With Doyle's "courtesy," Gauss dashed forward in a few quick strides.
A flash of cold light!
The rapier in his hand plunged with precision into the chest of the Water Ghoul, who was already completely exhausted.
"Pfft!"
The Water Ghoul's slimy skin split open, and its foul-smelling blood gushed out.
Gauss briskly pulled out his sword and retreated.
With the last Water Ghoul slain by Gauss, the long-awaited text finally appeared again.
"Water Ghoul slain *1" "Monster Kill Count: 50" "Reward obtained: Class Skill, 1st Circle Spell [Mage Armor]!" "Reward obtained: Agility +1" "Current Agility: 6" "Next stage: Accumulate a Monster Kill Count of 100."
After the pleasing notifications came a jolt through Gauss's entire body. In the blink of an eye, goosebumps rose all over him.
An invisible force seemed to flow through every nerve in his body, tiny currents surging within him and giving him an indescribable, wondrous sensation.
In just a few blinks, that miraculous force had finished transforming his body.
And in the next moment, another spell was imprinted upon his mind.
"What's wrong?"
Seeing him standing there dazed after killing the last Water Ghoul, Doyle asked, confused.
"N-no, it's nothing. Let me catch my breath." Gauss let out a long breath and shook his head.
In truth, he felt better than ever.
First, there was the increase to his Agility. Though it was only one point, unlike Constitution, Agility's effects were more immediately noticeable.
After rising from 5 to 6 points, he felt that his overall coordination and bodily agility had both improved.
To use an example from his previous life, it was like playing a game with a fluctuating network delay of one or two hundred milliseconds, then suddenly seeing it drop to a steady few dozen.
The two experiences were completely different.
Of course, whether that was a suitable comparison was another matter. He had only just finished improving, and the sudden change in his physical state could exaggerate and distort some of his subjective impressions. But all in all, his control over his body had improved considerably.
And this time, he had also been rewarded with another spell.
The 1st Circle Spell [Mage Armor].
Gauss sensed the new spell in his mind and quickly understood its effects.
When actively cast, it consumed a certain amount of magic power to form an invisible suit of armor around his body—equivalent to wearing an invisible force-field suit of armor with zero weight.
This Mage Armor wouldn't affect his movement speed or agility, yet it could absorb damage for him when he was attacked.
Feeling the effects of Mage Armor, Gauss couldn't help feeling his heart pound.
It was a very good spell.
He admitted that, at this moment, he might be a little too eager for the new and shiny.
Just as the more destructive Magic Missile had replaced Mage Hand in his favor after he obtained it, he suddenly felt that even the previously perfect Magic Missile wasn't quite as appealing anymore.
In his eyes, Mage Armor had now risen another step above Magic Missile in importance.
He was even starting to wonder whether he should replace his Core Skill with this newly acquired spell.
By instinct, he judged that Mage Armor would be faster to master than Magic Missile.
As an apprentice of a Spellcaster class who might not be quite so "squishy," but certainly wasn't "tanky" either, what worried him most was being attacked.
No matter how powerful his attacks were, he was still made of flesh and blood. A single stray arrow could take his life.
The battlefield was often complicated and unpredictable. Even someone as cautious as Gauss, with his ability to accelerate his brain, couldn't claim he could avoid every attack from other creatures.
That was also why he had insisted on teaming up with others lately. They could help draw some of the enemy's fire, allowing him to stay a little less tense and focused.
But now, with Mage Armor at his disposal, as long as he cast the spell during combat and the enemy's attacks didn't exceed its damage threshold, he could avoid harm from certain accidents.
This would greatly improve his margin for error in battle.
Of course, as he took in more information about Mage Armor, Gauss soon realized he still needed to be cautious. He couldn't get carried away.
Mage Armor wasn't a lifesaving charm. If the damage enemies dealt to it in a short time exceeded its limit, it would break. And for now, it couldn't withstand every type of attack.
Furthermore, because he was still only an apprentice, the spell might not be as powerful in his hands as it would be in the hands of a true professional.
He would need to test it further to see how it performed.
But despite all those limitations, it was still a spell perfectly suited to him.
Gauss gathered his thoughts. After taking in the changes to his body, he turned his attention back to reality.
His thoughts hadn't taken long. After finishing the battle, the others had all seized the chance to recover their strength.
Daphne began checking the other team members, especially the three who had fought on the front line. She focused on their limbs, waists, and abdomens—places that were easy to injure. Once she confirmed that none of them had been wounded, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Though Water Ghouls weren't strong fighters, they carried a lot of bacteria.
Some minor wounds could go unnoticed, and might not even hurt. They could be more troublesome than obvious injuries, because if overlooked, there was a small chance they could worsen into an illness and even cause death.
Meva and Oliver, who had provided ranged support, put on gloves and began harvesting the spoils as usual.
Besides the Water Ghouls' left ears, which they needed to submit as proof for the quest, there were also useful materials from the creatures' bodies that needed to be collected.
So it was a major undertaking.
After Daphne finished checking him over, Gauss went to help process the spoils of battle.
Leven looked at his companions and breathed a sigh of relief.
The bad premonition he'd had seemed to be nothing more than an unreliable false alarm. They had killed the Water Ghouls with apparent ease.
After a brief rest, he joined the others in handling the post-battle tasks.
Overall, collecting the Water Ghouls' remains was a painful but rewarding business.
The Water Ghouls smelled terrible, and handling their corpses was hardly a pleasant experience. But when they remembered that every material was worth silver coins, they found themselves willing to endure it.
There was only one kind of hardship in the world: the hardship of being poor.
Just as everyone was hard at work, bustling with activity, Gauss's eyelid suddenly began to twitch.
At first, he paid it no mind. He thought his sense of smell, which had nearly gone numb, was coming back, and the gray-green Water Ghoul remains beside him were making him feel sick.
But soon, his cerebral cortex went numb again, as if his body were instinctively warning him.
He finally realized something was wrong and abruptly raised his head.
He looked in one direction.
Beneath the moonlight, a tall blue figure was walking along the far riverbank, across the river's pale, silvery surface.
Was it a person? Or—
No! It was a monster!!
Squinting into the distance in the moonlight, Gauss finally made out the exact appearance of the humanoid silhouette.
Its shriveled skin, covered in blue spots, clung tightly to its bones like a layer of dried hide. Fine scales covered patches of its skin.
Most striking was its face, with features like a canine creature's. A pair of eyes like glowing red coals burned in its sunken sockets. Its snout jutted forward, packed with rows of fine, sharp predator's teeth. A huge, thick, snake-like tongue flicked ceaselessly through the air, and the ends of its forelimbs bore claws as sharp as blades.
It moved with its back arched, like a canine creature walking on two legs. Light-footed but swift, it headed toward them.
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