At dawn the campfires were long out, leaving only wisps of blue-gray smoke.
Gauss and Alia washed up, bolted a simple breakfast, rubbed feeling back into cheeks numbed by the cold, and headed to that day's rendezvous point.
People hadn't fully gathered yet, but low conversations from nearby squads drifted over.
"Seems like one team's missing?"
"I heard they… ran into a CR-2 pure-blood ogre…"
"Better keep our guard up."
"Odd, though. If they couldn't win, you'd think they could at least run."
"Maybe they overestimated themselves?"
Gauss and Alia traded a look.
Could it be another team died yesterday?
"I'll ask around," Alia said with her eyes.
With Gauss's nod, she walked over to a familiar-looking sorceress a short distance away. Moments later Alia came back wearing a puzzled expression.
"What is it?" Gauss asked.
"They're saying… it was the four-person team we took care of yesterday," Alia whispered, barely above a breath.
"Huh?" Gauss raised a brow. "How did that turn into 'ran into an ogre'?"
So Gauss equals a pure-blood CR-2 ogre now?
"Maybe… someone covered for us?" Alia shook her head; she was just as baffled.
"Forget it…" Thinking won't solve it. No one was questioning them anyway, and the rumor, as rumors go, worked in their favor.
So: eat when it's time to eat, drink when it's time to drink.
A single team's annihilation made everyone more cautious, but not exactly shocked. Anyone who volunteers for the winter hunt accepts the risk. Before leaving, everyone signs a benefits agreement with the Adventurers' Guild: if you die clearing monsters, your family gets generous compensation—solid cash, a respectable Guild-arranged job, or other support.
Yesterday's wipe wasn't the end; in a force of hundreds, more would die in the days to come. And many figured that if you ran into a CR-2 ogre and couldn't win, you could still probably run—so they tamped down the spiraling thoughts. In another sense, it helped—after a smooth first day, people were naturally letting their guard slip; this tightened it again.
…
High up in the trees, a man scanned the surroundings. After a while, he slid down a rope with simian ease from several dozen meters up.
"Captain, we've got people."
"How many? Need support?"
"Two—one man, one woman. Strong. Looks like they've got it under control."
"Pull back."
The captain sighed. On day two, elite teams "foraging" beyond their assigned sectors were clearly multiplying. They'd thought they were among the earliest movers; turned out the two-person team had beaten them to it—and seemed not to need help at all.
They had no intention of approaching Gauss and Alia. If the pair were struggling, maybe they'd jump in—for a tidy fifty or sixty percent cut. As it was, there'd be no payoff, just a risk of being seen as picking a fight. Too dangerous. Besides, veterans of many winter hunts knew how terrifyingly thorough the Guild's intelligence machine could be. You could think you'd covered your tracks perfectly; if the Guild wanted to dig, it would find something.
"Move—find the next monster camp!"
The captain waved, and they slipped back into the shade of the woods.
Ten or so minutes later, the fighting was over. The snow was littered with monster corpses.
Alia walked up to Gauss and found him staring, thoughtful, toward a spot deep in the trees.
"What is it?"
"Felt like someone was watching us just now."
"Like yesterday?" Alia tensed.
"Probably not…" Gauss withdrew his gaze. "That feeling's gone now."
"Let's still be careful," Alia said automatically—then paused, realizing how much she was coming to rely on Gauss. Even a hunch from him felt right to her… well, except when it came to his opinions on food.
Gauss checked his monster compendium.
This was the second monster camp cleared that day. It was already afternoon.
[Total Monster Kills: 922.]
The seventeenth ordinary monster entry lit up: Frost Serpent—a low-tier creature that's active only in cold seasons and highly aggressive. One to two meters long, about as thick as a child's wrist. Its two front fangs carry a cold venom; the bitten area rapidly loses heat and goes necrotic; without timely care it can freeze a commoner to death. It's a "normal" monster with no challenge rating, but that doesn't mean it isn't dangerous. It just gets less infamy than goblins because it's limited to winter and most victims are voiceless wildlife.
