After nearly every adventuring company that came to visit bought a batch of monster materials, the help of all those teams quickly cleared the more than ten thousand monster corpses lying out in the wilderness.
The Red Dragon Company made nearly four thousand gold coins from it all.
It was the single biggest haul they had ever made, and it drove home for Gauss just how massive a source of wealth a labyrinth could be for a powerful adventurer.
That kind of money was enough for an ordinary person to live lavishly for a lifetime.
Especially in a small town like Grayrock, where prices weren't particularly high, it would be enough to buy up a huge number of homes, shops, and other properties and become a rich local landlord.
If an ordinary person in a small town wanted to accumulate that much wealth, even earning twenty copper coins a day and spending absolutely nothing, it would still take thousands of years.
But even counting the time he'd spent killing the monsters and later negotiating the sales, the whole thing had taken only a few days.
The contrast was enough to make anyone feel dazed.
Of course, the world of adventurers and the world of ordinary people only looked like they overlapped. In truth, they were completely different worlds.
Though four thousand gold was a huge sum, after the initial satisfaction wore off, Gauss calmed down quickly.
He had long since moved past the stage of being obsessed with money. He was no longer the original owner of this body, that small-town young man who dreamed of grinding away for decades just to buy a house.
Just like this experience had shown him, strength would always matter more than money itself.
A strong adventurer would never truly be short of money. They could always earn wealth beyond ordinary imagination by taking commissions and hunting monsters.
That was exactly why so many young people kept throwing themselves onto the path of the adventurer.
For a young person with no background and no support, the road was dangerous, but it was also the fairest field they could ever hope to touch.
So after finishing up with the other adventuring companies, Gauss threw himself right back into practicing magic.
The proficiency of the two newly acquired 5th-circle spells, Bigby's Hand and Dawn, rose rapidly under his relentless training.
While he was busy with that, the teammates who had gone into seclusion for breakthroughs began waking up one after another.
Maybe the gains from this battle had really been enormous, because almost all of their breakthroughs went smoothly.
Albena successfully advanced to become a Level 8 warrior.
As her level rose, her body became even stronger.
The giant blood in her veins had drawn strange looks from others during the years she'd spent living alone after leaving her tribe, but for a warrior, that bloodline put her far ahead of the starting line.
Compared to many special races, pureblood humans really did seem relatively average in raw talent.
That didn't mean humanity had no advantages. On the contrary, mankind's greatest gifts were its high fertility and high intelligence as a species. As long as there were enough humans, then even if most individuals were mediocre, sooner or later one of them would pull an SSR—or even a UR—out of the pool.
Back to Albena: after reaching Level 8, her inborn monstrous strength seemed to have been further unlocked. On top of that, she gained a bloodline talent somewhat similar to an orc's berserk state.
She called it Giantization.
It was somewhat like the Body Enlargement technique Gauss himself possessed, but after testing it personally, he found that Albena's version was more comprehensive.
Gauss's Body Enlargement was just a skill, so it mostly enlarged the body itself, without dramatically increasing strength or burst power. Albena's Giantization, however, seemed to briefly awaken the giant blood within her, enlarging her body while also drastically boosting her strength.
Of course, such a huge short-term boost came at a price. For several days afterward, she wouldn't be able to use it again. She had to wait for her giant blood to recover before activating it once more.
So compared to Body Enlargement, Albena's Giantization was actually closer in nature to Dragonkind and Second-Stage Ghoulification, though in raw potency it was probably weaker than Gauss's two ace talents. By his estimate, Albena's Giantization was roughly equivalent to a blue-rank racial talent.
The side effects were too obvious, and it was unclear whether the ability would evolve further once her own strength rose and her giant bloodline returned to a purer state.
Still, even at its current level, the talent already let Albena pull noticeably ahead of most warriors of the same rank.
In her giantized state, Gauss was certain she could kill multiple Level 8 warriors by herself. And if a Level 9 professional wasn't ready for it, they would probably be pushed onto the back foot very quickly.
If they couldn't endure the initial burst before her blood cooled, they might even be killed outright.
That was the tyranny of racial talents.
They were like special treasure chests passed down through bloodline after bloodline by one's ancestors. Not every inheritor could open them. Only a lucky few ever found the key.
The second person whose changes were especially obvious was Alia.
When she returned, she was already a level 6 professional.
Her hair had turned a luminous moon-white silver. Her already pale skin seemed almost to glow, and her features had become even more refined.
Her returning elven bloodline had clearly been purified even further.
Judging by appearance alone, anyone seeing her for the first time would assume she was a pureblood elf of noble origin, not a half-elf.
Shadow, meanwhile, reached level 7, and her number of shadow clones rose from two to five.
That increase gave her a huge jump in combat power. Gauss honestly felt that the scale of her improvement was even greater than Albena's, despite Albena gaining Giantization.
After all, Albena's Giantization was incredibly domineering, but it had a time limit. Once it ended, she dropped back to normal. Shadow's extra clones, on the other hand, were part of her normal state.
Five elusive shadow clones were enough to give almost any opponent a headache.
And according to Shadow herself, if she combined the five into one, that single merged clone was nearly as strong as she was in person.
As for Serandur, he was the last member of Gauss's original five-man team to come back.
He was also the latest to emerge out of everyone in the Red Dragon Company who had gone into seclusion.
Ivan and the others had all returned, but Serandur still hadn't.
If Gauss hadn't specifically gone to check on him in the cave he'd chosen for his breakthrough, he might have started to think something had gone wrong.
But Serandur's state truly was unusual.
With his powerful dragon-sight, Gauss saw that Serandur's body temperature had dropped to an extreme low, almost blending into the ambient temperature of the cave.
