On the dragon's back, everyone was chatting.
Alia was filling Shadow in on everything that had happened with the party while she'd been away. Shadow listened quietly the whole time.
Gauss, meanwhile, had started trying to teach the drake Hephaestus some basic Draconic.
If you had to pick the single best Draconic tutor for Hephaestus in this world—no, across all races—Gauss was probably that person now.
Even a real dragon might not beat him for the job.
First, his grasp of Draconic was already quite high; he'd reached Intermediate Draconic, and it was obvious he was on track to become a true master of the language.
Second, he carried draconic blood himself, which made a drake instinctively more inclined to trust him.
Third—and most importantly—thanks to the white egg, there was a faint telepathic bond between him and Hephaestus.
As long as he kept some physical contact with the drake, Hephaestus could more or less understand what he meant.
So even if Hephaestus couldn't understand the Draconic sounds themselves, Gauss could overlay that with the telepathic "translation" at the same time. As long as he was patient and repeated things enough, even with Hephaestus' blockheaded skull, it should be able to pick up a bit of Draconic, right?
Whether learning Draconic would eventually let it actually cast spells—that would be the next phase of the plan.
Gauss felt he'd been raising Hephaestus pretty decently. Over this period, both its mind and its body had begun to develop.
As long as both he and Hephaestus were willing to push in the direction of getting stronger, there was a chance for it to evolve from mere drake into a true dragon someday.
Shadow listened to Alia, and every so often her gaze drifted toward Gauss, who was hunched over, "grggrgr"-ing away with Hephaestus in Draconic. She couldn't help feeling a bit nostalgic.
"By the way, Shadow—show us what you can do after your breakthrough later, yeah?" As if feeling her gaze, Gauss spoke without turning his head.
"Okay."
Shadow nodded.
She'd gained an awful lot from that breakthrough.
…
"Huff—"
Because Hephaestus was stuck in "after-school tutoring," it didn't fly at full speed.
By the time it arrived over their target and slowed its wingbeats to begin gliding down, its two foreclaws touched the ground and it let out a long exhale.
Even its spirit seemed a little wilted; its big head kept swaying like it was dizzy.
Before it could relax too much, Gauss' voice sounded from above its skull.
"We'll continue after the fight."
"Rooaarr~~"
Hephaestus' whole body slumped.
This kind of cognitive work exhausted it far more than actual combat ever could.
Mentally and physically wiped.
Its brain wasn't exactly built for higher thought to begin with. Draconic, as a language, was especially deep and complex, and the mental load was enormous.
Think about it: even someone as smart as Gauss had nearly crashed his own brain when he first received the Draconic data dump.
Sure, what Gauss took in back then was much more than what Hephaestus was currently working on—but the gap between their mental horsepower was just as huge in the opposite direction.
Looking at Hephaestus' defeated expression, Gauss reached down to rub its head again and said earnestly:
"If you're a slow learner, you just have to work harder, you know that? You've already lost at the starting line, Hephaestus."
"Rooo~~"
Gauss, the archetypal parent-who-wants-their-kid-to-be-a-dragon.jpg
…
"Ugh, that smell!"
"Cough."
The area around a kobold den never exactly smelled nice.
By the time the group reached the mountain where the kobold tribe lived, the air was already thick with a persistent stench.
"These lizard brats…"
Gauss turned to Shadow.
Shadow nodded.
The air beside her rippled.
In the next instant—even Gauss' eyes almost couldn't catch it—Shadow's body blurred, and two additional humanoid shadows split away from her, standing at her sides.
"This is…?"
"A kind of shadow clone," she said. "They can also perform scouting and combat tasks."
"Right now I can only split two. If I only split one, it's stronger than if I split two."
…!
That strong?
Everyone was visibly impressed.
This wasn't just an upgrade; it was a qualitative change.
Before, only her true body could shift into shadow.
Now she basically had two extra helpers.
Even if they weren't full strength, just having them on the field as extra pressure or distractions changed the dynamics completely.
And that was before you even counted her main role.
Shadow had always been a scout rather than a frontline fighter. With her shadow abilities she was already in a league of her own: terrain didn't matter, concealment was unparalleled, she moved fast…
Now all those scouting advantages were tripled.
At her command, the two shadows slipped into the ground and flowed off into the distance, vanishing from sight in a heartbeat.
So fast…
"How strong are they compared to your main body?" Gauss asked curiously.
"Hmm…"
Shadow rubbed her chin, thinking.
It was hard to quantify "strength" with a number.
"Maybe thirty to sixty percent? If I split two, they're more fragile," she said, not entirely sure. "If they get shattered, they just come back along the path and merge back into me."
She could only give a vague range.
She'd practically come straight from her breakthrough to find Gauss. Aside from a little practice on the road, she hadn't really stress-tested the ability yet.
"Already fantastic," Gauss nodded.
It felt a bit like his clay magic—but stronger and more flexible.
Of course, Shaping Magic: Clay was just a Level 2 spell, while her shadow power was woven through her entire being. Comparing the two wasn't exactly fair.
Over ninety percent of Shadow's power was bound up in that shadow ability.
Gauss and the others waited outside the mountains while Shadow's shadows scouted ahead.
Before long, the two shadows returned and flowed back into Shadow's feet.
"Found the target tribe," Shadow said calmly.
"Then let's move."
As they walked through the tunnels, Shadow relayed the intel her shadows had gathered: kobold numbers, main weapons, count of elites, tunnel structure, and more…
The odd part was, this kobold tribe had enslaved a small goblin tribe.
That wasn't common.
Normally, kobolds and goblins were rivals—both low-level humanoid monsters, both occupying the same ecological niche. They lived in caves, ruins, forests, competing over similar food, space, and treasure.
