When they finally made out who it was through the glare of spell-light, Leavin and Meva both showed expressions of surprise—followed immediately by recognition—and the wariness in their bodies vanished at once.
Beside them, Sasha—the female warrior who had once met Gauss in passing—stood frozen for a long moment, only then realizing she'd seen this person somewhere before.
Only Elvin, the priest who'd joined the team not long ago, still looked completely baffled. His weathered middle-aged face swung left, then right, silently wondering who this obviously extraordinary figure was and why he would help them.
He'd heard Leavin and Meva's names earlier—so maybe this man was their acquaintance?
But why had they never mentioned it?
And after traveling together for a while, he'd learned enough about his teammates to know they were plain, ordinary adventurers. It didn't make sense that they could know anyone of this caliber.
Eyes wide, he watched Gauss wipe out the beastmen that had trapped them with a few casual motions of his hand.
When the dust settled and the explosions stopped, the area around them looked like the surface of the moon—craters of varying sizes everywhere, and bodies sprawled across the ground, permanently motionless.
"So… so strong…"
Sasha and Priest Elvin both swallowed hard.
The enemy that had cornered the Night Owl squad to the brink of death had been crushed so effortlessly by that man who appeared out of nowhere.
The contrast was so stark it left their minds buzzing.
Even Leavin and Meva—who thought they understood how strong Gauss was simply because he was active around Greystone and it was hard not to hear rumors—were still stunned.
Hearing about someone's power and seeing it with your own eyes weren't the same thing. The latter hit you like a hammer.
After sweeping the marsh beastmen from the area, Gauss checked again to confirm there was no immediate danger. Then he drifted down and landed.
"I didn't expect to run into you two here."
He touched down lightly. His moon-white robe was spotless—there wasn't even a hint he'd just finished a fight.
As he spoke, he flicked four cantrips onto the four of them.
White light flashed.
The blood and grime on their leather armor and skin peeled away as if stripped by invisible hands, gathering into clotted red lumps that plopped onto the ground nearby.
"Thanks, Gauss!" Leavin and Meva finally exhaled and greeted him.
"Seriously—thank god we ran into you."
Meva's whole body, rigid with tension, loosened in one instant.
Things had been so desperate she'd already made peace with dying here today. Then luck had thrown Gauss in front of them.
If Gauss was here, it meant the danger was over.
"G–Gauss?!"
Priest Elvin and Sasha—who had still been trying to place him—both blurted it out at the same time.
Elvin in particular dropped his wooden staff on the ground. That alone showed how shaken he was.
He stared at Gauss like a fan seeing his idol in person, and he stammered respectfully, almost tripping over his own words.
"Y–You're… you're the Gauss I know of? That… that Gauss?"
Gauss, who had been talking with Leavin and Meva, turned his head, looked at him, and smiled as he nodded.
"Probably. More or less."
"Good heavens… I can't believe it's really you!"
"And—my name's Elvin. I'm a priest. I'm… I'm a huge admirer of yours."
The middle-aged man's face flushed bright red with excitement that didn't match his age at all.
"Hello." Gauss nodded politely.
Elvin whipped back toward his teammates, still buzzing.
"Leavin, Meva—you two know Gauss?!"
"I never told you?" Leavin blinked. "We used to be teammates."
"Huh?" Elvin looked stunned, rifling through his memories.
Then something flickered—an old scene, a tavern night when the party had just formed. Leavin, drunk, had mentioned a former teammate named Gauss.
Elvin had been drunk too. He'd brushed it off as just someone with the same name.
Because who would ever imagine Leavin and Meva had once teamed up with this Gauss?
"I thought it was just someone else with the same name—because you two are only Level 1." Elvin protested.
He honestly didn't think that was on him. Leavin hadn't given details, and in Elvin's mind, his teammates and the legendary Gauss lived in different worlds.
Leavin and Meva exchanged a glance, both a little embarrassed.
Compared to Gauss, they really did look painfully ordinary.
Gauss simply smiled, watching the scene play out.
He hadn't expected a priest like Elvin to idolize him this much. Shouldn't a priest admire high-level healers more than a guy who spent his life fighting?
Maybe every priest had a warrior's heart, deep down.
"I took a commission to clear out the marsh beastman nest ahead," Gauss explained. "I sensed fighting in this direction, so I split off and flew over to check."
As he finished speaking, the Red Dragon Company's convoy appeared in the distance.
The four Night Owl members stiffened instinctively at the sight of a large, disciplined force rolling in.
"Gauss, you couldn't wait for us?" Alia started to tease him—then she spotted Leavin and Meva beside him and stopped.
She hadn't interacted with them much, but she knew they were once Gauss's companions, so she simply offered a friendly smile.
"Hey."
"Hello." Leavin answered politely.
Gauss was used to Alia's presence, but to outsiders she didn't read as "normal" at all. Her elven traits were striking—sharp ears, pale skin, a face that made you stare. The pale blue of her hair and eyes had faded over time; now it was a silvery gray with a faint bluish sheen. She was tall enough, long-limbed, and moved with that light, fluid grace.
She looked closer and closer to a pure-blood elf—far more than a typical half-elf ever would.
Gauss saw her every day, so he didn't really notice the change anymore.
"You hurt?" Alia asked. "Want me to heal you?"
She'd recently learned another healing spell.
"No injuries. Gauss got here in time." Leavin shook his head.
But the more people there were, the stiffer Leavin became. With Gauss it still felt natural—now, with unfamiliar faces, the air turned awkward, like his hands and feet didn't know where to go.
Gauss caught the discomfort immediately.
"We're setting up camp here for now," he said. "You can rest with us for a bit, if you want."
They'd come for the beastman clan in the swamp. The chase fight had happened, but Gauss was sure he'd wiped out the pursuing force completely.
