Honestly, if Gauss's stats weren't already outstanding—and if Moterra's blessing hadn't made him especially sensitive to evil power—he might not have been able to identify Fisher's aura so quickly.
On top of that, Gauss still carried a mark inside him.
It dated back to when he wasn't even a proper professional yet—still a bottom-tier adventurer.
During a purge of a ratman nest beneath a chapel, the ratman priest who ultimately chose suicide used his own life—and the lives of his kin—to brand Gauss with a mark.
Back then, the priest even spoke the name of the entity it served: Vespeteria.
Gauss later asked Moterra to remove it, but Moterra wasn't skilled in that kind of purification. She could only use a few methods to mask it.
"So Fisher… like that ratman priest… is also a pawn of that mysterious being?"
Gauss signaled the Red Dragon Company's ordinary members not to come any closer.
He didn't know whether it was an evil god, a demon, or a devil—but it definitely wasn't something harmless. For normal people, brushing against power like that was basically suicide.
"SSSS—!"
Fisher's mangled body—shot full of holes—suddenly jerked. A murky green vapor surged from inside him, wrapping around his entire form like a ghost clinging to flesh.
Then he slowly lifted into the air, staring at Gauss and baring a savage grin.
At this point he barely looked human anymore—more like the kind of humanoid evil creature people told stories about.
No wonder, after seizing power, he'd wanted Luna and the others dead.
"Be careful," Alia warned too, waving for the Red Dragon Company members to back off even farther.
At the same time, Serandur quickly cast Bless over everyone nearby, guarding against any poisonous miasma that might leak from Fisher's body and infect them.
Behind Fisher, the dozen or so elite riders he'd brought wore a mix of expressions.
Several yanked hard on their reins, their eyes flashing with fear as they stared at their new "captain."
Anyone could see how unnatural Fisher's state had become.
After exchanging glances, self-preservation crushed whatever loyalty they'd mustered. They turned their mounts and bolted—putting hundreds of meters between themselves and Fisher in seconds.
"Fisher… you finally can't hide it anymore, can you?"
Far off, Luna watched the transformation too. Even she looked shaken—this was beyond what she'd expected.
The night Wolf died, she'd only arrived at the tent at the very end. She hadn't witnessed the whole process, so she never knew what method Fisher used to kill Wolf so quickly.
She'd thought Fisher was simply an ambitious man.
Now it looked like he had something behind him.
Gauss lowered his gaze. Among Fisher's remaining people, a few were still charging—accelerating straight toward him.
So loyal… even after he'd revealed himself?
But as they closed the distance, Gauss sensed the same source-aura on them—much weaker than Fisher's.
Their transformations weren't full-body—only partial: an arm, a head, a section of torso.
Those altered parts became black-green energy-flesh, twisted and wrong.
So they were accomplices. That explained why they weren't panicking—and why they were sprinting toward the rear line of Red Dragon Company instead of toward Luna.
Luna's small group also edged closer to Red Dragon Company's formation.
She clearly wasn't going to stand aside.
Whether out of personal vendetta or pure survival, she had to help—because even if she ran, Fisher could still hunt her later.
Gauss stared at Fisher's fully-formed state, still calm.
So this was Fisher's "vessel."
According to Luna, he'd targeted Gauss since early this year, constantly poisoning Captain Wolf's ear, trying to push Wolf into taking action against him.
But there was a contradiction.
Fisher had killed Wolf—meaning he was stronger than Wolf by a fair margin.
If Fisher wanted Gauss's secrets, he could've acted himself. Why keep trying to incite a "helper" he could easily kill?
And why hold back before, only to suddenly strike now?
If the only new thing was that, after taking over, he had a few "converted" helpers… then the simplest answer was:
He only recently obtained this power.
That would also explain why he'd stayed quiet and subordinate for years—and why he stopped hiding his ambition now.
People who gain strength far above their station often lose balance. They get drunk on it.
"Still not enough."
Gauss was curious what—or who—had granted Fisher that same power as the ratman priest's. But using possession-energy to beat him was still a severe underestimation.
And "severe" didn't even begin to cover it.
Other people might find this kind of corrupt energy hard to deal with.
Gauss wouldn't.
He had Moterra's blessing. He had holy water. Fisher might look arrogant, but in that brief exchange earlier, the parasitic power clinging to him had already been eaten away a little.
Gauss could kill Fisher. It would just take effort.
But then… had Fisher used this power to instantly kill Wolf?
Even accepting Luna's account, Gauss still didn't get it.
Fisher's aura, in this form, topped out around the peak of Level 10. It wasn't giving Gauss the kind of pressure that screamed "overwhelming threat."
Sure, that might be enough to beat Wolf in a straight fight.
But to kill a Level 10 warrior in seconds—leaving him almost no chance to resist—you'd need transcendent power.
Like Gauss himself: if he went all-out, he could fast-kill Wolf.
So Fisher was hiding another trump card.
Gauss invoked his Dragonseed.
His instincts told him Second-Stage Ghoulification wasn't a direct counter to Fisher's current state.
But that was fine—Gauss had too many tools.
Dragonseed's furnace-like strength. Moterra-blessed body. Holy water. Witching Hour. All of them could restrain Fisher.
That was the terrifying part of Gauss's current strength:
He was complete—almost no blind spots. For most adventurers, that kind of breadth was unthinkable.
