William's blunt warning was not born of arrogance, but of a terrifyingly accurate understanding of monster biology. The Scarlet Bears were not allies; they were elemental forces of destruction currently trapped in a trance.
Once the buffer of lesser monsters was annihilated, these behemoths would not simply vanish. Deprived of targets, their blind, berserk fury would pivot toward the only remaining source of spirit signatures: the clan's own spirit masters.
At this stage, the bears were incapable of differentiation. The thin, milky membrane over their eyes rendered them functionally blind to the nuances of friend or foe.
They were slaves to a singular sensory input—the intoxicating, resonant scent of the yellow fluid. They would tear through stone, steel, and flesh with equal indifference to reach that scent.
The spirit masters on the ground, intoxicated by their sudden shift from victims to hunters, had committed a strategic blunder of catastrophic proportions.
