Every hair on the rogue Dilan's body stood on end.
It wasn't as if he'd never seen a Magic Missile—on the contrary, he knew the spell well. But the threat these missiles carried was unlike anything he'd felt before.
Too fast.
Piero's Magic Missile never looked like this!
And how had he missed that, besides the female target and the male "fighter," there was a hidden spellcaster in the enemy party at all? He'd been caught completely flat-footed.
His thoughts snapped into place.
The halo from the cleric's pre-cast Bless flared to life on him.
Blessed and driven by survival instinct, he kicked back with everything he had, exploding into a desperate retreat.
The last missile skimmed his waist by a hair.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Three bolts slammed into the snow, flinging up white plumes.
"That was close, yours tru—"
Dilan tumbled twice across the drift, wolfish and scrambling. He'd barely found his balance, hadn't drawn a full breath—
Another pulse of magic tingled at his side. "Magic Missile!"
Boom!
The missiles lanced from the staff in Gauss's hand.
Flat on the ground, Dilan watched them arrow in and felt his soul drop. At that speed, there was no way he could get clear.
He was spent, kneeling in the snow with no leverage. All he could do was throw his leather-braced forearms across his face and curl up as tight as he could.
Boom!
A bolt smashed into his forearm.
The impact crashed over him like a siege ram to the chest.
Crack! Crack! The splintering of bone was loud and clean—both forearms twisted like dead branches and snapped.
An instant later the weight of it flung him backward.
"—!!"
He rolled several times across the thin layer of snow.
Hot, bright blood splattered, painting big "plum blossoms" of red across the white.
"Kh—kh!"
He lay there coughing blood, crimson bubbling from his mouth. His broken arms flopped uselessly against the snow.
In the middle of his chest—beneath his leather—gaped a bowl-wide hole of shredded flesh. He didn't have long.
Flat on his back, his fading gaze happened to fix on the direction the missiles had come from.
Where he'd assumed there must be a dedicated caster, there was still only that "Goblin Slayer."
"Then… who…?"
Bewilderment drained from his pupils with the last light.
"Dilan!!!"
The rogue's sudden death made the distant cleric and mage—who'd been about to rush in with healing—stiffen, pupils pinpricking. Piero, especially, was struck dumb with disbelief.
That was… his Magic Missile?
What kind of sick joke—
Blake, up in Gauss's face, seized the opening.
The instant Gauss committed to downing Dilan, Blake hewed in with a great cleave, the white-edged blade ripping the air as it chopped for Gauss's shoulder.
Crack!
The crisp report rang across the snow.
A hit!
A flicker of triumph flashed in Blake's eyes—then vanished as the jarring, rock-hard rebound shuddered up his arms.
A heavy, invisible armor seemed to sheath Gauss from head to toe; if you looked close you could even see a faint ripple shimmer around him.
The strike he prided himself on had done nothing.
He hadn't gotten through the man's ward at all.
Gauss winced, let the force carry him into a backstep, and landed light. He lifted his eyes to Blake—no longer flat, but cold, threaded with killing intent.
"What a ward…" Blake swallowed. He understood now: the man in front of him was far beyond anything they'd expected. Had he known, he'd never have toyed with this idea at all.
He was already regretting it—badly.
In Gauss's periphery, Alia and Ulfen were both shaking off the sleep effect. Alia had mounted Ulfen; for the moment, she didn't need him.
"All in! Otherwise we're dying here!" Blake roared to the two behind him.
With Dilan gone, the remaining three were slow—and the enemy had a giant wolf. There was no outrunning that team in the short term.
Back to the river; fight or die.
The two survivors grasped the stakes at once. The cleric flung a Bless; halos settled over both him and the mage, sharpening the fighter's control and the mage's casting rhythm and success rate.
With his "support"—Alia—no longer a concern, Gauss ignored Blake entirely.
He triggered Enhanced Leap. Power seemed to well up from the snow into his legs.
