ca-book Chapter 332: The Most Sacred Slash
Chapter 332: The Most Sacred Slash
Cecilia was clearly startled by Gauss’s sudden “variation.”Gauss’s winged flight was even slightly faster than the Red Drake Hephaestus, though that was a short burst of sprint speed; over longer distances, Hephaestus as a drake still held a natural advantage.
“You really don’t care about your life, do you?”
Cecilia muttered to herself.
Through Gauss’s twin pupils that seemed to burn like flames, she sensed a resolute, death-defying determination.
Yet, oddly, she could not bring herself to kill the man before her.
Compared to corpses and undead, living beings obviously offered far greater research value.
“What a madman!”
Cecilia could only command the skeletal dragon to avoid their pincer attack.
The bone colossus gave a long, mournful roar. Its huge body found turning difficult, so it could only lift its head and soar into the sky.
“Fireball!”
Gauss, who had long since prepared, raised his staff.
In the path where the bone colossus was ascending, a blinding white sphere rapidly swelled.
In an instant, the fireball expanded into a small sun hanging in the air, releasing an immense amount of light and heat.
“Roar!!!!”
The charging bone dragon had no time to dodge.
It collided head-on with that blazing “sun.”
Accompanied by a piercing, anguished roar, the searing red-and-white flames nearly consumed half the skeletal dragon’s body.
Especially the raised head and neck — the fireball’s terrifying temperatures and shockwave ravaged them in an instant, filling the air with the peculiar smell of sulfur and burning bone ash.
Cecilia herself was struck squarely by the fireball’s shockwave and was blasted off the dragon’s back.
When the dust settled, she hung suspended in the air, her red robe in tatters and her face covered with burns, blazing red.
“Cough, cough!”
She spat a little black smoke.
The fireball’s blast forced even her to reveal a slightly feral expression beneath her usual elegance.
The way she looked at Gauss had completely changed.
A beastlike ruthlessness flickered deep in her pupils.
Hephaestus targeted the crippled skeletal dragon that was barely keeping itself stable in the air.
Gauss and Cecilia stared at each other across the clearing.
“You forced my hand.”
Beneath Cecilia’s torn robe, dragon-scale patterns crawled across the surface of her dry skin as if coming to life.
An invisible force wrapped around her body.
Ghostly blue cold flames wound around her from head to toe, dropping the surrounding air temperature by several degrees and spreading frost.
Magic Missiles slammed forward, but she waved out her cold fire to block them.
The cold flames swiftly devoured the Magic Missiles and then surged in Gauss’s direction.
Gauss used Fly to dodge.
Thanks to his exquisite bodily control, he nimbly evaded the attack.
However, while his attention was fixed on Cecilia, the cold flame behind her suddenly and irrationally changed course and barreled toward him.
“!”
The cold flame struck his back, sticking to his scale armor and seeping through his robe.
“So cold...”
He felt as if his bones, blood, and organs were freezing solid.
Gauss looked around and realized the temperature in the space where they fought was plummeting rapidly.
Cecilia radiated some kind of cold-domain field.
When she lifted an arm, she could influence the storming frost around her.
“This absolutely is not a power Master-level professionals can wield.”
Gauss swallowed.
He had estimated Cecilia to be a top-tier Master-level force — one of the tiny elite at the pyramid’s peak.
But as she demonstrated the terrifying ability to turn wind into snow and deform the heavens, he realized he had underestimated her strength.
Although he had never personally witnessed Transcendent-level combat, he immediately understood that the power before him was Transcendent.
Amid the wind and snow, Gauss felt overwhelmingly insignificant.
He tried to fly away from the blizzard.
But Cecilia pursued, and the raging snowstorm remained wrapped around them both.
His once-blazing flight speed could not overcome the storm’s hindrance; escaping her proved difficult.
He could barely tell directions.
Visibility was almost zero in the swirling snow.
“Fireball!”
He swallowed a few Magic Crystals and unleashed a full-power Fireball again, trying to use the repelling heat to disperse the blizzard.
But when the fireball exploded, its power was far weaker than before.
The omnipresent chill kept devouring the flames it produced.
Under Gauss’s gaze, the fireball seemed to be strangled by invisible cold hands.
He inhaled deeply.
His energy was still draining rapidly. He clenched the Godwater-forged Water Sword in his hand.
