"What do you mean by a primordial trait?"

The Blood Emperor stared at him for a moment. Then it laughed with unhurried amusement, the kind that came from something that hadn’t been surprised in a very long time.

"Never in my existence have I been spoken to so carelessly by a mortal." The smile that followed was cold and calm in equal measure. "But I’ll humor you. You’ll be dead soon enough."

Winston didn’t react to the threat. The Level 140 reading had been the only thing to surprise him since entering this hall. Everything after that — the creature’s presence, its confidence, its casual delivery — he processed as information about the monster he was going to kill. Nothing more.

The Blood Emperor noticed this but it didn’t comment.

Instead it turned and walked out of the throne room. Winston followed without being asked, tracking it automatically, Yari still in hand. They stepped onto the third floor and the Blood Emperor stopped.

The twin guardians’ bodies were still where they’d fallen.

The Blood Emperor approached them slowly and knelt. Winston watched in silence as it placed a hand near the closest one.

"Your battle is finally over," it said quietly. "Rest now in the eternal abyss."

It stayed there for a moment. Then it rose and moved to the floors below, repeating the same ritual at each one. Winston followed the entire way down, through every floor and out of the pagoda entirely, where it extended the same gesture to the monsters that had fallen in the cavern outside.

Winston stood behind it and watched as a tight feeling crossed his chest.

’I can’t be sentimental about this.’

They had come after his life and In addition to that this was war, the same war humanity had been fighting since the Red Gates first tore open. Humans had died. Monsters had died. That was the reality of it. His grip on the Yari tightened slightly as he told himself that, and it helped.

When the Blood Emperor finished, it turned to face him.

"So, were you sent by the ___"

Winston couldn’t hear the last words as they dissolved into nothing, like the sound had been surgically removed.

The Blood Emperor’s expression shifted at Winston’s confused look as it was a clear sign he hadn’t heard its complete question. Something crossed its face the next moment and it looked remarkably like fury directed somewhere other than Winston.

"They put a mental block on it too." Its voice dropped. "Those bastards act righteous and then pull something more diabolical than anything we’ve ever done. If they hadn’t sealed my powers, I’d have gone after every last one of them."

Winston said nothing. He had stopped speaking the moment they left the pagoda. Something hadn’t felt right and he hadn’t been able to identify why, his mind kept sliding off the thought every time he reached for it until it finally latched onto something.

"Oh." The Blood Emperor smiled. "You already figured it out."

Reality shattered like glass and Winston hit the throne room floor hard as blood pooled around him immediately. The Blood Emperor stood over him, one hand bloodied and Winston felt the hole in his chest before he saw it.

The moment they had left the pagoda, that was when it had clicked. Guardians couldn’t leave the guardian room. That was a fixed rule, fundamental to how the Astral Heaven worked. But his mind had been blocked from reaching that conclusion until the illusion had already served its purpose.

By the time he understood, it was too late.

The Blood Emperor crouched slightly, looking at him with something between curiosity and regret.

"It’s a shame about the mental block. I can’t extract any useful information from you." A pause. "But that trait, I didn’t know a primordial trait could manifest in the mortal realm. If I had my full power, I could take it from you." Frustration edged into its voice. "But those bastards made sure it wouldn’t be possible."

BAM!

It suddenly kicked Winston’s body across the hall and he hit the floor hard before sliding to a stop. Winston’s vision had already gone dark from blood loss. The Blood Emperor watched him from a distance.

"The trait is wasted on a mortal. The fact that you can even hold it without your mind or body breaking apart is beyond me." It clicked its tongue as Winston’s vision went fully black and his life force faded completely. "Still trash at the end of it. What a waste."

The Blood Emperor turned back toward the throne.

It had been awakened from its long sleep by a power it hadn’t recognized. It had come face to face with that power and found it attached to someone it couldn’t take it from and couldn’t use. The frustration of that sat heavy as it walked back to its throne.

Then It felt it.

A surge of life force exploded directly behind it but as it spun to look all it could see was Winston standing in his own pool of blood. The hole in his chest had sealed. His crimson eyes were open and locked on the guardian with an expression that had nothing left of warmth in it.

Life Tithe had triggered, one soul was consumed and his body was rebuilt to peak condition in an instant.

The Blood Emperor stared. For the first time since this encounter began, it hadn’t moved fast enough as energy surged through Winston.

『Gaia’s Grasp』

BOOM!

The throne room floor erupted almost immediately as massive roots tore upward through the obsidian, destroying the hall from the inside out, pillars cracked, the ceiling fragmented and the entire structure came apart as root after root burst through every surface. The force carried through the pagoda walls and out into the open cavern beyond.

The Blood Emperor launched skyward, carried by the eruption, and found itself airborne outside the pagoda entirely — looking down at Winston standing between the roots below, with a cold smile on his face, staring up.

[Blood Emperor — Level 105]

The level drop made sense the moment Winston thought it through.

Guardians were physically bound to their guardian zone and they were incapable of leaving it under normal circumstances.

The restriction wasn’t a rule that could be broken through willpower or strength. It was absolute.

But if the guardian couldn’t leave on its own, the solution was to force it out. And Gaia’s Grasp had done exactly that, erupting through every surface of the pagoda with enough force to carry the Blood Emperor out of the guardian zone entirely, triggering the penalty the moment it crossed that invisible boundary.

Thirty-five levels stripped in an instant. From 140 down to 105.

As for the spell Winston had picked it up from the Level 22 Giant Tree Troll. When Freya had asked about it, he’d told her it wouldn’t come in handy then. He’d been right. This was the moment it was built for.

[Gaia’s Grasp — Level 22]

[Type: Expendable]

[Cost: 220 Energy]

[Effect: The caster funnels a massive surge of energy, causing the ground to heave and fracture within a 20-meter radius. From these fissures, thick iron-hard roots erupt at high velocity, forming sentient vine-like limbs under the caster’s direct mental control. These roots can lash out with bone-crushing force, entwine enemies in an inescapable grip, or form dense walls to intercept incoming attacks. Roots persist until concentration breaks or the target is fully subdued, then calcify and crumble.]

He had burned one soul slot into it before casting. That had pushed it from Level 22 to Level 44 and it had been enough to tear through obsidian floors, crack pagoda walls, and send a shocked Level 140 guardian airborne through its own structural ceiling.

The Blood Emperor looked down at him from the air, blood-red eyes wide with something it clearly hadn’t experienced recently.

"You vermin, how dare you!"

It reached for his mind immediately, the same illusion ability that had killed him once already pressing against his consciousness. But this time Winston’s eyes were already closed and it felt the attempt slide off him completely.

Winston, dropped into a stance, and rushed up the network of roots he still controlled, each one holding firm beneath his feet as he climbed fast toward the airborne guardian.