The instinctive, blood-deep terror in the goblins' veins left most of them stiff and clumsy. Around Gauss it was as if an invisible fear field targeted at goblins was humming. Only a handful of elite goblins could barely keep their composure under that pressure.
His arrival flipped the battle in an instant. With timing like this, even a straw can break the camel's back—let alone a "juggernaut" like him stepping in. The sailors immediately seized the upper hand in the close-quarters brawl.
"Kill!"
Boarding actions have another crucial factor: though the goblins far outnumbered the Seagull's crew, deck space limits how many can actually leap aboard. And Gauss's three teammates—plus Captain Fern and First Mate Rayne—soaked the first wave up front. For a time, despite being fewer, the humans on the Seagull held the advantage.
Gauss glanced over the situation on deck, tapped his boot lightly, skimmed over the rail, and landed steady on the goblins' refitted "mothership."
The sight there was nothing like the Seagull: the deck was a junk heap of stolen trash, rusty iron, mildewed timbers, even a few unidentified corpses, all reeking to high heaven.
More goblins were jammed shoulder to shoulder. They'd been lining up to jump across; now his sudden drop sent them into chaos.
He flicked his arm; a few handfuls of clay snapped from his sleeve. Magic surged. The clay spun in the air and took shape—Shore-Walker Goblin constructs whose looks matched the monsters around them in every way but color.
Stronger than goblins, too—brutal in a way that was almost… elegant. They snatched weapons from nearby raiders and brought cleavers down without mercy.
"Waaah!"
Screams rose as the clay shore-walkers began the slaughter.
Gauss ignored the common goblins; they could hardly scratch his defenses now. One sweep of his gaze and he locked onto the elites huddled at the stern. Hiding wasn't quite right—they were smart enough to observe this ominous, nightmare of a foe and send underlings to probe his limits.
They hadn't expected him to call up even fiercer "kin" to butcher their rank and file—then come for them himself.
The goblin chief he fixed on went rigid, as if some horror had set sights on it. Unease surged from the depths of its mind. In its eyes, black miasma coiled around Gauss, reaching out across the air like tendrils, slipping through skin and flesh to seize its heart. For an instant, the heart stopped. Breathing turned hard.
The strange power ebbed quickly; it gulped air—and realized Gauss had vanished.
It jerked its head—left, right. Nothing. Nowhere.
Its heart, just released from that chokehold, hammered so hard it might jump out of its chest.
Then the skin atop its bald head prickled—needle-sharp pain. It looked up.
A blaze of white filled its vision.
Gauss was above it, driving his full weight down with a gathered, plunging strike.
Boom!!
Air shoved outward in a ring.
"Ah!" The White Falcon oblique cut scythed down across the chief's neck.
Dead.
Scarlet fountained; in a blink, a goblin pirate leader with "big dreams" was gone. It might have lorded over this deck, ruling life and death—but before a stronger hand, it had none.
"So weak…" Gauss said flatly.
"Shore-Walker Goblin Pirate Chief Slain ×1."
Weaker than he'd expected—probably only a tier 2 or tier 3 challenge. Or maybe he'd simply gotten stronger. At Level 4 and able to punch up to Level 6 for short bursts, this tier of monster was now a stomp.
He looked at the other elites—no hesitation—and blurred out again.
This time he didn't bother with ambush. He went in like a tiger into a flock, straight through the mass. What's terrifying to common folk looked slow and sloppy to him; their patchwork armor tore like paper under his edge.
"White Falcon—Chain Peck!"
He flashed through them; Zephyr became a storm of white afterimages. Each flicker put the needle-sharp tip exactly on a vital—throat, eye socket, heart. Where the edge went, a body dropped.
Some swung back; bone clubs smashed only through the echoes he left behind.
A one-sided massacre.
Fear spread through the goblins like plague. Watching their chief and headmen fall like wheat under that streaking figure, the last of their will broke.
"Waaah!!"
"Waaah!"
They shrieked, dropped weapons, and sprinted for the rails to dive overboard.
Gauss didn't give them the chance.
"Cloud of Daggers!"
A Level 2 Spell whirled to life before him, condensing into a spinning bank of knives. He pushed his arm forward; the lethal "cloud" surged and blanketed the turning, fleeing goblins.
On a ship it wasn't truly enclosed, but the effect was still horrific. As the storm rolled, countless tiny cuts flared across goblin hides—then split wide. Blood geysered.
Ssshhh!!
It rained blood over the goblin ship. Scarlet ran in sheets across the planks.
Gauss cast Cloud of Daggers three times in three directions, covering nearly ninety percent of the deck. No ordinary goblin could endure that slicing storm. When he lowered his hand, the packed mob was gone. He looked down: a thick, sticky layer of flesh slurry and blood covered the deck.
On the Seagull, sailors manning the light ballistae toward the sea turned at the commotion. Pupils pinched to pinpricks. The once-brown hull nearby was now a stinking bloodship. First sights made heads throb; instinct screamed wrong—like a slaughterhouse.
What happened?
Their eyes slid to Gauss, standing steady at the stern—spotless, not a speck on him, a stark contrast to the hellscape beneath him. He looked less like the maker of that crimson hell than a passerby caught in the wrong place.
But if he didn't do it—who did?
"S-so… strong."
