Andni could hardly contain herself as she tugged Gauss into his room.

"Let me see."

She was simply brimming with curiosity.

Seeing her tilt her head back, eyes shining and face written with eager longing, Gauss didn't string her along.

He quickly pulled the White Wand out of his Storage Bag — the upgraded form of his old Hundred Bone Staff.

"Ooh—"

Andni hurried forward to inspect it.

The wand in Gauss's hand measured roughly fifty centimeters long.

Unlike the old staff, which still showed connected bone segments, this new wand was smooth and rounded, its sharp edges sanded away.

Its color was a pure, jade-like white;

to the naked eye there wasn't a single flaw.

The grip was slightly thicker than the shaft, naturally forming subtle depressions and rises that fit the hand. The grip's color was a touch deeper, and if you looked closely at the grain you could just make out almost imperceptible veins of gilded gold, like leaf veins or feather filaments.

More than a weapon, it resembled a flawless piece of art, reflecting a mesmerizing glow in the lamplight.

Most striking was the milky-white gemstone set at one end;

silver-white specks flowed and pulsed inside it, emitting a calm yet powerful aura that seemed to draw in anyone who stared at it, capturing their gaze and mind.

Light itself bent subtly around it: beautiful, elegant, mysterious, powerful...

This was Andni's first impression of the reborn White Bone Staff.

"So beautiful..."

After a long moment she swallowed and voiced her appraisal slowly.

But even with her eye for such things, she couldn't discern the wand's origin.

Plus, having spent many idle years fondling the old staff, she had an especially intimate sense of how it had changed.

"Can I hold it?"

She looked up at Gauss and asked.

Although the Hundred Bone Staff had originally belonged to her, once she had handed it to Gauss it was no longer her concern — she understood that boundary.

"You can try it, senior."

Gauss bent slightly and offered the White Wand to her.

What did he mean by that? Andni felt puzzled, but now that she had permission and the wand itself piqued her curiosity far more than questions, she reached out with her small hand.

"Soft?"

Just as her fair fingers were about to close around the wand, a powerful resisting force radiated from the shaft's surface.

Her fingers were pushed back.

What was happening?

Andni didn't believe in omens. She gripped harder and tried again.

This time the resisting force was even stronger.

It was as if the wand sensed someone trying to take it from Gauss and instantly erupted with greater strength to resist.

"Shi—!"

Her attempt failed once more, and she even staggered back half a step.

She tried many methods after that, even resorting to magic, but she still couldn't hold it, let alone use it.

She had to give up on experiencing the wand.

Watching Gauss hold the White Wand effortlessly and swing it casually, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy.

It looked as if the wand had recognized Gauss as its master and could only be used by him.

True, he seemed to be the wand's destined owner, but as the previous owner, didn't she deserve even a trace of sentimental claim?

"Nobody else can touch it?" Andni sat down on Gauss's bed to rest.

"That's right. My two companions tried and failed too." Gauss noticed her dejected expression and the corner of his mouth tugged up a little.

"Well...that's more like it."

Hearing that others couldn't touch it made Andni feel a bit better.

"Did your Identify Spell work?"

Gauss looked at Andni.

When he first obtained the White Wand he had used Identify Spell on it many times afterward, but without exception, it never produced any result.

He hoped Andni, whose mage rank was higher, might have a different outcome.

"No." Andni shook her head. "My Identify Spell can't affect it."

She had no idea either.

Back when it was the Hundred Bone Staff, her Identify Spell could at least affect it, if not reveal details. Now the staff outright blocked her spell.

Gauss felt a little disappointed, though not entirely surprised.

The White Wand's origin was clearly not simple.

"Was someone involved in reforging it?" Andni studied the flawless wand as if it had always been that perfect and asked.

Seeing such craftsmanship, she had half a mind to find the artisan who had forged it.

Gauss shook his head.

"I don't think so. I honestly don't know what happened."

He was equally puzzled.

He vaguely remembered entering some mysterious space, and when he emerged the wand had become like this — but all memory of what took place inside was gone.

Andni fell silent to think after hearing his description.

Before she could say anything, a sudden commotion erupted outside.

The previously quiet night filled with the sound of hurried footsteps.

"Clang!" "Clang!" "Clang!"

Three sharp bell strikes rang out.

The sound was heavy and urgent, sweeping across Outpost 11;

everyone nearby heard it instantly.