"Control Water."
He cast, recalling the holy water to his hand.
Even the distant Fisher—riding high on power—couldn't fully suppress a reflexive fear when he saw that shimmering blue flow again.
Deep in that water was a force that could grind down the "god-power" inside him.
But he hadn't acted rashly.
He'd already mastered the divine technique.
It was that very technique that had let him kill Wolf so easily.
He saw blue light flash across Gauss's body—space magic, just like the intelligence reports said.
He's coming.
Fisher's heart tightened.
Then—
Gauss blinked into view, close enough to be lethal.
In Gauss's hand, a blue-gold water spear had condensed into a long, knight-lance shape. He thrust forward.
The spear tip flared.
Pshk!
It punched straight through Fisher's skull, pinning precisely into a knot of condensed power in his "brain."
The knot burst—then began to reform somewhere else.
"Too weak! Too weak!"
"I can't be killed now!"
Fisher kept repeating it, grotesquely, even with his head pierced.
Gauss knew it was bravado. The lance's holy power was chewing through the parasite-energy. Once that was fully erased, Fisher would drop right back into mortal flesh.
Gauss's eyes stayed locked on Fisher.
He noticed Fisher was preparing another spell.
Gauss didn't know what it did—but he knew a simple rule:
If the enemy wants it, stop it.
He spoke Draconic and fired boosted magic missiles in a stream, intercepting Fisher's dark bolts mid-air, while chaining Any Door to keep pressure on Fisher's retreat.
Fisher, compared to normal casters, really was unusually strong—he could still cast quickly through injuries and abnormal states.
"Counterspell!"
Gauss snapped out the effect. With Precision enhancing it, the counter came fast and clean—yet the corrupt force on Fisher's body shrugged it off the moment it touched.
Gauss was about to spear through the freshly-reforming knot again—
Then Fisher laughed, triumphant.
Gauss knew: the biggest card was being played.
His blood ran hotter under the pumping force of his Dragonheart. Heat surged through his body. The raw life-force alone was enough to drive back most corrupt energies.
That was what dragons were: legend-species. In the material world, ancient dragons could even stand against gods.
Gauss wasn't an ancient dragon, but Fisher was nothing more than a pawn.
"Curse Divine Art—Beast's Punishment!"
For an instant, Gauss thought he heard something—like a voice.
Time seemed to freeze.
Then his vision went dark.
Shapes—countless shapes—rose around him.
"What…?"
His body stiffened in midair. Invisible but crushing shackles layered over him, one after another, locking him down like a mountain on his shoulders.
Not far away, Fisher's face split into a victorious grin.
"Hahahaha!"
Below, Alia, Luna, and the others heard the shift. The entire city seemed to tremble. They looked up—
And saw Gauss immobilized in the sky.
"How—?"
Alia's pupils shrank.
The sky had turned. Gauss was locked. Fisher still moved.
"I'm going to help him!"
She was only Level 5, but the returning elven blood in her body—and that faint, exalted moonlit divinity—could suppress some corrupt forces.
"Careful," Albena warned, swinging her axe to drive back Alia's opponent.
"Let's go, you two!"
Alia—now a peregrine—shot upward.
In the sky, Fisher didn't rush in.
He had to let the punishment work, to grind down Gauss's power. He still didn't dare close—afraid of backlash from Gauss's holy water and whatever other counters Gauss had.
He stood at a distance, "admiring" the sight that only he could see:
Shackles shaped like beasts, stacked on Gauss, like a corpse-mountain of curses.
It was an even more spectacular image than the one he'd used on Wolf.
"You can't move, can you?"
Alia circled near Gauss, pouring her energy into him—but felt no change.
Her power wasn't enough.
"The punishment is a god-given supreme divine art," Fisher said lazily. "Give up."
"No adventurer escapes its judgment."
"Everything you've killed—their resentment, pain, unwillingness—erupts as curse."
"I heard your captain loves slaughtering monsters."
"The more you kill, the harder it is to break free."
"That's the weight of life."
"Maybe his body will pop like a balloon—boom."
He explained it generously, as if victory was already certain.
Because in his mind, everyone here would die anyway.
But then—
His eyes snapped wide.
"Wh-what?!"
Inside him, that "almighty" god-power was leaking away.
If it was just fueling the punishment, fine.
But what terrified him was this:
The shackles around Gauss were collapsing—faster and faster.
"No! That's divine art!"
Gauss had killed tens of thousands of monsters. Fisher had verified it—Gauss was infamous for chain-running low-level commissions and wiping high-density nests.
In Fisher's mind, the god had crafted the perfect execution technique.
It should've crushed Gauss.
But then—
A voice spoke from the sky.
"You look surprised."
Gauss opened his eyes, staring straight at Fisher.
He flexed his fingers.
The invisible shackles shattered.
The curse wave had come, savage and heavy.
But the real effect wasn't what Fisher imagined.
The resentment was thick beyond belief, forming restraints—but it also feared Gauss like a god of death, never daring to truly strike.
The moment Gauss realized that, those "ferocious" spirits evaporated like ghosts under sunlight.
And really, it made sense.
When they were alive, they couldn't threaten him. Why would their dead will amount to anything now?
If the hatred of goblins and kobolds could move on its own, it would probably run away from him.
~~~
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