A day passed in the blink of an eye.
Aside from being punched once by Gauss, Serlandul showed no other physical abnormalities. After much consideration and discussion, Gauss and the others decided today would be the day to open the fifth-level gate of the Maze.
To be precise, it had been almost a week since the battle that ended with the Magic Frog Lord.
The number of people entering the fourth level of the Maze continued to grow.
Now newcors in the Red Dragon Guild also knew that the current guidelines were for exploring the Maze’s fourth level.
"Ready?"
Gauss looked around at his companions.
Although it had been a week of hard work, compared to fighting and marching, this felt like a different kind of labor.
Seeing his teammates nod quickly, he felt reassured.
He raised his right hand and cast his spell.
"Light Cantrip!"
Gauss released magic, summoning several floating, burning-white light spheres that banished the surrounding dimness.
They had co out into an incredibly spacious cavern. The air was cold, and water droplets constantly trickled down the stalactite columns above.
"Plop! Plop!"
Droplets hit the ground and splashed.
Suddenly, Gauss spoke up, "Watch out!"
He glanced up.
Clusters of Sli were descending toward the very exit he had just stepped through.
"Bigby’s Hand!"
Gauss cast the spell, and a huge hand condensed into shape, covering the passageway.
Nurous Slis still hadn’t finished reacting.
"Grab!"
Before those Slis could counterattack, the enormous palm smashed down with brutal force.
"Ptooey!!!"
Countless Slis burst like overripe fruit.
The sticky juices dripped between the giant hand’s fingers.
Gauss casually checked the Monster Encyclopedia.
Just that one crushing grasp had killed dozens of Slis.
Under the effect of Gauss’s fifth-circle spell, they had been far too weak.
At the sa ti, other mbers of the Red Dragon Guild who had recovered from their surprise tightened their grips on weapons and launched attacks on Slis hiding in crevices around the cavern.
Arrows and spells flew toward the ceiling.
Slis hiding in rock fissures and piles of weeds were rooted out, pierced through with swords.
Gauss’s gaze fixed on the largest Sli at the rear.
Its diater was roughly two ters.
It was the biggest Sli Gauss had seen since becoming an adventurer.
Slis are one of the common low-tier monsters.
Compared with Goblins, they don’t usually organize to raid villages or caravans, so they aren’t as conspicuous.
In fact, most Slis reaching such size were rare occurrences.
This Sli, however, was unusually massive.
Gauss’s Awareness picked up sothing as he watched the creature move.
Suddenly, a shallow depression two to three dozen centiters deep opened in front of it.
Stronger Slis often left traces of their movent like this.
Then, several sticky, twitching sli tentacles flailed crazily through the air.
"Diamond Palm!"
With Gauss’s thought, the palm—its surface growing harder in an instant—fell with a speed wholly inconsistent with its enormous size.
Under the palm, the very air seed to be sucked away.
"Boom!!"
The cavern trembled twice.
When the air settled, Bigby’s Hand lifted, and the Sli had been pulverized into a slag heap, dead beyond rescue.
Although it was rare for a Sli to reach such strength, Gauss showed no rcy.
Slis were not a benevolent race.
They did not actively attack human settlents under normal circumstances, but their poor information-gathering ant that if they encountered humans in the wild they would still seize the chance for nutrition.
Research suggested the Sli’s path to strength involved gradually increasing their affinity for mana and raising intelligence; killing other sentient beings was a shortcut for them.
Silently, Gauss pocketed the fragnted Sli cores into his Storage Bag.
He scanned the rest of the cavern; the other Slis were dispatched by the Red Dragon Guild mbers in very short order.
"Let’s rest a bit."
Gauss instructed everyone to clean up the area around the cavern.
If nothing unexpected happened, this place would beco a base camp for later adventurers on the fifth level.
He then took out his Crystal Orb to check the map.
If he wasn’t mistaken, this location matched the position displayed on the map relative to where they had co from.
Since Gauss and the others were eager to set off, and he also needed to confirm the cavern’s safety, they didn’t linger unnecessarily.
After leaving the cavern, moss and puddles dotted the terrain.
Frogs, mosquitoes...
Gauss decisively raised his right hand. The back of his hand glowed faintly.
It was a perfect mont to test sothing.
Soon, hundreds of insects and small creepy-crawlies sward and buzzed around, but after the Weaver’s Mark upgraded, the effect was noticeably different.
Previously, he could hear the chaotic noise of insects, which irritated him.
Now, under the control of his talent, even those insects without independent consciousness emitted clear sounds.
Of course the insects hadn’t changed—the talent had grown stronger, and when "communicating" with them, he could control or assist them.
From now on, he and his companions would no longer be troubled by mosquitoes or poisonous insects.
Against insect-type monsters that had independent awareness, he could use the Weaver’s Mark to interfere with their judgnt by disrupting their sounds.
Through communication with the insects, Gauss learned which monster types were most nurous on this level.
Unlike the fourth level, there were two dominant monster groups on the fifth level.
One was the Sli clan they had just encountered at the exit.
The damp environnt of the fifth level was extrely suitable for Slis to breed. The only reason this relatively weak low-tier species could flourish was their prodigious reproductive capacity.
Like Goblins...
The other dominant group was an entirely different species.
From the insects’ reports, Gauss learned more about them.
Outside the Maze, even experienced adventurers and researchers rarely encountered such creatures, and even if they did, they often underestimated the threat.
Gauss had only observed them briefly before, but their rapid regeneration and group tactics made the species dangerous.
These creatures could infect other beings and convert them into spore thralls.
Those spore thralls varied in strength; so were weak, others far stronger.
After receiving the information, Gauss had Shadow use her talent to quickly scout the surroundings with him.
The number of wild animals on the fifth level exceeded that of the fourth.
Gauss also discovered sothing that surprised him.
He saw a large number of Slis that had been dosticated.
So were in caverns like the one they had erged from; others were crowded inside a massive pit.
Countless spherical Slis writhed quickly within.
In other words, the insect reports had a slight bias: Slis did indeed rival the mushroom creatures in numbers, but the Slis were being fard.
Obviously, Slis would not crawl into pens by themselves.
And besides the mushroom creatures, the only ones capable of such husbandry were those more intelligent fungoid beings.
Were the Slis being raised as a food reserve?
Gauss felt a flicker of curiosity.
Although he knew there were high-intelligence monster races, seeing the concept of livestock-raising—sothing he associated with humans—in the monsters’ behavior left him a little stunned.
Soon, his theory was confird.
A three-ter-tall mushroom person erged slowly from the grass like an old farr. It stood at the rim of the huge pit, peered down at the mass of Slis, and then...
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