Chapter 25: The Lower‑Level Ecosystem
"Little Gauss, want some breakfast today?"
"Maybe next time, Sophia. I’m heading out first!"
Gauss stepped through the inn’s front door.
His practice with Magic Missile had shown some results, so he planned to head to the Adventurer’s Guild.
After entering level 2, his proficiency gains from simple practice had sharply slowed.
Real combat offered far better training than grinding out mundane practice.
Besides, the numbers on his Monster Encyclopedia had stalled for a while.
Total monsters slain: 12
“Next milestone: cumulative monster kills must reach 50.”
Training Magic Missile was like sharpening a blade — now that it was sharp, it was time to test it.
More importantly, staying around the town’s outskirts practicing spells had drained his small coin purse quickly, so he needed to take on some quests to replenish it.
Current funds: 26 silver, 15 copper, 2 copper.
In just a few days, more than 2 silver had silently disappeared.
Most of that money had gone toward food and drink.
And that was with him consciously controlling his spending, avoiding splurging at taverns.
“What’s going on? Didn’t I just eat a bit more meat?”
Gauss shook his head.
Even though he’d been eating at relatively “cheap” street stalls and small corner shops the past few days, his expenses weren’t particularly high.
Even if he had meat almost every single meal, could the spending really have ballooned to this extent?
Gauss decided he wasn’t to blame here.
Blame this world’s exorbitant meat prices—this world needs to examine its own shortcomings; after all these years, has technology or productivity really advanced? Why can’t meat shift from a luxury to an everyday food?
He shook his head again.
His desire to eat meat wasn’t likely to fade anytime soon.
As his mana reserves continued to grow, he felt like an adolescent boy—each day burning vast amounts of energy, and eating only vegetables wouldn’t sustain him; sooner or later his body would break down.
Besides, he didn’t intend to curb his culinary cravings.
Training was already tough enough; he saw nothing wrong with enjoying himself a bit. Living like an ascetic monk was never his life goal.
He walked into the Adventurer’s Guild hall.
The crowd was still large that morning.
That was the usual scene at the Guild—especially in the morning and evening, adventurers swarmed in like bargain-hunting housewives at a supermarket, wandering the hall looking for suitable quests.
Gauss had been to the Guild several times and had completely demystified the location.
Through his careful observation, he noticed some adventurers dressed impressively, yet they just hovered around the bulletin boards, browsing contract details and nodding repeatedly—but after a long time showed no movement to take action.
He vaguely recognized a few figures, seeing them every time he came.
He reasonably suspected that among the large group of adventurers were some extras, possibly even hired by the Guild to make the hall look more lively and to stimulate other adventurers’ desire to snatch quests.
Shaking off these idle speculations in his head, Gauss also went to the quest bulletin board to browse the job postings.
First, he ruled out gathering quests—material gathering often required aimless, time-consuming searching in forests, wasting time, and he also lacked knowledge in herbal collection, preservation techniques, tools, and experience.
He quickly crossed out escort quests as well.
He also only glanced at the fixed monster-clearing quests.
Those contracts issued by Graystone Town’s city hall were long-term—but precisely because of that, those areas had been swept clean by adventurers for years, and monsters were rarely seen there.
Gauss focused mainly on monster-slaying quests posted by civilians.
In this world, many low-tier monsters like goblins had little inherent value—they didn’t drop any materials useful to humans.
So villagers and civilian settlements often pooled funds to post adventurer contracts through the Guild.
Some might wonder—goblins are just small monsters; even if a dozen gather, surely they’re no match for a village of dozens, so why don’t villagers just eliminate them themselves instead of hiring adventurers?
Gauss used to be puzzled by this as well.
But after chatting with villagers in Birch Village, he more or less understood the reason.
First of all, the combat power of monster groups isn’t simply a matter of numbers; many small monsters, though weak individually, gain substantial group combat experience from long-term fights with wild beasts and other monsters in the wild.
Second, the terrain is often disadvantageous—jungles, lairs, or other wild environments aren’t suitable for human combat.
Most critically, once combat breaks out, injuries and even deaths become inevitable risks.
Villagers who farm long-term rarely possess any real fighting spirit.
Even if one or two do, they can’t inspire the others.
Don’t be fooled into thinking Gauss slaying goblins was easy—it’s because his body, once a hunter’s, was already in top physical condition compared to ordinary people.
And his above-average intelligence gave him a pseudo bullet-time awareness during combat.
Add magic, weapons, and teammates into the mix, and he appeared like a “war god.”
But average villagers didn’t have those advantages.
If a fight broke out, it would be nearly impossible to escape without injuries, and villagers dying was not uncommon.
Rather than risk their lives fighting, timid villagers preferred to grit their teeth, pool money together, and commission the Adventurer’s Guild to handle the matter.
Over time, a kind of unspoken norm formed on this continent—when it came to monster problems, it was best to hire adventurers.
Gauss figured the Adventurer’s Guild probably promoted that notion behind the scenes as well. If no one came to request jobs, how would the Guild keep running?
After browsing the corkboard on the bulletin wall for quite some time, he still hadn’t found a satisfactory job.
He hoped to find a quest involving fewer than five monsters with weak combat capabilities.
Such quests did exist, but they were relatively rare. When the monster threat was low, villagers wouldn’t be extravagant enough to fund a quest at the Adventurer’s Guild.
Moreover, many low-tier monsters, while low in intelligence and strength, had strong survival instincts that drove them to group together and continually expand their numbers.
So even in monster ecology, there was a pattern like “beasts travel alone; cattle and sheep move in herds.”
“Besides, I can’t even grab those.” Gauss shook his head. “The safer jobs probably get snatched up the moment they’re posted by other low-level adventurer teams.”
In any field, competition was fiercest at the bottom.
“Maybe I should go check over there?”
His gaze shifted to the corner of the hall where the crowd was densest.
If he wasn’t mistaken, that was where adventurers formed temporary teams—after all, not every adventurer had fixed teammates, and many quests couldn’t be completed solo. In such cases, they could only recruit temporary allies in the Guild hall.
Just like how he had volunteered to join Hailier’s team last time.