When the group flew over to Gauss's position, they realized he looked even younger up close.
The moment they noticed how strikingly handsome the young man was, they immediately understood that this was the person they'd come to find—the commander of the Red Dragon Company, Gauss.
And after seeing that there were no monsters or enemies anywhere near him, they couldn't help muttering to themselves.
So that light spell earlier… was that a warning shot for them?
That thought made their attitude even more humble on the spot.
They had already learned about Gauss's strength from the intelligence gathered by their scouts, but only now did they realize that what those reports had described might have been only part of it.
He was like an iceberg hidden beneath the sea—the more you uncovered, the more unfathomable he seemed.
Gauss gave the group a brief glance and more or less figured out who they were and why they had come.
After they approached and exchanged a few words, things turned out exactly as he expected.
They had come looking for him.
He'd probably been spotted by the scouts stationed outside the Red Dragon Company's temporary camp when he was flying around after coming out of seclusion.
And once they realized the actual leader had finally shown himself, it was only natural that the commanders or higher-ups from the other adventuring groups would come over to talk.
For one thing, those mountains of monster corpses and materials—if they were left there for another few days, a lot of organs and tissues would rot and lose most of their value.
Anyone with half a brain could see that, with only a little over a hundred people, the Red Dragon Company had no way to harvest everything in time, nor enough manpower to transport and sell it all afterward.
Instead of letting it all rot and stink, it made far more sense to sell part of it off.
So the sooner these other groups negotiated with Red Dragon, the better their chances of grabbing a share of the spoils.
Of course, if the one sitting on this "gold mountain" weren't the Red Dragon Company but some much weaker adventuring company, these visiting groups probably wouldn't have been nearly so polite. More likely, they would have simply joined forces and carved the spoils up by force.
In the end, all profit distribution rested on strength.
Otherwise, what did it matter if Red Dragon technically owned the battlefield?
Gauss led these self-introduced Sky Adventuring Company leaders back toward the Red Dragon Company's encampment.
He'd only stepped out to practice his two Level 5 spells, and though it hadn't been for long, he'd already gotten a sense of their effects.
Most of the Red Dragon Company members were still working overtime to harvest the battlefield, focusing primarily on the elite-tier monster corpses. As for the far more numerous low-tier monsters, they could only leave those for later.
Gauss flew ahead while the giant eagle followed behind him in silence.
It didn't take long before the battlefield itself came into view from eagleback.
Though they'd already seen the rough outline of the battle through recording crystals, actually arriving at the scene made the brutality of the fight far more tangible.
That said, given that the reports suggested the Red Dragon Company had suffered little to no losses, the "brutality" here was clearly one-sided—from the monsters' perspective.
The old mage in dark robes stared out over the endless field of corpses, his eyes far sharper than his age suggested, and his pupils shrank.
Monster bodies littered the ground in such numbers that the end of them couldn't be seen at a glance.
Even if Sky Adventuring Company had brought several times more people, they would probably still have been drowned beneath a monster tide of this size.
And while they were studying the battlefield, Gauss was quietly studying them in return.
The strongest one—the old mage—was probably level 9 or 10. Hard to say for sure without fighting him.
Still, for Gauss, that difference hardly mattered anymore.
By the time they returned to camp, the cooks of the Red Dragon Company had already prepared food.
The edible portions of the Magic Frog Lord had been cut away earlier and stored in cold boxes. They would serve as Gauss's main rations for quite some time.
It wasn't that Gauss was being stingy—those chunks of flesh, soaked in dense, high-grade mana for years, were toxic to most people.
Gauss could ignore the damage and make full use of the nourishment thanks to his purple-rank racial talent, Feast. Other people, however, weren't so lucky.
That said, the rest of the Red Dragon Company ate very well too.
Before setting out, Gauss had already had the logistics team purchase well over a hundred gold coins' worth of food—enough to feed their hundred-plus people comfortably for most of half a month inside the labyrinth.
