“Go!”

He shouted—and moved.

Almost simultaneously he unleashed Enhanced Leap and Brute Force. A surge of raw power flooded his body.

In an instant his frame—especially his legs—bulked out.

Supple muscle lines swelled and knotted like slabs of rock.

Thud!

With the double boost’s explosive force, his foot hammered the ground.

The rebound launched him like a cannon shot!

Beside him, Alia threw him one last look and vaulted onto the wolf.

Worried as she was, she knew every extra second she lingered put Gauss in more danger.

If she left early, Gauss could break off before his Omni-Armor failed.

Da-dah!

Already cued, Ulfen sprang into a run, pounding back the way they’d come.

“Find us fast!”

Alia’s voice faded down the tunnel.

Gauss had no attention to spare. His eyes held only the pale, lethal spider-sentinel ahead.

He moved at speed; the world blurred backward.

In a heartbeat he was on the guardian’s flank.

He pushed off again, springing high.

Both hands clenched the heavy metal staff; Brute Force poured into his arms with nothing held back.

Crackle—!

Muscles corded and bulged, blue veins writhing under his skin like little snakes.

BOOM!!

The heavy staff tore the air, wrapped in a vicious gale, and came crashing down at the pale guardian’s head!

The sentinel, attention fixed on the fleeing Alia, had just pivoted to pursue when it felt the cutting wind from the side.

Its reaction was inhumanly fast: the body twisted at an impossible speed, and a hardened forearm blade interposed itself along the staff’s arc.

Clang!

A deafening, glassy crack; a visible white shockwave rippled from the clash.

“Nrgh—!”

Gauss gritted his teeth and heaved down with everything he had!

At last the blocking arm-blade sank a few centimeters—and the pale carapace beneath creaked with tooth-aching “k-krk”s.

Clearly, even for it, taking Gauss’s charged blow head-on wasn’t easy.

Which meant it had to tear its focus from Alia and fix it on Gauss.

Thunk!

One slender but deadly leg shot up like lightning.

The next instant—the blade-fine spider-leg slashed the air with a ripping keen and piston-kicked into Gauss’s torso.

BOOM! He went flying.

Midair, he clearly felt the Omni-Armor over his skin eroding at an alarming rate.

It didn’t shatter from a single kick—but it wouldn’t take many.

And that had been an awkward strike, delivered while it braced against his blow and fired off in haste. A full-power hit would be worse.

Legs really do hit harder than arms.

He’d half-hoped to probe its strength—what if it was all bark and no bite? Maybe he could tick off the fifth elite-kill right here.

Not a chance. This was no “toothless tiger”; it was the real thing.

Probably not a mere rating 3 threat.

He guessed he and Alia were the first party to trigger this pale guardian; its body hadn’t fully spun up into combat mode yet. Once it warmed up, it would only get scarier.

He had to pull out.

He had no intention of butting his head against the wall.

Alia was already away; it was his turn to look for an exit.

Knowing when to retreat is the wisest adventurer’s tactic—hot-blooded fools don’t live long.

With that in mind, he twisted hips and waist in the air, forcing his body into a landing stance.

Scree—

He skidded several meters on landing and barely held his feet.

The pale guardian had already become a blur, closing fast.

“Light!”

Primed and ready, the spell at the staff’s tip exploded into brilliance; searing radiance flooded the passage.

The sentinel’s vacant eyes pinched down.

They might look hollow, but it still relied on sight to gather information—and down here, although there was ambient glow everywhere, it wasn’t true sunlight. The creatures of this place, shaped by long exposure, had devolved toward low-light vision.

Gauss had realized that last night: his unusually bright Light could act like a flashbang even against non-dark-aligned foes.

The pale guardian flinched, reflexively tightening its guard.

Gauss detonated off the floor with brute force and sprinted for the way they’d come.

The sentinel froze for less than a second, then launched after him.

“Light!”

After a short sprint Gauss wheeled and flashed it again.

This time the effect was modest. Whether it was adapting or had shielded itself in advance, its pursuit didn’t falter. Riding its forward momentum, milky radiance coiled along its arm-blades and it scythed toward Gauss.

BOOM!

He met it with the staff, held for a heartbeat—and was hurled away on the force of the cut.

Thud!

He grunted.

The sentinel wasn’t dull; it had predicted his block. As the arms struck, the leg-blade came on as well. Fortunately the Omni-Armor held—barely.

That was thanks to the ward being his core skill. A normal mage armor at his current level wouldn’t have withstood that blitz.

Gauss deliberately collapsed the damaged ward. Mana surged, and a fresh Omni-Armor snapped over him—near-instant.

In the blink of an eye his shielding was restored.

This was why he dared to stand in front of a powerful elite: so long as the enemy couldn’t break him in a single hit, he could leverage his deep mana and core-skill instant cast to rebuild his defenses—again and again.

A walking fortress.

And right now, his mana was still rich.

But—as he tumbled back he scanned the corridor.

This was the way they’d come, yet… the environment felt subtly different.

What was going on?

Unease rose in his chest.