I Am Not Goblin Slayer

Chapter 363: Divine Factor

"Huff—"The dust settled.

The entire underground town reeked of a choking stench.

Gauss took several deep breaths.

He tossed a mana olive grown by Aria into his mouth.

"Locate Creature: Goblin."

Gauss scanned the area, confirmed there were no surviving goblins left underground, then sheathed his Water Sword.

The ground had already become a river of blood.

Corpses lay scattered in every direction, toppled and twisted; severed palms, fingers, and eyeballs were everywhere. If someone accidentally wandered in at this moment, they might think they had stumbled into some horrific purgatory.

Even the dwarves looked far from pleased.

Instinct made them uncontrollably nauseous at the bloody scene.

As they walked to Gauss’s side, they made every effort to avoid stepping on certain indescribable bits of flesh.

Then they looked at the group of humans, especially Gauss, who had killed the most goblins. His face was utterly calm, as if he hadn’t just massacred dozens of goblins, but was instead a retired gardener who’d spent a leisurely afternoon pruning his plants.

Although his clothes were slightly dirty from exertion, his expression was relaxed, even carrying the quiet satisfaction of a job well done.

"Glug—"

Bruno and his companions swallowed instinctively.

Could this adventurer Gauss they hired possibly be some kind of bloodthirsty maniac?

He looked more like a monster than those goblins.

Had they escaped the wolf’s den only to walk into a tiger’s mouth?

Fortunately, after Gauss sheathed his weapon and repeatedly used his magic to clean their bodies, that terrifying aura eased considerably, and he reverted to that affable, exemplary adventurer persona.

"Finished?"

"Yes. Dwarf friends, no goblins survived." Gauss nodded.

He guided a distant clone to help the dwarf Toga out of a concealed chamber.

"Toga!"

"Bruno!"

"...."

The two dwarves embraced each other when they found one another.

After a brief excitement, Toga realized the place outside had become a horrific pit of slaughter.

Clearly, within the short time she had hidden in the chamber after hearing the explosion, the adventurer Bruno hired had already cleared the entire goblin underground lair.

So powerful...

Her gaze returned from the nearby pile of dismembered bodies.

She still recognized the goblin head that had defeated and captured her—the goblin chieftain.

But the once-powerful enemy was now dismembered and scattered across the ground.

Her eyes fixed on Gauss in the crowd, and with a single glance she sized him up as the team’s pillar of strength.

Was he the same person who had spoken with her earlier?

"Hello, I’m Toga. Thank you for rescuing me." Toga thanked Gauss with deep gratitude.

"You’re welcome. We’re not exactly doing charity work, Bruno hired us."

"Should be, should be, thank you so much."

"But, Miss Toga, don’t split from your group impulsively in the wild next time," Gauss warned.

For whatever reason, recklessly leaving the group in the wild is dangerous.

If you were a lone wolf, that’s one thing—lone wolves have plenty of solo experience and caution. But people who habitually travel in teams often lack certain qualities.

Toga forced a laugh.

She knew this time her own impulsiveness had caused the trouble.

Although in the end she had only been beaten and starved for two days and not seriously injured, she had definitely been lucky.

Bruno had quickly realized she had gone missing, but because he lacked tracking skills, he had to go to Falim to post a commission and seek help. There he happened to meet Gauss, who could travel fast and was powerful enough that, with just a few people, he annihilated a huge goblin lair...

Any break in that chain might have led to irreversible disaster.

After this incident she knew she had to curb her temper.

"Ahem..."

"Let’s head up." Gauss signaled for them to get to the surface.

The smell in the underground lair was unbearable.

"How did you do it?"

By the campfire, having wolfed down some food, Toga asked curiously.

She still couldn’t imagine how Gauss and his few companions had cleared a goblin lair so swiftly.

"Could you possibly be a Transcendent-class powerhouse?"

After thinking it over, that was the only conclusion she could reach.

As a Level 6 warrior herself, she believed she could not pull off such a feat. Even Level 8, 9, or 10 warriors stronger than her likely could not do it.

The only explanation was that this man before her was a Transcendent-level fighter.

From Level 11 onward, when a professional reaches Transcendent, everything changes dramatically.

The name implies transcendence from the mundane; before it is ordinary, after it is rebirth.

They said most careers gain longer lifespans after entering Transcendent because their life hierarchy has reached a completely new stage.

Gauss shook his head.

"I’m a Level 6 professional, just like you."

"Level 6!!?"

Toga’s eyes widened in disbelief.

She thought Gauss was joking.

"You're definitely joking with me, Gauss?"

Sometimes telling the truth is hard because people assume you’re lying.

Seeing Gauss remain expressionless, her smile grew stiff.

"You’re serious?"

Gauss blinked.

"My gods! By Moradin!"

Toga slapped her forehead.

She felt her understanding of combat power versus professional level had been turned upside down.

If Gauss did not lie, how could two Level 6 professionals differ so starkly?

Even legendary species at the same level usually don’t possess such power, right?

Toga shook her head.

While the group rested, Gauss’s clay constructs were collecting loot below.

But just like his initial reconnaissance suggested, despite appearing large, the goblin lair yielded little value.

Luckily, the payment for this commission was Bruno’s stash of Mithril. Otherwise, with only the scrap metal and raw materials in the lair, their profit would have been miserable. Even counting manpower, Gauss’s small team likely cost a pretty penny.

The only significant item was the various organs from the goblin chieftain, especially that heart, which Gauss kept.

Sitting by the fire, his mind replayed fragments of what he had observed in the goblin lair.

This underground lair was very different from those he had encountered before.

At first he couldn’t put his finger on the difference, only that his sixth sense felt something odd.

After thinking it through while seated, he quickly realized what caused that discordant feeling.

"It’s this."

