Chapter 36: That Might Work
The demigods had done their research on Winston before he stepped outside the gate.
Knowledge of an initiate clearing a Tier Three gate wasn’t something any of them could afford to treat lightly.
However what the research had returned was not what any of them had expected. For starters he wasn’t from any notable class holder family plus there was no record of exceptional performance at Nightwing and it was quite the opposite.
Winston sat at the bottom of his class academically and near the bottom physically.
The academy records painted a picture of someone who had barely scraped through six years of training.
In the real world, weak students awakened weak classes. That wasn’t pessimism, it was a consistent, documented pattern across every academy in Key City and beyond.
The Trait Factor’s potency showed itself before awakening through raw talent and physical capability.
Winston’s records showed neither. And yet he went against every conventional data collected so far about the trait factor.
Freya had been holding her composed posture through her father’s entire exchange, but it cracked the moment the word registered.
She turned to Winston directly.
"You’re a Fortunate?"
Winston shifted his attention from Richard to her without missing a beat.
"Yes. Hope that doesn’t change anything."
Freya didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes moved to Zelda instead and a new question formed.
Zelda saved her the trouble.
"I’m a Fortunate as well."
Freya went still.
She had been curious about the two of them since the moment she’d watched Winston take apart the Grey Tusk.
Two people who performed at that level had to have come from somewhere significant.
Either they were quietly trained by the Association or they came from families that kept a low profile.
The possibility that they were Fortunates had genuinely never occurred to her.
Her entire framework for understanding class holder potential had just developed a serious crack.
’I assumed they were secretly trained. I never even considered Fortunates.’
Winston noticed her expression and started to say something.
However he stopped the moment he felt eyes on the back of his neck as he turned to see Richard still watching him.
"Right...you asked how I handled the guardian."y Winston straightened. "My apologies for the delay."
Richard said nothing.
Luckily Celeste stepped in before the silence extended too far.
"Yes. Walk us through it."
Winston looked at the guild master and smiled slightly.
"It’s simple. But first off I didn’t face a Tier Three guardian."
The three demigods reacted differently but simultaneously. Celeste’s expression shifted to confusion. Markus’s eyes narrowed and Richard’s attention, which had been operating at about sixty percent, came fully online.
Celeste recovered first.
"If you didn’t face a Tier Three guardian, how did the gate open?"
"I opened it by defeating the guardian," Winston said. "That part is accurate."
Now all three of them were looking at him with versions of the same expression. Fortunately Winston didn’t leave them in it long.
"The guardian wasn’t a Tier Three monster. It was Tier Four."
The silence that followed lasted exactly two seconds before Celeste broke it.
"You took down a Tier Four monster." It wasn’t quite a question.
"How?"
Richard and Markus had struggled to accept that Winston had taken down a Tier Three guardian, despite every report and piece of evidence pointing towards an initiate clearing a Tier Three beacon, and two of them had resisted it instinctively.
That resistance hadn’t come from stubbornness — it had come from something more fundamental.
Divine Instinct.
The ability every demigod possessed, an elevated threat and truth perception that operated below conscious awareness.
It was the reason Markus had doubted from the beginning. The reason Richard’s assessment of Winston had kept returning uncertain results.
Now they all understood why.
Their Divine instincts hadn’t rejected the Tier Three story because it was impossible.
They had rejected it because it was wrong.
The truth was different, and the moment Winston said the actual Tier of the guardian, every instinct all three of them had went off simultaneously like a signal long overdue.
The alarms running through their awareness now were confirmation, not doubt.
Celeste leaned forward slightly.
Markus had gone very still in the way powerful people go still when they are genuinely uncertain what to do with new information.
Richard’s attention, already fully engaged since the Tier Four revelation, had sharpened further, because even with his senses at their peak, even with Divine Instinct running at full output, there was still nothing on Winston’s surface that should have made any of this possible.
’A genius, perhaps. But geniuses don’t fight three tiers above their rank. That has never happened. Not once in the entire recorded history of the Astral Heaven.’
Winston looked at the three of them and read the room without the Soul Trait.
The questions were coming from a place of genuine confusion rather than suspicion.
More importantly, Trait Concealment was holding clean and not a single flicker of recognition about what he actually was had crossed any of their expressions.
He had an opportunity here, and he needed to use it correctly.
’I have to plan this carefully.’
Winston laid it out the same way he had for Freya and Zelda.
Celeste and Markus both listened with the focused attention of people who could recognize a genuinely novel tactical approach when they heard one.
The expressions on their faces said they were impressed and processing simultaneously.
However Richard said nothing.
After a moment his gaze moved to Freya, something turning over behind his eyes that he hadn’t voiced yet.
Winston noticed but left it alone.
Then Celeste laughed it was the kind that came from someone who appreciated what they were looking at.
"Impressive doesn’t cover it." She looked at Winston directly. "So let me ask you something. Why don’t you join the Lunar Wolves? We take exceptional care of our members, and I think you’d find the resources considerably more interesting than anything a Nightwing graduate typically has access to."
Markus turned toward her with an expression he was keeping deliberately neutral.
’Shameless hag!.’
He looked back at Winston.
"Becoming an Association agent would suit you better. The opportunities available through official channels are significantly broader than guild membership — more reach, more protection, more room to develop at your own pace."
He let the last part land with weight.
The two demigods looked at each other. Neither smiled outright, but there was something running beneath both their expressions, the shared awareness that Richard, who had spent the initial part of this conversation establishing his own authority and undermining Winston, was currently unable to make a competing offer without it looking like a reaction to theirs.
Richard had noticed too. His pride registered the position he’d been maneuvered into. His eyes moved back to Freya.
She was watching the exchange between the two demigods with her usual composure. But Richard studied her face for a moment longer than necessary.
’That might work.’
