The moment that "dirty" fireball smashed into its face, the Magic Frog Lord was completely stunned.
And honestly, it couldn't really be blamed for being caught off guard. Gauss's casting speed was simply too fast.
Boom!!!
A surge of blazing fire erupted alongside a violent shockwave, instantly blasting the Magic Frog Lord backward.
Splurt! Splurt!
When the giant frog hit the ground, several of the ugly sacs covering its body burst open. Multicolored magical slime splattered across the surface, leaving pits of different sizes all over the ground.
The Magic Frog Lord shook its head lightly, clearly still dazed from the fireball's impact.
Not far away, Gauss quietly let out a breath of relief.
The second he finished casting that fireball, he'd already started regretting it.
Not because he thought it was too weak. Quite the opposite—he was worried it might have been too strong.
His spellcaster level was only 7, but whether it was the purity and total amount of his mana, or the number of racial talents and class specialties that amplified his spells, he was far beyond other adventurers of the same level. In fact, he might even surpass some Level 11 spellcasters in that regard. Otherwise, how could he possibly contend with Level 11 professionals while lacking something as game-changing as a "domain"?
And the power of a spell was closely tied to mana, specialties, and talents.
Even though Fireball was only a 3-ring spell, in his hands it hit harder than most 4-ring spells.
On top of that, just as humans had different classes, monsters also had their own strengths and weaknesses. No matter how he looked at it, this giant frog was clearly built like a caster, not some iron-boned warrior.
So he really had been afraid that if it failed to dodge in time, its fragile "mage-type" body might get blown to pieces on the spot by that one fireball, ruining his original plan.
Once the lord died, would those monster underlings still keep throwing themselves at him, even knowing they couldn't win?
Fortunately, the worst-case scenario hadn't happened.
The giant frog's instincts had kicked in the instant the fireball appeared. It had shoved off to the side and used the blast wave itself to avoid the hottest center of the explosion.
"Not bad…"
Gauss's opinion of this caster-type Magic Frog Lord improved a little.
Maybe being a labyrinth lord gave it some kind of special bonus. Its body really was tougher than he'd expected.
And he could vaguely sense that in the instant the fireball hit, the surrounding space itself had shifted in some subtle, indescribable way, as if this layer of the labyrinth had absorbed part of the damage for it.
Ribbit!
The Frog Lord finally recovered from its dazed, stars-in-the-eyes state and looked up just in time to see Gauss shaking his head, clearly surprised. The frog, intelligent enough to understand the expression, instantly caught the meaning in that reaction, and fury blazed inside its huge body.
How dare this human look down on it!
Its frog eyes burned.
It was the lord of this floor, the king who ruled countless monsters. When had it ever suffered such humiliation?
As far as it was concerned, it had just been caught off guard by a sneak attack. If they fought head-on with both sides prepared, it didn't believe it would lose.
With the labyrinth's power backing it, it could constantly regenerate its life, stamina, and mana in battle. As long as its enemy couldn't kill it instantly, it would only grow stronger and stronger.
Ribbit!
As if responding to the Frog Lord's roar, the entire monster horde outside surged into motion.
The monsters threw themselves desperately at the humans blocking them.
But before they could crash into the Red Dragon Company, they had to get past the giant clay goblin and the red dragon beast first.
Those two enormous creatures were so powerful that they barely needed any techniques at all. Their hands, feet, and bodies themselves were weapons enough to obliterate the surrounding monsters, turning them into nothing more than numbers on Gauss's bestiary.
Meanwhile, the Red Dragon Company's other members kept pouring out damage from behind the cover those two beasts provided.
Luna, especially, was casting like a maniac. Spell after spell crashed into the distant monster army. The reason she could go all out with such peace of mind was simple—she had never had frontliners who made her feel as safe as the clay goblin giant and the red dragon beast did.
Especially the clay goblin. It truly embodied "fighting without fear of death." It didn't care about its own safety at all. Every spell and arrow was tanked head-on by its massive, heavy body, like an unbreakable wall of despair standing between the monsters and the humans.
If not for the labyrinth lord's constant influence over the nearby monsters, the enemy force probably would have broken and run already.
Gauss glanced toward the distant fighting.
He felt even more satisfied.
In just that short span, his teammates and subordinates had already killed over a hundred more monsters for him, and he hadn't even needed to lift a finger himself.
That gave him the delightful feeling of being a hands-off boss, just directing his staff to do the work.
All he needed to do was keep this lord occupied, keep it enraged, and make sure it didn't die too fast. It needed to keep croaking a while longer and draw in even more monsters to die.
He had finally found a perfect "training ground," and he wanted to squeeze as many kills out of it as possible.
