latelenovela Chapter 270: The Statue
Chapter 270: The Statue
Gauss still encountered goblins more than any other enemy in a day.He was not tired of them.
To him, goblins, aside from the usual familiar traits, were relatively easy to kill.
Recently, as the number of goblin kills increased,
the second effect on the title [Goblin Slayer]: Bloodthirsty—which grants a chance to restore 3% stamina upon killing goblins and related advanced races—had quietly increased its recovery rate from the original 2% to 3%.
Although it still seemed insignificant, given the large numbers of goblins and the fact that he already found killing goblins effortless thanks to the added effect of [Bane],
one advantage built upon another, making the work increasingly second nature.
"Total monsters killed: 5837"
By the end of the day, he had dispatched about two hundred more monsters.
They had basically wiped out the various monster outposts around the village.
To find more monsters, he would likely have to go much farther.
But that would be for later.
Gauss watched the sun slant toward the west and led the team back to the village.
Along the way he casually hunted down a few more prey.
As night fell,
orange flames gradually rose and chased the darkness away.
Today was a special day.
This afternoon the village's final protective fence had been completed, which meant the entire village project was finished.
To celebrate, Village Chief Bruno decided to hold a modest festival.
On the village square, bonfires of every size added a festive air to what would otherwise have been an ordinary night.
The villagers, who had looked exhausted after days of construction, now wore freshly washed clothes and smiled.
Some families came out together, wives and children clustering around, looking at the transformed village with pride glinting in their eyes.
There were even a few proper stalls in the square selling homemade food.
Besides the villagers and Gauss’s team, there were merchants who had passed by and, drawn by the new settlement’s energy, stopped to set up.
The air smelled of roasted meat and wine.
The wine had been bought from the traders;it was a sweet liquor fermented from fruits.
Children chased one another around the bonfires, their laughter bright.
They might not fully understand the adults’ wistful emotions, but they felt the joy of the celebration.
Bruno stood beside Gauss, his face flushed by the firelight.
Whether from excitement or the wine he’d drunk, he stepped forward and spoke once most villagers had gathered, drawing everyone’s attention.
"Everyone! Today, we stand here, standing on a home built with our own hands! A few days ago this was only a shabby grass shelter and constant fear;we didn't know whether monsters or bandits would arrive first."
"And now, look around."
He spread his arms and pointed to the sturdy houses, the tall watchtowers, and the solid fences.
"None of this would exist without the sweat of every one of us, and above all, without Gauss the sir, Shadow the sir, Serlandul the sir, and Aria the sir."
He turned to Gauss's team and bowed deeply.
"It is you who drove away the bandits, cleared the surrounding monsters, and gave us new life and hope to survive on this barren land. We villagers will never forget this debt."
The villagers spontaneously applauded, all eyes fixed on Gauss and the others, gratitude and respect shining in their faces.
Especially those rescued from the mountains by Gauss, now integrated into the village, some had reddened eyes and secretly wiped away tears.
The arrival of Gauss and his team had indeed changed many lives.
Aria, receiving so much attention, blushed and looked down, though the corners of her mouth lifted slightly.
Shadow stood quietly in the shade, but the tension at her mouth softened a little.
Serlandul glanced at Gauss, signaling that as captain he should say a few words.
Gauss hesitated a moment and stepped forward.
Honestly, he wasn’t good at dealing with scenes like this.
But with the atmosphere as it was, and being one of the protagonists, it felt wrong not to say anything.
He cleared his throat.
"Chief Bruno, you flatter us. We only made some small, insignificant contributions. We are happy the village has come to this scale. Tonight’s celebration is not the end;I hope you all always remember the courage you had the first day you lifted your weapons. Help one another from now on, defend this village with your own strength, and build it into a thriving home."
"May this bonfire forever light your path." He took the cup Bruno handed him and raised it to the crowd.
"To the village, cheers!"
The crowd quickly erupted in cheers.
After a short speech, the celebration got underway.
Some villagers danced and sang around the bonfires.
Bruno led Gauss and the others to the village center.
Gauss had actually noticed earlier the object covered in black cloth.
Without teasing anyone, Bruno and a few villagers pulled away the cloth.
The coarse fabric slid off to reveal a wooden statue.
It was not finely carved,
but it was clear the statue’s base depicted the four of them standing together, with similar heights and builds.
Gauss stood one step forward, his wand angled ahead, expression focused and calm as if casting a spell.
Shadow stood to his side in the shade, eyes sharp and alert.
Aria stood on Gauss’s other side, both hands gripping a wooden staff struck into the ground, a bright smile on her face.
Serlandul stood behind the three, palm upraised in a healing pose.
