I Am Not Goblin Slayer

Chapter 328: Cultists of the Secret Chamber

The sudden appearance of the person startled both individuals present.However, unlike the tiefling child's instinctive reaction of being frightened, the woman with the flower basket instantly turned pale—a reaction of a guilty conscience—and immediately tried to turn and flee.

But, the hand that grabbed her was simply too strong.

"Who are you? Let me go!"

She turned around. Behind her was a male figure taller than her.

He had handsome features, though at this moment his face was expressionless.

An intense sense of pressure emanated from him.

In the woman's eyes, it was as if countless dark tentacles were writhing and clawing their way out from his body, then reaching out to grab her.

"You... you!"

Gauss used his other hand to take the bread from the woman and toss it to Serlandul.

Serlandul caught it, brought it to his nose, and gave it a light sniff.

"Captain, it contains a knockout drug."

Gauss glanced at the equally trembling tiefling child, then turned his gaze back to the woman who was now babbling incoherently.

"What is your purpose?"

He asked the question flatly.

The woman naturally was not going to willingly reveal her purpose.

However, when Gauss's words fell upon her ears, they produced an extremely powerful magical effect.

It was as if a silver-tongued swindler was leaning close to her ear, persuading her step by step. The originally terrifying man gradually appeared more amiable and kind in her eyes, almost like a friend.

In her dazed state, she straightforwardly laid out the entire plan.

"This is my job."

"Someone gave me a sum of money to look for these homeless tiefling orphans in the alleys, use this drugged food to knock them out, and then take them to a designated location."

Hearing the woman calmly state the plan, the tiefling boy's pupils rapidly contracted.

"Who was the person who gave you the money?"

"I don't know. He was shrouded in a black robe; I couldn't see his face clearly."

"Where did he tell you to take the unconscious children?"

"To... to...

"Ah!!!!"

The woman, who had been speaking quite fluently moments before, suddenly seemed to short-circuit. Not long after, she clutched her head and began writhing in pain on the ground.

A series of hurried footsteps sounded from behind Gauss.

"Tap tap tap—"

Soldiers carrying long spears jogged into the alley from the outside.

The soldiers looked warily at Gauss and his group.

The patrol captain leading them took a step forward.

"What are you doing in this alley?"

Gauss blinked.

The tiefling child scrambled up from the ground, shivering as he tried to stand in front of Gauss to defend him.

"This big brother is a good person..."

The child rattled off a stream of explanation. It was unclear whether his explanation worked, or whether the soldiers noticed the rank of the adventurer badges hanging from Gauss and the others.

In any case, the soldiers quickly sheathed their spears and hauled up the woman who had collapsed, moaning, on the ground.

"We'll take this trafficker back for questioning."

"Sir, if it's convenient, please accompany us to record the details of the incident."

"Not very convenient. I'm about to take this child to eat now."

Gauss shook his head, replying calmly.

The patrol captain fell silent, and a wordless standoff filled the alley.

"Of course, if you don't have time, then forget it."

"Withdraw!"

The soldiers quickly withdrew from the alley.

The quiet alley returned to silence.

"They arrived quite quickly." Serlandul's gaze returned from the disappearing soldiers at the alley's end.

"And they took the person away. What a coincidence."

The group shared an unspoken understanding.

Their location was not on a bustling main street.

While it was possible a patrol just happened to pass by and heard the cries of pain from the alley, the probability of that was clearly not high.

"Never mind, let's eat first."

Gauss helped the tiefling boy to his feet.

He was so hungry he was nearly faint.

"Let's get something to eat first to fill your stomach?"

Gauss took out a handful of pastries and candies from his Storage Bag and placed them in the boy's hands.

"Thank you, big brother."

The boy swallowed hard, eagerly unwrapping a candy and placing the crystal-clear sweet into his mouth.

As the sweet syrup melted in his mouth, a blissful expression spread across the boy's face.

"In the future, in deserted places like this, don't easily accept food from strangers."

Seeing this, Gauss kindly reminded him.

"Mhmm, mhmm."

The boy nodded vigorously like a chick pecking at rice.

After what just happened, Gauss was already someone he could fully trust in his heart.

"Let's go eat first."

After a lunch...

The boy parted ways with Gauss and the others at the restaurant entrance, carrying several takeout boxes in his hands.

That was food he planned to share with other children in his neighborhood.

Gauss watched his figure disappear from sight.

The team soon fell into a somber atmosphere.