Bang—
He stowed the Unbreaking Staff, didn't spare Blake a glance, and blurred past him toward the cleric and mage.
Trussed in heavy plate, Blake couldn't possibly keep up. He tried to cut Gauss off, but could only turn his head and watch the man tap-step past and vanish to his flank—a helpless, hollow feeling opening in his chest.
He knew it, too: he could charge in a straight line, sure, but with that weight and that pathing he'd never match Gauss for agility or speed.
The only one who could have run Gauss down—Dilan—was already cooling.
Gauss flickered across the snow.
The mage and the cleric, seeing his line, both felt their guts drop.
"Magic Missile!"
The mage threw the spell he knew best again and again toward Gauss.
But the power, the pace, the precision—none of it compared to Gauss's. Those fist-sized bolts looked smaller, slower. Gauss toe-tapped, slipped left, read the lines early, and ghosted past.
Rattled, the mage's form was a mess; if not for the cleric's Bless, he'd have been even slower.
Of everyone left, only the dead rogue truly understood how terrifying this swordsman-who-was-a-caster really was.
"Run!"
The cleric yanked out a crossbow and loosed a few token shots at Gauss as he closed, then started to turn—
Green tendrils, unseasonably alive, punched up through the snow at their feet.
Vines shattered the frozen crust, shot up, and lashed around both their ankles.
Alia had cast Entangle.
Thunk!
Both men pitched forward as the vines yanked and tangled, dumping them hard into the snow.
"Magic Missile!"
As if answering the mage's earlier volleys, Gauss returned fire with two of his own.
Boom!
Face-down in the drift, neither had time to roll.
Both bolts pounded into the center of their chests.
Pop!
The missiles cored through heart and rib; red bloomed across the clean snow.
Gauss added a Firebolt to the right side of each chest—just in case either of them had the vanishingly rare right-sided heart.
Three down.
He stopped and looked to the last man standing.
Blake hadn't moved.
His eyes flicked over the three cooling bodies, Adam's apple bobbing. There was no time to grieve—he knew it. With his team gone, he had lost any real chance against that man. How many of those surgical hits could his proud iron shell buy him?
His best blow hadn't even cracked the ward.
And the man was faster than he was.
Clang! The greatsword fell from his hands.
Thump! His knees hit the snow a heartbeat later.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong. They egged me on!"
He dropped hard, head bowed deep into the cold.
Astride Ulfen, Alia rode up beside Gauss and shot him a careful look.
"Relax," Gauss said softly, eyes on the warrior kneeling so neatly in the drift.
"Information! I'll trade you a piece of valuable information for my life!" Blake fumbled out a yellowed scroll.
"A treasure map, right?" Gauss said before he could begin.
"Y… yes."
Gauss didn't believe a word of it.
Sure, and I'm supposed to swallow that whole?
"Then toss it here. I agree."
Blake ground his teeth. "N—No. You have to guarantee my safety. Once we're back at camp, I'll—"
Gauss smiled.
He glanced at Alia and cast Message.
She nodded once as his voice brushed her mind.
"That's not how this works. Who knows if you'll bolt the second we're in camp—and even if you don't, what if you…" Gauss chewed a berry and a strip of frog jerky, topping up as he stalled the last fighter.
Time was on his side. With the numbers now reversed, he could take the man down whenever he liked—but why spend the effort if he didn't have to?
Beside him, Alia was ready.
A heartbeat later, at Gauss's cue, vines whipped up around Blake, sprouting and snaking with unnatural speed.
Before he could react, they'd bound his kneeling body and his fallen sword tight.
"You said—you said you'd let me go!" Blake's eyes bulged. He thrashed, snapping one creeper after another—only for more to surge up and coil him fast. The clever tendrils slithered over his armor, probing into gaps, and finally popped straps free.
"Magic Missile."
Three cerulean bolts howled toward him.
"Shame," Gauss said, watching the thick, unrepentant malice in Blake's eyes. He slowly shook his head. "You don't understand that you were wrong. You only understand that you're about to die."