"Let's talk while we eat."
"Then we won't stand on ceremony, Commander Gauss."
Gauss had only practiced magic for a short while, but he was already getting hungry. The moment he smelled the steaming bowl of soup made from the frog lord, his appetite surged.
This wasn't just about indulging himself.
As his Magiccaster level rose, and with all the monster-derived racial talents evolving inside him, his body had begun to instinctively crave richer, higher-grade food.
Everyone sat around the bonfire on rough-cut logs being used as makeshift stools.
The guests, seeing the food in front of Gauss—so obviously different from everyone else's—couldn't help looking a little longer than they intended.
In that oversized bowl, the broth bubbled ominously, and waves of violent, concentrated mana kept rising from it.
It looked less like food and more like some mysterious potion brewed by a witch in a cauldron deep in the woods.
Gauss acted like he didn't notice the stares. He picked up a spoon and started eating in large bites.
Mmm.
Even after hours of simmering, the sliced frog meat still retained an astonishing bounce. As he chewed, the glossy, translucent flesh seemed to twitch against his tongue.
It was easily the most vibrant ingredient he had ever eaten. It almost still felt alive.
Every swallow sent a warm current rising from his stomach into his limbs and bones.
His whole body felt comfortably warm, like he was soaking in a hot spring.
Nourished by the meal, even his dragon-like heart seemed to beat with more power.
He took another spoonful, smiling in clear satisfaction.
Who would've thought something that ugly could taste this good?
The guests sitting across from him were all holding their own plates, but none of them had touched a bite.
They had probably guessed something from the wild, violent mana radiating off that soup.
"Commander Gauss… if this old man may ask… what exactly are you eating?"
Hawkins, the Sky Adventuring Company's old wizard-commander, finally couldn't hold back.
The question left his mouth and he almost regretted it at once.
After all, this might have touched on some private secret of Gauss's.
But Gauss's expression didn't change at all.
"The thigh meat of this floor's Magic Frog Lord. Want some?"
There was still half a pot of it bubbling nearby.
The moment they heard that answer—and realized it matched what they'd already feared—the few guests looked at one another, then all shook their heads in unison.
High-level monster flesh wasn't something you could make edible with ordinary cooking methods. If it were, there'd be no need for alchemy to exist in the first place.
For hundreds upon hundreds of years, people had studied alchemy precisely to neutralize and refine the savage energy inside dangerous ingredients, using all kinds of supporting materials and magical processing to turn them into something the human body could digest.
Even then, many powerful potions still required the drinker to have very high physical qualities.
Just eating the flesh of a powerful monster directly?
That was basically drinking poison.
And yet Gauss showed no discomfort at all. In fact, he looked like he was thoroughly enjoying it.
Hawkins blinked.
Could this young commander actually be some terrifying magical creature wearing human skin?
The more he interacted with Gauss, the more mysterious the young man became.
When they declined his offer, Gauss merely smiled.
He really wasn't being stingy.
Before long, the entire pot of food that no one else dared touch had gone into his stomach.
His mana, stamina, and life force all returned to their peak.
His mana cap even seemed to increase slightly from the meal.
For him, with his ocean-like reserves, it was barely a drop in the bucket—but in terms of sheer quantity, it was probably about equal to the full mana pool of an ordinary level 1 spellcaster.
The cold flesh of a monster had turned into warm mana inside his body.
After the meal, Gauss gathered the few Red Dragon officers currently not in the middle of breaking through and officially began negotiations over subcontracting the spoils.
The tens of thousands of low-tier monster corpses needed to be sold off as soon as possible. Otherwise, they'd just rot where they lay.
Over the last half day, wild animals and opportunistic monsters had already started creeping in, trying to drag bodies away.
As more time passed, the smell would only grow stronger, pulling in even more scavengers. The Red Dragon members were already busy enough harvesting the higher-value materials—they couldn't spend all their time chasing petty thieves.