In other words, if a creature that used thermal vision had come here, it probably wouldn't have noticed there was even a living person inside.
Though curious, Gauss was relieved as soon as he sensed that Serandur's heartbeat—slow almost to the point of stillness—was still there.
He hadn't moved in any closer for a more detailed inspection.
Breakthroughs weren't something you could interfere with carelessly. Like a chrysalis becoming a butterfly, this was often the point at which a professional was most vulnerable.
Even if something seemed wrong, the best thing to do was usually wait.
Well-meaning help, done in a panic, often became a form of harm instead.
That was a lesson mankind had learned the hard way through countless real examples.
Serandur's body was curled into a spiral, like a snake hibernating.
Gauss watched from afar for a while, then left.
When other adventuring companies came to deal with him, they couldn't help but cautiously ask when he planned to open the next floor of the labyrinth.
He brushed them off by saying the Red Dragon Company needed time to recover.
None of them appeared particularly urgent about it.
Gauss wasn't sure if that was because they didn't dare show impatience in front of him, or because there was still enough left to explore on the fourth floor that they didn't mind the delay.
He figured it was both.
Though the battle with the magic frog lord had killed over ten thousand monsters and drastically cut down the population on the fourth floor, there were still plenty of other creatures left.
There were level 5 monsters, and also elite individuals who had resisted the lord's summons. These stronger monsters tended to guard special treasure chests and points of interest.
So there was still a lot worth exploring on the fourth floor.
And beyond that, the monster materials bought from Gauss still had to be collected, preserved, hauled out, and sold. That alone tied up a great deal of the other companies' manpower.
So for the moment, thanks to the Red Dragon Company's decision, the entire main force on the fourth floor remained here.
After checking on Serandur, Gauss went back to cultivating with his teammates.
Over the past few days, he had also carved out some time every day to answer cultivation questions from other Red Dragon Company members.
It was basically a very casual "class," where any company member could come up and ask him one question related to their training.
Once word got out, almost everyone showed tremendous enthusiasm.
It wasn't just spellcasters. Even warriors, rangers, rogues, and others whose professions seemed unrelated to Gauss all stepped forward for guidance.
At first, the latter probably didn't expect much. Most of them were just using the chance to interact with him out of admiration.
But under Gauss's golden eyes, they soon felt as though their bodies had been seen through inside and out.
And then Gauss gave each of them tailored advice based on their condition.
Under his guidance, the members of the Red Dragon Company found entirely new directions for their training.
Gauss might not have understood all the specifics of each profession and skill, but he understood the human body.
Take warrior techniques, for example. Under his eyes, nothing was hidden. He could see exactly how tight their muscles were when a technique activated, how fast their blood flowed, and so on.
That allowed him to identify each person's exact problems in an astonishingly short time—whether it was posture, exertion method, or long-term bodily strain.
His vast "knowledge" earned him even more admiration from the members.
If before, they'd worshiped him mostly because of his strength, then now that he had displayed such exceptional teaching ability, every member who benefited from his guidance was genuinely won over.
People were creatures driven by benefits...
Even admiration needed enough real benefit behind it to become something solid.
Proof of Leadership only accelerated that process. It wasn't brainwashing. If Gauss's character had instinctively disgusted others, then Proof of Leadership would never have made them loyal.
A small, frail-looking girl walked up nervously, her heart pounding.
When her eyes landed on Gauss's face, the pounding only grew faster.
"Commander, I'm the one who asked you about Chromatic Orb the other day."
"I remember you. You're Holly, right? What's the problem?"
Gauss looked at her, and in an instant recalled her name and the exact issue she had asked about the day before. He hadn't even tried to memorize it. At 20 Intelligence, his memory had long since become effectively perfect.
Unless he deliberately erased information, forgetting was almost impossible.
"Mm-hmm."
The moment Holly realized Gauss actually remembered her, surprise and joy bloomed across her face, and her eyes sparkled.
But she didn't waste any time. There were still plenty of others waiting behind her, hoping for their own chance.
She knew that for an ordinary little Level 1 mage like herself, getting guidance from someone like the commander was an unbelievably rare opportunity.
Other adventuring companies almost never offered something like this.
After all, an adventuring company was fundamentally an employment relationship. The higher-ups' only real duty was to pay wages.
Training guidance wasn't, strictly speaking, part of their job at all—especially not in large companies with hundreds or thousands of members.
If every person needed guidance, the leadership wouldn't have time for anything else.
And more importantly, most people simply didn't want the hassle.
But Commander Gauss was different…
She quickly explained the issue she'd run into while practicing Chromatic Orb, then looked up at him with bright expectation.
Even though Gauss himself hadn't learned Chromatic Orb, his magical knowledge let him immediately understand what was wrong.
Soon, under his instruction, Holly tried casting it a few more times.
Problems that felt like impassable walls to low-level professionals were often incredibly simple from Gauss's perspective—especially when the person in question had already spent plenty of time thinking, practicing, and failing.
What was hard for one person was trivial for another.
As soon as he pointed it out, clarity came instantly.
Watching a sphere of energy appear at the tip of her wand, Holly's face lit up with joy.
Very quickly, one member after another came to Gauss for instruction.
"Magic Missile."
"Acid Splash."
"Hunter's Mark…"
With his dragon eyes and his formidable knowledge of how bodies and power worked, Gauss was able to identify the issues in their movements, circulation, magical structures, and habits far faster than any ordinary instructor.
Even the members who had initially approached him just out of idol worship soon ended up walking away with truly useful answers.
And that, more than anything, made their respect real.
Then, just as Gauss was about to leave and go continue refining his own magic, he suddenly looked toward a certain direction.
Rumble.
A deep, rolling sound came from far away.
It was coming from the direction of the cave where Serandur had gone into seclusion not long ago.