As soon as Gauss finished speaking in that flat tone, the air went oddly still.
No one said a word. Only the keening wind and the faint, unhurried sound of Gauss chewing jerky remained.
Up front, the warrior Blake glanced back at his companions; out of Gauss’s line of sight, a wolfish resolve flickered in his eyes. He gave the tiniest nod, then turned back wearing a smile he forced into something like “sincerity.”
“Forget it—peace over pride. Piero, drop the payout thing. First come, first served, right? We didn’t lift a finger anyway. Let’s just call it making friends with this brother.” Blake waved generously.
The man in front of him went on chewing, calm and silent, as if unmoved by any of it.
Blake drew a deep breath, as though truly letting the quarrel go. “We’ll be on our way, then.”
The mage and the cleric turned first and began to retreat at a brisk pace. The warrior and the rogue fell back more slowly, bringing up the rear.
It looked as if the two parties would disengage without further trouble.
The instant the mage and the cleric had opened up some distance, Blake’s “retreating” step twisted hard, stored power detonating from his soles.
He pivoted almost between blinks—then lunged for Gauss.
The greatsword arced high, white light flaring along the edge. It came down for Gauss’s skull, all rage and treachery in one vicious stroke—fast, ruthless, meant to split him in two.
Metal shrieked; sparks burst. The expected spray of blood did not follow.
Gauss didn’t even blink.
Somehow a matte-black, heavy metal scepter was already in his hands—held crosswise, wrists steady as iron—catching the blade perfectly.
In that brief bind, Blake felt the counterforce jolt up his arms; his pupils tightened. Gauss wasn’t as burly as he was—yet here, in raw power, there was no easy advantage at all.
The lockup lasted only a heartbeat.
Gauss triggered the new skill he’d been quietly prepping. He’d been snatching moments to practice all morning; he’d only just gotten the basics, and it still took him a beat to bring online—but it worked.
Power flooded from every limb into his arms. The muscles gripping the Unbreaking Staff swelled visibly, and a greater surge exploded outward.
A brutish force poured through the scepter. Pain lanced Blake’s grip; he staggered back several steps before he could plant himself again.
The other three stared, incredulous.
It ran counter to everything they expected: in a straight contest of strength, their heavy, power-type frontliner had lost?
Feeling that furnace of power raging in his arms, Gauss gained a fresh respect for the [Brute Force] he’d unlocked earlier. As a Level 1 mage—even with excellent base Strength—he should not, in close quarters, be able to overpower a Level 1 heavy fighter. With Brute Force, he could. At least in raw power.
His focus snapped back to the fight.
He knew full well their honeyed words had been nothing but a stalling tactic. A simple rule: never listen to what people say—watch what they do. The “peacemaker” smile hadn’t fooled him; the man’s body had been taut the whole time, ready to explode.
So Gauss had stayed wary, too.
Proved he wasn’t being paranoid.
With one hand tucked behind his back, he gave Alia a quick signal to fall back and stay sharp.
“All together! Take him!” With the pretense torn away, Blake stopped bothering to hide anything.
Being thrown back had shaken him, but he recovered quickly: part of it was that his pivot and power-up had been sloppy; besides, they had numbers, and the two across from them had just finished a hard fight. Stamina was on their side.
Many against few wasn’t shameful.
Win the fight—everything else follows.
He bellowed and charged again, mustering everything he had.
At the same time, behind him the mage slashed his wand and wove a sign with his free hand. A knot of warped energy hurled out and burst between the slowly retreating Alia—readying an Entangle—and Gauss.
An unseen ripple rolled out.
The weird pulse washed over both Gauss and Alia.
Steel locked with Blake’s blade, Gauss felt the jolt—and then… nothing.
Ulfen, the gray wolf at Gauss’s side, stuttered mid-movement. His lids sagged, a low whine rumbling as drowsiness dragged at him; he wavered, fighting it.
Gauss saw it in the corner of his eye, then cut a glance toward Alia.
As expected, the spell had touched her too. The Omni-Armor wrapped around her was a pared-down version; unlike Gauss, she didn’t have his innate Magic Resistance, and her base resistance wasn’t high. For a heartbeat the sleep effect tugged at her.
And that was when the rogue—who’d been circling like a shadow at the margins—whipped around, using the spell’s opening to explode toward Alia.
So she’d been his target all along. Gauss’s brow creased. Alia wore a layer of his forcefield, but it had scuffed some in the last fight; he wasn’t going to gamble on it. The most update n0vels are published on N()velFire.net
He heaved Blake back again on a tide of brute force—then snapped his wrist, the scepter’s tip flashing toward the rogue as magic welled.
He’d recovered a slice of mana, and his reserve gland still held untouched stock.
Three bolts flared out in a chevron, screaming in low, blue arcs.
They cut off the rogue’s forward lane, his sidestep, and his retreat all at once.
Blake gaped, shock written plain. It wasn’t overblown. They were out-of-towners; everything they “knew” about Gauss was hearsay. And the last bit they’d seen with their own eyes had been all close-quarters work—hard not to slot him, by reflex, into “balanced fighter.”
In truth, the sight of Gauss casting with such fluid ease was what didn’t add up.
“So I’ve been fighting a spellcaster, up close?”
The realization hit Blake like a slap. Suddenly the wrongness he’d felt in that bind made terrible sense. A prickling unease crawled up his spine.
Out ahead, the missiles were blazingly fast. The rogue Dilan, skimming low over the ground, felt a lethal pressure yaw to his flank—a chill shooting up his back into his skull. He flicked a glance over—
—and his heart lurched.
Three blue-trailed bolts were streaking in, far quicker and deadlier than any he’d seen of the same spell.
“Since when is there a mage here!?”