Taking the hive-mind nature of the myconids into account, Gauss did not make a move against the one in the distance. He didn't want to alert the whole nest.
He had no idea how far their telepathy could reach, what the range limit was, or how many of their own kind they could relay information to.
So he simply stayed hidden and observed them at work for a while.
They were feeding the slimes.
Compared to other monsters, slimes had one obvious advantage when it came to livestock-style breeding.
As long as they were fed well, their destructive tendencies and desire to move around stayed relatively low.
So long as enough food was dumped in on schedule and they were kept inside a reasonably enclosed nest, they would naturally treat the place as home. You couldn't drive them away even if you tried.
And from the slime's perspective, it made sense too.
Food literally falling from the sky every day, with no obvious danger in sight, really did look like a perfect monster lair.
After feeding the slime farm, the myconids stretched those long legs of theirs and slowly walked away. Of course, they only looked slow. In reality, with their tall frames, an ordinary human would have a hard time even keeping up with them at a run.
"Should we keep following them?"
Shadow, wrapped in darkness, turned to look at Gauss.
Gauss shook his head.
"No. Let's head back first."
He didn't think there was much point in trailing a few ordinary myconids.
At this point, thanks to Weaver's Mark and their field investigation, he had already gotten a rough grasp of the overall situation on the fifth floor. On top of that, the map crystal was giving him a real-time coordinate lock on the floor lord's location, so there was no need to waste effort doing something unnecessary.
Hearing Gauss's reply, Shadow nodded.
With her abilities, low-level monsters had almost no chance of detecting the two of them. Even if they openly walked into a myconid camp, they still wouldn't have noticed. But since Gauss had made his decision, she naturally followed his lead.
When they returned to the cave entrance, the Red Dragon Company members had already done some basic improvements.
The originally uneven ground had been leveled out.
Lamp racks had been nailed into the rock walls, and bonfires had been lit all around, instantly filling the huge cavern with light and warmth.
Gauss shared the information he and Shadow had gathered with the core members of the Red Dragon Company.
"So the lord of this floor is probably a myconid?"
"And they're farming ordinary slimes as reserve food?"
"I didn't expect these monsters to be this clever…"
Alia nodded thoughtfully after hearing the report.
"Well, naturally," Serandur said, having fully recovered his usual calm and joining the conversation.
"Unlike humans, our serpentfolk race still maintains a few connections with certain monster forces."
Serandur's tone carried a trace of awkwardness when he said that.
But Gauss and the others showed no particular reaction.
Their understanding of monster territory was similar to what it had been before. The reason humans knew so little about the Monster Nation wasn't because it was impossible to learn anything about it. It was because reaching the level where you could obtain that information was itself extremely difficult.
After all, if you knew too much about high-level monsters without having the strength to back it up, that knowledge often came with danger.
Some small channels of contact still existed between the intelligent races of the human world and certain monster groups.
High-ranking monster nobles, especially, sometimes traded rare materials or intelligence through intermediaries.
At the very least, serpentfolk merchants and informants were one of those channels.
"According to the stories, a lot of high-intelligence monsters in the Monster Nation have even built cities of their own.
The ones walking their streets are all intelligent monsters.
They call themselves the Demonfolk.
That name doesn't refer to a single species, but to many different high-intelligence monster races collectively.
Apparently the Demonfolk even copied us humans and established their own nobility."
As Serandur spoke, Gauss recalled the knowledge he had read in books.
Publicly available books on the Monster Nation were rare.
It had been a long time since humanity launched any large-scale expeditions deep into monster territory.
Of course, Gauss had no doubt that elite small-unit reconnaissance missions had continued in secret. But that kind of intelligence would never be published, much less written into books meant for ordinary adventurers and scholars.
The only reason he had been able to gather what he had was because of his current strength and status.
After all, he also happened to be a visiting professor at a magic academy, which gave him access to far more valuable archived texts.
Even among monsters, the same species could differ wildly depending on where they were born.
A goblin born in the Monster Nation was usually smarter and stronger than one born in human territory.
And just as there were huge gaps in intelligence between humans, even the dullest monster races would occasionally produce exceptionally intelligent individuals.
Those outstanding individuals often showed astonishing talent, as though they had received some mysterious blessing. Their affinity for magic and all kinds of power far surpassed that of ordinary monsters.