"What section do you want?"
"You're free to inspect the marked area yourselves afterward."
Gauss spread out a rough map and got straight to the point.
He'd drawn it himself, dividing the area into sections and marking each with the approximate monster types and counts.
That kind of work wasn't difficult for him.
The numbers weren't perfect, but they were easily within ten or twenty percent.
"Commander Gauss, may we take a look and discuss it first?"
"Of course."
Gauss had no problem with that.
For Sky Adventuring Company, they really did need to think carefully.
They had over three hundred people total once combatants and logistics staff were counted together.
But a good chunk of those were still active on the earlier floors.
Even if they pulled more people over later, their manpower for hauling and processing was limited. Buying too much and failing to handle it in time would be a loss too.
It might not cripple them, but any avoidable loss was still worth avoiding.
Aside from the sea of low-tier monsters, Gauss was also selling off a number of elite monster corpses.
On average, even a basic monster corpse could yield a dozen or more silver coins' worth of materials, weapons, armor, and other equipment.
And not all low-tier monsters were equal.
These weren't the ragged things you found in roadside villages or forgotten scrublands. The monsters inside the labyrinth were practically rich boys.
Magic frogs dropped valuable mana glands, and their hides were worth something too.
As for the rest—even the most common goblins in the labyrinth usually carried decent iron weapons and usable armor. That all translated into money.
And the elite monsters were even more valuable.
Gauss didn't interrupt their discussion.
For him, the main point was convenience.
He didn't have the manpower or time to process everything himself, so as long as the offer wasn't insulting, he was willing to sell.
After some back-and-forth, they finally picked a section.
It was mostly magic frogs—over three thousand of them in total—along with a smaller number of elite frogs.
What they really had their eyes on, though, were the elites.
"Six hundred gold. What do you think, Commander Gauss?" Hawkins made his offer.
Gauss locked eyes with him and instinctively felt there was still room to move.
At times like this, his Perception stat was incredibly useful. And because the men across from him had all been thoroughly shaken by what they'd seen earlier, Gauss's own presence was weighing on them enough that reading them became even easier.
"Make it eight hundred. There are close to a hundred elite magic frog corpses in that section, and nearly ten of them are Level 5."
Even so, Gauss wasn't pushing too hard.
It was still a profitable deal.
Those elite frogs were where the real value lay. If the Red Dragon Company hadn't been short on storage space for fresh, high-value materials, he might not have been willing to sell them at all.
When Gauss pushed the price up, Hawkins fell silent.
That number was actually very close to the upper limit he'd already imagined internally.
But he hadn't revealed the slightest hint of his price range during their earlier discussion.
So was that just intuition?
He had the uncomfortable feeling of being seen through by a man young enough to be his grandson.
It was an awkward sensation, but he didn't dare show it.
After a short pause—and one more look into Gauss's eyes—he decided not to haggle further.
A few hundred gold wasn't trivial, but it also wasn't enough for him to waste breath over.
He'd still make a profit regardless.
And in any case, this could be treated as doing the young but frighteningly powerful Red Dragon commander a favor.
After all, their companies would almost certainly have more dealings with Red Dragon later in the labyrinth.
More importantly, the price Gauss was asking was still fair.
People naturally showed more tolerance toward the strong.
So at this moment, even though Gauss was raising the price, Hawkins didn't feel much resentment. If anything, he thought Gauss handled things fairly and decently.
"Eight hundred it is."
"Thank you, Commander Gauss, for giving us the chance to work together."
Once they reached an agreement, Hawkins didn't act stingy at all. He immediately took out several money bags.
Each one held a hundred gold coins.
Gauss gave them a quick count, then put the eight hundred gold away.
"Then let's call this a good partnership."
After taking the money, Gauss smiled sincerely and shook Hawkins's hand.
Over the next day or two, the leaders of other adventuring companies arrived one after another and signed their own deals with Red Dragon.
~~~
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