I Am Not A Goblin Slayer

But when it swung its massive axe, what it cleaved was merely an afterimage.

”Wrong. Behind you.”

Gauss certainly knew the One-Eyed Giant couldn’t understand his words. But he didn’t give it any time to react either.

The next moment, the dragon wings behind him retracted into his body, and his right arm underwent a rapid transformation. Platinum scales emitted an intense luster. Following the flash of light, his right arm abruptly expanded several times in size, the writhing muscles darting rapidly beneath the scales like little mice. In an instant, his right arm morphed into a thick, muscular dragon claw covered in gleaming Platinum scales. He raised his right arm high—its sheer mass was even larger than his entire body.

”BOOM!”

The claw clamped down on the back of the One-Eyed Giant’s neck and suddenly exerted force. The One-Eyed Giant instinctively tried to resist, but the sudden, overwhelming surge of power was far too terrifying. Moreover, having lost a thigh, it was already struggling to muster its full strength. The resistance it had just managed to gather was instantly and brutally crushed by the dragon claw gripping it!

”BANG!!!”

The One-Eyed Giant was instantly pinned firmly to the ground. Its face flushed a deep, blood-engorged red, and python-like veins throbbed madly along the sides of its scalp. The force overwhelming it was simply too great.

”THUD! THUD! THUD!”

The One-Eyed Giant braced its arms against the ground, trying to push itself up, but Gauss, riding on its back, didn’t budge an inch. In the blink of an eye, his dragon claw arm applied even greater pressure. It tried to swat Gauss off its back like a mosquito, but the moment it raised its arm, a Missile instantly shattered its elbow joint.

”CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!”

The bones and cartilage in the Giant’s neck snapped with the sound of popping firecrackers. Its resistance grew weaker and weaker... until finally, its body went completely limp, ceasing all movement.

”Successfully slain Commander-level Demon: One-Eyed Giant * 1”

”...”

Gauss maintained the pressure for a few more seconds before slowly relaxing his grip. He actually had many ways to kill this One-Eyed Giant. The reason he chose to get into close quarters and execute it using his partial dragon transformation was twofold. On one hand, he wanted to maximize the preservation of its body tissue; striking its vital points with Fireball Technique, Dawn, Bigby’s Hand, or a Dragon Roar Missile would diminish his potential gains. On the other hand, he wanted to use a real combat scenario to test the newly acquired power of his draconic physical manifestation.

The results proved that the draconic physical manifestation was indeed quite formidable. The dragon wings granted him powerful physical flight capabilities. The dragon scales granted him powerful Protective defenses. The dragon throat granted him the destructive ranged power of a true dragon’s breath. Meanwhile, the dragon claws and partial dragon torso granted him unparalleled brute strength, to the point where even a Giant—a creature renowned for its might—could hardly muster a single ounce of resistance beneath him.

It was just a pity that he had sent Red Dragon Hephaestus out to do odd jobs and protect the members of the Red Dragon Team along the way. Otherwise, he could have kept him close to offer some hands-on instruction, letting him learn the formidable abilities of a true dragon.

He looked down at the massive Giant corpse beneath him. He didn’t jump to the conclusion that the Giant race, which shared equal fame with true dragons, was mediocre and merely riding on an unearned reputation. Such a comparison was both unfair and unequal.

In the eyes of the world, true dragons were mostly powerful species like Five-Colored Dragons or Metal Dragons. As for other creatures like Sub-dragons, wyverns, and Earth Dragons, did they count as dragons? Barely, but absolutely no one would call them true dragons.

The Giant species boasted a similarly expansive family tree. The likes of Hill Giants, One-Eyed Giants, and Wasteful Giants weren’t actually considered true Giants; at best, their status was equivalent to that of Dragon Descendants and Sub-dragons within the Dragon Race.

There were the noble Storm Giants, who lived far from the mortal world, mastered the power of prophecy, wearied of conflict, and were revered as Low Tier deities by certain humanoid civilizations. There were the noble Cloud Giants, who could transform into mist and embody clouds, claiming solid clouds as their fiefdoms and manipulating the weather. Not to mention the Giants and Giant divine scions who possessed Titan bloodlines; their destructive power was magnified tens or even hundreds of times, surpassing even true dragons of the same level.

