The route turned out to be even more complicated than Gauss had expected.
It took him a full three days just to make his way past the deployment zone of the Green Dragon Queen's monster army.
And the reason he managed it in only three days was because the green dragon had apparently issued a further advance order, causing huge numbers of monsters to begin pressing forward in formations of varying size.
In the forest, a goblin rose from a patch of brush and silently watched the last detachment of monsters disappear down the beast trail.
"For now, this should be safe."
Gauss's body was now covered in grime, making him look exactly like a feral goblin that had been living alone for far too long—but that was deliberate.
And the result proved that all the effort had been worth it.
Over the last few days, he had run into a few unexpected situations, but all of them had passed without real danger.
Other monsters simply could not tell that such an utterly goblin-like "creature" was actually a human in disguise.
Of course, that also had to do with the level of the targets he was deceiving. If Gauss had appeared right under the nose of an epic creature like the Green Dragon Queen, there was a good chance he never would have passed unnoticed.
After all, Disguise was only a Level 5 spell. Its effects were excellent, but they were not enough to let him bridge that many levels of difference and deceive a target like that.
Fortunately, everything had gone relatively smoothly.
He had safely crossed the most dangerous part.
His mind relaxed a little.
For the past few days, he had been watching everything around him almost every second, and he had not slept at all. Other than moving in winding, careful paths, the rest of his time had been spent curled up inside hidden tree hollows or caves, waiting for nearby monsters to pass before continuing forward.
You could say this kind of infiltration was more exhausting than most battles. The fatigue was not just physical—most of it came from the mental pressure.
Because Gauss knew perfectly well that once exposed, his situation would become extremely dangerous.
"It really isn't easy, being one of those professional scouts."
He could not help sighing inwardly. What he had gone through these last few days was just normal life for them.
He felt like he would probably respect intelligence operatives a lot more from now on.
Once the Green Dragon Army had moved out, the forest suddenly became quiet.
So quiet it was almost eerie. Even the cries of wild beasts had mostly vanished, as though they too had been cowed by that immense military force pressing down on everything.
Gauss took out the map the Adventurers' Guild had given him.
The precise location of the juvenile dragon nest was marked on it.
Comparing the surrounding terrain with the corresponding information on the map, Gauss roughly confirmed his current position, then turned his gaze toward a certain direction in the forest.
That was where the nest was supposed to be.
Assuming nothing had changed.
Another two days passed in the blink of an eye.
By now, Gauss had traveled far into the Jade Forest, to a place most adventurers would likely never reach in their entire lives.
There were no longer any traces of human activity around him. Perhaps hundreds or even thousands of years ago, this land had once belonged to humans—but time had erased all signs of it.
The scent of magic in the air had grown stronger.
And the natural mana here felt different from the mana in the Kingdom of Carlos. It carried threads of restlessness, wild and unstable.
Even when Gauss was not using any level magic and was only performing small tests with cantrips, he could still tell that his spells here had a faint tendency to slip out of control.
Fortunately, that tendency was not especially strong. It was just a slight interference while casting, and with a little effort on his part, he could suppress it easily enough.
Still, the frenzied natural mana did not come with only disadvantages. It also seemed to offer a chance of amplifying spell power.
Even so, Gauss still disliked the magical atmosphere here.
It made his whole body feel uncomfortable, like he did not belong.
Gauss lay on a slope, looking down at the valley in the distance.
That valley was where his target nest lay.
He had arrived nearby the day before, and after conducting a basic sweep of the surrounding terrain, he had settled temporarily on this high vantage point, where he could observe the valley from afar.
The reason he had not made any further move yet was that he was waiting for a signal from the Adventurers' Guild.
He had a simple long-distance communication device in hand. Its function was extremely basic: once the other side confirmed the message, this end would light up.
The agreed timing for the operation would be determined by the signal from that device.
Even though he already had the Silent Cage—an artifact capable of sealing off the area—the guild, for safety's sake, still wanted him to wait until the Green Dragon Queen had formally engaged the mysterious powerhouse the guild had sent to deal with her before starting his own action.
If something went wrong, that would at least give him more room to react.
Gauss completely agreed with that reasoning.
An enemy like the Green Dragon Queen gave off too much oppressive force. It was impossible not to feel uneasy.
He genuinely could not imagine what he would do if she suddenly showed up.
Even if he used every trick he had, if he tried to flee, there was a very high chance he would still be slower than her. But if he chose to fight with his life on the line instead, could he even cross the kilometers-wide Domain she wielded and reach her in the first place?
When the gap in strength was too great, no amount of tricks really mattered.