Only now did the sailors realize yesterday's glimpse hadn't shown his ceiling. Unhindered, he was terrifying—enough to make them uneasy. If he unleashed that on the Seagull, would they be any different from those goblins ground into paste?
They swallowed hard.
Gauss looked to the sea. He was pleased with the first real showing of Cloud of Daggers after time practicing it—if not satisfied. At his signal, the clay shore-walkers splashed overboard.
Clay constructs don't fare well in salt water, even if their base form swims; but the clay magic could sheath them in a water-repelling membrane for a short time. It was enough.
It sounds wild—but that's magic.
Soon, red spread across the surface as the constructs hunted below. His kill counter ticked up fast. The three Clouds of Daggers plus the ongoing pursuit had put down nearly two hundred goblins.
"Total Monsters Kill: 5,275."
"Total Monsters Kill: 5,278."
"5,285."
…
The number kept climbing. A pity he hadn't yet mastered the Level 3 Fireball or Fly; he was itching to try them. If a Level 2 spell did this on a deck, what would Fireball do? One shot to hole the ship? If not one, a few? The thought made his fingers itch. He resolved to push the Level 3 studies harder when they got back.
As Alia and the crew finished the cleanup, the fight wound down. Shouts faded; the rest of the goblins were either cut down, slipped the constructs, or vanished who-knows-where. The sea grew quiet again—only gulls wheeling and squawking overhead and sailors gulping air.
Serandur moved among the wounded, patching them up; the chaos had left some men cut, but no grave losses—largely thanks to Gauss. Even without directly babysitting them this time, his goblin-bane aura had helped.
"Total Monsters Kill: 5,345." Only a few hundred shy of the next milestone at 6,000.
"White Falcon Sword Art Lv2 (10/20)." The proficiency rose quickly—live combat really is the best teacher. As his strength climbed, so did his efficiency: more-numerous mobs, faster clears. Even without trying to "kill-steal," most of the kills came from him and his clay constructs.
Many sailors had no breath left for words; they stared, dazed, at the carpet of corpses. They had done it—wiped a host this big. Others, settled enough to feel it, bent over the rail and heaved at the double assault on eyes and nose.
"Captain Fern! Port bulwark's damaged—seams are opening, she's taking water!" a burly sailor ran up to report.
Fern's brow knotted. He strode to the rail and leaned out. After the ships had separated, a big fracture had opened; with each lift of the hull, the sea seeped in.
"Hands to repairs—now! Bring her toward that island!" he snapped.
By then Gauss had returned to the Seagull and stood at the side. "Tough to fix?"
"Not too bad—we've got spare planks and adhesives aboard, and carpenters with the hands for it. It will take time," Fern said, masking his heartache for the ship with a smile. "Mr. Gauss—haven't you updated your badge rank?"
For all his average fighting power, Fern's eye wasn't bad—Gauss was operating well beyond a typical elite. It now made sense why this man, not the Level 5 on the team, wore the captain's mantle. Fern even suspected Gauss might already be Level 5—power this extreme would be easier to accept that way than at Level 4.
"No—I'm Level 4," Gauss said truthfully.
"Hff—" Fern hissed in a breath; the air seemed to warm a few degrees. His look grew even more respectful. Level 4 was scarier than 5 here—the implication even he could read.
"Mr. Gauss, let's go below and rest," he said, deference clear.
Gauss met his eyes and fell silent a moment. He understood: as more of his real strength showed, an unseen wall had risen between them. Not hostility—an instinctive awe and distance before something outside one's frame. A kind of self-protection.
"Alright," he said evenly. "I'll rest a bit." Standing there, he'd noticed too many sailors were sneaking looks at him and tying themselves in knots instead of repairing and cleaning.
Back in his cabin, Alia and Shadow followed; only Serandur stayed topside to treat the wounded.
"Didn't expect there to be so many," Alia said once they were alone, talkative now. "But the headmen weren't that strong." She had watched Gauss's side enough to judge.
"Maybe that's just the sea," Gauss said, unsure. "Most of the world is water; humans haven't been to most of it, but monsters breed freely. Maybe that means more low-tier mobs?"
Alia nodded. "Maybe we should buy a ship someday."
"We're short on hands. We aren't an adventuring company with dozens or hundreds," Gauss said, still level-headed. Coastal or deep-sea, only companies really have a seat at that table. Small parties are just that—small.
"True." She sighed. "I wonder how those companies run."
"That's a long way off," he said. "Your core needs to be high level." He figured they were a distance from the stage where a company made sense.
Without power, how do you gather followers? Potential and "future" don't feed people; most look at the now. Only the strong can lead others to profit. From what he knew, core members in the big companies were at least double-digits.
He was far from that. But… he would get there. More members meant a wider net for intel—and someone else to handle all the non-combat errands, so he could focus on killing monsters.
The core squad would still stay lean and mobile—easier to take commissions everywhere and adapt fast.
…
The island with the Tidal Caverns wasn't far. Before nightfall, the Seagull dropped anchor by a shoal; carpenters and sailors set to the breach. Gauss and the others stepped onto the rough sand as the dark deepened.
"Awoo!!" A beast roared somewhere in the mountains behind. Clearly the island held more than shore-walker goblins—and the goblins weren't high on its food chain.
"Eyes up," Gauss warned. "This island isn't simple."
"Right. Once the repairs are done tomorrow, we're gone," Fern agreed. No need to borrow trouble; the commission was complete and the haul was rich. Time to leave.