As a "senior," seeing rookies he knew get on the right track and slowly grow stronger, Gauss felt quite gratified.
After chatting for a while with Mira and the others, who were so excited they could barely speak clearly, the group started walking toward the direction of Lakeside Town.
"Has anything interesting happened in town lately?"
Gauss asked about how the town was doing.
Mira shook her head.
"The festival from a while back was already the liveliest the town has been in recent years, but I heard that in the past month or two, the monsters crawling out of Blue Lake seem to have increased a bit." Mira answered honestly.
For the town’s residents, dullness was the norm; no news was the best news.
Mira walked as she couldn’t help looking up at Gauss.
She felt that compared to the last time they met, the aura of a powerhouse around Gauss was even stronger.
As the saying goes, clothes make the man, and Gauss was no exception.
Previously he had only worn an ordinary black mage robe, low-key and unobtrusive; now, however, he was in a set of luxurious white mage robes, and along with his gradually accumulated reputation, it naturally lent him a calm, composed bearing.
Gauss and the others didn’t deliberately hide themselves. After all, this trip he’d come back to "submit" the Lake God’s commission, something he couldn’t hide from others anyway.
As he openly walked into Lakeside Town, he was of course recognized by many townsfolk almost immediately.
After all, he had stayed here for quite some time; many people in town had seen him, and even after he left, news about him kept coming, and the discussions about him never really died down.
The townsfolk at the gate who recognized Gauss boiled over.
"Lord Gauss, would you like some fruit? Homegrown."
"Welcome back to Lakeside Town."
In the eyes of the locals of Lakeside Town, Gauss counted as half one of their own.
Never mind whether Gauss knew this or not; at least that’s how they felt in their hearts.
Especially after hearing that Gauss had been received by the legendary Lake God, this perception became even more widespread.
The only regret for the townsfolk was that Gauss met the Lake God in Yuge Town, which meant many of them never got to witness the Lake God’s descent with their own eyes.
Gauss responded to the crowd’s enthusiasm.
But aside from that there wasn’t much more interaction; there were simply too many people. If he slowed down even a bit, he might end up stuck in the street.
...
The next day, the temperature dropped a bit more.
Beast-drawn carts loaded with supplies kept pouring into the town.
In this kind of weather, commoners would rather stay home and rest by the wood-burning hearth than go out.
However, for most people, this could only ever be a luxury.
First, they still needed to hustle for a living and earn money; second, staying home long-term burning firewood was its own expense—once they burned through their stock, they either had to go out and chop wood themselves, or spend money to buy some at the market or from their neighbors.
Fortunately, Lakeside Town was rich in resources and was, broadly speaking, a fairly well-off little town. The pedestrians on the street wrapped themselves up tightly, which at least blocked some of the frost carried by the cold wind.
"Haa—"
Most people on the street were busy with their usual work, blowing out big clouds of white breath.
Though the weather was a bit harsher, they were used to it, or rather, they had long since become thoroughly practiced in their trades; the craft might have been passed down from their grandfathers or great-grandfathers, into their hands, and then their children and grandchildren would also spend their whole lives doing this work.
Chopping wood, gathering herbs, net-fishing, cleaning sewers, shoveling snow and sweeping the streets, weaving, loading and unloading cargo...
In short, this world was not made up solely of great Adventurers.
For most people, it was this sort of day-in, day-out ordinary triviality that constituted everything they knew.
However, on such an ordinary day, the town quietly grew lively.
A piece of news spread rapidly through the whole settlement.
"Have you heard? Mr. Gauss is back in town again."
Someone, taking a moment from work, spoke conspiratorially to his companion.
"But why? Didn’t he just leave not long ago?"
"Shh... I’ll tell you, but don’t go blabbing it everywhere."
"Relax, I’ve got a tight mouth."
"I heard Mr. Gauss has a love interest in town..."
"..."
"Yesterday when I was unloading cargo at the city gate, I happened to bump into that big shot and his companions; he even smiled at me."
"He was wearing a really beautiful outfit. I heard someone say that set of clothes alone could buy half the town."
"Hiss... isn’t that a bit much?"
"A bit much? That’s just because you’ve never seen the world. You know dragons, right? Dragons are just his mounts. Other big shots at best ride a horse; Lord Gauss rides a dragon."
"A dragon—that’s a behemoth even high nobles can’t ride!"
"Let me put it this way: Lord Miles in town claims to own half a street of shops and is the richest man in our Lakeside Town, but compared to Lord Gauss, he’s a pauper! No different from us!"
"Hey, hey, hey! What are you doing over there chatting away?"
"Get back to unloading!"
"Alright, alright."
...
After Gauss and his group finished breakfast, they walked out of the inn onto the street.
The goal this morning was to head for Blue Lake.
He just didn’t know if, now that it was winter, the Lake God Metela needed to hibernate.
But Gauss still planned to go check things out first.
From the moment they left the inn, they became the focus of the street. Under the covert gazes of the crowd, people quickly picked up on the direction he was heading—toward Blue Lake.
Blue Lake... Gauss...
Putting these two nouns together, a certain guess slowly surfaced in everyone’s minds.