Winston raised the Yari and directed the roots upward simultaneously.

The giant bat came down with furious momentum, its wings folded as it dove straight at him.

The roots rose to intercept and the Blood Emperor tore straight through them, shrugging off the barriers like they were paper, closing the distance without slowing.

It opened its mouth and released a sonic wave at point-blank range.

Winston dove sideways, felt the pressure of it pass over him, and was already moving before he’d fully landed.

He sent a root spiraling upward beneath his feet and rode it toward the bat as it climbed higher, trying to reset the engagement from altitude.

The bat folded its wings and launched itself downward like a missile, its body spinning with the wind pressure from the rotation forming a defensive shell around it as it hurtled toward Winston on the ascending root.

Winston gripped the Yari with both hands, aimed the spearhead directly at the incoming torpedo, and layered Grey Charge and Energy Coating simultaneously onto the shaft.

The collision detonated in a spray of blood and the Blood Emperor erupted out of the explosion in its original form, one hand already coated in blood, driving straight for Winston’s chest.

It was still blind but echolocation didn’t need eyes. It had tracked him through the sound of the impact.

Winston shifted his grip fast, holding the Yari horizontally. The attack struck the shaft instead of his chest and launched him downward. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

BOOM!

He hit the cavern floor hard, dust erupting in every direction.

But he rolled clear a second later before the guardian’s foot cratered the stone where he’d landed.

Back on his feet. Eyes open. The roots were still active, but they were now intercepting the blood bullet volleys the guardian was firing.

Winston charged forward and the two of them collided as the Blood Emperor manifested a blood spear mid-motion, the weapons meeting with a sound that rang through the cavern like struck iron.

Back and forth. Thrust, deflect, counter, withdraw. Winston’s low thrust. The guardian’s leg block. The guardian’s high thrust. Winston’s parry and immediate riposte.

The exchange accelerated until the individual movements stopped being distinguishable as it just became the continuous percussion of draconic steel against blood steel, roots intercepting projectiles in the background, two fighters operating at a level that had nothing to do with their natural rank.

The Blood Emperor had centuries of experience. Winston had reflex, pattern recognition, and the Black Dragonic Armor’s passive pushing something primal into his combat instincts and giving him a hunger for the exchange that kept the smile on his face even as the fight intensified.

Then a blood bullet slipped through the root coverage.

Winston caught the movement late and jerked aside but it was not fast enough.

The graze disrupted his footing for a fraction of a second and the Blood Emperor read it instantly.

Its blood spear swept upward in a sharp vertical arc, catching the Yari’s shaft and sending it spinning out of Winston’s grip and into the air above them.

The guardian brought the spear down for the kill.

"Die!"

Time didn’t slow. Winston just thought faster.

He could take the hit. Life Tithe would bring him back. He still had charges.

But that was the problem.

If dying became the default solution every time the situation got critical, he’d stop finding actual solutions.

Comfort in a safety net was a ceiling he refused to build for himself.

He dove left and the blood spear struck stone.

The guardian’s guard was open. Winston had no weapon in hand and the roots were occupied.

The Blood Emperor pulled back for the follow-up, echolocation already tracking him, but it didn’t account for one thing.

Winston deactivated and immediately re-summoned the Black Dragonic Yari.

The polearm appeared directly in his outstretched hand mid-motion and to a blind creature relying on sound to track targets, the Yari had simply materialized from nothing at the exact moment of the strike.

The guardian had no time to react, as the spearhead drove through its neck and came out the other side.

The Blood Emperor coughed blood across the Yari’s shaft.

Winston drove the spearhead deeper, pinning the guardian in place, watching its eyes lock onto his with an expression that was trying to form words and failed trying.

He pulled the spear out sharply.

The guardian jerked, control over its blood projectiles collapsing instantly as its concentration vanished and the floating spheres dropped harmlessly to the cavern floor.

Its hands came up instinctively toward the wound. Winston grabbed its throat with his free hand.

"Checkmate."

The Yari came around in a clean horizontal arc as the Blood Emperor’s head left its shoulders and spun into the air.

One thought crossed through it in that final moment and it was how the spear had simply appeared in Winston’s hand with no warning.

But unfortunately it had no answer. The head hit the stone floor and the headless body followed a half-second later with a heavy, final impact.

Winston swung the Yari once to clear the blood from the blade and stood in the quiet that followed.

’So what happens now?’

He hadn’t actually thought past this point. He had never been the one to actually close a beacon before.

He didn’t have to figure it out as a subtle but clear pull came from the direction of the pagoda, like the building itself was calling him back.

He walked toward it, the root network dissolving behind him as he released Gaia’s Grasp, the thick iron-hard tendrils calcifying and crumbling to dust as the spell ended.

The throne room was wrecked, the floor cracked, walls fractured and the dais reduced to rubble from the roots that had torn through it.

Winston stepped into the center of it and watched as a spark appeared in the air above him.

Small at first until it became brighter and expanded fully into a golden gate, shimmering and stable, its light filling every corner of the destroyed hall.

Winston looked at it and felt something settle in his chest.

’We can finally go home.’

He had walked into a Tier Three beacon alone, faced a low-level Tier Four guardian that had already killed him once, and found a way through it anyway.

And it was not just through raw power, but through pattern recognition, improvisation, and a refusal to let the safety net of Life Tithe make him mentally soft.

The gate was open. Everyone in the secret realm had a way out.

He had done the impossible.

And he was already thinking about what came next.

****

A/N: Ten Golden Tickets or Ten Reviews for Bonus Chapters.