For Gauss, the moment he sensed the divine substance leaking from within that golden candle, the nature of the battle quietly changed.
He knew he had to get his hands on that candle—fast.
The moment Any Door triggered, his body vanished from Hephaestus's back.
In the next instant, he blinked into open air somewhere two hundred meters away.
He'd chosen two hundred meters on purpose.
His current limit was three hundred meters, but through testing he'd learned that jumping three hundred meters cost more than double what two hundred meters did.
In other words, unless he was in a desperate escape situation like last time in Blackwater Town, a three-hundred-meter blink just wasn't cost-effective.
On the other hand, blinking only several tens of meters at a time really could save mana—but the tradeoff was frequency. The more often he cast Any Door, the more the total "wind-up time" stacked.
Right now, Gauss still needed about half a second of prep before each cast.
Half a second didn't sound like much—until you did it ten times in a row. Then it became five seconds. Ten seconds. Worse.
And in a real fight, five to ten seconds of uncertainty could mean anything.
So he settled on two hundred meters.
But the moment this silent jump went off, he realized something was different.
Those "fire birds" swirling through the valley reacted to his displacement almost immediately.
The nearest flames surged toward him like moths diving into a lantern.
And unlike when he'd been up on Hephaestus's back, the closer he was to the ground, the denser those flames became—almost everywhere, almost unavoidable.
He could feel the temperature of his skin rising fast.
Gauss's face didn't change. He simply drew on his mana and triggered a second Any Door.
He was still some distance from the elderly kobold chieftain.
He'd thought it would be a clean, straightforward approach—but he'd underestimated this valley-wide, unnatural fire.
No wonder. It was an attack fueled by divine essence.
Just as the white-hot flames were about to crash into him, mana surged again. Blue light flashed—and he disappeared.
Boom!
The converging "fire birds" collided and detonated into a burning cloud that had to be thousands of degrees.
The air warped. Space itself seemed to twist, like the heat was tearing at reality.
Gauss reappeared in an open patch two hundred meters away, glancing back over his shoulder.
"Pretty strong," he judged quietly.
That explosion didn't match his initial read of the chieftain's personal mana at all.
When he'd first looked with his golden dragon eyes, the chieftain's raw magical strength felt like an 8th-level caster.
But that blast just now? It was closer to Level 10 output.
That was impossible on its own.
A kobold wasn't a true dragon, not a demon, not anything naturally capable of that kind of over-level power.
The answer was obvious: the golden candle.
Its might was letting an ordinary kobold unleash attacks far beyond its station.
Gauss could force "low-tier transcendent" power when he went all-out, but that didn't mean he could ignore everything below transcendent.
And within that fire he could sense a pressure—subtle, but real.
His instincts warned him: if he got caught in it, the damage would be worse than it looked.
"Alright," he thought, "time to get serious."
He switched tactics instantly.
Black-and-white ghoul energy snapped back onto his body.
His mind accelerated. His blood and mana surged. His agility and speed spiked.
And as if something clicked into place under that pressure, his newly upgraded Greater Spell Mastery fused more completely with his casting.
The effect was immediate:
The prep time for Any Door—a Level 4 spell—shrank hard.
From about 0.5 seconds down to roughly 0.2–0.3 seconds.
Far away, the kobold chieftain—now fully channeling the candle's mysterious power—had entered a strange, profound state.
It felt… divine.
"So perfect…"
The sensation of near-omnipotence intoxicated it.
Here, in this valley, it believed it was invincible. Any enemy would be burned to ash.
The sea of flames felt like an extension of its own body.
To it, Gauss was an intruder inside its flesh—and even though Gauss was using stealthy spatial magic, it could still "sense" him instantly.
But the moment it realized the human was aiming for its treasure, a cold anxiety flared in its chest.
Damn him.
That candle was its treasure.
Once it had tasted that power, it became obsessed—so obsessed it usually hid the real candle deep underground and carried replicas when meeting stronger lords.
Because it understood a simple truth:
If higher-ranked monsters learned what it possessed, they'd take it—no matter the cost.
So it had to kill the human.
Kill him before he took the candle.
…
Blue light flickered again and again.
With his speed mode engaged, Gauss's Any Door became brutally clean.
The fire birds could still try to intercept—but with only 0.2–0.3 seconds of wind-up, the interception window collapsed.
The flames kept losing their target and colliding midair.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
High-temperature detonations erupted across the valley almost simultaneously.
Kobolds, rock, soil—everything got swallowed in white-hot blasts.
The spectacle was absurdly dramatic.