A gift from the lake god was not simple; even though the ambient temperature had dropped below freezing, the Water Sword remained completely unaffected.
He had to find the hidden Dragon Seeker concealed in the storm.
He vowed internally.
Resisting the deadly cold sapped his body’s energy even faster, making an already costly state even worse.
“Cough!”
Countless tiny blades of ice cut across his body. His defenses broke and rapidly reformed.
Dragon Seeker, where are you?
His golden dragon eyes glittered.
As if answering his call, he sensed something changing deep within his pupils.
His soul energy gradually strengthened and finally attached itself to his eyes.
Gauss looked into the blizzard.
The once-blank white scene now looked different.
Mana flowed within it.
Where did the mana originate?
He narrowed his eyes slightly and traced the invisible mana stream to its source.
A human-shaped mana condensation slowly materialized.
Found you!
The wind and snow were just a façade; the mana was the essence.
He did not rush to act, though. He remained momentarily stunned like before, gritting his teeth as countless ice-blade strikes hit him.
Hidden in the blizzard, Cecilia watched the flustered Gauss.
Although the current situation favored her, a sense of urgency crept into her mind.
They were not far from Longdi Fort; the commotion she’d caused might already have been noticed by the city.
That was why she had earlier hesitated to fully deploy her field power.
If she could not finish quickly, once the city’s Transcendents came to investigate, she would be trapped.
She lowered her gaze to the skeletal wyvern still engaged with the Red Drake.
Such tenacious life force.
Even she had to admit the man’s vitality was shockingly resilient — almost unbecoming of a human.
Not to mention a level 5 professional, even a squad of Master-level professionals couldn’t match his toughness.
High mobility, explosive power enough to wound her, regenerative ability...
But this ends now.
Though she had only recently stepped into the Transcendent threshold, she already created a clear gulf between herself and those below Transcendent — an insurmountable divide.
Her torrent of mana flowed into her staff; a powerful spell was taking shape.
She would finish this with one decisive blow!
At that moment, Gauss, who had detected the enormous mana fluctuation, finally moved.
He pinpointed a direction within the blizzard, then flapped his wings. The massive thrust launched him like a cannonball.
“!! ?”
Cecilia, who had just begun her ritual, was terrified.
She had no idea how Gauss had detected her hiding within the storm.
But there was no time to break the ritual now.
Stopping would cause a rebounding backlash of mana she could not withstand.
She could only accelerate the mana flowing into her wand.
Time seemed to slow, even freeze.
Both Gauss and Cecilia knew each other’s movements with perfect clarity.
Gauss felt his blood begin to burn; white mist exhaled from his pores.
Red veins slowly crawled through his gilded dragon pupils and then spread quickly.
“Hurry! Faster!”
The enormous mana condensing on Cecilia’s staff looked deadly to him, and precisely because of that she dared not stop casting. She was immersed in it as if firmly restrained.
He had to seize this critical, hair-trigger opportunity.
Mana in his body burned like a furnace. Under his urging, Fly had reached its limit, and his energy wings behind him beat madly.
Flight Instinct, Fly, Ghost Form, Sturdy Scale Bloodline, Monstrous Strength, and many racial talents ignited almost simultaneously.
There was nothing else in his vision; all the wind and snow turned into streaks that he flung behind him.
Hundreds of meters at his terrifying speed vanished in an instant. Their figures rapidly closed the gap.
“Got you!”
“Done!”
Both felt a simultaneous thrill in their hearts as they stared at each other from close range.
Gauss flashed into view in front of Cecilia. Red veins flooded his pupils, but every ounce of his focus was on the Dragon Priestess.
Time seemed to stop.
Snowflakes paused in midair.
Gauss gripped the Godwater Water Sword with his right arm. Under Monstrous Strength, Sturdy Scale Bloodline, and Ghost Form, his muscles bulged like stone.
Terrifying force swelled within him.
At the same time, the Water Sword responded to the enemy and erupted with brilliant divine light.
“Whoosh!!!”
Gauss, moving at blinding speed, slashed downward with the Water Sword, channeling overwhelming power to carve a near-perfect, dazzling semicircle.
This attack, the culmination of all his strength, pushed him to the edge.
But Cecilia’s staff fired a fearsome beam, its energy icy cold enough to freeze the air.
The beam struck Gauss.
They passed each other by.
Time resumed its flow.
