The Ironscale bloodline flared to life.
Brute Force.
Sword Soul's aura wrapped around his fist.
…
A dozen techniques erupted together in the span of a heartbeat!
His punch even broke the sound barrier.
Ring after ring of compressed air rippled out along his knuckles and the corded muscles of his arm!
"DOOM!"
The attack came so abruptly that the old woman had no time at all to react.
His fist smashed square into her slack, baggy skin.
"PFFTT!!"
Almost the instant they made contact—
All the power gathered on Gauss's fist tore her sagging flesh apart, as if he'd struck a hollow leather sack instead of a human body.
"Crack!"
A crisp fracture echoed through the dark.
The old woman's skull took the blow like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. Her frail neck simply couldn't withstand that sudden, titanic force. Her head snapped backward at a grotesquely unnatural angle.
Skin and muscle at her neck ripped open in an instant. The head, eyes wide with horror, shot away like a cannonball.
But the expected spray of blood never came.
The severed head traced a grim arc through the air, punched through several cabinets, and finally crashed down into the floorboards.
"Everyone, stay sharp!"
Gauss exhaled slowly.
He did not relax just because his first strike had seemingly been "successful"—instead, he immediately warned his teammates.
A split-shadow of Shadow flickered into view at his side at just the right moment.
"She's not dead yet…"
The truth was Gauss hadn't believed this "old woman" from the very beginning.
By most people's standards, he probably counted as a "good person"—but precisely because of that, he knew he couldn't afford to drop his guard around suspicious strangers. Good intentions, in the wrong place, got people killed.
From the moment he stepped into the house, every cell in his body had felt like it was rebelling.
A visceral, bone-deep rejection—physical and emotional alike.
So his guard had been at full height the whole time.
But without hard proof, he'd had no excuse to strike first.
Not until Shadow's split-body slipped into the cellar and brought back real evidence. Then and only then did he choose to strike first and strike hard.
Gauss's golden eyes burned as he stared toward the wrecked kitchen.
"Cloud of Daggers!"
He still didn't know exactly what state their enemy was in—and he had no intention of politely waiting for her to fully reveal herself and "start the fight fair."
Cold, razor-edged power lanced from his mouth as he spat out the incantation.
The energy flared, swelling into a whirling storm of blade-like shards, a cloud of flying knives that howled forward and tore the room apart.
"Back!"
They all moved, retreating as one.
Gauss spun and drove his fist backward, blasting a hole straight through the wall behind them.
The barrier between interior and exterior vanished in an instant.
Sunlight flooded into the once-gloomy hall.
"Shra-shra-shra!"
In terrain like this, Cloud of Daggers' effect surpassed most level 2spells—and even many Level 3 ones.
The severed head, still buried amid the smashed cabinets, hadn't even had time to float free before the Cloud of Daggers washed over it.
Gauss thought he heard a few raspy, distorted screams.
As expected.
He hadn't believed for a second she'd be killed that easily.
He drew in magic, weaving a new spell in his mouth—
When the floor beneath his boots suddenly writhed and softened.
The solid ground flowed like a living thing.
Something fast lunged at him from the side.
But before it reached him, Albena had already stepped hard, swinging her great axe in a brutal arc.
"Pshh!" Dark green blood sprayed in a high arc.
That charged blow of hers wasn't something just any riffraff could take head-on.
Even Gauss wouldn't want to eat that strike without preparation.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bisected assailant tumble aside.
It looked humanoid.
Its whole body was wrapped in filthy, rotting strips of cloth.
Its appearance was like a signal—the starting horn.
From beneath the floorboards all around, more humanoid figures crawled up out of the dirt and closed in from every direction.
Zombies?
But somehow… not quite the same.
Gauss flung out a hand, summoning a cluster of clay constructs.
"I'll leave these ones to you."
He turned his gaze back toward the ruined house.
By now, the entire structure had caved in.
A hideous red head was rising from the rubble—its fragile skin completely gone, leaving naked red muscle and exposed bone gleaming in the air.
Its sparse, pale hair still clung to the skull, fanning out like a rotten halo.