"This is—"

"An attack!!!" Andni's expression changed and she leaped off the bed in an instant.

Three short, urgent bell rings served as a common high-level alarm — the kind sounded only when a city, town, or human settlement faced a large-scale assault.

No one would ring it as a joke.

Stepping out the door, Serlandul and Aria were already waiting in front of Gauss's room.

"What do we do now?"

"First, go see." Gauss decided without hesitation.

No matter what, they couldn't stay in the inn;

they had to go out and gather information to know what to do next.

Many others decided the same, flooding into the streets.

Torches bobbed and adventurers carrying them moved everywhere.

"Monsters are attacking at night! The captain of the knights requests that all adventurers go to the walls to help defend the camp."

A few mounted cavalrymen rode quickly through the street, passing the report to the camp's adventurers.

So it really was a night attack.

When Gauss learned the specifics he felt a measure of relief.

What made him uneasy was that many cavalry had apparently been dispatched to the Misty Path earlier.

The garrison now felt more hollow than usual.

And the timing was suspiciously convenient.

Doubt filled his mind.

But the immediate priority was to help repel the monsters. It was safer to rely on the camp's defenses rather than venture into pitch-black night.

"Stay with me. Don't stray too far." Andni stepped up to the three and said.

Here, she was the strongest;

she had the confidence to command.

"Alright." Gauss nodded.

Andni's presence steadied him.

She was known at least as a Black-Iron tier mage, and still in her prime — nowhere near any decline in strength.

In this camp she might not be the absolute strongest, but she was certainly among the top few.

Seeing Gauss agree, Aria and Serlandul exchanged looks and quickly nodded to follow her lead.

Andni nodded in satisfaction.

Then she led them toward the camp's edge.

Despite her small stature and being a mage, she moved astonishingly fast.

The four-person team and other adventurer squads advanced quickly.

The closer they got to the camp edge, the thicker the atmosphere of chaos and tension grew.

Laborers and noncombatants were being shepherded toward the camp center by soldiers, while fully armed soldiers and adventurers surged toward the defenses.

Passing through a final tangle of makeshift shacks, the camp's last defense line came into view.

A ring of packed-earth walls surrounded the camp as fortifications.

Scattered crude arrow towers, caltrops and traps outside the walls formed a barrier.

But that barrier was under tremendous pressure right now.

Beyond the wall, black as ink, came sharp, savage howls;

countless shadows pressed against the defenses.

On the parapet soldiers thrust desperately with spears;

archers and early-arriving adventurers relied on jagged merlons to keep firing, tossing simple offensive spells.

The air was thick with blood, gunpowder smoke, and the stench of beasts.

This was Gauss's first time participating in a large-scale defensive battle, and at night too;

his heart quickened.

"Break!!!"

Not far away, a section of packed-earth wall cracked;

something huge outside the wall seemed to be battering it.

But a moment later a man in gleaming silver armor drew his bow, released, and a silver beam shattered the night.

The impact outside the wall abruptly ceased.

"A Black-Iron tier professional!"

Probably from the cavalry. Gauss thought inwardly.

The four of them climbed the stairs and went up onto the wall.

What they saw outside tightened everyone's hearts.

A rolling tide of monsters surged forward;

due to darkness their numbers were hard to judge.

But their behavior was off: red eyes glowed and they howled.

Even when nearby allies were felled by ranged spells or arrows, they charged on without fear.

Hooked grappling lines were thrown onto the wall;

Goblins and Goblin-like creatures scrambled up ropes, using the wall to climb quickly.

Among the monster ranks were archers firing arrows to suppress the soldiers and adventurers on the wall.

"Ah!!"

Not far off, an arrow struck a soldier's throat;

blood sprayed as he clapped his hand to his neck, took two steps, then collapsed with a thud on the parapet.

Injured people were dragged away from the front.

Arrows fly without eyes;

in such chaotic battlefields a single stray bolt can kill even the most careful soldier.

"So many... and they don't seem afraid to die." Aria swallowed.

This scale of monsters exceeded ordinary commissions many times over.

Here, even professional adventurers could feel how insignificant their strength was.

"Stop talking and help." Gauss tossed two hand crossbows and bolts to Aria and Serlandul for defense.

He then checked their Gauss Fields to confirm they were functioning and looked to Andni.

"I don't need it." When Gauss moved to cast his protective spell on her, Andni shook her head and a tough white light slowly appeared around her.