Just as he was wondering when the signal would come, the transparent pendant in his palm suddenly flickered.
He leaned in to make sure it was not just sunlight reflecting off the surface.
Then his heartbeat quickened.
If the pendant lit up, it meant his mission could officially begin.
He put the pendant away and looked toward the valley.
The valley seemed quiet, but Gauss was certain dragons lived there.
He had once seen the silhouette of a restless juvenile dragon soaring overhead. Although it had been far away and had only circled the valley a few times before dropping back down, Gauss was too familiar with dragon forms to mistake it.
That had definitely been a dragon.
And judging by its color, it had most likely been a powerful young blue dragon.
Other than the dragons themselves, many gnoll tribes lived around the outside of the valley. Those seemed to be the dragon servants the Green Dragon Queen had left behind for them.
Earlier that day, Gauss had seen gnolls hauling large animal carcasses into the valley, probably delivering food to the dragon whelps.
He took out the Silent Cage and held it in his hand.
The time window he had for this operation was very short.
Once the Silent Cage was activated, it would only last for ten minutes.
Everything he wanted to accomplish had to be done within those ten minutes.
Once they were up, the seal would end, and news of the attack on the dragon nest would spread immediately.
At that point, even if the Green Dragon Queen could not return in time—or had no intention of returning—other transcendent monsters would definitely come to investigate.
During his journey through the Jade Forest, Gauss had already sensed several hidden auras. Every one of them had given him a faint sense of danger.
Though he did not know the exact reason, the Green Dragon Queen had clearly not committed all of her forces. She had held some in reserve.
That discovery was one of the reasons Gauss had remained so cautious afterward.
Still, near the dragon nest, he had not sensed anything comparably dangerous.
Of course, it was also possible the creatures hiding nearby had concealment methods beyond even his ability to detect.
But there was another possibility too:
the area around the dragon nest simply could not support too many beings stronger than dragons themselves. Just like the saying that one mountain cannot hold two tigers.
That was not just idle speculation. After Hephaestus gained intelligence, Gauss had actually spoken with him about it. The bloodline within dragons made them instinctively reject powerful alien creatures lurking nearby. Given enough time, such proximity could even hinder their own growth.
Dragons of the same kind, however, did not have that limitation. That was one of the underlying reasons so many orphaned dragon hatchlings were willing to sign exploitative "black labor" contracts with other adult dragons.
That was also why Gauss's case was different. His existence did not suppress Hephaestus.
He took a deep breath.
Then he started down the slope. Before long, he arrived near the valley.
He did not go any deeper.
According to the guild's estimates, because the dragon nest covered such a wide area, it would probably be difficult to maintain full-coverage, all-day surveillance arrays over the entire place. But local detection wards definitely existed inside.
If he barged in recklessly, the risk of exposure would be too high.
So…
Gauss released his Disguise, returning from his filthy goblin form to his human self.
Then he touched the silver branch-wrapped ring on his right middle finger.
Mana flowed into it. The Silent Cage began to activate.
Buzz—
A strange force spread out soundlessly from where he stood.
Like a single drop of water falling into a lake, it seemed almost insignificant, yet in an instant it spread outward in ring after ring.
Where those ripples passed, the world appeared unchanged to the naked eye. Leaves still swayed in the wind, and the distant gnoll camps remained noisy.
But everything had already changed.
An invisible membrane instantly covered a hemispherical area.
Gauss, the dragon nest, and all the gnoll tribes outside the nest were enclosed within it.
Inside and outside the membrane had become two different worlds.
Creatures outside the area affected by the Silent Cage would look toward it and see only an entirely ordinary valley—but that was merely the image the Cage allowed the world to perceive.
As for the creatures inside, no sound, magic, or other method of communication could pierce the transparent barrier. And if they tried to approach its boundary, their minds would be subtly influenced, causing them to wander in circles without realizing it.
As a gold-grade artifact, the Silent Cage's effects were stronger than those of most artifacts of the same level.
Of course, its weakness was equally obvious: the duration was short, only ten minutes.
And in a sense, it was also a single-use item. Once activated, it exhausted all its energy and could no longer function until it was taken back and recharged.
Compared to gold-grade artifacts that could function stably for long periods, it made sense that this one's effect was so much more powerful.
After confirming that the Silent Cage had fully taken effect, Gauss stopped holding back.
For the next ten minutes, everything inside the Cage was trapped prey.
Ten minutes.
He fixed that number firmly in his mind.
And from the instant the Silent Cage was activated, Eden—who had been idle all this time—became his timer, silently counting the seconds for him.
