Chapter 73: Judgment Mechanism
Name: Gauss.
Strength: 6.
Agility: 6.
Constitution: 6.
Intelligence: 7.
Perception: 57.
Charisma: 6.
Skills:
Tier‑0 Cantrip Mage Hand lv. 3 (3/50).
Tier‑1 Spell Magic Missile lv. 2 (17/20).
Tier‑1 Spell Mage Armor lv. 2 (19/20).
Swordsmanship Basics lv. 1 (9/10).
Talents: Rapid Digestion, Magic Resistance.
Gauss glanced at his attribute panel.
The growing number of skills and talents also signified his steadily increasing strength.
While he was reviewing the panel, two other villagers approached from a distance.
“There are eight in total—did you count correctly?” Gauss returned to reality and gestured to the two men to look at the goblins lying dead in the mud.
“That’s right.” Both villagers nodded repeatedly.
They had watched the entire fight and were thoroughly impressed by Gauss’s performance, even unconsciously adopting a sense of awe.
Though he looked refined and reserved, Gauss turned into a brutal other being when slaying monsters—like an old butcher who had slaughtered livestock for decades, taking life with each movement.
The stark contrast between his two personas sent a chill through both villagers.
They feared that he would not have been satisfied yet and might treat them as goblins and strike them down as well.
Fortunately, his emotions remained rather stable for now.
After a brief moment of joy, Gauss regained composure and attentively observed his surroundings.
He remained alert to the scent of blood and any movement that might attract other creatures.
After collecting trophy evidence, he rummaged through the wreckage and picked up some potentially valuable scraps to carry.
Back at the village, the village chief and the two villagers who had accompanied him confirmed the kill and promptly handed Gauss the agreed reward of 7 silver and 20 copper coins.
With the temporary commission completed, Gauss searched the nearby area a bit more.
He managed to kill two slime slimes and one small skeleton that had crawled out from somewhere, but found nothing else of value.
So he returned to the first village, bid farewell to the village chief and Jenos, and embarked on the journey back to Graystone Town.
“Phew!”
As the density of the aquamarine farmland gradually thinned, Gauss drew ever closer to Graystone Town.
The grayish stony outline of the town slowly grew larger in his vision.
“We’re here!”
Passing through the checkpoint gate, Gauss—who had been away for several days—felt excited to see the town streets unchanged.
Humans are weird creatures that tire of the old for the new.
On his first day in the village, he’d found its peaceful, quiet atmosphere quite livable;
but after a few days, he couldn’t help but miss the liveliness of the town.
The village was indeed quieter than the town and lacked many outsiders,
but there was nowhere suitable to spend money on entertainment or necessities.
After nightfall, the village became pitch‑black, and he, like everyone else, had no choice but to sleep early.
That was difficult to adapt to.
Suffocating that feeling, Gauss headed toward the Adventurers’ Guild, where the first thing to do upon return was to submit his quest.
The receptionist duty was again assigned to Petra this time.
She was the first Adventurers’ Guild receptionist he had met, and Gauss remembered the blonde Petra well, feeling a nostalgic sense of seeing an old acquaintance again.
What he didn’t expect was that before he even took out his Adventurer’s Badge to prove his identity, Petra had already called his name.
“Mr. Gauss, was the mission smooth this time?”
“Uh, it was alright, I didn’t encounter any danger.” Gauss looked at Petra, feeling a bit surprised.
He remembered her quite well—partly due to his good memory, and partly because she was the first Adventurers’ Guild staff member he had interacted with, which made him naturally more attentive.
But for her, as a guild employee who dealt with countless adventurers every day, to remember him and even match his name correctly—that was something else.
Perhaps this was the level of professionalism expected of an Adventurers’ Guild employee! Gauss could only think this way with admiration.
Putting himself in her shoes, if he were doing her job, he definitely wouldn’t remember an ordinary low-level adventurer.
Petra took the quest items and badge Gauss handed over and quietly glanced at his face a few times.
Compared to his first visit, his face now carried much more confidence.
She certainly remembered him—not because she had some extraordinary memory.
It was simply because Gauss had left a strong impression on her, and she had privately followed his quest record.
As a rookie adventurer, being able to progress this smoothly and even start taking solo missions recently, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say he was “exceptionally gifted.”
“Sorry, these few goblin left ears don’t belong to this particular commission.”
“Oh, I must have accidentally mixed them in,” Gauss said as he watched Petra accurately place a few goblin ears on the counter, feeling a bit surprised.
Those goblin ears weren’t mistakenly mixed in—he had deliberately tried to slip them in together to see what would happen.
To his surprise, the guild’s identification methods were this advanced—the number returned matched exactly the number he’d mixed in.
Was it because of differences in the time they were severed?
Gauss mused silently.
But he quickly dismissed the idea—after all, the time difference between the two batches of goblin ears was barely two days.
If the judgment were based on that alone, it would cause major errors—since a single mission could last several days, and some large-scale missions could span one or two months, or even longer.
So was it some kind of detection or tracing magic or magic item being used?
Now that he had gotten the test result he wanted, Gauss didn’t delay further at the counter—after all, there were other adventurers lining up behind him.
Eleven silver coins.
He placed the coins into his pouch, and seeing it bulge once again, Gauss’s mood improved significantly.
Current cash: 42 silver coins and 65 copper coins.
Gauss looked at his boots—the long trek had worn the soles down to a thin layer.
It was time to buy new clothes, boots, and other daily necessities.
There was no helping it—as an adventurer, the wear and tear on personal items like these was much greater than that of ordinary people.
Partly due to the long travel distances, and partly because moving through the wild meant branches, rocks, and other debris often tore at his clothes.
As for why Mage Armor couldn’t protect against such wear—
That was because the effects of Mage Armor didn’t seem to respond to mosquito bites, environmental scraping, and other mundane interactions.
There appeared to be some kind of judgment mechanism built into the spell effect.