Only when a strong external force—say a dragon, or an ogre chieftain—or one side had overwhelming numbers would they crush the other tribe, capture survivors, and turn them into disposable labor.
The idea that this kobold tribe had basically wiped out a decent-sized goblin tribe made Gauss wince internally.
If only they'd learned to peacefully co-exist in the same cave system and work together… and then waited for him to show up.
That would've been perfect.
What a waste…
As they moved deeper along the tunnels, the party systematically cleaned out all the visible and hidden sentries.
Before long they reached the deepest chamber—a large natural cavern.
This lair was much smaller than the one outside Gold & Silver Town, but it still gave them plenty of room to fight.
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
When Gauss and the others stepped inside, several kobolds were busily swinging pickaxes, chipping at the rock. Whether they were mining or expanding the cave, it was hard to say.
"Gah?"
One kobold froze mid-swing, staring blankly at the sudden appearance of humans. It seemed its brain hadn't caught up yet.
An instant later, before it could bare its teeth and howl—
A flash of swordlight sliced past its throat.
"Thump!"
The sound died in its throat.
But while it failed to shout a warning, the kobolds around it did it for him.
It was like tossing a spark into a barrel of oil: whoomp—the entire lair erupted into chaos.
To demonstrate her new strength to Gauss, Shadow stepped forward and split off two more shadows.
The shadows stood beside her like twin bodyguards.
Then they moved.
Each shadow formed a long spear from pure darkness and thrust it toward a nearby kobold.
"Shhk!!"
The spearheads extended in a blink, punching through kobold necks and pinning them to the cavern wall.
Two blood-red blossoms bloomed on the stone.
Gauss' pupils shrank.
It wasn't that he was surprised by their killing power—everyone here could do that easily.
It was because…
He swallowed.
Two lines of text floated into view.
Kobold Slain ×1
Kobold Slain ×1
…
The timing matched perfectly with the instant the shadows killed the kobolds.
Her kills were counting as his?
Gauss hadn't expected Shadow's breakthrough to level 6 to come with that change.
No, wait…
There had to be a range limit.
He thought back. On the way in, when Shadow's shadow clones were scouting, they'd also quietly killed a few kobolds that were in the way.
But those kills had never shown up on his panel.
The difference this time was simple: he was present.
So why?
Why were Shadow's kills suddenly counting toward his total now?
Before, they never had.
Hephaestus' kills had been counted, sure. But that was because of the white egg and whatever weird pact it had made between them.
So what had changed with Shadow?
Her shadows had grown stronger? That didn't make sense. The system that tracked kills wouldn't change based on one teammate's power.
The adventurer's handbook certainly didn't contain any help text explaining this mechanic—just like it had never explained why Hephaestus' kills shared with him. He'd always had to infer and test on his own.
Or could it be…
Some invisible stat like "closeness" or "trust"? Something in his relationship with Shadow had crossed a threshold, causing the system to treat her kills as if they were his as well?
That was the only thing that made sense.
Under his startled gaze, the two shadow clones danced through the kobold lines, cutting them down.
Not only could their bodies form weapons, the shadows also tended to explode into "shadow spikes": a ring of jagged spears bursting up, impaling kobolds in a circle.
Noticing the shifting expression on his face, Shadow suddenly thought of something.
"Gauss, should I call them back?" she asked.
She remembered, belatedly, that Gauss liked to personally rack up the kills.
"No, no—keep going," Gauss shook his head.
He was here. If the system was counting Shadow's kills as his, it made no difference to his bestiary or kill count whether he swung the blade or she did.
Of course, he wasn't about to slack off. He still needed real combat to hone his skills and spellcasting.
But he was thinking: If Shadow's kills could be shared, did that mean the same might be true for the others—Alia, Serandur, Albena?
He needed to figure out why it worked for Shadow, find the key.
If it was about "affection" or "trust," then even the most recent member, Albena, had already proven herself pretty reliable.
Hephaestus. Shadow…
Where there's one, there's two. Where there are two, there might well be three.
After thinking for a moment, Gauss summoned Hephaestus.
The moment the drake appeared, it was like the final straw on a camel's back.
Many kobolds froze, looking up at him in a daze.
It was like they were seeing the brightest moon in their hearts.
"Whoooom!"
In their stunned gazes, Hephaestus let loose a blast of blazing flame that engulfed them.
"Waaahhh!!"
The kobolds' last bits of fighting spirit vanished.
Especially the lowly ones—whose bloodline instincts worshipped and feared dragons in equal measure.
Now that Hephaestus had arrived, the battle became completely one-sided.
Gauss' spellcasting was faster than ever.
Intermediate Draconic's effect was starting to show.
He'd already been highly attuned to magic. Now, boosted by Draconic, that attunement had skyrocketed to something inhuman.
Fast.
Spell after spell erupted from his hands.
Ending these monsters as quickly as possible was the last bit of mercy he could offer.
Amid screams and crackling flames, the kobold lair fell silent.
Even the enslaved goblin mini-tribe got swept up and cleared out.
[Intermediate Draconic (Basic) is upgrading!
Congratulations! Upgraded to Intermediate Draconic (Elite).]
Just off this single lair's worth of kobolds, Intermediate Draconic had ticked up a level.
His command of Draconic grew more natural.
Gauss opened his mouth, feeling a strong urge to say something.
He also knew Draconic wasn't something you casually threw around. The language itself carried power.
[Total Monsters Kill: 9,214]
This kobold nest—kobolds and goblins together—had contributed 284 kills.
Gauss exhaled slowly.
Every time he racked up a huge number of kills in a short time, he could feel it—that subtle sense that he was getting stronger.
Like some invisible force was steadily flowing into his body, bit by bit.