Cecilia was clearly startled by Gauss's sudden "variation."
The speed of Gauss's wing-beating flight was actually a bit faster than the red drake Hephaestus—at least in short, burst-speed sprints. Over a long distance, Hephaestus still had the innate advantage of a true drake.
"Are you actually trying to die?"
Cecilia muttered under her breath.
Through Gauss's eyes—like twin flames—she felt a grim, death-ready resolve.
And yet… she couldn't bring herself to kill him.
A living subject was far more valuable than a corpse or an undead.
"Lunatic…"
All she could do was steer the bone dragon out of their pincer.
The skeletal dragon wailed, but its huge body turned clumsily. It could only raise its skull and climb into the sky.
"Fireball!"
Gauss, already prepared, lifted his staff.
Directly in the bone dragon's ascent path, a white-hot sphere expanded at terrifying speed.
In a heartbeat, it swelled into a miniature sun hanging in midair, blasting out a flood of light and heat.
"ROAR!!!"
The bone dragon couldn't dodge in time.
It slammed straight into that "sun."
With a shriek of agony, searing red-white fire engulfed nearly half its body—especially the lifted skull and neck. The shockwave and heat tore through the air, filling it with the strange stench of sulfur and burning bone ash.
Cecilia took the shockwave head-on too—she was blasted off the dragon's back.
When the smoke thinned, she hovered in the air. Her red robe was in tatters, her face blistered and red with burns.
"Cough—cough!"
Black smoke spilled from her mouth.
For the first time, the always-elegant Cecilia looked genuinely disheveled.
The way she looked at Gauss had changed completely.
In her pupils, something feral flashed—cruel, savage.
Hephaestus went for the broken bone dragon, which was struggling to stabilize itself in the air.
Gauss and Cecilia locked eyes across the distance.
"You forced my hand."
Under Cecilia's shredded robe, dragon-markings on her shriveled skin seemed to come alive, racing across her body.
An invisible power wrapped around her.
Ghostly blue coldfire coiled over her from head to toe, and the temperature dropped by several degrees. Frost spread outward.
Gauss fired magic missiles—she flicked the coldfire and blocked them.
The coldfire swallowed the missiles and kept coming toward Gauss.
He dodged with flight magic.
With precise body control, he slipped past the attack.
But the moment his attention stayed on Cecilia, that coldfire behind him broke every rule—twisting midair and slamming into him anyway.
Boom!
It struck his back, clinging to his energy scales and seeping into his robe.
"So cold…"
He felt his bones, blood, and organs trying to freeze solid.
Gauss looked around and realized the temperature was plunging rapidly.
Around Cecilia was a cold-domain field.
With a lift of her arm, she could stir blizzard and frost like puppets.
"This is not power a master-tier adventurer should have."
Gauss swallowed hard.
He'd estimated Cecilia as a peak master-level fighter—top of the pyramid.
But now, seeing her command wind and snow, reshape the sky itself, he understood he'd underestimated her.
He'd never personally watched a true transcendent-level battle… but he recognized it instantly:
This was transcendent power.
In the blizzard, Gauss felt unbearably small.
He tried to fly out of the storm—
but Cecilia followed, and the blizzard followed them, never letting go.
His normally insane mobility was smothered by the gale and snow. He couldn't shake her, couldn't even keep his bearings.
Visibility was near zero.
"Fireball!"
He swallowed several magic crystals and unleashed a full-power fireball, trying to use opposing heat to blow the storm apart.
But when it detonated, it was far weaker than before.
Ice-cold energy everywhere devoured the flames.
In Gauss's eyes, the fireball was crushed out—like an invisible frozen hand snuffing it.
He took a hard breath.
His energy was draining fast. He tightened his grip on the holy-water sword.
The lake spirit's gift wasn't ordinary—despite the subzero air, the waterblade didn't falter at all.
I have to find Cecilia inside the blizzard, he thought.
Resisting the lethal cold made his already brutal energy burn even worse.
Slice-slice-slice!
Countless tiny ice blades carved at him. His defenses shattered—then regenerated—over and over.
Where are you?
His golden dragon eyes burned.
And then, as if answering his question, something inside his pupils shifted.
His soul-energy surged, flowed into his eyes, and "coated" his vision.
Gauss stared into the storm.
The white-out looked… different now.
He could see mana moving through it.
And the source of that mana—
He narrowed his eyes and followed the invisible flow upstream.
A "human-shaped" knot of mana slowly came into view.
Found you.
The blizzard was the appearance—mana was the truth.
He didn't rush.
He kept acting panicked and trapped, letting the ice blades keep cutting him.
Hidden in the storm, Cecilia watched the "flustered" Gauss.
Even with everything going her way, urgency rose in her chest.
They were too close to Longflute Keep. This scale of magic might already be noticed.
That was why she'd avoided using her domain at first.
If she couldn't finish fast, once the city's transcendent figures arrived, she'd be trapped.
She glanced down at the bone dragon locked in a brutal bite-fight with Hephaestus.
Stubborn thing.
Even she had to admit it: Gauss's vitality was absurd for a human.
High mobility, explosive damage that could injure her, regeneration…
But it ended here.
Even if she'd only just stepped into the transcendent threshold, it was still a gulf between above and below.