They could help one boy avoid harm, but this city was so vast. In corners they couldn't see, a second, a third case might be happening right now.

This no longer seemed like a situation a single adventurer or a single adventuring party could handle.

This city was sick.

"There are too many tiefling orphans."

Many human couples, after giving birth to a tiefling child, would abandon the child out of shock and the fear bred from long-term public pressure, even though it was their own flesh and blood.

Children with good luck might be taken in and raised by institutions or tiefling mutual aid organizations. Those with bad luck might breathe their last on the very day they were abandoned.

And these abandoned tiefling orphans, lacking education and under the influence of public opinion and survival pressure, often ended up on paths of petty theft and crime, further exacerbating the worsening situation.

Gauss and the others returned to the inn.

They handed the house sale commission form to York and advised him not to go to sparsely populated places recently, as the situation in the city was unsettled.

In the afternoon, Aria returned to the inn beaming with joy.

Her smile also lightened Gauss's mood, which had been somewhat heavy due to the morning's events.

"Found a suitable place? You look so happy."

"Mhmm, a very nice natural cave. There's a waterfall and a spring nearby, the scenery is beautiful. I plan to set off tonight."

Aria was already impatient to begin her breakthrough.

Gauss was genuinely happy for her from the bottom of his heart.

"Could you mark the specific location on the map for me?"

"Okay."

Aria fetched a pen and began drawing and writing on the map, marking which city gate to exit from, which road to take, where to enter a side path, and finally enter the woodland.

She recorded everything in meticulous detail because she had specifically paid attention to the route when she set out in the morning.

"Take Hephaestus with you too?"

Gauss handed the Living Bag containing Hephaestus back to Aria.

"Huh?"

Aria tilted her head slightly, looking into his eyes.

"What would I take Hephaestus for? It can still help you if it stays by your side."

The Red Drake Hephaestus wasn't her contracted creature; a breakthrough wouldn't affect it or her in any way. If she took it, it would most likely just sleep the whole time inside the bag.

"If you encounter any danger, you can summon it. Hephaestus should be willing to listen to you now."

Gauss just didn't feel completely at ease.

And if Hephaestus was with Aria, it should be foolproof.

In terms of combat power, Hephaestus was probably second only to Gauss himself in the team.

Moreover, if it couldn't defeat an opponent, it could always take to the skies with Aria to escape.

"What danger could there be? Gauss, are you worried because of that tiefling paladin's commission this morning? But we didn't accept that commission."

Aria shook her head.

"Maybe I'm overthinking it, but you should still take Hephaestus."

"Alright, if it makes you feel better."

Aria ultimately didn't refuse.

Night fell.

After preparing her supplies, Aria mounted Ulfen and bid farewell to Gauss and the others in front of the inn.

"I should be back in about a week."

"Don't miss me too much."

"Go on."

After Aria left, Shadow nodded to Gauss and then melted into the shadows to follow her.

She followed all the way, only returning to the city after safely escorting Aria to the meditation woodland and scouting the surrounding forest.

"I've scouted; the area is safe."

"That's good."

Gauss nodded.

He also felt he might have been overthinking it.

For some reason, ever since entering Longdi Fort, he always felt as if invisible eyes were watching him.

That feeling wasn't the first time it had appeared. Back in Lincrest Town, he had also felt a sense of being spied on and followed.

That's why he was always more attentive while walking, trying to pinpoint where that surveillance was coming from. This was also why he had been able to notice various details and stumble upon incidents on the streets these past two days.

"Serlandul, where are you planning to go tomorrow?"

Gauss planned to give the team a few days off.

"Me? I'll probably go to the slums for a free clinic?" Serlandul replied sincerely.

In the past, during the team's free time when there were no commission arrangements, he often went to the slums or lower districts of towns they passed through to provide free medical treatment for the poor.

Firstly, the act of healing helped with his professional advancement. Secondly, those poor people who couldn't afford medical treatment treated him, a free physician, with an attitude that felt more comfortable to him than that of ordinary people, even though his lower body had a non-human snake torso.

"Shadow, what about you?"

"I plan to wander around the city." Shadow shrugged.

"Me too, but I'm going to visit the blacksmith shop to buy some steel ingots. My equipment needs maintenance." Albenia also shared her plans.

"Alright, then everyone, stay safe."

Gauss also planned to act alone. He intended to wander the streets and flush out that shadowy presence spying on him from the dark.

He would feel more at ease if his teammates weren't with him.

...