Clearly she had her own defenses.

"Conserve your mana where you can," Andni warned.

"Understood."

Gauss nodded and took out his steel longsword.

His protective spells were reserved for his companions;

he couldn't help everyone.

Now that Gauss Field had reached Circle 2, its protection was stronger but consumed more mana — even he couldn't use it often.

He had to keep mana in reserve for emergencies.

Four Clay Spiders materialized beside him.

Unfortunately, the two Clay Converts had been left in the Dark Forest;

though he had given a recall command at the last moment, he did not know whether he could retrieve them.

After ordering the Clay Spiders to autonomously fight and assist around him and his companions, Gauss grabbed his longsword and rushed to a section of wall.

A dark-green arm was crawling over the merlon, followed by an ugly bald head rising up.

Gauss's reflexes were quick.

With his steel longsword he drove the blade through the Goblin's neck the instant it reached the top.

The Goblin couldn't even scream and was ended;

its body fell limply over the wall.

"Kill: Goblin *1"

Goblins were the most numerous here — those green-skinned brats were the forest's cheapest fodder;

even if wiped out, they'd spring up again like roadside weeds soon after.

Gauss took a deep breath, tamping down the nerves of his first large-scale wall defense. His gaze hardened.

Whether on a contract, in a cave, or defending a wall, he only needed to do one thing: kill monsters. Killing Goblins was exactly what he did best.

He moved nimbly, eyes sharp, scanning the parapet to find more climbing monsters.

He struck and slashed with his longsword, precise and efficient, clearing climbing foes.

For a while, no monster could set foot on the wall near them.

The four Clay Spiders executed orders faithfully, crawling quickly around Gauss, Aria, and Serlandul;

sometimes they leapt and lanced small monsters' eyes or throats with sharp limbs, sometimes they spat sticky strands to bind enemies to the wall, creating openings for others.

They knew no fear, felt no fatigue — like heartless machines harvesting lives.

"Total monsters killed: 2,430"

"Total monsters killed: 2,431"

The kill counter kept climbing.

Gauss paid no attention to it, lost in the rhythm of killing.

A soldier was knocked down by three Goblins.

As a Goblin raised its dagger to stab, a cold flash cut through.

Three heads exploded, gouts of viscous blood spurting high.

The soldier, stunned into survival, looked up through the sticky gore and saw a tall black-robed figure breathing heavily;

he hurriedly shouted thanks.

"Th-thank you!!"

"Mm."

Gauss had severed the vines on the wall.

Looking down, he saw more vines growing along the packed-earth surface.

Many monsters were climbing up those vines.

There were casters among the besieging monsters too.

Looking further into the distance, Gauss saw flickering fires — not monsters lighting campfires to expose themselves, but a hoofed beast whose mane, tail, and hooves glowed with natural flames, giving off light in the night and making it visible from afar.

"A Nightmare!"

Nightmares — also called "demon foals" or "hell foals" — typically posed Challenge Level 3 or higher.

They were often used like warhorses by advanced evil beings and were frequently summoned from other planes by various spellcasting monsters.

Riding the Nightmare were several humanoid figures, faintly visible.

Judging by how effortlessly they controlled the Nightmare, they were far stronger than average monsters.

Gauss turned his gaze. Andni hovered midair.

She tightly defended a long stretch of wall.

Her small body now exuded a chilling press of power.

She tapped her wand and a stream of scorching fireballs, as if alive, roared out and struck the densest clusters of monsters below with pinpoint accuracy.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Explosions followed in succession;

flames rose and waves of charred bodies filled the air with the stench of burnt flesh.

Her controlled flames were remarkably versatile — sometimes turning into rolling walls of fire that swept large groups away, sometimes condensing into scorching arrows that precisely pierced elite monsters who tried to throw spears or cast spells from farther off.

Because of this powerful spell artillery, pressure on the nearby walls eased dramatically.

Soldiers and adventurers were lifted in morale and intensified their clearing of climbing enemies.

"So strong..."

Gauss only needed one glance to feel awed.

It was his first up-close view of a high-tier professional launching attacks.

Master-level professionals truly did show transformative power.

To them, low-level monsters and elites seemed no different.

Gauss also sensed something: her strength might not be that of an ordinary Master...

Across the long wall besides Andni, several other Master-tier professionals guarded their assigned sections.