Farther away, the kobold commanders who'd prepared the wax-and-oil traps stared at the devastation with worshipful awe.
Their chieftain was unstoppable.
To them, it looked like the chieftain was controlling everything—and that the human was only barely, desperately escaping at the last moment, like prey trapped in a jar.
But what they didn't see was the truth:
Sweat the size of beans was running down the chieftain's brow.
Why?
Why was it always just missing?
Every time Gauss dodged, the chieftain's anxiety tightened another notch—like invisible tentacles wrapping around its heart and squeezing.
It could feel the "divine power" draining away.
And it was no longer as confident as it had been at the start.
It was starting to understand:
That human—Hephaestus's rider—really could take its treasure.
As Gauss's presence pressed closer and closer, the chieftain's pupils widened.
"No… no! You can't take it!"
More and more mana flooded into the candle.
"Die!"
"Die!"
"JUST DIE!"
Bloodshot veins spread through its eyes as it stared at Gauss, trying to kill him with sheer hatred.
And the explosions accelerated, faster and faster.
The entire valley began to tremble.
…
Gauss, unlike the chieftain, grew calmer with every step.
He watched the kobold unravel—and then shifted his focus to the golden candle.
The real weakness was the chieftain itself.
Put a weapon in a child's hands and put it in a trained soldier's hands—the result isn't even comparable.
In Gauss's eyes, this chieftain was the child.
Yes, if the chained explosions actually hit him, they'd hurt.
And if he got pinned, the endless fire birds could stack into something far worse.
But that all depended on one thing:
Hitting him.
The chieftain's reaction speed was wildly slower than Gauss's 0.2-second timing.
Divine essence made the attack strong—but the kobold couldn't match that strength, even after being empowered.
To sense Gauss, decide, issue intent, channel mana through the candle, then steer the valley's flame birds—every step took time.
Gauss's movement was point-to-point teleportation.
And he was deliberately not taking the shortest line.
Meaning the chieftain couldn't truly predict him—every attack had to be launched after it re-acquired his position.
So in theory, if the chieftain's chain of reactions exceeded 0.2 seconds, it would never land a direct hit.
That "so close—almost" gap the commanders imagined wasn't a near miss.
It was an unbridgeable gulf.
And that was why the chieftain finally cracked—why it started throwing random detonations.
Less "attack," more "panic."
Because it had started to grasp the objective reality:
Even with the candle, it could not reliably hit Gauss.
Outside the valley, Red Dragon Company elites were already ordering emergency repositioning so collapsing tunnels wouldn't bury their people.
And amid the constant shockwaves, Gauss blinked and blinked again—closing the distance until he was finally right beside the elderly chieftain.
Up close, he froze for a fraction of a heartbeat.
The kobold had changed.
Its once-dull red scales had lost what little sheen they had. Its life force felt paper-thin. It looked like it was dying on its feet.
It had been old—but not this old.
"So that's the price," Gauss thought fast.
"Overusing divine essence burns its life."
Power beyond your level always demands a cost beyond reason.
To this kobold, divine essence wasn't a blessing.
It was poison.
"Counterspell!"
Gauss snapped a suppressive effect onto it.
The chieftain's body convulsed—spell backlash becoming the final straw.
Residual mana inside it spiraled into chaos, tearing through its organs like a storm.
Its neck, chest, belly, limbs—bulging and collapsing like a balloon under violent pressure.
And at the same time, the flames that filled the valley abruptly lost "will," slowed, and began to fade.
"Hand it over."
Gauss blinked in and, with ruthless speed, ripped the golden candle from the chieftain's grasp.
The kobold tried to clutch it back—but its body was already failing.
Gauss glanced at it once, then slapped a palm into its torso.
Don't die here. Not in my hands.
"Any Door!"
"Fireball!"
Blue light wrapped the chieftain—no resistance, no counter.
A flash, and it vanished—reappearing high in the air three hundred meters away.
Then the Fireball detonated.
BOOM!
A roar of light and heat—then nothing remained.
"Kobold Chieftain Slain ×1"
"Gained Commander Points ×20"
Gauss felt the confirmation register.
Then he looked down at the golden candle in his hand.
The instant he held it, a hunger rose from inside him.
A craving.
He didn't resist.
Under his gaze, the candle began to break apart into particles—dissolving into his palm like glittering dust.
His right hand turned pure gold.
The glow lasted more than ten seconds before slowly fading, returning to normal.
Then the system prompt appeared.
"Gained Divine Favor 1.52%. Current Divine Favor: 2.65%."
"And you have absorbed a mysterious power from this special divine substance."