The sharp Water Sword severed Cecilia’s left arm that held the staff, taking half her shoulder with it.
Blood spurted out.
Cecilia’s eyes rolled as she looked at her severed left arm. Her heart thudded violently; her face turned deathly pale.
Because the slice from the Water Sword had come within three finger-widths of her heart.
Fortunately, her spell had already hit the enemy’s body, forcing his original slash slightly off-target.
Otherwise her heart might have been cut in two along with the arm.
“Hiss—”
She gasped.
Divine energy at the wound burned her, sending waves of pain into her brain.
Worse, repairing the severed limb afterward would be more troublesome, possibly leaving hard-to-heal sequelae and weakening her power.
Still, victory ultimately belonged to her.
She felt Gauss floating in the air behind her, his movements growing rigid.
He had fallen unconscious; the various draconic mutations on his body had faded, returning him to a normal human appearance.
On his body was a conspicuous deep purple frostbite. The burst of extreme cold energy was rapidly spreading inside Gauss.
The freezing mana pulse would keep consuming Gauss’s internal mana, eventually freezing him solid.
Whether she could later restore Gauss from such fatal freezing — she did not want to think on it now.
Today she had been forced into such an embarrassing state by this tiny level-5 professional.
If this got out, other Dragon Priestesses would surely mock her.
“Still, at least you belong to me.”
She slowly turned to look at Gauss.
“Pfft!”
The sound of blade meeting flesh rang out.
“The Most Sacred Slash!”
A blindingly brilliant sword of light split her body in two.
When did that happen?
A horned man had appeared behind her without her noticing.
He hovered in the air, blade sheathed.
His gaze fell on Gauss not far away, whose half-body had already frozen into an ice block and was slipping downward, unable to control himself.
A short-haired tiefling sorceress with horns flashed beneath Gauss and caught him at the waist.
“Thanks, Noxil.”
“Brr! So cold, so cold!”
The tiefling woman pulled her shoulders close.
“This little guy’s life force is really tenacious.”
She looked at Gauss’s heart — a white energy was firmly protecting it, keeping the freezing energy from fully spreading through his body.
“Leave him to me.”
The tiefling paladin Praelius took Gauss from the woman and began treating him.
“Go arrest the two Dragon Worshipers down there.”
Praelius instructed.
“Got it.”
After their friend Noxil left, he looked back at Gauss with a hint of guilt on his face.
“I’m late.”
A warm life-energy light seeped from his hands into Gauss’s body.
Under his healing, the frozen energy that had filled most of Gauss’s body quickly receded.
“Lucky in the misfortune, it’s not too late.”
Especially because Gauss’s heart had not frozen; it retained considerable vitality, and the freezing energy had not heavily infiltrated his brain.
If those two vital organs remained intact, the consequences would not be too dire.
Gauss’s unconsciousness, from Praelius’s perception, was the result of exhaustion.
He produced a vial exuding thick life force, gently pried open Gauss’s lips, and poured it in.
As the potion was swallowed, Gauss’s previously pale face rapidly regained healthy color.
Praelius showed a pained expression; that potion was not ordinary.
It had been a gift from an extraordinary elf he had helped escape danger during his travels.
But he felt guilty and worried that the high-level magic released by the Dragon Priestess might leave lingering damage in Gauss’s body, affecting his future potential.
So even though he hated to use it, he had to expend the priceless potion.
He sensed rich life mana flowing through Gauss and smiled.
The potion healed Gauss’s hidden wounds, and the remaining energy was nourishing his body.
Gauss might turn this fainting into an opportunity to break through.
He looked down; the two Dragon Worshipers had been swiftly captured one by one by Noxil’s actions.
“It’s time to head back.”
Thinking of how he had wanted to come to support after receiving Gauss’s signal but had been delayed, a shadow passed his usually calm face.
If not for Noxil’s timely help, it would have taken him longer to arrive, and Gauss might have been truly in mortal danger.
...
Longdi Fort, top floor of the Adventurers Guild
The once-quiet, peaceful hall suddenly erupted into chaos.
Ferguson, the guildmaster, who had been in seclusion for a long time, stepped out of his room with a thunderous face. A message from the provincial city had interrupted his cultivation.
“Call Vice Masters Edwards and Curtis here,” he told the person beside him. From his tone, it was clear his mood was far from good.
“Just tell them we have a major problem.”