"Eh? You're back this early today?"
Passing by Gauss's room and noticing the door ajar, Alia leaned in—and was surprised to find him still there at midday.
"Mm. Something unusual came up, so I didn't take any new commissions." Gauss set his book down and glanced toward the doorway.
These past few days his routine was: turn in the previous day's commissions in the morning, then immediately pick up the next set to save time. But today the commission the senior guild director had mentioned was weighing on him, so he'd skipped the board.
"Oh?" Alia's expression sobered.
As Gauss's long-time teammate, she knew him too well. Lately he was either killing goblins or on the way to kill goblins—never idle. Or he was finding a patch of open ground to practice spells. Sitting quietly in a room with a book like this really was "rest" for him; normally he read in transit, on a wagon or a chocobo.
"That's perfect timing—I just mastered Faerie Fire," Alia said, beaming.
Count the days and it wasn't hard to guess why she was so happy. She wore her heart on her sleeve.
From purchase to proficiency in just a few days was far faster than usual—faster than she expected. So fast it felt unreal.
"Nice pace—congrats." Gauss looked at her bright face and read the joy there.
"Heh…" Alia scratched the back of her head. "Honestly… I think I'm riding your and Serandur's coattails, hehe…"
"You remember what we said about blending that 'mystery energy' from you and Serandur?" she added, flashing white teeth. "I definitely feel my spell practice speeding up a lot. I can't explain the mechanism, but it helped a ton with Faerie Fire."
"Maybe your talent's finally blooming," Gauss said.
"My talent's not that good," Alia replied earnestly, shaking her head.
"You never know. Have a little faith in yourself," Gauss said. "I read a great biography once: sometimes a person's potential just needs a trigger—or it unlocks when you hit the right season of life. Late bloomers are real. Maybe that's you right now."
Alia stared at him for a beat, then grinned. "I'll take that blessing."
She'd wanted to say: her "trigger" was meeting Gauss in the Jade Forest last year. Everything in her adventuring life had veered since. But that felt a little corny, so she kept it to herself.
"So—what's the 'unusual' thing today?" she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
Gauss pointed at the door, asking her to close it. He kept it open for air—and to spot teammates returning at a glance. Since he was breaking routine to stay in, the plan was to loop Alia in about the morning's commission.
"So mysterious?" Alia shooed her pets back to her room, shut the door, and took a chair.
"This morning the guild offered me a non-public commission—high risk, high reward—about exterminating a goblin unit tied to the Blackfang tribe. I told them I'd consider it and wanted to talk it over with you and Serandur…" Gauss used Message to relay the details.
He was careful because the director had asked him not to leak the contents. This was as discreet as he could get—and more than enough. If someone wanted to "listen in," they'd have to crack the cantrip, be watching him right then, and avoid his notice. Anyone that capable would already have better channels; this "secret" wouldn't be news to them.
When Alia finished listening, she fell silent for a moment. Most team decisions, she was happy to leave to Gauss—but that didn't mean she didn't think them through. However unlikely, if Gauss ever lost the plot, she'd have to call it out.
"Blackfang…" The name wasn't unfamiliar. Anyone who knew even a little history of the monster war had heard of the Five Goblin Tribes. Picture tens of millions of goblins flooding into human lands like a tide—that thought alone chilled the blood. Rumor said there were still pockets of descendants from that era, tucked away in remote ranges within human kingdoms.
If they accepted this, it could be their team's highest-spec mission since forming. Even if the enemy strength and numbers at Outpost 11 had been greater, a large, multi-squad defense is different from an independent team commission.
The risk was real.
But… the guild's reward was a lot.
Enough to feed a whole party for a long time. If they stuck to ordinary commissions—even adding some Bronze-only beginner jobs—who knew how many they'd need to equal this one payout, not to mention travel time, prep and cleanup costs, and all the fatigue in between. And even "within our weight class" jobs can go sideways; there's no such thing as absolute safety once you step onto the road.
Seeing Alia's eyes start to sparkle, Gauss knew she was as tempted as he'd been when he first heard it. Who wouldn't be? Resources to raise a talentless commoner to a Level 5 Professional, with your choice of conversion—hard to say no.
For him specifically, with goblins as the target, he could fully leverage his anti-goblin specialization. His current Title in the [Goblin] line was [Goblin Butcher] (Tier 3), which came with bonuses:
Bane: +30% damage dealt.
Bane (Extra): Critical—a chance to trigger a crit for a massive spike in power.
Bloodthirst: Killing goblins or their advanced variants has a chance to restore 2% stamina.
Those alone let him massively outperform baseline when fighting goblins. A goblin commission was about optimal for him right now: rich rewards, fast kill-count accumulation, XP for two racial traits, spirits to feed the clay goblin…
"The reward is great," Alia said, coming out of her thoughts. "But let's wait for Serandur, yeah? We can mull it over for a couple days."
"He should be back soon," she added. The special energy had helped her so much that—by her reckoning—Serandur, who'd been stuck just shy of Level 4 for ages, would benefit too. If she'd been at a bottleneck, that boost would've pushed her through.
