Winston activated his Soul Trait the moment his eyes closed and the world went dark. But through the Soul Trait, the Blood Emperor’s presence burned like a red sun against the void.

It was the only thing Winston could track. The only thing he needed to track.

The Blood Emperor watched him climbing blind and something shifted in its expression.

’He has power over death.’ The thought crossed its face clearly enough that Winston didn’t need to read its soul to understand the direction.

’Something even the high immortals don’t possess — instantaneous resurrection.’

The moment of shock when Winston had stood up from his own corpse had been the opening. Winston had used every second of it. But the Blood Emperor had processed the situation now and it wasn’t giving him another free window.

A giant sphere of blood coalesced above its raised index finger. Then it split into dozens of blood bullets that launched downward at Winston as he climbed.

Winston directed roots upward to intercept. They rose fast, forming a barrier between him and the incoming volley.

But the blood passed through the roots like they weren’t there, piercing into his shoulders on both sides. The pain fractured his concentration and the roots beneath his feet wavered as he dropped slightly before catching himself on a lower branch, regaining control before Gaia’s Grasp fully collapsed.

More bullets came. He couldn’t see them through closed eyes. But he had positioned himself to keep vital areas shielded, angling his body so the strikes landed on limbs and muscle rather than anything immediately fatal.

It was the best he could do.

When the volley stopped, he could barely move. Blood soaked through the armor from a dozen entry points.

The fact that Gaia’s Grasp was still active said more about his will than anything else, the concentration required to maintain a spell that mentally taxing while absorbing that much damage was the kind of thing that broke most holders long before the body gave out.

The Blood Emperor floated above him, one finger extended, a small sphere of blood balanced at its tip.

"No matter how many times you can come back, there has to be a limit." Its voice carried something close to satisfaction. "Even your will has a ceiling."

The sphere fired a single bullet, aimed directly at Winston’s head as he lay against the root with his eyes closed and his body wrecked.

The Blood Emperor smiled but Winston’s head moved at the last second and the bullet struck the root.

Life Tithe triggered as a charge burned to force the body back to full while he was still breathing. His wounds were sealed and the blood stopped completely. As every limitation that had been stacking on him for the last thirty seconds simply ceased to exist.

The Blood Emperor stared.

"How did you dodge that with your eyes closed?"

Winston didn’t answer. Energy was already building beneath his feet, the roots cracking the stone around him from the pressure.

『Grey Charge』

Thirty meters collapsed in under a second. Winston came up at the Blood Emperor with the Yari swinging at full extension, aimed to take its head.

The guardian pulled back just fast enough and the spearhead missed the kill by a fraction.

But Winston immediately layered Energy Coating onto the blade mid-motion without breaking stride.

The energy film extended the Yari’s effective reach by several inches. The follow-through caught the Blood Emperor across the eye drawing blood from the guardian this time.

"HOW DARE YOU — HOW DARE A MORTAL WOUND ME!"

The scream tore through the cavern as the Blood Emperor clutched its eye. Winston let gravity take him, dropping back down to the roots below and landing cleanly.

The moment his feet hit, he opened his eyes.

Taking the guardian’s eye had been the goal. Without them functioning properly, the illusion ability lost its primary anchor point. Winston could finally see again without the risk of being pulled under.

He steadied himself on the root and ran through what had just worked.

The second floor guardians had been manageable through Soul Trait vision alone, since they were close-range fighters whose soul outlines tracked against their body movements, giving him enough information to predict attacks and counter them.

The Blood Emperor was completely different. Its ranged attacks were projectiles. Projectiles didn’t have souls.

There was nothing for the Soul Trait to lock onto mid-flight, which was why the blood bullet volley had torn through him so thoroughly while his eyes were closed.

He had needed a different approach. If things with souls showed outlines, why not things without souls?

Objects without life force should still have a detectable absence, a shape in the void that the Soul Trait could render by elimination rather than by direct reading.

The act was simple in concept. But extraordinarily difficult in practice, requiring a level of mental output that most holders couldn’t sustain under combat conditions.

Winston had managed it for exactly one attack. The guardian’s final precision shot aimed at his head. That was all he had needed, one moment of soulless object tracking to read the angle, shift his head clear, and let the bullet pass.

The guardian’s shock had been the window. Grey Charge had closed it permanently.

Winston allowed himself exactly one thought about that.

’I might actually be a battle genius.’

The Blood Emperor’s screams were still echoing off the cavern walls. Then they changed as the pain shifted into something lower, something that vibrated differently through the stone and air around them. Winston’s eyes snapped up to see the guardian transforming.

The transformation happened fast and wrong in the way that only something ancient could manage.

The Blood Emperor’s spine elongated and arched backward, pulled by forces that had nothing to do with muscle or bone.

Its limbs stretched outward and the framework of what they were becoming became visible before the flesh fully caught up.

Leathery membranes spread between the elongated finger bones, unfurling in sections until two massive wings hung fully formed on either side, heavy and dark as velvet in the cavern’s remaining light.

Coarse dark fur pushed through the skin across the face and torso. The jaw pushed forward into a blunt muzzle, the elegant features that had sat in that throne dissolving into something older and less refined.

Throughout the entire process, the eyelids stayed shut, but not from pain, but by design. The skull was reshaping itself around new senses and it didn’t need to see.

The massive form rose on a sudden updraft, wings beating in slow, rhythmic pulses that moved more air than they had any right to.

The cavern filled with the sound of it, like the wingbeats were setting the tempo for everything else.

Winston stood on the root network below and looked up at it.

He let out a slow breath.

’Round two then.’

The giant bat opened its mouth and let out a screech that hit the cavern walls and bounced back from every direction at once. Then it folded its wings and dove.