Swamp-dwelling beastmen looked a little different from ordinary beastmen.
To adapt to the damp environment, marsh beastmen didn't have the dry, rough skin common to their kin. Instead, their skin was smoother and tougher, and it was almost always coated in a slick, sticky film. That secretion reduced friction as they moved through mud, and it also helped prevent the skin from rotting after long periods soaked in swamp water.
At that moment, many beastmen in the marsh felt the temperature spike. The water-heavy air seemed to be drained dry in an instant. For marsh beastmen—who were extremely sensitive to humidity—this change was impossible to miss.
The next second—
Boom!
A quake-like shock rolled through the center of the swamp.
Floating high above, Gauss watched his fireball slam into the marsh beastman nest. The upcast fireball—pushed to Level 4 power—collided head-on with the miasma hanging over the swamp, and the surrounding mana immediately went berserk.
That miasma wasn't just fog. It carried dense natural mana—apparently a special defensive layer, and a strong one. A normal Level 4 spell, or an attack of similar intensity, might not have broken it at all.
But an upcast, fully-charged fireball from Gauss wasn't something an ordinary Level 4 spell could even pretend to match. The miasma barrier buckled, then shattered.
Up above, the morning sun finally pierced the miasma that never seemed to disperse, spilling light onto the ground.
It was like someone had torn a massive hole in the sky above the swamp.
"Wooo—wooo!"
Exposed to sunlight, the beastmen blew their horns.
They crouched on thick, mangrove-like roots, whipping their heads around as they searched for the enemy.
And then, at the center of that ruptured opening, they saw him—hovering openly, making no effort to hide.
"Human!"
A sharp-eyed beastman scout recognized the intruder instantly.
Beastmen were no strangers to humans.
Over the past few months, they'd been fighting them constantly—first the early-year siege, then the scramble to claim territory, then battles with refugees trying to escape on foot, and finally the steady clashes with adventurers drifting into this region.
And almost every time, the beastmen had the advantage.
To a coordinated beastman pack, ordinary humans were livestock—cattle waiting to be butchered. At the start, they'd even tried keeping humans as slaves and emergency rations, until illness spread among the captives and the "stock" kept dying on them. That was when they abandoned the idea.
But the human in the sky now… wasn't like the others.
His eyes were cold.
When that gaze fell on them, the marsh beastmen shuddered instinctively—like they were being watched by something far worse than a man.
Gauss took in the exposed nest.
Bones were everywhere.
Some were from animals, but far more were human—hundreds of skeletons, two or three hundred at least, just in plain sight. And who knew how many more were buried in the mud.
His brows tightened.
Once he confirmed there were no living humans here, he didn't hesitate. His white staff rose again.
That first fireball had been for reconnaissance—ripping open the miasma so he could see what he was dealing with.
Now he was done playing nice.
Below, beastman casters caught his movement and panicked, unleashing the spells they'd been holding ready.
Some fired energy bolts. Others threw out counterspells, trying to break his casting.
In the beastmen's eyes, those various halos of magic—different sizes, different intensities—struck Gauss squarely.
Then…
Nothing.
Like needles dropped into the ocean, the spells vanished without effect.
Gauss didn't even flinch. His casting rhythm didn't change.
"Upcast Fireball!"
As he drove the fireball down, he noticed several beastman casters chanting together. A rune-covered, pillar-like ward began rising from the swamp.
Boom!
The fireball smashed into the defensive magic.
Because it was a coordinated spell—multiple casters working in sync—the barrier was stronger than Gauss expected.
So it held.
For two seconds.
It absorbed part of the shock and heat… and then it broke anyway.
Beastmen could learn magic, but their talent for it was mediocre. Against someone like Gauss—who didn't just know spells, but owned them—even numbers felt clumsy and strained.
KABOOM!
A mushroom-cloud of energy erupted in the center of the swamp.
In an instant, beastmen bodies went flying like torn paper.
The wet ground at the blast center became a crater—then dried and hardened, like a drained lakebed.
"Damn you, human!"
Two figures—one male, one female—launched themselves up from the mud.
"Couldn't hold back, huh?"
Gauss's face didn't change. He kept Fly active and simply drifted aside, letting their leap miss.
He doubted they could punch through his stacked defenses—but these two were almost certainly the nest's commanders, not fodder. They'd earned at least a shred of respect.
From the side, Gauss flicked his wand again.
Dozens of missiles formed in front of him, then locked onto the two midair beastmen and fired together.
With no footing in the air, they had nowhere to dodge.
The "eye-grown" missile storm hit them head-on.
Boom!
The repeated impacts slammed them down faster than they'd risen, driving them back into the mud.
"True Phantasm."
Before they could even shake off the impact, Gauss snapped off two illusion spells.
The moment the magic landed, both beastmen—still dizzy and half-stunned—felt the world shift.