They discussed details for a while. Alia's take on the temporary teammate matched Gauss's: once Serandur returned and they'd properly regrouped, try to meet the temp early and feel things out. If it didn't gel, decide based on the read.
That afternoon, Gauss decided to wander town and see if any shops were selling mana clay. He'd been in Lincrown Town for a bit, but aside from his first day—scouting for an inn—he hadn't really looked around in daylight.
He left the inn and strolled the streets. Without any census data, simple observation told him the resident population was notably larger than Grayrock's. Besides locals, he kept seeing long-haul caravans and adventurers in garb from other regions—good for the town's energy, but a little destabilizing. Like that "thief" and those hotheaded "clerks" he'd run into at night the other day—fine for him, but an ordinary person would've been steamrolled.
"Grayrock's still better," he mused. "Less commerce, sure, but more honest folk."
Lost in his survey, he wandered into an area he hadn't visited before. The buildings were lower and shabbier than along the main drag; the lanes narrowed; a damp, rotting wood smell hung in the air. Passersby wore simple clothes and the weariness of hard lives.
"Every shiny town has a district like this."
There were no patrolling guards here—just local toughs in scuffed leather, strutting around. Yet as these "locals" passed Gauss, the same thing happened every time: the chatter cut off, swagger shrank, bodies angled aside to clear his path, eyes slid away from his calm gaze, some even dipped their heads like guilty men avoiding eye contact.
It was daytime, and he wore his adventuring kit for field work. In bright sun, you didn't need keen eyes to see he wasn't someone to cross.
A burst of jeering laughter at a lane mouth ahead caught his attention. A few thugs had ringed a young man of about eighteen. His patched but clean clothes were clutched tight around a few oil-wrapped old books. A fresh red mark glowed on his cheek; his eyes were wet, but he bit his lip hard, refusing to cry.
"Brat! You bump into me and dirty my clothes and think we're square?"
A tall thug had the young man by the collar, spitting as he shouted. One glance at the thug's filth-caked tunic said the stains were years deep—not the result of a brush-by.
"S—sorry, I didn't mean to. I'll pay—I'll clean it," the young man said, voice shaking, reaching to wipe it.
"Pay? You got coin? This is fine fabric!" The tall thug slapped his hand away and reached for the books. "Those rags might fetch a few coppers. They'll cover your debt!"
"No! You can't have them! Mr. Colt lent them to me—I have to return them!" The young man suddenly clenched, holding the books tight.
The other two thugs grabbed his arms. "Still resisting, huh?"
The tall one raised his hand for a hard slap.
At the lane mouth, Gauss halted, turned, and stepped in. Muscles coiled—
Then he felt something and stopped.
A slim figure ghosted from the shadows, crossed the ground in a handful of springy steps—faster than Gauss—and was on the thugs before they could react.
Whump!
Her right leg cracked out like a whip—three precise kicks slammed into three bellies. The thugs didn't even manage full screams; eyes bulged, bodies folding like hooked shrimp, they flew into the wall and slid down.
"Urgh…"
They curled on the ground, clutching their guts, rolling in pain. From her entrance to the last kick, it had taken only a few blinks. The gap in strength was obvious.
Gauss's lifted foot eased back; the tension left his frame. He'd meant to intervene, but if someone handled it first, he had no reason to pile on.
Then he saw the woman's face—more precisely, those black eyes—and a memory from a few nights back flashed.
Her?
She looked barely into her twenties, a fine-boned, angular oval face with a cut of handsomeness. Tall—about one-eighty—with a lean, toned frame; her close-fitting clothes sketched strong shoulders and a straight, proud back. A hunter's wariness hung about her, as if she were constantly scoring the environment.
Gauss instantly linked her to that time—the "thief" he'd seen near the market. Even masked from the nose down beneath a cloak, he had a sharp memory. He wouldn't mistake the teardrop mole under her left eye.
The young man stared, dumbstruck, at the three toppled bullies and the savior who'd dropped from nowhere. The cloaked woman didn't spare the groaning thugs a glance. She turned, looked at the books hugged tight in his arms, and paused a beat.
"Go home," she said.
He snapped back to himself, bowed deeply, and blurted, "Th—thank you!" Then he bolted with his books.
Only then did the woman turn and fix on Gauss. When she saw his face, her brows lifted in the same surprised recognition. She masked it quickly. She'd clocked the way he'd shifted to move—because of certain reasons, she never passed up a chance to step in first.
They looked at each other across the writhing thugs, silent in the narrow lane. She dipped a small nod… then blurred away, her body melting into a side alley like a shadow on the wind.
Gauss let his gaze fall away.
"A thief with a sense of justice, huh…"
After that night, he'd felt she really had stolen goods from the shop—why he hadn't gone hard on the clerks. But judging from just now, maybe there'd been more to it. That night she hadn't moved this fast; it had felt deliberately slowed—making a point of walking away in front of the crowd.
"Whatever. Not my business," Gauss said, shaking his head. Just another passerby. Even if meeting twice in a row was a coincidence—and even if she felt distinctive—the world was full of distinctive people. No point fixating. No one's more "special" than he is.
He wasn't a permanent in Lincrown anyway. Odds were they wouldn't cross paths again.