They were a race capable of forging the ancient Giant Empire, boasting a pantheon of Giant gods beyond this world that protected them. This included Stronmaus, the chief god of the Storm Giants; Memnor, the chief god of the Cloud Giants; Skoraeus Stonebones, the chief god of the Stone Giants... and so on. That was in addition to their creator deity, Annam the All-Father, whom they no longer worshipped. The divine scions of the All-Father, along with the Giant pantheon—a mix of heroic spirits and Evil Gods—served as testaments to the might of their race.

Even disregarding the distant gods in the heavens, merely looking at the situation in the Material Realm was proof enough.

Not too far from here, the Lord of another Borderland—the Giant Fang Plateau—was a Mountain Giant King who possessed an ancient, high-tier Titan bloodline. It was said that his destructive power was even greater than that of the Green Dragon Queen. As a result, the adjacent Ancestral Province had long been plunged into misery and suffering. The natural disasters triggered by his awakening had devastated numerous human settlements. The entire province had been ravaged by war, left riddled with scars. It was rumored that the kingdom’s direct Knight Order had already stationed itself in the Ancestral Province solely to resist the offensive launched by that Mountain Giant King.

Gauss deactivated the draconic physical manifestation on his arm. The Storage Bracelet he pulled out faintly glowed. With a single thought, the entire corpse of the One-Eyed Giant, along with its severed lower leg, was swept into the Storage Space. Fortunately, he still had this Storage Bracelet—which previously held four juvenile dragons—on his person. Otherwise, fitting this massive spoil of war would not have been an easy task.

Gauss examined the loot in the bracelet once more, much like an old miser tallying his vault. Only after confirming that nothing was amiss did he put the bracelet away. Being placed alongside true dragons after death could be considered a dignified end for this One-Eyed Giant. After all, in terms of hierarchical status, this non-noble One-Eyed Giant, utterly lacking any powerful ancient bloodline, couldn’t even hope to match a true dragon.

Gauss turned and went back into the One-Eyed Giant’s lair, sweeping through it to loot all its Treasure. Only then did he return to the woodland where the soldiers were.

By now, they had finished tending to their affairs. This included placing their fallen comrade’s remains into a body bag, organizing the scattered equipment and Armor, and gathering the materials from the numerous monster corpses in the forest.

Seeing Gauss descend from the sky, Vice-Captain Caleb—or rather, the man who would likely become the official captain very soon—hurriedly jogged over.

”Lord Gauss, we’ve organized all the loot from your kills.” Caleb gestured toward the neatly piled monster corpses.

He was actually underselling it. That pile didn’t just contain Gauss’s kills; it also included the monsters their squad had slain earlier. However, at this moment, compared to such trifling gains, everyone—having just walked a lap before the gates of Hell—felt that simply surviving was the greatest harvest of all.

”Keep them.

”Process and divide the monsters I killed among yourselves. Give a few extra shares to the family of the fallen; consider it compensation for them.”

Gauss waved his hand dismissively, his face showing that he truly didn’t mind. At his level, much of the loot no longer caught his eye. For the vast majority of the monsters he had slain alone in the wild just now, he hadn’t bothered to harvest them at all. For one, it wasted time and impacted his efficiency in killing monsters. For another, the profit was low, and it would only take up Storage Space.

The most valuable thing in this camp was the corpse of the One-Eyed Giant he had just stowed away. It seemed to possess some Giant lineage within its body, which might potentially be refined into special potions. As for these foreign monsters, many of them had marched into battle lightly equipped, leaving very little profit to be squeezed out of them. For the men standing before him, however, it was a rather substantial windfall.

”...”

Hearing Gauss’s generous offer, Caleb slowly looked up, feeling a lump forming in his throat. He hesitated repeatedly, yet couldn’t bring himself to utter any false words of polite refusal. They truly needed this profit. The money would allow them to upgrade to better Armor and weapons, purchase higher-tier Combat Skills, and improve their individual combat strength. As for the family of their fallen comrade, although they would receive a military pension, they had, after all, lost their household’s main breadwinner. His wife and child undeniably needed the extra money.

”Then, on behalf of my brothers-in-arms, I thank you, My Lord!”

Gauss openly accepted their gratitude. After inquiring about their military affiliation, he escorted them to a safe main road and watched them march toward the city walls.

Following that, he threw himself back into the busy task of hunting and slaying monsters in the wilderness. By the time Gauss ended his day trip and returned to the military camp, Guild President Monroe had just sent someone to notify him that the Guild’s senior actuary had arrived at the frontline camp with the exchange roster.