Nila carefully crept deeper into the cave.
Reason told her that the red dragon was an extremely dangerous creature to her, and that the best thing to do was keep a respectful distance. But the strange curiosity and fluttering in her heart still made her sneak over.
She poked her head out from the cave entrance and looked into the depths.
Years of living underground had trained her eyes to see well in the dark.
Inside the cold stone cavern lay a beautiful, enormous dragon. And leaning against the dragon's back, like a sleeping beauty, was the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life.
"So… so beautiful…"
Her evaluation came out incoherent, and her heart could not help beating faster.
Just as she had sensed, he really was a beautiful man.
Even more beautiful than she could have imagined. Especially after spending her whole life seeing the disheveled, unkempt men around her, his appearance seemed all the more extraordinary.
Please forgive her poor vocabulary; she truly could not find the right words to describe his looks.
Perhaps her gaze was too direct, because Hephaestus, the red dragon that had been resting with its eyes closed, turned its attention toward her.
Nila was so frightened that she immediately shrank back and hid behind the rock.
Fortunately, Hephaestus was only curious about what she was sneaking around for. After glancing at her once, he withdrew his gaze again.
After hearing no movement from the dragon getting up, Nila looked into the cave depths again.
She possessed an almost instinctive intuition that allowed her to accurately sense malice from other beings.
That intuition had helped her avoid danger several times.
It was precisely because she trusted that ability that she had gathered the courage to come to the cave where the red dragon was and check the situation.
She did not sense the undisguised malice from this terrifying beast that she usually felt from other monsters.
She looked at Gauss's clean face and luxurious clothing, and envy rose in her heart.
"Who exactly are this dragon and this person? Are they from the human kingdom in the north?"
Ever since she was born, she had lived in this monster territory, spending every day in fear.
To their small human tribe, the human lands in the north were an unreachable homeland, something that existed only in descriptions passed down by word of mouth.
They did not have the strength to cross monster territory.
There should be quite a few tribes like theirs. Supposedly, they were descendants of human troops left behind during the last world war.
Of course, more than a hundred years had passed, and nearly all of that generation had died out, leaving only descendants like them hiding in the wilderness and grasping for a chance to survive.
Compared to the safe human kingdoms, the monster-infested environment around them was the real world they knew.
Some younger people had even begun to doubt whether the human kingdoms in the north truly existed at all.
Or perhaps they were only fantasies woven by their ancestors because they feared their descendants would lose hope.
Nila had once been one of those who held such conspiracy-like doubts—until the man not far away suddenly barged into her ordinary world.
No matter how she thought about it, a cave-dwelling tribe like theirs could never raise such a powerful figure, right?
Or perhaps there existed some much larger human tribe?
Countless thoughts surged wildly through her heart.
The fragments of information she knew made her understanding of the world extremely limited.
But her intuition told her that the man not far away might be able to change the fate of her and her people.
Perhaps out of some playful mischief, Hephaestus deliberately took a preserved chunk of meat from the storage bag under Nila's gaze, then tossed it into his mouth like a snack.
Gulp.
Meat!
Nila uselessly wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand while swallowing repeatedly.
Even though it was raw meat, the rich, plump texture still made her drool. She could not even imagine how fragrant it would be if that piece of meat were roasted.
She did not have many chances to eat mouthfuls of meat in her daily life. And most of the meat they got came from the giant rats that lived near them in the cave. As for wild beasts, they were not common in the relatively barren soil around them. Most lived near direct water sources.
But places like that were also where monsters gathered.
They had to scout again and again before they dared take action even once.
Under her longing gaze, the red dragon took out another piece of meat even larger than her entire body and swallowed it in one bite.
The snacks he ate just to satisfy his cravings were enough to feed her entire tribe.
At that moment, Nila was filled with boundless envy.
Was this the world of the strong?
Just when she could no longer bear the temptation and was about to turn and leave—
Thud!
A huge chunk of meat weighing over a hundred pounds landed precisely beside her feet.
She looked at the fresh red meat now stained with dust. There was not the slightest disgust in her eyes—only pure desire for meat.
She turned toward the red dragon in disbelief.
"Is… is this for me?"
She looked at the red dragon and pointed at herself.
"Mm."
Hephaestus turned his head away and let out a low rumble.
He had not intended to give her any, but the desire in her eyes had been so intense that it actually made him feel a trace of guilt.