Gauss used Mage Hand to lift the huge heart propped on a clay spider and brought it in front of him.

"Thud!"

Although the goblin chieftain was dead cold, this plump heart still throbbed violently.

Of course that didn’t mean the heart was anomalous; like ordinary animals in his past life whose organs sometimes briefly stayed active after death, lifeforms here were more potent, so those aftereffects were more pronounced.

What Gauss found strange was the heart’s owner—the goblin chieftain.

Its existence was bizarre.

Powerful yet weak.

Powerful in that, compared to its pitiful underlings and an evidently makeshift lair, having such a chieftain was like a phoenix appearing in a henhouse.

Its underlings were quantity without quality; the elite-level goblins numbered only around twenty and were not very strong.

They looked like a ragtag troupe hastily recruited from nearby.

That explained why the lair collapsed with a single strike. Otherwise, a force of over a thousand goblins shouldn’t have fallen so fast; they would have put up at least symbolic resistance.

If so, the chieftain's existence became even stranger.

It couldn’t have just sprung from the earth, right?

Even someone near-broken like Gauss took two full years to progress from a normal person to Master-level. For a goblin with no background, that level of advancement by only its own efforts and talent seemed unbelievable to him.

Gauss also doubted it was a leader sent from the monster nation to cultivate a branch force within human territory. That wouldn’t make sense: if it had the backing of the monster nation, it would have brought its own followers and basic smithing methods or monster spellbooks and inheritance.

Like that thousand-strong goblin lair he had blasted with alchemical bombs at the start—those goblins knew mining and smithing, trained beasts into cavalry, and enslaved other species of monsters.

But this little goblin lair knew nothing.

Moreover, the goblin chieftain displayed high attack and low defense in combat.

In destructive power and burst speed it truly was at the basic chieftain level, but its defenses were too fragile.

Gauss’s Thousand Threads Severing Boundary had intended to weaken it, but he hadn’t noticed and ended up cutting it into dozens of pieces.

Fragile underlings, a makeshift force, a high-attack-low-defense chieftain, and its cunning intelligence...

Putting these factors together, Gauss felt the goblin was suddenly awakened—like it had instantly been enlightened.

To make a crude analogy, it was like the "Enlightened Gob" from an old online competitive game he’d played—a creature with perfect targeting and teleportation but awkward physical movement. That goblin was filled with such contradictions.

It couldn’t really be that it "opened" something, could it?

Gauss shook his head.

Suddenly he thought of something and opened the Adventurer’s Manual.

Aside from the dense kill records, his total monsters killed count had reached 18,511.

Of course, that wasn’t the important part.

He looked at a newly popped-up notification.

"Killed Goblin Chieftain *1"

"Obtained Commander Points *10"

"Identified that you killed a goblin imbued with special divine favor power, absorbed Divine Factor 0.13%."

"Huh?"

Sure enough, an unusual line appeared on the panel.

Divine favor power? What did that mean?

So the goblin that died by his hand really had "opened" something?

But this extra was not an Adventurer’s Manual like his; it was the favor of a deity.

What deity?

A goblin god?

He didn’t recall hearing of such a deity.

And what was the Divine Factor he absorbed from killing it?

This was the first time Gauss had seen that term on the Adventurer’s Manual.

He had a vague feeling that the Divine Factor would benefit him greatly.

Only the amount was tiny—0.13%, roughly one-thousandth.

What would happen if he collected 100% Divine Factor? Instant divinity on the spot?

Gauss shook his head and focused on the Divine Factor, but the panel offered no further hints.

Still, he distinctly felt an indescribable power subtly enter his body.

Were there many creatures holding divine favor like that goblin?

He licked his lips. An invisible will whispered that when Divine Factor accumulated to a certain degree, something strange would manifest in him.

And it was necessary—something not comparable simply by professional level or attribute numbers.

It was important!

He had to hunt and seize these Divine Factors.

His heart started to race.

"Huff—"

Gauss took a deep breath to calm himself.

Across the campfire, the dwarves watched Gauss staring at the goblin heart in confusion.

Although he had saved Toga’s life, his current behavior seemed a bit odd.

Could anyone explain why Gauss was staring at the goblin heart with longing eyes and occasionally licking his lips...?

Could he possibly want to eat the goblin heart?

It didn’t look appetizing.

They had lived many years and never heard of anyone who liked goblin meat.

That stuff was inedible; even powerful goblins had bizarre, often poisonous flesh.

Maybe he really had a strange goblin-eating fetish.

While they were baffled, Gauss suddenly put the goblin heart into his Storage Bag,

then looked at the dwarves who were about to speak.

"Anything else, folks?"

Through countless tests he knew the Adventurer’s Manual could only be seen by him.

"No... no..." Bruno waved his hands nervously when he realized the implication.

A fetish is a fetish—at least it wasn’t aimed at them.

Who doesn’t have a secret oddity?

Seeing they had no response, Gauss stood up on his knees without overthinking.

"Then you all keep resting. I’ll go check below again."

"Please do."

Bruno gestured for him to act freely and watched Gauss’s departing back.

The dwarves exchanged glances, all guessing Gauss was going down to handle that heart where they couldn’t see.

Gauss didn’t know what the dwarves were thinking of him.

He returned to the underground lair.

On the open ground, piles of goblin corpses had been stacked.

He searched the area carefully several times, especially the chieftain’s living spot, investigating thoroughly.

Unfortunately, no matter how he rummaged, he found no unusual items.

No strange artifacts, no altar, no statue for communicating with a god—nothing.

So was the goblin’s awakening of divine favor power merely a coincidence?

Considering that the only divine-favored target he killed so far was that goblin, if Gauss wanted to collect more Divine Factor, he would likely need to target the goblin species.

It was both intuition and path dependence.