One second. Two. Three…
Gauss did not know how long killing dragons would actually take, or whether it would truly require the full ten minutes, but he acted as though every second mattered.
"Any Door."
He flashed to the valley entrance.
The gnolls near the entrance saw him at once.
But before the stunned monsters could even react, the light of Any Door flared again. In a blink, he vanished once more.
Only then, after a delay, did the gnolls descend into chaos and ignite signal smoke to alert nearby tribes.
But by then, it was obviously already too late.
Whether by smoke or any magical tool, no information was getting out anymore.
With several more blinks, Gauss crossed the valley barrier and entered the relatively flat ground inside.
Just as the Adventurers' Guild had predicted, the valley interior really did contain detection wards.
The instant Gauss appeared in midair above the valley, several huge figures rose into the sky.
They were dragons of different colors.
One black. One blue. Two green.
The biggest of them was the blue dragon Gauss had already glimpsed from afar before.
Its body was even larger than Hephaestus's by two full sizes.
Hephaestus's wingspan was already close to twenty meters, but Gauss estimated this blue dragon's wingspan at around twenty-five.
Compared to the Green Dragon Queen's ninety-meter wingspan from the century-old records, they were still practically babies.
But a red dragon with a twenty-meter wingspan and a blue dragon with twenty-five meters were clearly not in the same class.
Under normal circumstances, red dragons of the same age bracket were supposed to be noticeably larger than the other four chromatic breeds.
And while blue dragons were not weak physically, part of their natural advantage lay in magical talent, meaning their raw bodies still fell short of red dragons.
So this told him that the strongest blue dragon in the nest was not to be underestimated.
That might also explain why there were no transcendent monsters living around here.
These chromatic dragons were not adults yet, but anyone who assumed some random creature could stroll in and kill them quickly was badly mistaken.
A Level 10 blue dragon… perhaps with real combat strength on par with a Level 12 monster?
For now, that was all Gauss could judge.
He had never actually fought a blue dragon head-on before.
The other juvenile dragons nearby were weaker than the blue dragon leading them, but still far above ordinary monsters.
Looks like I'll have to take this seriously.
Gauss's eyes turned cold.
"ROAR!"
"Human!"
"How dare you invade my territory!"
The blue dragon in the air spread its wings and roared, an overpowering aura exploding outward.
Faced with this mysterious human suddenly appearing in the dragon nest, the blue dragon showed almost no panic. If anything, it seemed excited, as though it had just found an interesting new toy.
Still, it clearly was not expecting any real conversation, because it continued speaking in Dragon Tongue.
Under normal circumstances, no human would understand it, much less respond.
But Gauss was a little special.
"There are only four of you?"
He spoke back in the same deep draconic cadence.
The instant those words reached the ears of the four chromatic dragons, their expressions changed.
Even the arrogant blue dragon's face twisted in shock.
"You! Are you a silver dragon? Or a gold dragon?!"
Clearly, hearing Gauss's flawless Dragon Tongue made them instantly misjudge him as another dragon.
Unlike chromatic dragons, both silver dragons and gold dragons were experts in transformation magic. They would even take human form and live as mortals in human kingdoms for decades or centuries.
Sometimes they would join adventuring teams just to experience the life of a short-lived race.
Most of the time, they would not interfere in major events. They simply wandered the world for amusement, leaving quietly once they grew bored.
Though metal dragons did occasionally help humans, war was another matter entirely. At least in the last human-monster war, the metallic dragon clans had not intervened for either side.
That was why the chromatic dragons panicked the instant they mistook Gauss for an adult metallic dragon.
Metallic dragons were rarer than chromatic dragons, but individually stronger. And any metallic dragon wandering the world in human form was almost certainly an adult or very close to adulthood.
That was an enemy fully capable of crushing them.
"What do you think?"
Gauss did not answer directly. If he could put even more mental pressure on them this way, why not?
In the next instant, he summoned Hephaestus, who had been waiting impatiently inside the creature pouch.
Seeing Gauss release a red dragon subordinate, the chromatic dragons became even more convinced that he was some other dragon in human form, even if they could not understand why a red dragon would be mixed up with a metallic dragon.
After all, a proud red dragon would never submit to a human.
And deep down, the four of them had already guessed why this supposed metallic dragon had appeared here.
"Stranger dragon, we are under the protection of the Green Dragon Queen Aesselas. If you attack us, she will never let you go."
They could only pull out the Green Dragon Queen's name like a banner, hoping to intimidate this adult metallic dragon—who had still not openly stated his intentions.
~~~
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