From a god's-eye perspective, they were spread out, each holding their ground, while in gaps powerful elite fighters like Gauss swept through.

Slowly, the humans who had been forced into a hurried defense were beginning to stabilize.

Just as Gauss thought this —

Suddenly a series of deafening explosions ripped through the air.

"!"

"!"

"!!"

Violent shockwaves accompanied towering flames;

the wall beneath Gauss's feet trembled.

He braced against the parapet and, once the dust settled, scanned the area.

Where the blasts had hit, solid packed-earth walls had collapsed in chunks. Gaping breaches of several meters — even tens of meters — appeared in the defenses.

"This is bad."

His heart sank.

Those fierce explosions were not the work of ordinary monsters;

they resembled alchemical charges, prepared and detonated.

"A breach! The wall's been blown wide open!"

Panic spread through the crowd like wildfire.

Monsters poured into the camp through the gaps. Some scrambled up the breach slope, quickly surging onto the wall, engaging soldiers and adventurers in close combat.

"Roar—"

In an instant the situation, which had been stabilizing, descended back into chaos.

With the wall blasted, elites hiding in the rear now surged forward;

first onto the wall came thick-skinned bear-beasts and armored landwalkers, acting as meatshields. Their massive bodies absorbed hurried volleys of arrows, thrown spears and spells, opening the way for following forces.

Behind them, countless lesser demons with red-lit eyes scuttled forward, climbing the wall on all fours.

On the broken parapet Gauss fixed his gaze on a bear-beast.

Seeing no one nearby, he pushed his hands forward gripping the White Wand.

"Burning Hands!"

A terrifying fan of flame erupted from his palms.

The fiery blast engulfed a stretch of wall in front of him.

The horde caught in it screamed as the inferno took hold;

even the lead bear-beast struggled.

A wide-area spell sacrifices some single-target potency for broader coverage.

"Magic Missile!"

Gauss conjured several missiles.

They immediately locked onto the burning bear-beast that charged out of the flames.

Bang!!!

The missiles struck the beast, causing an explosion.

The bear-beast halted mid-lunge, then lost strength and collapsed heavily onto the parapet!

"Kill: Elite Monster, Bear-Beast *1"

A notification flashed before Gauss.

Then realization hit him.

He glanced at his Elite Codex page;

Elite Points had jumped from 43 to 53.

Unlocking the new codex entry had rewarded him 10 Elite Points.

He now met the upgrade requirement!

Amid the battlefield was exactly the moment to harness power.

Gauss swiftly opened his attribute panel to the racial talent slot for Reptilian.

Now the Reptilian talent pulsed with light.

"Conditions for advancing the quality have been met. Do you wish to advance the pale-quality racial talent [Reptilian]?"

"Yes." Gauss did not hesitate.

The next moment, Elite Points rapidly consumed, dropping to 3.

A streak of blue light flashed from the talent slot!

"White-quality [Reinforced Scale Bloodline] successfully advanced!"

A torrent far hotter than before burst from the depths of his bloodline!

This surge of power was anything but gentle;

it carried a savage, ancient aura that swept through his limbs.

He felt his blood pounding more solidly;

a fine layer of energetic scales slowly appeared on his skin, recombining and tightening into firmer, denser plates.

Once these energy scales covered his skin, they emitted a burning heat and fused with Gauss Field, causing the formerly invisible field to display overlapping blue-black scale patterns like a tangible armor!

His muscle fibers briefly tore and were then remade;

his bones emitted faint creaks as they grew denser.

Sensory-wise, his darkvision and thermal sensing sharpened dramatically;

even in the night, the heat signatures of the monsters below shone like blazing torches to him — he could even vaguely trace the flow of energy within them.

The old [Reptilian] label on the attribute panel melted away as if by fire. In its place glowed new characters rimmed in deep blue:

"Blue-quality [Reinforced Scale Bloodline]"

"You have traced your lineage back to an older bloodline;

a faint, pure draconic power awakens within you. This lifts you beyond ordinary Reptilians, granting potential approaching greatness."

An unprecedented sense of strength filled his entire body.

"!!!"

Gauss clenched his fist. On his right hand the Gauss Field warped and condensed, forming a jagged, air-twisting magical draconic claw!

The Field's magical waves merged with the Reinforced Scale Bloodline's racial talent, producing a strange reaction that blended magic and bloodline power.

Such formidable magical force!