I Am Not A Goblin Slayer

However, Gauss had consistently maintained an attitude of polite refusal.

It wasn’t that he didn’t even have the time for a meal; he just didn’t want to open the floodgates. Accepting one invitation would only lead to an endless stream of others.

Refusing them at that point would only end up offending people.

It was better to treat everyone equally from the start and reject all attempts to curry favor.

At worst, people might say he was pretending to be aloof, but seeing him refuse others’ invitations just the same, they wouldn’t feel too resentful.

He left the Red Dragon Team camp.

Gauss flew to an empty clearing outside the city walls. He calmly dispatched the wandering monsters in the vicinity before summoning the Red Dragon Hephaestus.

“Let’s start practicing.”

It wasn’t just him who needed to practice sixth-ring Spells; Hephaestus needed to practice as well.

It had already learned third-ring Magic.

“Don’t give me that long face. I went through the same thing. When I was your age… sorry, you’re much older than I am. Anyway, you need to work hard, understand?”

Gauss patted Hephaestus’s belly, then gave it a shove, signaling it to move further away so as not to interfere with his practice.

Right at that moment, a voice echoed from within Gauss’s body.

“Gauss, I feel like I’m about to resurrect.”

The voice, crisp like a young child’s, came from the King of Slime, Eden. Most of the time, it was quiet and unobtrusive, and Gauss had already grown accustomed to its presence. Hearing it suddenly announce its impending resurrection left him momentarily stunned.

He soon remembered that Eden was currently following him in an extremely unique state of existence.

Theoretically, Gauss had already killed it on a physical level.

However, because it was a creature of the Demon King species, it possessed a bizarre immortality. It hadn’t truly died; instead, it was just waiting out the cooldown period for its resurrection.

“That fast?”

Gauss had killed it in the Maze, back before this war had even broken out.

“Go ahead, then.”

Gauss was quite curious to see how Eden would come back to life. He had never witnessed a creature resurrect and regenerate before.

“Okay,” Eden’s obedient voice rang out.

Immediately after, Gauss felt as if the entire “world” had changed.

The reason he could sense this shift was because of his Top-Tier Magic Essence Constitution, which made his Perception of the Natural Magic in the environment incredibly sharp. Those without a Natural Magic affinity Constitution wouldn’t realize what was happening at all.

No matter how overwhelmingly powerful they were, they were no exception.

At this moment, raging waves surged within the vast ocean of Natural Magic.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

These waves violently rushed toward a specific spot in front of Gauss.

An incomparably massive vortex was drawing in colossal amounts of Natural Magic.

Gauss found the scene somewhat familiar. It looked similar to when he activated the whale-swallowing ability of his Top-Tier Magic Essence Constitution.

However, the sight before him was far more spectacular than when he devoured Natural Magic; it was like a higher-intensity, longer-lasting, wide-area absorption.

Of course, considering that his Top-Tier Magic Essence Constitution had been contributed by Eden itself, it wasn’t surprising that the original owner possessed a similar ability.

Gauss narrowed his eyes slightly.

At the center of the vortex, a tiny speck condensing immense Magic Power was forming.

Gauss could feel that the scene before him seemed to have triggered an extremely unique rule of the world.

It wasn’t as simple as merely inhaling massive amounts of Natural Magic and purifying it to remove impurities, though he couldn’t exactly articulate the deeper mechanics of the rules at play.

If he could understand them, perhaps he too could create life and resurrect the dead.

Time slowly ticked by.

Gauss watched as a small clot materialized out of thin air in the previously empty clearing. It gradually expanded until it formed a transparent, palm-sized, soft-bodied entity.

Once the physical body finished coalescing, the surging Natural Magic subsided.

However, the transparent Slime body remained motionless. Just as Gauss wondered if he should speak up and ask about its condition, the squishy, jelly-like blob suddenly wiggled.

Following that, as if shivering like a human, its entire body trembled rapidly. It bounced a few times on the ground before finally stabilizing.

“I’m alive.”