Even though there was probably another lord on the fifth floor, who knew what the situation down there would be like? Better to focus on what was in front of him and milk this cash cow for all it was worth.
The monster lord, of course, had no idea Gauss was already treating it like a mobile loot pinata.
Seeing that the human still wasn't attacking, it actually started to feel smug, convinced its mighty croaking had intimidated him.
To be fair, that trick usually worked on its underlings. Its lordly aura alone was enough to scare some of them to death.
Ribbit!
Encouraged by that thought, it opened its giant mouth and roared at Gauss again. Visible soundwaves spread outward in rings from directly in front of it.
…?
Hovering in midair, Gauss glanced down at it.
Even though he had no idea why it was suddenly shouting at him in such a provocative way, he was perfectly happy with the result.
The more it croaked, the more monsters it would attract.
Because of that, he decided he could hit it a little harder later. He'd already tested its thick-skinned durability. As long as he didn't kill it in one blow, it was fine.
The ruptured sacs across the Frog Lord's body had already started healing, swelling again as they slowly refilled with mana.
And among the intact sacs, the red one and blue one beneath its jaw suddenly lit up.
The glow was molten-hot. Through the semi-transparent sac walls, liquid fire could be seen rolling inside.
Gauss narrowed his eyes.
"So now you're finally going to fight back?"
He stayed floating in place, not in any rush to interrupt the spell, while silently holding Any Door ready.
The Frog Lord didn't give him too much sense of danger, and he still wanted to observe its true combat ability more carefully. After all, his goal was to capture it, not kill it.
After a brief charge-up, the underside of the Frog Lord's jaw bulged outward.
As its body swelled, two violent currents of magic converged in its mouth, making its entire lower jaw expand to the limit. The lower half of its head puffed into a ridiculous sphere.
Then it snapped its mouth open.
Boom!
Fire and water fused together in the instant they were blasted out under pressure, forming a white torrent of superheated steam.
Everything it touched was annihilated. The ground dried and cracked in an instant, and even the trees and plants didn't have time to catch fire—they were simply vaporized.
"A compound spell?"
Gauss was a little surprised. The power of that attack really was impressive.
The next second, just as the steam cloud was about to engulf him, blue light flashed around his body, and he vanished. In the blink of an eye, he reappeared behind the Frog Lord.
"That's a nasty attack."
Now in a safe spot, Gauss looked back at the destructive steam with clear interest.
In some ways, the giant magic frog's compound spell was even more dangerous than his Fireball.
Fireball was pure heat and impact. But this superheated steam carried far greater energy and could penetrate surfaces instantly, inflicting devastating damage on internal structures.
The two completely different mana types seemed to undergo some kind of mutation the moment they fused.
Gauss wasn't unfamiliar with this kind of thing.
During the battle to defend Grayrock Town, he'd already seen mages cooperate with their casting. Sometimes it was simply stacking the same spell type to increase scale, and sometimes it involved combining different effects like this.
But in his perception, what the Frog Lord was doing now was on an entirely different level.
Is this just a physical racial trait?
Gauss stared at the lord's body structure. Those multi-element sacs were part of its physiology. Those special organs seemed to grant it a much greater degree of control over its magic.
He himself had tried similar compound spells in private, but they always felt a bit off.
This was the kind of thing that sounded easy until you actually tried it.
As for why the frog could do it, he could only say this: every being had its own strengths.
Having unleashed the superheated steam, the Frog Lord only realized a moment later that it hadn't hit anything.
Just as it was about to search for Gauss—
Thud!
A two-meter-long giant arrow came crashing down from the air behind it like a cannon shell, instantly punching through one of its thick forelimbs.
The powerful muscles and steel-like bones snapped apart. Its mountain-sized body pitched sideways and crashed down.
Ribbit!!
This croak was full of feeling.
Pain!
Intense pain exploded from the bloody wound in its forelimb and surged through its entire body.
Its round eyes dropped to the severed limb.
A stubborn blue force was eroding the wound nonstop, and it was that force that kept causing the pain.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
It started leaping around in agony.
Each jump hit the ground hard enough to leave fresh craters.
At the same time, it spewed spell after spell like it had gone insane.
The steam spell formed from fire and water. A heavy toxic projectile formed from poison and water. One devastating attack after another.
In an instant, the terrain around it was reduced to ruin.
"So you're afraid I'll finish you off while you're hurt?"
Gauss could already tell what it was thinking.
He noticed that while it was unleashing those spells at random, the surrounding natural mana was flowing into its body.
That mana supply let it act like a magical artillery platform, continuously bombarding the area, while also turning the hundred-meter radius around it into a forbidden zone no one could enter.