Under the ragged stump of its neck, several wispy black tendrils of energy trailed and smoldered, like smoking strings tethering it to something unseen.
Even stripped of skin and features, Gauss could still see the raw, undisguised hatred and venom twisting that bared, sinewy face.
"You… you actually ruined my body!"
The old witch howled.
She truly hadn't expected Gauss's ambush to come that suddenly—her head had been knocked clean off before she'd even finished her first shocked thought.
If not for the fact that most of her life energy was anchored in her brain, and her bones had been specially reinforced, she'd have died on the spot. Even so, that monstrous punch had rattled her skull so hard she was still swimming from the concussion.
"Cunning little brat!"
Staring at his spotless white robe, the witch's fury flared anew.
Gauss studied the floating head.
A flying head demon?
Something about the hovering witch's head put him in mind of certain nightmare creatures from his previous life's folklore.
"What a shame I didn't kill you in one punch," he sighed, genuinely disappointed.
Under normal circumstances, a human spellcaster taking his full-power sucker punch at arm's reach wouldn't survive.
But was this thing really still "human"?
Gauss didn't think so.
He couldn't judge her by normal standards.
He narrowed his eyes.
Beneath the exposed muscle, he could see a film of black energy clinging to the skull.
That, along with the reinforced bone, was what had kept her intact.
Could Fireball melt that?
He wasn't sure—and more importantly, there was the victim Shadow had seen in the cellar.
If he dropped a full-force Fireball on the house, he might collapse the underground chamber as well.
While he thought, Gauss's body lifted smoothly into the air under the power of Flight.
The white wand slid into his hand.
With its tip aimed at the head—
Eight Magic Missiles fired in rapid succession.
Breath-casting was powerful, but came with drawbacks: the preparation was done inside his own body. Even with his reinforced constitution, rapid-fire casting that way would strain him.
For pure rate-of-fire, the traditional wand still had the edge.
The blue orbs streaked through the air, homing in on the floating head.
"?"
To Gauss's surprise, several missiles glanced off at odd angles, shaving past her skull without connecting.
It looked as if some unseen layer of power had nudged each shot aside.
This was a first.
But he adjusted quickly, and his mind raced to analyze.
So—not just high physical resistance, but magical resistance as well.
"You've really made me angry, little mage," the witch croaked, voice dripping with cold malice.
Yet even now—with no body, just a grotesque head—she sounded oddly self-assured, like she still held a winning card.
Where's that confidence coming from?
Gauss couldn't sense any massive magical reserves off her. His own aura dwarfed hers several times over.
Given her apparent age and withered flesh, it made sense that her magic would have waned over time—even if she'd developed bizarre "flying head" abilities.
He had more spells, more fuel in the tank, and vastly better mobility.
She's not afraid of me?
Even with her "dolls" crawling out of the ground, they wouldn't last long against Albena and the others.
If he weren't wary of unknown tricks, he'd have gone in to finish it with his fists.
That first punch, while it hadn't killed her, had clearly left one hell of a mark.
As Gauss weighed his options, the witch gave her head a few slow shakes, as if finally recovering from the lingering daze.
"It hurt when you hit me—but… what a marvelous body you have," she rasped, tongue snaking out to lick her lips, eyes wandering hungrily over Gauss's frame.
She practically drooled at the memory of his raw power.
That body had the strength of a warrior and the versatility of a mage; she'd experienced it firsthand.
Some special bloodline, no doubt.
She licked her lips again, greed burning in her eyes.
She had thought little Abby would be the perfect vessel. But now, compared to the man before her, the girl was nothing.
Her heart pounded.
Normally she avoided male hosts, because taking them on triggered vicious soul-body rejection. The worst incident had nearly killed her. That was why she almost exclusively targeted women.
But this time… even that memory couldn't douse the longing rising inside her.
It was like a devil whispering in her ear, over and over.
If she could seize that body, all her troubles—rapid aging, stagnant power—would be solved.
If she became him, everything would change.
She had to have him. She had to.
The more she thought about it, the more her eyes reddened, pupils dilating like a starving wolf scenting fresh meat.