There was no helping it. Who told him to be a true dragon with a beautiful form and a kind heart?
As rent for him and Gauss staying here, giving away a piece of meat did not seem too excessive. After all, he was not the kind of unreasonable creature who seized another's nest by force.
And although Hephaestus looked as if he could not be bothered to deal with her, Nila treated the heavy chunk of meat like a priceless treasure.
That might sound exaggerated, but for a human tribe like theirs, surviving in the cracks of monster territory, such a large and clean piece of meat was indeed rare.
"Thank you, Lord Red Dragon!"
Nila bowed deeply several times toward the red dragon in excitement.
Part of her joy came from obtaining precious meat. The other part came from the dragon's willingness to give food at all. That meant he really was rather kind.
Their group probably did not need to move after all.
They did not dare hope that the red dragon would protect them. They only hoped he would not kill them.
"Then I'll head back first."
Nila swallowed and spoke eagerly.
"Hmph."
Hephaestus caught a glimpse of the gratitude on her face from the corner of his eye and felt rather pleased, but he still let out a cold, proud snort.
Because of Gauss, his impression of humans had changed greatly, and he no longer saw them as food the way he had before.
But humans were still only humans. He was a noble dragon, so naturally he had to be superior.
Of course, Master Gauss and his companions were exceptions.
Especially Gauss. Though he wore a human form, the dragon blood inside him was even richer than Hephaestus's own true dragon blood. In Hephaestus's heart, he had long since been treated as a superior dragon.
Still, watching Nila struggle to carry the huge piece of meat, he felt an inexplicable happiness.
In Gauss's spiritual world, his consciousness gradually awakened.
It felt as if he had slept for a very, very long time.
At first, he dreamed of his previous life.
There, he continued the ordinary life he had lived before transmigrating. After graduating, he joined a large design company, worked hard for eight or nine years, and finally became a project manager.
Then he paid the down payment on a house, began going on arranged dates, married, had children, and in another blink, he had reached middle age. Then came unemployment anxiety, job hunting again…
Only when the elderly version of himself in the dream within the dream drew his final breath before a hospital bed did he seem to realize he was inside a double dream. Shocked, he woke from that dream, only to find that what awaited him was still another dream.
"Hah…"
After experiencing an entire virtual life, he could not help breaking into a cold sweat in the first layer of the dream.
That life could not be called a tragedy. It had no major illness or disaster, and his family had been happy and complete. But compared with his current self in this magnificent, turbulent world, it felt a little too dull.
Perhaps it was only after experiencing that contrast that the feeling became so clear.
If he had to choose, compared to the stable urban Gauss, he would probably still choose his current life—even though he himself was not sure whether he could die peacefully of old age here like he might have in that safe previous life.
Without realizing it, he had already formed deep bonds with this world.
He had companions: Alia, Serandur, Shadow, Albena…
He had elders who had looked after him: Sophia, the innkeeper; Andeni, the halfling; Gron Bates, the blacksmith…
He even had a dragon mount.
Asking himself honestly, he really did prefer his life in this world, even if it was filled with uncertainty.
The moment he confirmed that thought, something seemed to change violently in some invisible place.
His spiritual world began to transform completely.
Boom!
Many special existences within his consciousness began collapsing.
The sea of memories began to reshape itself, and even those stable spell models started trembling.
In a daze, Gauss had the feeling that his little sampan drifting across a vast sea had finally dropped anchor in the unstable ocean.
His connection with the world, himself, his soul, and many other layers of existence quietly became far more solid.
In truth, before this, even Gauss himself had not noticed it, but although he had transmigrated here more than two years ago, he had still carried a faint sense of distance. Occasionally, he would still think about the life that had only just begun in his previous world.
But now, in that dream within a dream, he had already lived out that ordinary life.
The final trace of regret toward his previous life seemed to vanish completely after the simulation ended. The soul named Gauss had finally settled here.
In the unseen depths, a power surged from within his body, blending his past life, present, and future together.
This miraculous phenomenon even reversed time and space to a certain extent.
In the real world, Hephaestus, who had been bored while guarding Gauss, suddenly sensed a profound and unfathomable power from him.
Gauss clearly still looked the same, and his body was still in the same place, yet it also seemed as though he had appeared in another dimension at the same time.
Hephaestus could not help blinking. In a daze, he seemed to see several versions of Gauss overlapping with each other.
