"Winston. You do understand this is a false gate, right?"

"Yes."

Zelda shook her head slowly.

"I don’t think you actually do." She leaned forward. "Because of how stable things look here in the secret realm, it’s easy to forget what’s outside. But the actual tier of this region is Tier Three. Do you understand what that means for the guardian?"

Winston stayed quiet.

"The guardian will be at least Level 80. If you’re lucky." She held his gaze. "But there’s a real chance it reaches Level 95. Winston, you stand no chance."

Freya said nothing. She had gone quiet the moment Winston had announced his intention, and now that he announced it again she hadn’t moved from that position. Something about the certainty in his voice had made her hold back her doubt. There had to be a reason behind it.

She had watched him operate for three days. So she chose to wait.

Zelda didn’t have that distance. Six years of knowing Winston meant six years of knowing exactly when he was about to do something that could get him killed and she cared about it in a way that didn’t leave room for detachment.

"Winston, I know you awakened a Sacred class." Her voice tightened. "But Freya and I are Sacred class holders too, and neither of us is confident going near that guardian. Even if your class is stronger than ours, I don’t believe the gap is large enough to close a Tier Three gate solo."

He still didn’t answer.

"The best option is to wait here," she continued. "Keep the hidden effect active, pool resources, stay protected until the Association finds a way to send real help. With all three of us gathering energy stones, we can sustain the concealment long enough."

Winston still remained silent.

However Freya quietly stepped back. She wasn’t picking a side in this.

Winston looked at Zelda and said nothing aloud, but his mind was already moving through the flaws in her plan.

The energy requirement to maintain the hidden effect would only increase over time. If help took too long, the only monsters capable of dropping sufficient energy stones would be the Tier Three creatures Zelda was specifically trying to avoid.

And the hidden effect wasn’t impenetrable, a monster could still stumble across the entrance by accident. If that happened, everyone inside became trapped prey with nowhere to run.

Every one of those points was reasonable. Every one of them was worth saying.

But he didn’t say any of them.

The doubt in her voice had landed somewhere it shouldn’t have, and what came out instead was the first thing that rose to the surface.

"And who exactly is going to stop me?"

The pavilion went still.

Zelda looked at the floor. Her fists closed slowly at her sides.

"Why do you always have to be this stubborn?"

It wasn’t a question. The air pressure in the pavilion began to shift, it was a subtle, building tension that had nothing to do with the ventilation.

Zelda’s blue eyes brightened, the glow intensifying, and Freya’s hand moved instinctively toward her katana.

Zelda was already moving.

『EMPOWER』

She crossed the distance in an instant, first Realization fully active, fist loaded with the force of a freight train behind it.

BOOM!

The pavilion flaps blew outward from the shockwave. Mark was through the entrance in seconds, hand raised and ready, then he froze completely.

Freya stared with a blank expression.

Zelda’s fist had stopped cold and Winston hadn’t moved from where he stood. He had blocked it with a single index finger.

His crimson eyes were restrained, carrying a weight that hadn’t been there at Nightwing.

Zelda looked at her blocked fist. Then at him.

"I’ll ask you again, Zelda." His voice was quiet. "Who is going to stop me?"

Zelda stared at her own fist, still pressed against Winston’s single raised finger.

She hadn’t actually been trying to hit him. The punch had been aimed slightly to the side of his head and it was a venting of frustration more than an actual attack, the kind of near-miss that said everything without making contact.

However Winston had moved anyway. He had shifted his hand deliberately into the path of the strike and stopped it cold with one finger.

He hadn’t done it out of reflex. He had done it to make a point.

The air pressure dropped as Zelda deactivated her Realization. She stepped back, flexing her hand once at her side, trying not to make it obvious.

The impact had gone straight through. Her hand was numb from the knuckles to the wrist, and she was fairly certain Winston had already noticed.

Mark stood frozen in the pavilion entrance, still processing what he had just seen. He knew exactly how much force was behind that punch.

It was the same strike that had saved him on day one, the same blow that had sent a Level 25 monster staggering when nothing else had worked.

Yet Winston had absorbed it through one finger without shifting his footing.

"You’re far stronger than I assumed," Zelda said quietly.

Winston lowered his hand.

"That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"So there’s no changing your mind about the beacon."

"No."

Zelda exhaled. Six years had taught her exactly what Winston’s resolved expression looked like versus his stubborn one.

Right now it was both at once, and she knew from experience that trying to argue past that combination was a guaranteed waste of time.

His stubbornness had always been his worst trait and his best one, depending on the day.

She turned and walked to the bed.

Reached underneath it and pulled out a box with two scrolls inside, this box was different from the mastery fruit box, it was smaller and sealed with a faint shimmer along the edges.

She stood and threw the scrolls inside across the pavilion without ceremony.

Winston caught them both.

He looked down at the scrolls and his eyes shifted slightly.

*****

A/N: Thank You For Reading.