While Jorghan drew every eye and weapon in the base, they'd slipped to the interrogation area where Swana and Scarlett were held. The guards were already dead—casualties of Jorghan's initial assault—making the extraction almost too easy.

Swana could barely stand, her injured leg useless, venom still coursing through her veins. Scarlett was conscious but battered, one eye swollen shut, blood crusting her split lip.

"We need to move!" Sik'ra had shouted, hauling Swana up with one arm while Sarhita supported Scarlett.

"Now!"

They'd made it perhaps two hundred yards when the shockwave hit.

Sarhita saw it coming—a wall of force and debris expanding toward them like the breath of an angry god. She threw up her hands, her own magic responding, creating a barrier of hardened air that wrapped around all four of them.

The shockwave struck.

For three heartbeats they were inside a maelstrom of destruction, the barrier holding but barely, cracks forming in Sarhita's hastily constructed defense. Debris hammered against the shield—metal fragments, chunks of soil, pieces of things that had once been equipment or structures or people.

Then it passed, leaving them gasping but alive in a suddenly silent world.

"Higher ground," Sarhita gasped.

"We need to see what's happening."

They moved as quickly as Swana's condition allowed, scrambling up a rocky outcropping that overlooked the base. Sarhita laid Swana down gently, already pulling a healing potion from her pack—one of the expensive ones, crafted with rare ingredients specifically designed to counteract venoms.

She carried them just in case, as they were in the forest.

"Drink this," she said, supporting Swana's head.

"All of it. It's going to burn, but the poison needs to be neutralized."

Swana drank, and true to Sarhita's warning, fire seemed to spread through her veins. But it was cleansing fire, burning away the venom's corruption. Within moments, color began returning to her face, her breathing steadying.

Below them, in the crater where the IPMF base had stood, two figures faced each other.

Jorghan and the Sentinel.

Both are still standing.

The shockwave had created exactly what Jorghan needed—distance and opportunity.

The blood was everywhere.

Hundreds of soldiers dead, their life essence pooling across the devastated ground. He'd been holding back from full absorption, maintaining some measure of control, but now he released that restraint.

His eyes flared deep crimson again as he raised his hands; sigils appeared before his palms.

The blood responded.

It flowed toward him from all directions—rivulets becoming streams, streams becoming rivers of red that defied gravity and physics alike. The blood didn't touch the ground as it moved; instead, it floated through the air, drawn by his will, answering his call.

When it reached him, it didn't coat his skin. Instead, it was absorbed directly into his body, converted into pure essence that enhanced every aspect of his physical form.

His muscles flexed with a red-colored aura. His bones strengthened beyond anything organic tissue should be capable of. His reflexes sharpened even further until he could track individual dust motes in the air and the sounds of sand beasts in the desert. His perception expanded, letting him sense the flow of energy through the Sentinel's systems, the micro-adjustments of its servos, and the heat signatures of its power distribution.

He was using the blood essence to enhance his physique, making progression to another level.

The blood essence flooded through him, and with it came power that transcended mere physical enhancement.

This was the true nature of his bloodline—not just manifestation and control, but transformation. The blood of the fallen becoming fuel for evolution, each death feeding his ascension.

[Bloodessence Extraction: Complete]

[Primordial Form: 100% Integration]

[Physical parameters exceeding baseline by a factor of 8.3]

[Warning: Continued absorption may trigger irreversible transformation]

He ignored the warning.

"Round two," Jorghan said quietly.

The True Battle Begins

Carrow's sensors screamed warnings as they registered the hostile's energy signature spiking to levels that shouldn't be possible. The force field that he had around Jorghan was not working anymore.

The Sentinel's AI recommended immediate withdrawal, tactical reassessment, and calling for orbital support.

Carrow overrode every suggestion.

"I don't care what the readings say," he growled into his neural interface.

"That thing killed my men. Engage full combat protocols. We're ending this."

The Sentinel launched forward again, this time with both arms configured for close combat. Pile drivers extended from the forearms—kinetic hammers capable of delivering repeated strikes with enough force to shatter tank armor.

Jorghan met the charge head-on.

No sword this time.

No wings.

Just his body, enhanced beyond human or elven limitations, moving with speed that made the Sentinel's advanced targeting systems struggle to keep track.

The first pile driver descended. Jorghan's hand came up, catching the three-ton arm mid-strike. Metal screeched as his fingers dented the meta-carbon composite, impossible biology overcoming impossible engineering.

He twisted, using the Sentinel's own momentum against it, and threw the twelve-foot war machine like it weighed nothing.

The Sentinel crashed through what remained of a supply depot, demolishing the structure entirely before its anti-grav compensators could arrest the momentum. It recovered almost instantly, servos adjusting, armor plates shifting to reinforce impact points.

They came together again in the center of the crater.

This time there was no pause, no moment of locked struggle. Just brutal, devastating combat that would have killed anything less durable than what they'd become.

The Sentinel's right arm pistoned forward in a straight punch.

Jorghan caught it with both hands, but the force drove him backward, his feet carving trenches in the ground. Before he could counter, the left arm came around in a hook that caught him in the ribs.

The impact cracked the air like thunder.

Jorghan was lifted off his feet and thrown fifty yards, his body tumbling through debris before he arrested his momentum with a burst of wind magic.

He came up bleeding—first blood in the entire engagement—but the wound was already closing, blood essence accelerating his healing to supernatural levels.

"You can be hurt," Carrow said with grim satisfaction.

"Which means you can be killed."

Jorghan smiled, and there was nothing human in the expression. "So can you."

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