"Sir Gauss, we hope you and your companions like this gift," Bruno said after everyone finished observing. "We originally wanted to make a stone statue, but time was short, so we made a wooden one for now and set it in the village center."
"When you come back next time, you should see statues of you and your partners."
"We have nothing valuable to repay you with, so we hope to place your statue here in the village center so future generations will remember who gave us this brand-new home."
"Thank you. I really like it." Gauss stared at the wooden carving for a long time, a little speechless.
The once-cool wood seemed softened by the orange glow from the bonfires.
It was the first time anyone had made statues of him and his companions.
In just a few days, amid busy construction, they had still found time to produce such a sizable carving—indeed thoughtful.
Not only him;Aria, Serlandul, even Shadow felt a little dazed.
Seeing their carved likenesses repeatedly felt both familiar and strange.
This was likely the best gift they had received.
"Sir Gauss, could you do one more thing for us?"
"Please say it."
"Please give our village a name."
Gauss looked at the village full of song and dance, pondered for a while, and said, "Call it Bonfire Village."
It was not a particularly distinctive name, but it felt fitting—bonfires symbolized hope and warmth, and he sincerely hoped the village would continue to grow.
He hoped that years from now, if he returned, the place would have developed even more.
"Then our village will be called Bonfire Village." Bruno and the surrounding villagers repeated the new name in their minds.
Actually, Bruno had wanted to name the village after Gauss, but since Gauss chose Bonfire Village, he did not object.
.....
Gauss stayed at Bonfire Village for another day.
"Total monsters killed: 5915"
Looking at the kill count on the panel, he was sure there were no longer monsters immediately around Bonfire Village, at least for the time being.
At the village gate,
all the villagers came to see Gauss off.
"This is as far as we go."
Gauss swung onto his ostrich.
Beyond the villagers, he glanced at the village center and saw the statue of him and his teammates.
"Sir Gauss, travel safely!"
"Come back and visit Bonfire Village when you have time."
He met their waves and waved back.
The two villages he'd recently experienced offered completely different feelings,
but each had moved him in its own way.
Sometimes, even though he helped a village because of a commission, he felt he had gained much from the villagers as well.
Gauss set off on a new journey.
Since his total kill count was close to 6,000, after leaving a short distance from Bonfire Village he used Fly to return to the high sky.
Blessing and Enhance Attributes glowed around him.
With the Eagle Eye Monocle equipped, the world before him became transparently clear.
If he focused, he could see even the minute vibration of a cicada’s wing on a distant branch, the texture of an insect's body—everything crisp and distinct.
Even though this was not his first time experiencing it, he still found it wondrous.
This was the power of the monocle as a magical artifact;ordinary telescopes could never achieve such exaggerated effects.
Moreover, the Eagle Eye Monocle could aggregate additional information and transmit it directly into his brain.
These data continuously inputted and enriched Gauss’s internal map.
Before long, a map of the two-kilometer radius around Gauss was fully "scanned" and drawn.
He quickly picked up several suspected monster lairs.
Bonfire remnants, stone piles, caves, crude tools—these signs of activity meant monsters were nearby even if he hadn’t seen them directly.
He descended slowly.
"Found the monster lair?"
Aria stretched and yawned.
She no longer found it surprising when Gauss decided to kill a few more small monsters before moving on.
She didn't bother asking why.
Killing monsters for Gauss was as ordinary as eating or sleeping.
Would anyone think it odd that a person slept every day? It’s only odd if they stopped sleeping.
Gauss killing monsters was the same.
"Yes."
"Let’s move out." Gauss swung back onto his mount. "I think I see trouble up ahead—some travelers are surrounded."
Hearing this, Aria and the others straightened up, wasted no time, and followed Gauss.
....
On a narrow road through a sparse forest,
several carriages had been forced into a crude defensive circle.
About seven or eight guards leaned on the carriages, holding off more than fifty goblins.
The goblins bellowed, swinging rusted mauls and wooden spears, repeatedly battering the convoy’s defenses.
These goblins pulsed with strange magic;both their running speed and strength were beyond normal goblins.
Two guards stood on a carriage roof with bows drawn, arrows flying toward the goblins.
Two goblins fell in response.
But after firing, the archers immediately ducked down.
There were goblin archers among the enemy.
The guards were well trained and worked reasonably well together;despite being outnumbered, they could hold ground using temporary defenses against the goblins.
In the center of the defensive circle stood an elderly man dressed well, exuding the aura of a professional.
Beside him was a young man who bore some resemblance to him.
"Grandfather, let me go out and fight."
The young man gripped his sword, anxious but speaking up.
"Not yet. Some of those goblins are elite." The old man shook his head silently, seeing his grandson’s eager face and thinking him too young.
