I Am Not Goblin Slayer

Chapter 466: Shadow in the Sky

That was a chest whose appearance was far from luxurious.Inside the chest lay a long, twisted stone. Its shape was so abstract that Gauss didn’t initially realize it might be a statue.

Not until the Identify Spell brought up its result.

“What the hell is this thing?”

Gauss blinked.

According to his Identify Spell, the appraisal result described it as follows:

“A strange statue. Perhaps you could use it to communicate with some great existence?”

This appraisal result was very simple, but at the same time, incredibly vague.

What needed to be understood was that an appraisal result without clear direction was itself a kind of direction.

Because, normally, only special items left Gauss unable to identify specific, concrete details.

But there was a contradiction here.

If it was truly something good, placed in a juvenile dragon lair as one of these dragon whelps’ hidden treasures, Gauss didn’t believe it could have been hidden right under the nose of their parent—that adult Green Dragon named Aetherass.

As an adult dragon, Aetherass couldn’t possibly have no interest in treasures, curios, and similar items.

Even if the juvenile dragons had stumbled upon it by chance, the Green Dragon Queen would most likely have confiscated it.

So, rationally speaking, Gauss never expected to find any high-value collectibles in their lair.

The best he could hope for was to grab some worthless scraps the Green Dragon Queen had overlooked and trade them for a few gold coins.

He didn’t reach out to touch the statue sitting in the box—a figure so blurry and indistinct in shape and form, like a child’s lump of clay.

His caution came for two reasons. First, the implications of the Identify Spell’s result. Second, it was an instinct he’d developed since arriving in this world. In a realm filled with gods, evil gods, demons, and devils, it was best to be extremely careful with such objects.

The unknown often meant danger.

Moreover, if it wasn’t a good thing, it made sense that the Green Dragon Queen Aetherass had left it in the juvenile dragon lair.

Either she was preparing to use this eerie statue to ambush outsiders like him, or she herself was quite wary of it but unwilling to discard it, so she compromised by stashing it in the juvenile dragon lair. Or perhaps she had some other, hidden motive.

Especially since this was a Green Dragon—a breed that loved to scheme and constantly cooked up plots—unlike a Red Dragon, whose brain was practically filled with solid muscle. The probability of some shady business behind it was, in Gauss’s eyes, undeniably rising.

After identifying it, Gauss immediately wanted to get far away.

But he quickly realized that even if he wanted to avoid it now, it was probably too late.

Besides, many days had already passed since he first obtained this item.

If it’s a blessing, it’s not a curse; if it’s a curse, you can’t avoid it. Better to calm down and figure out how to deal with this statue.

First, he definitely didn’t want to engage in any communication with the “great existence” potentially behind the statue. So, not only should he not make any physical moves, but he also couldn’t attach any mental power to it.

“By the way, Eden. You need to be careful too.”

Gauss specifically cautioned the spirit of the void beside him.

Most of the time, it was “asleep.” Only when it encountered something interesting or Gauss awakened it would it become active around him.

Like now, the statue had roused it.

“Alright, Gauss. You be careful too.”

“It gives me an ominous feeling. Very dangerous.” Having lived so long, transitioning from a human to become a Demon King’s spawn, Eden naturally understood the principle of avoiding harm.

“Is this loot from the dragon lair?”

Eden asked curiously.

It probably already knew the situation, but it was confirming with Gauss.

“Yes.”

“Then it might point to Tiamat.” Eden made a reasonable guess.

After all, it was an object plundered from the Five Chromatic Evil Dragons. It couldn’t point to the Platinum Dragon God, could it? The most direct association was the God of Chromatic Dragons.

“But you never know. Green Dragons are sneaky bastards. They might get involved with other strange powers too.”

Gauss had actually been thinking the same thing.

The most likely possibility was Tiamat. Next came unknown evil gods and demon-devil types. Only a very slim chance involved some benevolent deities.

Communication was off the table. So that left abandonment, storage, handing it to someone else, or destruction?

It seemed Gauss had only these four options.

Either pretend it didn’t exist, find a remote corner in the mountains, bury it, and abandon it—probably without causing much trouble.

When he grew powerful enough and grasped more relevant intelligence, he could dig it up again and probe the secrets behind it.

If he worried some other creature might unearth it and cause trouble, he could seal it in one of his Storage Bags. But carrying it around came with unknown risks.

Handing it over to someone else was straightforward. Turn it over to the Guild. The Guild always had knowledgeable people who could determine the statue’s true nature. At the very least, dealing with it would be far safer than handling it himself.

The only drawback of this path was that any potential benefits from the statue would also be handed over.

As for the last option—destroying it himself.

From what Gauss knew, the higher the dimension of a power, the harder it was to influence the material world. A glance at the surrounding trees, grass, and the world itself made that clear.

This was already the world of life, not the realm of gods.

If gods could freely interfere with the material plane, divine miracles wouldn’t be as rare as they were. Both benevolent gods, evil gods, and seductive devils and demons would descend, show miracles, turn the land into their pastures, and fight over resources for their followers and divine power.

So destroying a potential divine artifact wasn’t as demanding as one might think.

Maybe it just required simple physical destruction—smashing, burning, or corroding it with acid, depending on the material.

But then again, who knew if that would invite some special karmic consequences? Another evil god might take notice.

In the end, Gauss decided on the safest option: the third method—hand it over to the Adventurers Guild.

Handling it himself was too dangerous. Mishandling it could also bring danger to others.

Suddenly, the flow of time around him seemed to slow.

Gauss was familiar with this sensation. It was the state he entered when activating his Future Sight ability.

It wasn’t that time had slowed or stopped. It was that his mental world was racing so fast that everything appeared frozen.

What’s happening?

The suddenness of it caught Gauss off guard.

