The effect of Intermediate Draconic was a whole tier stronger than Basic.
Now, if a true dragon appeared in front of him, he would have absolutely no language barrier talking to it.
Of course, that was only in terms of language.
Whether a dragon would be willing to talk at all depended on… many other things.
But the value of Draconic wasn't just in "being able to chat with dragons." That part was almost negligible—Draconic itself was the bonus.
Once Gauss fully finished absorbing this blue-grade ability, the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth was almost impossible to suppress.
No adventurer ever complained about being too strong.
If you can kill an enemy in one punch, why bother throwing a second?
Very nice.
Gauss put away the Folded House and cast Flight.
His body lifted cleanly from the ground, hovering lightly in mid-air.
Flying no longer had the slightest sense of strain it once did.
Maybe it was because dragons were born rulers of the sky… and now even this "humanoid fake dragon" carried a hint of a sky-lord's presence.
"Whew—"
His flying speed had clearly improved as well.
Gauss angled himself toward Lakeside Town.
He realized, a little dazed, that he'd been out for hours. It had been noon when he left; now the sun was already setting.
He was slowly starting to understand what "losing track of time in the mountains" really meant.
Back near Lakeside, he descended outside the town walls and strolled in at an unhurried pace.
Along the way, plenty of gazes—open or hidden—fell on him.
By now, his fame across the Five Towns of Blue Lake, especially around Lakeside itself, was changing day by day.
Calling him the hottest "rising star" wasn't an exaggeration.
And the fact that he happened to have a face most people found very easy to like… well, that only added fuel to the fire.
"That's the guy everyone's been talking about the past two days, right? Gauss?"
"That's him."
"It's insane. In just two days he got over thirteen hundred points. As monsters, that's thirteen hundred goblins or kobolds."
"With that many monsters, even if you tied them all up and lined them in front of me so I just had to chop heads one by one, I'd still never finish. My arms would give out before I got halfway…"
"That's why he's a top adventurer and you're a peddler."
"Seriously, he is as handsome as people say."
"If I could be with someone like that, I'd be fine with living on bread and water!"
"…"
Gauss walked straight through the crowd.
He acted as if he hadn't heard a word, his face calm and still.
It wasn't arrogance or putting on airs. He was just used to it.
Everyone's emotional threshold gets raised over time by what they go through.
Maybe the first few times he'd felt a little glow of satisfaction hearing praise, but since becoming an adventurer he'd heard the same kind of thing so many times that it barely stirred the water now.
Honestly, still being giddy about this at his stage… would've meant he was at least a little narcissistic.
"Back already?"
He ran into Alia at the inn's front door.
If he remembered right, her plan for the afternoon had been to make a shopping run in the market district to restock supplies.
"Yeah."
Gauss nodded.
Alia gave him a second, curious look.
"Gauss, your voice sounds nicer now," she commented directly this time. With no outsider like Maggie around, she didn't bother to be subtle.
"It's your bloodline, right?"
"Yeah." Gauss nodded. "Not bad, huh?"
"Mhm!" Alia nodded quickly, more than a little envious.
Having a better voice was something most people would never turn down.
"Oh, right, there's something I should tell you."
"Hm?"
"That second-place Herbert is chasing you."
"How many points is he at?"
Gauss didn't obsess over the day-to-day back-and-forth. He was pretty sure there weren't many adventurers in his weight class who could outdo him at monster slaughter. But Alia bringing it up specifically did make him curious.
"When I checked after lunch, he was already at 1,311."
"Oh?"
Gauss raised an eyebrow.
Because he'd spent the afternoon working on Draconic instead of hunting, his own score was still sitting at 1,372.
Herbert really had closed the gap again.
And in just half a day, he'd earned another two hundred points?
For Gauss, that wasn't spectacular. But compared to Herbert's earlier average of two hundred a day, it was clearly an uptick.