He had seen it—the combat strength of this goblin group was clearly off;they were not the roadside, harmless kind.
Leaving this temporary defense and being fully surrounded by goblins would be foolish.
Besides, there was no need for him to fight to the death.
If it came to it, he could take his grandson, mount a good horse, and leave. After all, that was the purpose of hiring these guards—to ensure their escape.
Sometimes you don't need to defeat the enemy;you only need to outrun your companions.
The goblins kept battering the carriages.
The guards seized opportunities and killed several goblins.
In the heat of the battle, suddenly a carriage was flipped by a few goblins glowing with strange red light.
"!"
The carriage toppled.
The once-solid defense immediately opened a gap.
When the goblins saw exposed humans, their eyes emitted a faint green light, like starving people seeing a feast.
Mucky saliva dripped from their mouths onto the ground.
"Hold the line!"
The guard captain shouted.
He used his shield to block.
There was no time to think;he had to act immediately.
If the goblins poured in, their small unit would be swept away and everything would be over.
They would claw and bite at limbs, organs, and other vulnerable spots from every direction.
"Swish!"
He swung his blade.
A goblin in front of him was quickly sliced in two.
Blood splattered, dousing his shield and the bodies of nearby goblins.
But the other goblins did not show much fear;on the contrary, the scent of blood seemed to ignite their frenzy like kindling to a flame.
The green light in their eyes glowed wilder.
The guard captain kept swinging;the other guards fought desperately,
but there were too many goblins. Soon goblins climbed over the carriages from other angles, jumped into the defensive circle, and quickly pounced on a guard, biting deeply into his neck.
"Ah!!!"
Under the special enhancement, these goblins moved even faster.
The guard captain heard his comrade's agonized scream.
"Mr. Sico, please help us!"
No response came.
"Mr. Sico?"
He pushed his shield forward and, taking a moment, turned to look back.
To his despair, the elderly man and his grandson who had been standing calm moments ago had vanished.
"The captain! That old man ran off!"
Another guard said in despair.
Their hope was shattered!
They hadn't expected that the professional mage, who earlier told them to hold on while he prepared a spell, would have no desire to fight and would so readily abandon them.
They had kept fighting stubbornly, waiting to see the professional cast a spell that might turn the tide.
Instead they got this outcome.
With one blow, the guards’ morale drained like a receding tide.
More people were knocked down.
It's over! It’s all over!
The captain swallowed. His blade moved even faster.
But one man's strength was limited;goblins poured through the breach.
He couldn't kill them all—alone he simply could not.
"!"
Suddenly, the goblin in front of him froze.
Time seemed to pause.
Even the air felt momentarily still.
Then, without warning,
a few streaks of white light like flying swallows crashed into the battlefield.
"Whoosh!!"
The goblins who had pinned people down raised their weapons but could not bring them down.
The white light kissed the taut necks of those goblins.
"Count!"
Blood blossomed.
After that the clock of time resumed its ticks.
"Thud thud thud thud!"
The sound of heads hitting the ground rang out.
The guards who had been pinned and instinctively struggling suddenly found their restraints gone.
Looking up, they saw those twisted-faced goblins now reduced to headless corpses.
Dead...dead?
Perhaps because it happened so suddenly, many had no idea what exactly had occurred.
Among the guard unit, only the captain vaguely caught the direction the white light had come from.
All the goblins seemed stunned and motionless, as if frozen.
He seized the moment and craned his head up.
There stood a tall man in a plain black robe, floating in the sky.
Reinforcements!
He finally exhaled.
Before he could say anything,
the figure in the sky vanished again.
The next instant,
a new round of horrific screams erupted from the goblin ranks.
He lowered his head and looked at the battlefield in front of him.
His pupils constricted.
Too fast!
In the tiny span while he had glanced up and looked away, the man had slashed through the goblin ranks like a tiger in a flock of sheep, decapitating countless goblins.
It didn't look like Gauss killing goblins;it looked like the goblins were charging straight into the blade.
And the man had only been dancing.
No single goblin could resist even a moment under those beautiful but lethal movements.
So...so strong...
The guard captain kept swallowing hard.
The scene made him dazed, as if the ferocious opponents they had been fighting had suddenly lost all fighting capability and become lambs led to slaughter.
After a while more,
when the smallest goblin at the rear of the group had his heart pierced by the man's blade, the man walked calmly through a scattered sea of gray-green and dark-red bodies to stand before him.
"Congratulations."
Congratulations to me?
The captain was stunned.
Then he soon felt a surge of new life welling up inside him.
It was the power he had longed for for years.
Have I broken through?
The cultivation bottleneck he’d pursued for years, which had eluded him, transformed when he finally let go of his obsession and focused only on survival.
Fate was indeed unpredictable.