"I think the 'Foraging Book' says it's edible," Gauss said, lifting a Frost Serpent that was still twitching. He neatly lopped off the head and pressed the cut end into the snow to quick-freeze it. "Want to try it tonight?"
"You sure it's actually edible?"
Alia glanced at a kobold corpse nearby. Its right thigh bore two clean punctures; the flesh around them had gone a ghastly blue-purple, the whole leg stiff as if it had been frozen for days. If she remembered right, that kobold had stepped on a serpent and got bitten for it.
"Should be fine. This is an authoritative book; we haven't hit a wrong note yet." Gauss patted his copy of The Complete Guide to Foraging around the Jade Forest.
Rustfrog meat might not agree with Alia, but that didn't make it inedible. As long as you could tolerate a few minor side effects, it filled the belly. For him, those "side effects" didn't exist; it was perfect protein—and it had saved him a lot on meat.
He finished processing a bundle of Frost Serpents, froze them, and stowed them in the pouch. Winter had its perks: meat kept longer.
"Shame—another half-ogre." After collecting the serpents, Gauss sighed. That made five half-ogres down; still no sign of other CR-1 elites.
"This is an ogre warlock's army," Alia said, not entirely sure what he was sighing about, "and we might be in a region where those are most common. A lot of other elite species are probably further out."
Gauss nodded. They were somewhere mid-depth. If he were the ogre warlock, he'd post "his own kind" in the safer interior and send the outsiders to make the first charges.
So if he wanted CR-1 elites like hobgoblin champions, two-headed goblins, goblin warriors, he might have to move outward?
Forget it—hit the thousand-kill milestone first.
922/1000. The next bump was getting close.
While they rested, the raven Echo kept working, scouting for nearby monster camps.
"Caw, caw, caw!"
Echo flapped back in. Alia fed it a dozen strips of meat for its trouble. Once it swallowed them down, she asked for the locations it had found. Fed and buoyed by Alia's druidic Nature power, the adolescent raven was growing fast—noticeably bigger than when they bonded, and glossier of feather. That, in a nutshell, is why a druid's beast companions could stand shoulder to shoulder with elite monsters.
Gauss watched Echo for a moment. Per Alia, it had a few possible growth paths. One: straight-up gigantism, like the gray wolf Ulfen, whose bulk was already several times his wild kin; a raven that kept growing might become a flying mount, though that would demand stronger Nature power from its master. Two: evolve as a "lord," gaining the power to command wild kin. Three: develop as a caster—sapients all have the potential to learn magic.
After a brief exchange with Echo, Alia had the positions of several camps. The raven wasn't strong, but its perch in the sky gave it a huge advantage; most ordinary scout spells couldn't compete.
Rest over, they moved out again.
They reached the first site Echo had marked. Gauss climbed to a treetop, observed for a bit, and his face tightened.
It was a sizable encampment—roughly two to three hundred monsters spread across the clearing and surrounding woods. Not something their little team could handle.
The leader was a pure-blood ogre even larger than a half-ogre. Ogres—giant-kin—typically stand around three meters and easily top a thousand pounds (450 kg). Challenge rating at least CR-2, and those with special abilities could be higher.
It looked like a walking hill. Even the studded log it carried as a club was bigger than a grown man. Ordinary goblins at its feet were like skinny dogs—snacks for between meals. And it was flanked by two half-ogres and a fully armored gnoll warrior.
This was absolutely a crack unit inside the horde.
"Pull back. That's out of our league—one pure-blood ogre, about three more CR-1 elites, and two to three hundred auxiliaries," Gauss sent via Message.
This was a dangerous neighborhood. As confident as he was, he wasn't about to pretend the two of them could chew through a camp like that.
He slid down from the tree. Just as he landed and turned to withdraw with Alia, a sharp keening cry split the sky in the distance—
—and from afar came the drumming of rapid footsteps.