The idea sank its claws into her mind, smothering all restraint.
While she was lost in twisted fantasies, Gauss kept feeding the Cloud of Daggers.
The storm of spectral knives slashed through the ether around her skull.
They still did no direct damage, but he noticed the layer of black energy shivering under every blow.
That told him her shield had limits. It could be worn down.
A matter of attrition then, he thought.
Witches were infamous for being tricky. Without knowing what else she was hiding, Gauss wasn't about to rush in.
The way she looked at him made his skin crawl, like she could already taste him.
Purely from a risk standpoint, the safest course was to maintain range and keep kiting her.
Worst case, with his deep mana pool, accelerated recovery, and agile spellcasting, he could simply grind through that black barrier.
"Plenty of mana left?" the witch asked.
"More than enough to wear you down," Gauss replied calmly, floating above her.
He kept flinging spells—Magic Missiles and Firebolts flew like he was throwing pebbles, not spending mana.
Those two spells had the highest familiarity; for the same cost, they gave the best return.
To the point that, with a mouthful of prepared rations and his Special Stomach working overtime, it almost felt like he wasn't losing any mana at all.
In reality, the main drain was Flight.
Around the witch, arrow after arrow of black-purple energy coalesced and shot upward.
Gauss twisted and rolled in midair, dodging some with ease.
The rest splashed against his Gauss Omni-Armor and Moonlight Robe, dispersing harmlessly.
They were both testing each other.
Gauss glanced down at the pale stain on his robe where one of her bolts had struck.
It hadn't been self-cleaned away—interesting.
He filed that away and focused on positioning.
His Flight had grown increasingly refined through recent practice.
"Your mana's running low, isn't it?" Gauss called, slipping past another volley.
The witch's aura hadn't grown since the fight began—and she only had that head for a focus. There was no way she could match his recovery speed.
Unless she massively outclassed him, he couldn't see how she'd win a mana war.
His advantages in magic were simply unfair.
"Plenty," the witch cackled.
But her glee was leaking through. Whatever she'd been waiting for, she clearly thought the time had come.
After one last missed volley, she suddenly stopped attacking entirely.
The black mist around her skull thickened.
So it's not just mana, Gauss thought, his suspicions hardening.
"Boom!"
The witch's head flared with black light.
In the same instant, that lone, grotesque head blurred forward, shrinking the distance between them in an eyeblink.
"Your body… will be mine!!!"
She appeared right above him, jaw gaping open to reveal a dripping red maw.
Invisible, crushing pressure rolled out in rings, a tide of soul-force that swept straight over Gauss.
Not a sonic attack, nor a simple magic blast, but something more intimate and dangerous—an assault aimed directly at the core of his consciousness, at the root of his being.
Soul Magic.
The witch's eyes shone with rabid triumph.
She could already see it—that perfect soul shuddering, cracking, and finally shattering under her onslaught, leaving the empty shell for her to slip into and flee with.
Once she completed the brain-swap, the path to the heavens would open.
She'd steal this freakish affinity for magic, break through her bottleneck, and never again have to scuttle from body to body like some cursed hermit crab.
Ke-ke-ke—!
And then—
Thud.
A stabbing spike of pain slammed into her own mind.
The tidal wave that would reduce ordinary professionals to gibbering idiots—or smash their souls outright—had crashed into something immovable.
It felt like slamming face-first into a reef buried beneath the surface.
"You…?"
Gauss's calm gaze met the witch's wide, panicked eyes.
As it happened, he had spent a little time studying soul-work himself.
So… were they peers of a sort?
"I think… we might have something to talk about," he said mildly, flexing his fingers into a fist.
He'd had his suspicions while she probed at him over and over.
That first haymaker hadn't just devastated her physically. Wrapped inside that blow had been a very fine, very subtle touch of soul-force.
That was why it had rattled her so hard she'd taken ages to recover—not just because of brute strength.
It was like hitting her wards both inside and out at the same time.
At the time, neither of them had quite recognized it for what it was.
But this time… he was paying attention.
~~~
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