Once they matured, they became the backbone of monster factions—the pillars supporting the war against humanity.
After amassing enough merit, they could even be granted noble titles among the Demonfolk.
And the Demon King—the King of Monsters—was the ruler above all those monster nobles.
Unlike human kings and emperors, a Demon King did not merely wield authority. He also embodied great personal power.
If he lost his position as the strongest, he would be replaced by a new Demon King, like poison insects devouring one another in a jar.
That was why, for so long, the Demon King had always stood as the strongest being in the world.
"So how do you know all this?" Alberna asked, looking at Serandur, who was speaking with such certainty.
"Because unlike humans, we serpentfolks still keep some ties with certain monster factions."
Serandur answered a little awkwardly.
After taking a short break, Gauss and the others prepared to officially begin their exploration of the fifth floor.
Before long, the other adventurers who had realized Gauss had opened the fifth-floor entrance would also begin arriving on this virgin floor.
The earlier they moved, the more resources they could claim.
"Let's go."
Gauss knew that, because of the myconids' racial trait, the moment they left this cave camp, the myconids would quickly learn that human adventurers had arrived.
So they needed to move fast.
As they stepped out of the cave, Gauss activated Weaver's Mark.
The moment he began communicating with the countless insects hidden everywhere, those tiny creatures answered with a loyalty that made them seem like subjects paying homage to a king, constantly responding to his questions.
Gauss quickly located several slime gathering sites nearby.
Yes—his plan was to wipe out a few slime farms along the way first.
Unlike the fourth floor, these penned-up slimes would be even easier to kill.
All he and the Red Dragon members had to do was stand at the top of the pits—or at the one and only cave entrance—and keep firing arrows and spells inside. That way they could kill the packed-together slimes quickly and effortlessly, like farmers harvesting a crop.
Strictly speaking, they looked more like robbers taking fruit that rightfully belonged to the myconids.
It wasn't long before Gauss and the others arrived at the first cave.
The entrance wasn't very large, which told him this slime farm was limited in scale.
So Gauss didn't bother sending anyone else in.
Instead, he summoned the long-unseen Hephaestus.
He had been lounging around inside the creature bag for a week. This was a good chance to let him stretch himself.
"Roooar—"
Hephaestus shook his head after coming out, seeming to realize only then that he had left the enclosed space of the bag.
He exchanged a glance with Gauss and quickly understood what was being asked of him.
After slightly lowering his body, he extended his head toward the cave entrance.
"Everyone else, back up."
Once he was sure the others had retreated to a safe distance, Gauss gave Hephaestus a look.
Boom!
Hephaestus's long neck turned red.
A torrent of dragonfire blasted from his jaws and poured straight into the cave.
Crackle crackle crackle!
Not long after, explosive noises began echoing out from inside.
One of the slimes' major weaknesses was fire.
And in a sealed environment, the power of red dragon flame—already high-temperature and carrying that peculiar, hard-to-extinguish trait—was amplified severalfold.
Panicked slimes rained down from every direction, only to drop straight into the dragonfire, where they were melted and vaporized almost instantly.
"Slime Slain x1."
"…"
Messages kept popping up in Gauss's monster codex.
After about a minute, the commotion died down.
"Total Monster Kills: 58,511."
That single burst had killed around five hundred slimes.
It was proof enough that attacking with a deliberate strategy could produce far better results for far less effort.
Hephaestus wasn't particularly strained by spewing dragonfire for a few dozen seconds.
And even if Gauss used Level 5 spells like Dawn or Bigby's Hand, it would still be hard to achieve the same efficiency in so little time.
That wasn't to say Hephaestus's dragonfire was stronger than Gauss's Dawn or Bigby's Hand. It was just a case of using the right tool for the job.
"You're going to have to work a little harder from here on out."
Gauss patted Hephaestus's broad side and encouraged him.
The moment he heard that, Hephaestus—who had only just stopped breathing fire and was still feeling a little parched—got an uneasy feeling.
While a few dozen seconds of dragonfire wasn't much for him, he wasn't a machine either. If he had to keep it up over and over, the burden would become real.
To be fair, he was still just a growing dragon beast—not a true adult dragon.