If Herbert had kept hunting into the afternoon, at that rate he would've ended the day around fifteen hundred points and overtaken him.
Does he not need to rest? If Gauss remembered right, Herbert had been competing hard for several days already—he should be hitting fatigue by now. Gauss scratched his head.
He hadn't cared that much about the score, but even he felt a faint sense of pressure now. He didn't show it in front of Alia though.
Looks like he'd have to go out again tonight and make up the missing points from the afternoon.
"Let's eat first."
…
Night fell.
An ember-colored dragon rose into the air beyond the outskirts of Lakeside Town.
Gauss sat on Hephaestus' back.
Maybe because of his newly-evolved Intermediate Draconic, he could feel that Hephaestus' attitude toward him had shifted again.
The change was so subtle the dragon probably hadn't noticed it himself.
In the past, Gauss and Hephaestus had mostly "talked" by sending impressions and intent through their mental link.
But now that he'd learned real Draconic, he wanted to practice a little while they flew.
So he deliberately muted the psychic channel.
He parted his lips and let a short, forceful syllable roll out from his throat.
"Hmm…"
The moment he spoke it, the dragon's steady wingbeats faltered in a very noticeable wobble.
"Rrrowr?"
Gauss hadn't said anything complicated—just Hephaestus' name, in Draconic.
But the dragon's response made him frown.
What the hell was that?
He'd originally assumed that he hadn't been able to understand Hephaestus' roars before because of the language gap—that they probably carried simple intentions, the way many beasts used calls for "food," "danger," "flee," "enemy," and so on.
Now that he actually knew Draconic, though, he realized he'd been giving the Drake too much credit.
He'd seriously overestimated its "EQ."
Those roars weren't "simple Draconic" at all; they were just… noise. Babble. Nonsense sounds with no semantic content.
Yes.
What had sounded, to Gauss' human ears, like a majestic dragon's bellow was, in Draconic terms, the equivalent of a drooling idiot mumbling.
No wonder the five-colored dragons refused to recognize Drake as "true" dragons.
No wonder dragon mothers were so annoyed by them that they often drove them out while they were still young, leaving them to sink or swim on their own.
Dragons were proud—rightly proud—creatures.
Giving birth to something that could only "uhh urrr hurrr" like that, it was no surprise they'd be furious.
Drakes were an eyesore in a dragon mother's eyes, a glitch that shattered her perfect self-image.
If it weren't for some taboo against killing their own young, they probably would snap their necks or shove them off a cliff the moment they realized they were defective.
Gauss, however, wasn't a dragon mother.
So after the initial shock, he just kept testing.
"Can you understand what I'm saying now?"
"Rroaar! (Gugugaga~)"
Gauss scratched his head.
Yep.
"Forget it. I'll think about teaching you later."
He sighed and patted the dragon's neck.
The kid really wasn't very bright. Expecting him to pick up Draconic in three sentences was unrealistic.
He patted Hephaestus again.
"Love and care for cognitively challenged dragons starts with me," he muttered.
He really was curious, though. If a Drake that never received proper heritage and training managed to learn Draconic and spellcasting later on… would there still be a real difference between it and a true dragon?
Hephaestus, of course, had no idea what Gauss was thinking.
The dragon just flew, slightly tense.
He couldn't understand Gauss' Draconic words, but they tugged on half-buried memories in his mind.
From when he'd first hatched, when that towering, beautiful mother had spoken such strange, powerful sounds over him.
He'd roared back a few times.
Her gaze had gone from warm to utterly cold in an instant, and she'd turned away, curling back up on her hoard.
Soon after, after a few feedings, she'd simply picked him up in her jaws and carried him out of the nest, dropping him far away.
He might not be clever, but even he understood that scene. It had sunk into him like a splinter.
The sounds Gauss was making now were those same syllables—the voice he yearned for and feared.
Whatever pride he'd had left as a dragon had been ground down completely.