"Pff!"
They looked down.
A spear had punched straight through their hearts.
Their bodies—strong bodies that should've been able to move—couldn't avoid it. They were pinned to the ground.
It hurt.
It hurt bad.
"Pff!"
And the assault didn't stop.
A second strike. A third. Then more—again and again—until they were skewered like hedgehogs, drowning in pain.
Gauss didn't bother watching after he cast it.
Some enemies could break his illusions.
These two couldn't.
"Next."
His gaze turned to the rest.
That one fireball had killed at least three hundred beastmen, but those outside the blast radius were recovering fast. Some strong fighters were already drawing bows to shoot the invader. Some mothers grabbed their small cubs and fled toward the outer edges.
They didn't realize escape was already impossible.
Farther out, the Red Dragon Company was advancing.
Hephis and the others were slaughtering the perimeter.
Gauss froze sections of swamp, trapping beastmen from the waist down.
Then a Cloud of Daggers rolled forward—slow, steady—and the trapped beastmen, unable to move, were ground into paste.
Male, female, cub—against magic, they all reached the same ending.
Gauss didn't spare a single beastman in his line of sight.
They hadn't spared the humans they'd once chained in this nest.
Whether it was a "coward" trying to run, or a "hero" charging in suicide to buy time—if they entered his range, they didn't survive the exchange.
This had been their safest home.
Now it was a death trap.
Ice that locked your legs. Water that moved like living blades. Killers gliding through fog. Any of it could steal a life in seconds.
His beastman title jumped three ranks in one sweep—Hunter, Slayer, Butcher.
And his purple talent Witching Hour kept drinking from the corpses.
Only after he could no longer see a single beastman still moving did Gauss lower his staff.
A chain of notifications popped up:
"Magic Missile Proficiency +4"
"Gauss Omni-Armor Proficiency +3"
"Firebolt Proficiency +6"
"Fireball Proficiency +5"
"Control Water Proficiency +7"
"Cloud of Daggers Proficiency +5"
…
This was why, when he purged nests, he cast everything.
With Witching Hour's reward procs, any spell he used could gain proficiency.
He'd tested "spam one spell" before, hoping it would level faster—but it barely improved. So he shifted tactics: rotate through as many spells as possible, training breadth as he fought.
He glanced at his core skill.
After the +3, Gauss Omni-Armor was now Lv5 (165/200)—closer and closer to Lv6.
And on top of the proficiency boosts, Witching Hour dropped a new skill:
"Blood Rage."
Activate it to accelerate blood flow, force the muscles into a pumped, empowered state, boosting strength and recovery for a time.
A solid warrior skill.
Gauss cast Locate Creature one more time. No living marsh beastmen remained within several hundred meters.
Only then did he descend.
The swamp was unrecognizable now—some zones frozen into hard ice, others baked dry into cracked earth. Two opposite climates coexisted side by side.
He glanced toward the distance.
Kill notifications were still ticking—his team finishing off the last stragglers.
He didn't jump back in. Instead, he drank a few blue potions and calmly replenished his mana.
Total Monster Kills: 35,321.
So this nest, plus the beastmen from yesterday evening, had contributed roughly 2,300 kills.
"Not bad," he thought.
Aside from the first dogman mine—where the elder chieftain's divine relic introduced chaos—everything after that had been clean and predictable.
That was normal.
If every nest leader had tricks like that dogman, adventurer mortality would skyrocket.
He scanned the wreckage.
The marsh beastman nest was wiped—meaning all three commissions he'd taken were complete.
This trip had been hugely profitable:
He'd also completed Gronn's rescue request.
He'd helped Luna eliminate the traitor and absorbed part of Fang of the Gray Wolf.
His company's strength had expanded dramatically.
And personally, he'd gained a mountain of experience.
He could feel it—he'd only just hit Level 7 recently, yet his "Mana Cup" already felt packed again, as if he'd been tempered at this rank for years.
It was time to go home.
This region was monster territory. Even Gauss felt the fatigue creeping in.
He missed cities—warm baths, real food, tavern lights.
The wild was sun and wind and constant vigilance. His people were exhausted too.
Under Gauss's direction, the Red Dragon Company cleaned the field, stripped the valuables, and began marching back toward Blackwater.
A week later, the white walls finally came into view.
Only then did Gauss's heart settle.
"Falrim—we're back."
He didn't return to Grayrock this time. He went straight to Falrim.
Most of the Red Dragon Company—old members and the newly absorbed Fang of the Gray Wolf alike—were locals from Falrim and nearby towns. The sooner they returned, the sooner they could see their families.
And they still had commissions to file, plus the remaining merger work to finish.
"Captain Gauss. Luna. You're back."
Two of Luna's trusted aides—both Master-tier—had already received word and were waiting at the gate.