Late at night, in the lower district of Longdi Fort.

In the backyard of an inconspicuous shop with a sign reading "Old Books & Sundries."

The ground was piled with miscellaneous items, seemingly ordinary.

But if someone moved aside the moldy-smelling oak barrel in the corner and pressed a slightly loose brick in the wall behind it, a narrow stone staircase leading downward, only wide enough for one person, would be revealed.

At the end of the stairs was a hollowed-out basement.

The air in the basement was stale.

It smelled of old parchment, cheap lamp oil, and a faint, elusive hint of sulfur.

The room was dim, illuminated only by a few ghostly blue flames that cast flickering, ominous shadows on everything within.

Three people sat before a table, on which lay a spread-out city map and several sheets of rough paper covered in tiny, densely packed handwriting.

"The target mentioned in the letter has appeared."

"This is quite timely, arriving just as we begin our plans."

Sitting in the main seat was a gaunt middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a dark robe cleaned to a spotless state, looking every bit the scholar.

Before him, a man almost blending into the shadows was completely wrapped in a deep gray cloak.

The third was a burly, powerfully built man wearing a leather apron stained with grease.

"We need to capture him and offer him to the great Immortal Dragon Queen. The aura he emits is so pure, so surging."

The scholar's eyes behind his lenses gleamed with an almost obsessive light under the ghostly blue flames.

"But there are too many people in the city. We cannot act under the public eye." The burly man reminded in a gruff voice.

"Don't rush, let me think, let me think."

The cloaked man, who had remained silent until now, suddenly spoke up.

"He has a companion who left the city, and they took that little dragon with them."

"Then this might be a good opportunity." Upon hearing this, the scholar nodded with satisfaction.

"Besides that little dragon, the target must also be kept under constant watch. He is far more precious than an ordinary drake."

The words of the three flickered like shadows in the ghostly blue firelight.

Beneath their clothing, the markings tattooed on their bodies were gradually glowing.

"There are no more kings in the world, only a broken throne remains, and the great Dragons will rule the world once more."

After speaking, the three simultaneously extended their right hands, palms down. Under the flickering firelight, the shadows cast by their five fingers extended, eerily resembling five strange heads twisting and writhing.

Gauss walked the streets of Longdi Fort.

The weather was nice today.

The bright, blazing white sun overhead had even raised the autumn temperature considerably.

Precisely because of this, there were even more people walking the streets.

As Gauss walked, he paid attention to his surroundings.

His Perception stat wasn't exceptionally high numerically, but due to his overly powerful soul, his detection of anomalies was more acute.

Suddenly, he spotted a furtive figure on a distant street corner.

"Hey!"

The child he called out to from afar instinctively tensed up and stiffly turned around.

Only after clearly seeing Gauss, who had quietly arrived beside him, did the boy heave a sigh of relief.

"Oh... it's you, you silly... kind-hearted person."

The tiefling boy Delai relaxed his entire body.

A moment ago, he thought it was some past victim of his theft who had spotted him.

As for this handsome man before him, he naturally hadn't forgotten.

Two days ago, it was this man who paid the bakery owner for the stolen bread on his behalf.

Although he was a petty thief, hardly a respectable character in the eyes of ordinary people, even bad guys were willing to deal with such a good person.

"You were about to say 'idiot,' weren't you?"

Gauss asked with a smile.

Caught out, the boy awkwardly forced a smile.

"Which bakery are you eyeing this time?" Gauss sighed, seeing how he had just been sneakily sizing up the shops on both sides of the street. "You shouldn't have finished all the bread you stole the day before yesterday, right?"

"Hehe, I'm not here to steal anything this time."

Delai showed an awkward, bashful expression.

"I want... I want to buy a gift for my sister."

"You have money?" Gauss looked at him with suspicion.

Facing Gauss's doubtful gaze, the boy's face instantly flushed red, his already ruddy complexion deepening further.

"Of course I have money... Well, although to a big shot like you, it's practically the same as having none."

"These were all found, you know. You can always find a few coppers in the cracks between paving stones or in alley corners."

The boy fished out some worn copper coins from his pocket.

"Then what are you hesitating about?"

"There are several shopkeepers on that street who have 'given alms' to me in the past. I have to avoid them."

"..."

Gauss shook his head.

So it was a guilty conscience.

"Forget it, follow behind me."

"No one will pay you any attention."

Gauss didn't mind walking a few extra steps. The sundries shop wasn't far anyway. Might as well see the help through to the end.