The Red Dragon members extinguished the remaining flames and entered to gather the loot.
Most of the slimes' gel-like bodies had been evaporated by the dragonfire. All that remained on the ground were tiny hardened pellets, almost like glass beads.
Those were the real harvest.
The springy slime cores had been dried, shrunk, and hardened by the intense heat into crystallized lumps.
But they still had value. They could serve as a partial substitute for low-grade mana stone fragments.
The Red Dragon members worked quickly, and before long they were sweeping through the place like an occupying army, clearing out one slime farm after another.
The biggest contributor was Hephaestus. Gauss wasn't about to ignore an effective tool just because he had other options.
Besides, it would also be good training for the dragon beast.
It was only after Hephaestus looked like he was about to start smoking from the mouth that Gauss finally told him to rest and took over with the company members instead.
"Slime Slain x322."
"Slime Slain x678."
"Slime Slain x566."
"…"
This was probably the easiest mass monster slaughter Gauss had ever carried out.
The slimes were practically lambs waiting at the slaughterhouse. Many of their caves never even managed to put up symbolic resistance before being wiped out.
The only thing Gauss regretted was that, because of the available space, each slime farm only held a few hundred slimes.
He strongly suspected that was deliberate on the myconids' part.
After all, if too many slimes were packed into one place, overcrowding would make them start fighting among themselves and thinning their own numbers.
And feeding them would become much more troublesome.
Still, Gauss wasn't picky.
He silently thanked the "gifts" from the myconids, then kept using Weaver's Mark to locate more slime farms and harvest them.
By the time he had killed nearly three thousand five hundred slimes, this smooth sweep finally hit a snag.
Although he and the Red Dragon Company had been moving with extreme efficiency, the fifth floor's other major race—the myconids—had finally noticed them.
Seeing a fully armed myconid force blocking their path, Gauss immediately understood that this troop had come specifically for the Red Dragon Company.
These weren't like the myconid "farmers" he had seen feeding the slimes.
Their forms and bearing were far fiercer.
They were actually shorter than the farmers, but each wore a mushroom cap like a helmet and carried spears, bows, and other weapons.
In front of them stood a line of beasts covered in pale spores.
Neither side wasted time with words. Seconds after coming face to face, battle broke out.
Those white spore thralls charged like mad dogs.
Gauss, of course, knew those were living weapons created by the myconid king's animated spores.
But the myconid king wasn't the only one capable of fielding soldiers.
Gauss scattered clumps of clay.
The clay hit the ground and, like beans turning into soldiers, rapidly shaped itself into goblin clay soldiers.
His clay goblins were just as fearless and expendable as the spore thralls. It was a perfect matchup.
Using the clay creatures as cover, the Red Dragon members launched their attacks at the myconid line.
"Bigby's Hand!"
An immense surge of mana burst from the tip of Gauss's white staff.
The myconids looked up in horror as a gigantic hand descended over the battlefield, sweeping right past the fighting line between spore thralls and clay constructs.
It formed a pincer with the arrows and spells loosed by the Red Dragon members.
Some myconids hurled sharp plant-spears at it. But to their despair, the massive silver hand didn't suffer so much as a scratch.
The spears hit its shining surface and snapped like toothpicks.
"Crushing Fist!"
Gauss murmured, and Bigby's Hand slammed down on the densest cluster of myconids.
Like swatting insects, it burst them into mush.
The myconids' bodies exploded into plant pulp beneath the hand.
Their regenerative abilities were impressive, but they clearly weren't enough to come back from being flattened into paste.
Those outside the strike zone were still blasted away by the shockwave.
And the moment they hit the ground, the Red Dragon Company's next wave of attacks swallowed them whole.
With one strike after another, Gauss drove Bigby's Hand into the enemy formation, smashing the myconid force apart in short order.
Once the battle was over, the mark on the back of Gauss's right hand lit up.
Through the insects, they brought him an urgent warning.
More myconids were on the way.
At the same time, he noticed that the lord marker on the crystal map was also moving toward them.
Which meant that, unlike the Magic Frog Lord of the previous floor, the fifth floor's lord wasn't the type to cower in the back and command monsters from afar.
It was coming personally.
"Interesting. It's actually heading straight for us?"
Gauss smiled faintly.