Her mana poured into her staff like a flood.
She was preparing a decisive spell.
A single hammer blow to end it.
And right then—Gauss moved.
He locked onto a specific direction in the storm, snapped his wings, and launched like a cannonball.
"What?!"
Cecilia's eyes widened.
She couldn't understand how he'd seen through her concealment.
But she couldn't stop casting now—interrupting would cause backlash she couldn't afford.
She could only force more mana into the staff, faster.
Time seemed to slow—nearly freeze.
Both of them knew exactly what the other was doing.
Gauss felt his blood combusting. White steam poured from his pores.
Blood vessels spidered through his golden dragon eyes.
"Faster. I need to be faster."
In Gauss's eyes, the mana gathering on Cecilia's staff was lethal.
But because it was lethal, she couldn't halt—she was "stuck" inside her own spell.
That was the opening he needed.
His mana burned like a furnace. Flight magic hit its absolute limit, and his energy wings beat like mad.
Flight instinct, flight magic, ghost form, scale-bloodline, brute-force enhancement—everything fired at once.
The storm turned into streaks of light behind him.
Hundreds of meters vanished in a blink.
Gauss and Cecilia closed the distance in an instant.
"I've got you!"
"It's finished!"
Both felt the same burst of joy at point-blank eye contact.
Gauss appeared in front of Cecilia—his eyes a web of bloodshot gold—every ounce of focus pinned on her.
Snow hung motionless.
Gauss's sword arm swelled under brute force, ghost form, and scale-bloodline.
Terrifying strength coiled inside it.
The holy-water blade sensed the enemy and flared even brighter.
WHAM—!
Gauss drew the blade down in a perfect, radiant arc, pouring everything into a single strike.
At the same moment, Cecilia's staff released a horrible, freezing ray—so cold the air itself crystallized.
It hit Gauss.
They crossed paths.
Time snapped back to normal.
The waterblade severed Cecilia's left arm—taking half her shoulder with it.
Blood sprayed.
Cecilia's eye rolled to the severed limb, her heart pounding, her face deathly pale.
The cut line had missed her heart by only three finger-widths.
Her spell had landed first and forced his strike to drift just slightly—otherwise her heart would have been split too.
She sucked in a sharp breath.
Holy power burned in the wound, grinding pain into her brain.
Worse—reattaching the limb would now be far harder, and might leave permanent damage, even a drop in strength.
But—victory was still hers.
She sensed Gauss behind her, suspended in the air, stiffening.
He'd fallen unconscious; the draconic changes melted away, returning him to human form.
A deep purple frostblight spread across his body, and the extreme cold inside him was rapidly expanding.
Her Winter Pulse—freezing mana meant to devour his internal magic until his whole body became ice.
Whether she could revive him afterward…
She didn't want to think about it.
This "little" level-five had forced her into humiliation.
If word got out, other dragon priests would mock her.
Still—
"at least you're mine now."
She turned back toward Gauss.
Thud.
A blade sank into flesh.
"Holy Slash!"
A brilliant light-sword split her body in two.
When?
A horned man had appeared behind her—silent.
He withdrew his blade and hovered in the air.
His gaze snapped to Gauss, whose body was half iced over and falling.
A short-haired tiefling sorceress blinked into place under Gauss and caught him around the waist.
"Thanks, Noshir."
"Brr—so cold!"
The tiefling woman shivered.
"This kid's ridiculously tough."
A white energy clung around Gauss's heart, preventing the freeze from fully spreading.
"I've got him."
The tiefling paladin—Playaos—took Gauss from her arms and began healing.
"Go capture the two cultists down there," Playaos ordered.
"Got it."
Once Noshir left, Playaos looked down at Gauss, guilt surfacing.
"I came too late."
Warm, life-filled radiance seeped from his hands into Gauss's body.
The ice began to retreat quickly.
"Thank the gods… not too late."
Gauss's heart hadn't frozen, and the cold hadn't reached his brain. That meant the outcome wouldn't be catastrophic.
Gauss's blackout was exhaustion—total burnout.
Playaos produced a vial of dense, life-rich potion, pried Gauss's lips open, and poured it in.
Color returned to Gauss's face almost immediately.
Playaos winced—this potion was precious beyond words.
A gift from a transcendent elf he'd once saved.
But he felt responsible, and he feared Cecilia's high-tier spell would leave lasting damage and stunt Gauss's future.
So he used it anyway.
He sensed the remaining vitality inside Gauss now reinforcing his body—healing hidden injuries and nourishing him further.
Gauss might even grow stronger from this near-death.
Down below, Noshir had already seized the last two Dragon Cultists.
"It's time to go back."
Playaos's expression darkened.
He remembered the "obstacles" that had delayed him after receiving Gauss's signal.
Without Noshir's help, he would've arrived later.
Gauss would have been truly at death's door.
…
Longflute Fortress—Adventurers' Guild, top floor.
The usually calm hall abruptly fell into chaos.
Guildmaster Ferguson, who had been in seclusion for a long time, stormed out with a livid face. A message from the provincial capital had interrupted his training.
"Summon Vice Edwards and Curtis," he ordered.
Then, with a voice like ice:
"Tell them we're in serious trouble."
~~~
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