Each Gauss seemed capable of deriving multiple futures. One Gauss stood up and smiled at him. Another still sat in place. Another walked around the cave wall, observing the environment.
But in the next moment, as Hephaestus focused his gaze, all the versions of Gauss merged back into one, leaving only Gauss's body sitting steadily in place.
Hephaestus froze.
This was the first time he had ever sensed an experience between illusion and reality like this.
This power had already exceeded the limits of his understanding.
Was Gauss…
Although he could not grasp it, Hephaestus knew that this was a critical moment for Gauss.
He quickly got to his feet and blocked the entrance with his body, preventing those humans from accidentally barging in and disturbing Gauss at this crucial time.
The changes in Gauss's spiritual world were far more intense than what his body showed.
His cerebral cortex entered an unprecedentedly active state, as if every single cell was working.
His spiritual power began to increase rapidly as well.
That feeling Gauss had before truly came to pass. Raising his Intelligence attribute from 20 to 21 was indeed a staged breakthrough.
And because of some special power residing in his body, this transformation was even more intense and unique than it normally would have been. That special power seemed to grant him some kind of higher-dimensional authority.
That authority was so powerful that, with his current level of strength, he was far from able to digest it.
He could only do his utmost to absorb and break down an extremely tiny portion of that ability.
And this seemed to be some kind of special protection. If it were completely released, it would probably burst his current "little pipe" in an instant.
Even though he was already a lofty transcendent-level combatant in the eyes of many people, before this kind of power, he seemed little different from an ordinary creature.
If his Intelligence attribute had not broken through to 21, barely reaching the minimum standard needed to carry even the smallest part of it, then even with the special power deep inside his body beginning to enlighten him, he would have gained nothing.
Very soon, his consciousness began to blur again.
His past memories unfolded before his eyes like a scroll.
Every detail appeared in his consciousness with perfect clarity.
Every sentence he had ever heard—whether something he had said, something others had said to him, or irrelevant conversations between passersby that had reached his ears—became incredibly clear, as if happening right now. Their expressions and movements appeared just as vividly.
Every battle he had experienced in the past also began to replay. His thoughts shook violently, and he quickly found many of his past shortcomings.
Not just his own.
He could even stand from his opponents' perspectives, weigh the strengths of both sides, and reverse-deduce how they should have responded to him.
Then, from his own perspective, he carried out the next layer of deduction.
This cycle repeated again and again, almost like an AI model from his previous life conducting self-training.
Because the sample details he could observe and absorb were simply too numerous, his seemingly brief database of just over two years in another world was actually richer than the life memories of other people spanning hundreds of years under normal circumstances.
And he could also perform infinite derivations based on existing data, continuously iterating.
His brain began to accelerate.
At a certain moment, he seemed to touch a threshold.
The dense database kept deducing and deepening, as though extending into an even more unfathomable field.
That was the ability to deduce a fixed future based on the past and combined with the present.
In this dimension, all futures could actually be predicted. Every attack was accompanied by preparatory movements, and so was every defense.
If the prediction was wrong, that only meant the sample size was still insufficient and the amount of thinking still too small.
Of course, normal creatures could not do this. Especially the higher-level a creature was, the more actions it could take in a single instant. They were not as easy to predict as weaker beings.
But the key was that Gauss's special ability had merged with a tiny portion of the special power that had just been released.
"Future Sight!"
This fitting name suddenly appeared in Gauss's mind.
Yes. This new ability was not merely mental deduction. It also touched upon the great power of time.
As long as he activated the ability, he could predict all of an enemy's high-probability movements within the next few seconds.
Multiple future images of the opponent would overlap before his eyes at once.
This would allow him to know what action the enemy would take one step earlier than they themselves carried it out.
And those few seconds were not to be underestimated. At his current level of combat, that was enough time to easily kill an enemy several times over.
No matter when, power that involved the level of time was always among the most noble.
When facing an enemy stronger than himself, he could also activate the ability to capture the one possibility in which he defeated the opponent or escaped. All unfavorable possibilities would be excluded, and the situation would ultimately be guided toward a future advantageous to him based on the opponent's choices.
It would form a state where "everything that happens is beneficial to me."
Of course, this ability was not omnipotent. The stronger someone was, the more possibilities they could extend. The difficulty of selecting the most favorable future from all those possibilities would also become greater.
After all, there were always situations that far exceeded the range this ability could control.