That meant the main beastman clan likely still didn't know the Red Dragon Company had arrived—perfect timing.
And Gauss wanted to talk with Leavin and Meva anyway, find out what had happened, and get more intel on the swamp nest. He knew them: they weren't reckless people. It didn't make sense that they'd walk themselves into that kind of trap without a reason.
"Alright." Leavin accepted.
They needed a breather—and he hadn't forgotten how unnatural this whole incident felt.
Now that Gauss was here, he could finally ask.
…
"The horses are back."
With the crows' help, Leavin's missing mounts were quickly found.
Alia, with her druid instincts, stepped up naturally to "talk" to them.
"It was a group wearing gray cloaks," she reported.
"It has to be them—the rogue team," Meva said, nodding. "They might still be nearby."
After hearing the story, Gauss considered it. "If they're smart, they're close."
His guess was right.
Because at that moment, a few kilometers from the Red Dragon Company's camp, several rogues in filthy, lead-gray cloaks sat on a fallen dead tree, whispering.
"Damn it—those bastards got lucky. How the hell did they run into an adventuring company right then?"
They'd watched the situation from a distance.
Everything had followed their script… until someone dropped from the sky and erased the beastmen in an instant. Then a strong team rolled in.
One glance was enough to know they couldn't touch those people.
"Boss, maybe we drop it," one of them muttered.
They'd planned to have Leavin's group die quietly in the swamp. Now there were too many variables.
"No," the leader said stubbornly. "They have to die here."
"And besides, that company just happened to pass by. They won't protect them forever. Once those people leave, we make our move."
"…Fair." The others nodded. That made sense.
They fell quiet again.
The man they called "boss" wore a complicated expression. His hand slipped into a hidden inner pocket.
Inside were two ancient-looking pieces of leather.
He came from an old family—so old that back when the family held power, this land wasn't even called what it was called now.
But the family had fallen. After his parents were killed by bandits, he was the last one left.
By chance, he'd returned to the ruins of their ancestral land to mourn the past glory—and there, in a surge of longing, he'd stumbled onto a torn map fragment.
After researching old texts, he learned the truth:
It was a special enchanted map. It recorded his family's buried treasure—an emergency vault meant to let future descendants rebuild the family if disaster struck.
The map had been split into many pieces, held by the heads of different family branches.
To prevent outsiders from decoding it, the map used a proprietary cipher unique to their bloodline.
Once the map was completed, it would guide its heir to a secret so valuable it could restore the family to power.
And the piece he possessed was the master page.
That master page had a unique property—it could subtly attract the other fragments.
The moment he saw the shield-bearer's scrap, he knew it was one of the missing pieces.
That was why he'd panicked when he noticed the shield-bearer seemed fascinated by it.
From the very beginning, he'd never intended to let them live.
And the three "teammates" beside him? He wouldn't let them live either.
That was why he'd gone to such lengths to lure beastmen onto Leavin's group—because he feared divination magic and causality-type spells.
If the targets died at monster hands instead of his, the risk of being traced dropped sharply.
Once he assembled the complete map, the treasure would change his life forever.
So he had to be careful. Careful to the point of cruelty.
Lost in that sweet fantasy—his future already glittering in his mind—he didn't notice the master page in his pocket pulsing faintly, a strange magic beginning to turn.
…
"No. We need to find those guys."
Even after Leavin told him not to derail the Red Dragon Company's plans for their sake, Gauss still chose to go after the rogues.
Partly because they were his former teammates—if Gauss hadn't shown up, they'd be beastman food.
Partly because before you punch monsters, you crush the rot inside.
Dirty little people using monsters as knives could be far more dangerous than they looked.
If they could try to kill Leavin over a minor conflict, they were the kind of poison that didn't stop.
Today it was Leavin. Tomorrow it might be the Red Dragon Company.
And what if the company moved on later and the rogues tried again?
Gauss had always been fiercely protective of his own.
Besides… he simply wanted to deal with them.
At his level, instincts mattered. If a thought kept scratching at him and wasn't obviously foolish, he usually followed it.
And in an open wilderness, finding a handful of rogues was hard for normal adventurers.
For him, it wasn't.
He cast flight, rose high into the sky, and clipped on his Eagle-Eye Monocle.
With his already inhuman attributes layered with the monocle's effect, the world sharpened.
Unless you flew the whole way, even a stealth specialist left traces.
"Those are animal hoofprints… that's our convoy's trail… hmm?"
Then Gauss's eyes lit up.
"Found you."
His body flashed—
Gauss appeared beside a set of clear footprints, studying their depth and spacing. Four lean adult men, moving together.
He locked onto their direction and shot forward, slicing through the trees.
And in that same forest—
The rogue leader, Felix, looked up, his face suddenly glowing with excitement.
His three subordinates stared at him, confused by the abrupt shift.
Only Felix knew why.
The master page had warmed again.
That meant a new fragment—another "child page"—was somewhere nearby.
So close he could almost taste it.
He wanted to howl.
He truly was the chosen one. Fate itself was shoving his inheritance into his hands.
"Ha… ha!"
He couldn't stop himself from laughing.
And then—
A calm, unfamiliar voice dropped from above, freezing his blood.
"What are you laughing at?"
Felix's joy shattered. Cold sweat burst out.
"Who—?!"
He snapped his head up.
A stunningly handsome man floated above them, arms crossed, gazing down with mild curiosity.
"Y-you…!"
Felix's pupils blew wide.
He recognized him instantly—the one who'd saved Leavin's group.
And now, up close, he recognized who he was.
"You're Gauss."
He swallowed hard, mind spiraling.
"Hello," Gauss said, expression unchanged.
~~~
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