He hadn’t actively activated Future Sight.

He sensed for a moment and quickly realized his powerful brain had entered a state of abnormal excitement. Unconsciously operating at high speed, the perceived world had begun to freeze.

Tracing the root cause, Gauss quickly found the “culprit”—the white egg that had been hidden deep in his body for a long time, nearly without any presence.

Scenes of his contact with the white egg flashed through Gauss’s mind.

That pure white egg had flown across the sky in that piece of the Dark Forest, actively merging into his body.

The scene from that day was still vivid in Gauss’s memory. The entire forest had fallen into chaos.

But the white egg had fallen asleep right after, not showing any signs of waking until he awakened his Sturdy Scale Bloodline racial talent.

Its next stir came when Gauss’s team carried out a certain secret commission with the dwarf trio of Thorin, Elton, and Nancy. When they passed through Rolling Stone Village, cursed by a demon, and killed that demon’s spawn, the white egg seemed to have absorbed a surge of energy.

“I wonder how that cursed village is doing now?”

Gauss’s thoughts drifted.

Back then, although he had killed that demon spawn, he lacked the ability to resolve the deeply rooted curse tangled in the villagers’ fates.

As time passed, that demon spawn would inevitably rise again on that royal land.

Maybe he could return to see the situation sometime.

Gauss pulled his scattered thoughts back and refocused on the white egg.

After that, he and the trio of Thorin, Elton, and Nancy had entered a desolate ruin. When facing the evil god Laduguer’s aura, the white egg erupted with intense hunger. In the end, while erasing the evil god’s aura, the white egg also swallowed a massive amount of evil energy. He and his companions had benefited greatly from that.

That experience had ultimately convinced Gauss that the white egg possessed an ability to promote biological evolution.

Afterward, the white egg helped him suppress Hephaestus—who was still an enemy at the time, a Drake—and established a special connection using unknown golden chains.

The most recent occurrence, and also the most subtle one.

So subtle that even he couldn’t confirm whether the white egg had been behind it.

That was the Future Sight ability he had awakened a few days ago when his Intelligence broke through 21 points. At the time, a mysterious power from a higher dimension had surged from within his body, triggering some special reaction, allowing him to master this time-related ability under intense mental stimulation.

Could it be you?

In truth, Gauss couldn’t be sure. There were simply too many secrets on him.

The Adventurer’s Manual, the blessings of the Lake God Mete and the Mountain Spirit Aisvier, fragments of World Rules, Dragon King’s Progeny—each of these powers could involve higher-dimensional forces.

But among the many possibilities, Gauss had a vague feeling that the connection with the white egg was the strongest.

Until the scene before him.

Nine phantom golden chains—the same ones that had once bound the Drake Hephaestus—shot out from Gauss’s abdomen.

The moment the chains pierced out, the time and space around Gauss seemed to freeze.

Gauss’s pupils slowly widened. Perhaps because he was a participant in this process, even if not the master, he could profoundly feel the marvel within.

This freezing wasn’t the stillness caused by his accelerated thinking. Compared to the freezing of time and space before him, he had at most borrowed a superficial fraction of this power.

He and the space around him seemed to have been forcibly torn away and separated from a vast world.

“Hephaestus, are you there? Eden?”

Whether it was Hephaestus, who had telepathic connection, or Eden, who could communicate mentally, both were now disconnected from Gauss.

Inside was inside, outside was outside. Two completely different spaces had formed.

No external means could affect the space inside, and vice versa.

Gauss felt utterly isolated from the world.

“Clank, clank, clank—”

Vaguely, a clashing sound reached Gauss’s ears—the sound of the golden chains vibrating.

The nine golden chains shot out together, then, like pythons, precisely bound the mysterious statue in front of Gauss.

“Creak, creak, creak!”

The golden chains kept winding, eventually tightening around the statue into an airtight sphere of golden chains.

Wispy strands of energy flowed against the current along the chains, surging into Gauss’s body.

Gauss first felt a chill, then recognized a familiar energy.

Divine Factor!

As expected, he knew whatever was behind this had to be related to gods.

Meanwhile, in the outer realms beyond the world, vast territories had long been turned into dwellings by the gods in the sky. In a certain divine kingdom, a majestic divine being slowly awakened.

For an existence like it, time had lost its meaning within its own divine kingdom.

Its vast Divine Sense seemed to sense something, casting a gaze toward a certain point outside the divine kingdom.

In an extremely active giant bubble, it seemed to detect a power that made its core tremble.

But then it fell into rare confusion.

That tremor lasted only an instant before vanishing without a trace.

It raised a claw, seemingly making a light gesture in the void before it. Time within the divine kingdom began to reverse.

Within their own divine kingdom, a deity wielded nearly absolute authority, capable of easily reshaping rules at will.

This included, naturally, control over time.

“Vanished?”

But even though the deity had unleashed its immense power, reversing the flow of time within the divine kingdom in an attempt to trace that instant of eerie tremor, it still found nothing.

Was it too entangled with the roots of the material world, rendering divine power useless?

Or was it related to the powers of those few?

Faced with this rare situation, even a god could be confused.

It truly couldn’t exert too much influence on the material world. But being so crudely deprived of any related divine knowledge like this—it might not have experienced anything like this for millions of years, if measured by material world time.

But no matter which, it clearly severed any further pursuit.

The former was a forbidden zone for gods. As for the latter, among the beings capable of such feats, by its knowledge, there were only a handful.

And each of them was a supreme existence that could drag it out of its divine kingdom and devour it alive.

So, even though it realized some important cause and effect closely tied to it had definitely occurred, it still had to suppress any thoughts.

All thoughts related to this matter were stripped from its divine knowledge at this moment. No traces remained, whether in its past, present, or future.

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