That must be one of the special privileges of being a Labyrinth Lord.
No wonder the Adventurers' Guild had kept emphasizing how dangerous labyrinth lords were.
Gauss used Any Door to reposition a bit farther away.
Then he watched the target carefully. By his estimate, the fourth-floor labyrinth lord itself was only around Level 8, but its actual danger level far exceeded that of an ordinary Level 8 monster.
It was like comparing a young dragon to a goblin of the same level. The numbers might look similar, but the reality was completely different.
Even so, with his golden dragon eyes active, Gauss could clearly see the other side of its absurd regeneration—
its body was overloaded.
Even with the labyrinth environment sustaining it, it was still made of flesh.
If it kept running like this for a few more minutes, it would burn itself out before Gauss even had to kill it.
"My little ATM, don't go and destroy yourself."
But just as he was thinking that, the Frog Lord finally stopped its magical bombardment.
When the smoke cleared, Gauss saw that the severed limb touched by the holy water had healed.
More accurately, it had torn off the infected part itself and regenerated a new forelimb.
Apparently it had suffered badly from the holy water empowered by Mectela's blessing.
The frog turned to glare at Gauss. Its eyes were filled with hatred—and a faint trace of fear.
It was starting to realize this human was far too strong.
Not only were his attacks absurdly precise, both strikes so far had landed exactly where they needed to and caused heavy damage, but his movement was so slippery it was like trying to catch an eel.
Its magic looked overwhelming, yet it still couldn't hit him.
Too slow…
Its mind raced as it desperately searched for a way out of the situation. Then, just as it turned its gaze toward its servants in the distance—and toward the human adventurers—
it heard that hateful human's voice from above.
"All right. Playtime's over."
Gauss's expression turned serious.
This frog couldn't hurt him much, but if it broke through toward his teammates, the consequences would be ugly. And if that happened, then even if he didn't want to, he'd have no choice but to kill it.
For the sake of keeping it alive, he had to get serious now and lock it down properly.
He raised his white wand overhead.
A brilliant light flared above him.
Three suns descended at once, dropping toward the ground in a converging formation that surrounded the central Frog Lord.
The Frog Lord discovered in horror that no matter which direction it jumped, it was still within the attack range of those already-unfolding fireballs.
No escape.
BOOM!!!
BOOM!!!!
Mushroom clouds rose from the plain.
The land for a thousand meters around shook violently.
Even the Red Dragon Company members and the monsters still fighting in the distance were affected by the aftershocks. Some of the spellcasters in the backline couldn't help glancing toward the terrifying explosions and muttering under their breath.
"The commander really is a monster…"
No matter how many times they saw it, this level of magic was always awe-inspiring.
At the center of the explosion, once the dust settled, the Frog Lord was covered in wounds. Mana-rich pus-like fluid was gushing from all over its body like springs bursting open.
And even in that state, it still wasn't dead.
Of course, that was exactly what Gauss intended.
Thanks to the world-rule fragment Precision, he had become surprisingly skilled at fine control. After all his earlier testing and observation, he had already figured out the Frog Lord's tolerance threshold, and he had used those three fireballs to blast it into exactly half-dead condition.
The surrounding mana started acting up again, flowing into the Frog Lord's body and healing it.
"Control Water."
Gauss had no intention of wasting the opening he had created. He smoothly cast the 4-ring spell Control Water.
A great quantity of clean water poured from his storage space, and once the holy water and large amounts of mana were mixed into it, the once ordinary water instantly became several massive water dragons that shot toward the Frog Lord, which was still regenerating in place.
The water dragons wrapped themselves around its mountain-sized body and kept tightening, forming a watery prison that pinned it where it stood.
Splurt!
The Frog Lord, only halfway through healing, coughed up another mouthful of blood.
It struggled, but quickly felt the suffocating pressure of a giant python's coils. Under that crushing force, it couldn't move at all.
And along the surface of the thick water dragons wrapped around it, countless blue-gold spikes emerged and repeatedly pierced into its body.
The damage they caused perfectly matched the pace of its regeneration.
Whatever it healed, the watery prison inflicted again in equal measure.
At that point, it was perfectly subdued.
It could no longer move. It couldn't die. Its life was being kept suspended in a state between living and dying.
"Perfect."
Gauss looked at the Frog Lord trapped in the blue water prison and smiled in satisfaction, feeling a faint sense of accomplishment.
Capturing an enemy alive and stripping away its resistance was much harder than simply killing it.
At this point, in the entire Timber Labyrinth, he was probably the only one capable of pulling something like this off.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/NotEvenMyFinalForm
— Currently You can Read 100 Chapters Ahead of Others!