Slime Eden’s crisp voice rang out. This time, it wasn’t transmitted in the form of Spiritual Power, but as an actual sound produced by vibrating Magic Power at a specific frequency.

It bounced over to Gauss’s feet. Its tiny, round eyes looked up at him, repeatedly confirming his appearance.

It seemed that after spending a month or two together, it was still somewhat unaccustomed to seeing Gauss with its actual physical eyes.

“Congratulations!”

Gauss crouched down to look it in the eye.

Unlike its filthy, mud-like Slime brethren, the clear, round, and bouncy jelly-like Eden looked rather adorable.

“Gauss, are you going to try and kill me now?”

Eden seemed very calm about its own resurrection, merely looking up at Gauss as it asked the question.

“…”

Gauss was caught off guard by the sudden question.

Theoretically, they were still enemies.

He had killed Eden, and Eden had only stayed by his side for a while because of its unique nature.

But he had to admit that his attitude toward Eden had drastically changed from the very beginning.

He didn’t want to lie to himself about that.

It was just like when he first met the Red Dragon Hephaestus. They had been bitter enemies ready to fight to the death, yet now they were as close as father and son.

In truth, he could sense that Eden harbored no malice toward him.

It was more like a lonely, wandering immortal soul that had encountered another unique existence, naturally gravitating toward him.

Moreover, Eden’s soul was also that of a human.

“There’s no rush for that.”

Gauss reached out and patted Slime Eden’s jelly-like body. He didn’t want to kill it; after spending so much time together, he had developed a certain fondness for it.

After asking its question, Eden had been waiting quietly for his answer.

“Are you afraid that it will hurt me, Gauss?” Eden asked in return. “Don’t worry, I can block out pain.

“I’ve already died many times.”

“Why don’t you want to live?” Gauss asked.

Eden froze. This was the first time anyone had asked it such a question.

It originally wanted to say that living for too long was too lonely, but after locking eyes with Gauss for a few moments, it suddenly lost that thought.

It sensed a rare feeling of kinship from Gauss.

“If you haven’t figured it out yet, take your time.”

Gauss picked it up in his arms.

He glanced at his interface. The moment he touched Eden, the Monster Atlas seemed to have encountered a bug.

“Anomaly detected! Abnormal entity recorded!”

“Anomaly detected! Abnormal entity recorded!”

Identical notifications popped up in rapid succession.

“Analyzed as one of the special abilities of a Demon King species.”

“Detected that the creature possesses immortality and resurrection capabilities. The entity was not killed!”

“The Monster Atlas is currently applying corrections… Correction failed!”

“Rewards have already been distributed! The Talent [Top-Tier Magic Essence Constitution] contains the exact same Source Essence energy.”

“Shared Source Essence exists in the Material Realm! Warning! Initiating emergency processing!”

“Initiating emergency processing!”

“Shielding complete! Danger resolved!”

“Result: You cannot obtain rewards again from an entity with the same Source Essence, namely the reborn King of Slime, [Eden]. Patch note: If you encounter an abnormal entity with similar resurrection capabilities again, you will not receive rewards, and it will not be counted as a kill unless its immortality is completely dismantled.”

Clearly, because Slime Eden had resurrected, the abnormal kill from a month or two ago was re-evaluated by the Monster Atlas as an erroneous record.

Some of the content in the notifications caught Gauss’s attention.

However, the Atlas merely popped up the prompts on its own without providing any specific explanations for the text.

Therefore, he could only silently repeat them in his mind a few times, committing the corresponding terms to memory until he had the opportunity to investigate them in detail later.

Regardless, the Monster Atlas had eliminated any possibility of him repeatedly farming Slime Eden for rewards due to its immortality.

Furthermore, if he encountered similar entities in the future, they would only count if he killed them completely.

Of course, Gauss didn’t mind too much. After all, he had already slaughtered over a hundred thousand monsters, and Eden was the only exception he had ever encountered.

Entities possessing immortality were clearly exceedingly rare.