"Rrr…"
When it came right down to it, aside from size and looks, Gauss was more like a true dragon than he was.
…
"Yaaawn—"
Gauss stretched and stifled a yawn.
"Gauss, what's your score now?" At breakfast, Alia couldn't hold back her curiosity.
She'd known he'd gone out hunting again—the fact that the beast bag had gone missing was a dead giveaway.
And from how he looked, he clearly hadn't taken it easy.
"You'll see in a bit." Gauss smiled and shook his head.
He knew Herbert had probably overtaken his total again yesterday afternoon, which was why he'd stayed out a bit longer.
Hephaestus had had a surprisingly good appetite.
And today they planned to run more commissions anyway.
He was confident that by tonight, the score gap would be comfortable.
Alia's curiosity prickled, but since Serandur and Albena seemed unbothered, she swallowed it for now.
After breakfast, they headed straight to the guild.
Mornings were always the busiest.
The hall was packed, with adventurers clustered around the ranking slate, arguing loudly.
Gauss, still walking toward the counter, glanced sideways at the stone board.
He started to look away—
—and froze.
Something was wrong.
He narrowed his eyes and looked again, properly this time.
"Eh?"
Alia noticed him pause and followed his gaze.
"Huh?"
She echoed his surprise.
The scene he'd imagined—his name shoved down the list—hadn't happened.
He was still at the top with 1,372 points.
Second place was Koman, sitting on 991.
Something was off. Very off.
Gauss' eyes ran down the entire ranking.
He didn't see Herbert's name anywhere.
Where had he gone?
Even if Herbert hadn't added a single point yesterday afternoon, he should've been solidly in second with over thirteen hundred.
Now he'd vanished outright.
Something had definitely happened.
Wasn't he supposed to be competing with Gauss for first? Gauss had thrashed monsters all night to shore up his lead—yet Herbert was simply… gone?
No wonder there were so many people standing around the board.
When he stepped into the hall, the crowd automatically parted for him.
The monster slayer, the inevitable champion of the Five Towns hunt, had arrived in his guild hall.
With Herbert's mysterious disappearance, there was no suspense left. Gauss' victory was practically guaranteed.
Even if Herbert were still around, he would've struggled to pose a meaningful threat. Now that he'd dropped out, the gap between Gauss and the rest was a chasm.
"Herbert's gone from the list," Alia chuckled quietly.
"Mm. Let's ask the front desk," Gauss said calmly.
If someone had vanished from the board, there had to be a reason—and it almost certainly involved the Adventurer's Guild.
They were the only ones with the authority to add or erase names.
"Good morning, Sir Gauss."
"Good morning."
The receptionist greeted him with an easy smile as soon as he approached.
Her job was to treat all adventurers equally—but Gauss was a special case.
"Let's update my score."
Gauss handed the hunt stone across the counter.
And while he was at it, asked, almost casually:
"By the way, can I ask why Herbert's name is no longer on the board?"
The receptionist wasn't surprised by the question. She did look a little awkward.
Strictly speaking, answering that wasn't really her job. If it had been anyone else asking, she would've politely shut them down.
But it was Gauss.
She picked her words with some care.
"Sir Herbert's points for yesterday were found, after investigation, to involve a rules violation," she said in a low voice. "The Guild has determined they are invalid. As result, Sir Herbert has been disqualified from the competition."
"Oh?"
Gauss nodded, thoughtful.
A rules violation, and processed this quickly—it sounded like the Guild had caught him red-handed. Maybe even in the act.
No wonder Herbert's pace had spiked yesterday afternoon.
And no wonder Gauss' instincts had felt something off.
He had to admit, cheating really was a bad idea.
The Guild did not look kindly on it.
They weren't about to go easy on someone just because he was a big fish in a small pond.
In the end, what kind of "big shot" could you be in a single town?
Next to a continent-spanning machine like the Adventurer's Guild, every local power was just… a small fry.