Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

The massive corrupted crocodile launched herself entirely off the submerged rocks.

Her colossal armored body soared through the heavy rain, completely defying gravity for a terrifying moment as her cavernous jaws snapped wide open, revealing endless overlapping rows of jagged yellowed teeth aimed directly at the huddled struggling rookies who were frantically trying to chip their legs free from the dark ice.

Silas pushed his Mythic Gold Core to its highly volatile maximum.

A roaring brilliant golden aura erupted violently from his skin, completely vaporizing the rain around him into a thick cloud of hissing steam.

His muscles fired with terrifying superhuman velocity, drawing upon the deepest reserves of his sovereign foundation.

He surged forward off the elevated rocks, his boots shattering the jagged, dark ice beneath his feet with every thunderous step as he desperately tried to physically intercept the massive beast’s airborne trajectory.

CRASH! SHATTER! CRASH!

But the cold unforgiving reality of the battlefield crashed down on him with the weight of a collapsing mountain.

The physical distance was simply too great...

The quicksand trap had forcefully dragged the rookies nearly forty feet away from his starting position on the ridge, and the Matriarch’s armored, airborne momentum was simply too fast for even his enhanced physique to match since he wasn’t that high leveled...

He was going to be more than two seconds too late to block the devastating bone-crushing bite.

’Dammit,’ Silas thought with his grip tightening around the heavy hilt of his mythril blade until the leather groaned.

He gritted his teeth, fully preparing to watch these girls suffer their very first casualties under his direct command.

He could heal them yes... but...

’Wait Eluned...!’ He glanced at the Watchtower in the distance... He was not fighting this war alone.

He had built a territory, and that territory was watching his back.

High above the flooded, treacherous, slop-filled quarry, the bruising, dark-purple clouds of the raging monsoon violently tore open.

WHOOOSHHHHHH!

The deafening roar of the rain and the terrifying snarling of the descending Matriarch were entirely overpowered by an incredibly high-pitched shriek of hyper-compressed mana violently tearing its way through the dense atmosphere.

SCREEEEEEECH!

Miles away, standing safely atop the massive, seventy-foot, rune-carved observation deck of the towering Blood-Iron Watchtower, the situation was entirely under flawless control.

”Phew...” Eluned sighed, using this thing was fun!

Eluned and Fenna had not taken their eyes off the magically-assisted ballista scopes for a single second since the ground teams had deployed.

The SSS-Rank Goddess and the Bow-Splitter captain had actively, meticulously tracked the massive spike in Silas’s Gold Core mana, recognizing the signs of an escalating engagement.

Through the glowing blue reticles of the heavy artillery, they watched the massive, highly armored signature of the Tier 3 Boss launch itself into the air toward the women’s vulnerable position on the ice.

The girls didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a heartbeat. They executed their overarching devastating heavy support role flawlessly.

KRA-THOOM! KRA-THOOM! KRA-THOOM!

The heavy Abyssal-Marrow-cooled ballistae fired in rapid, utterly deafening succession.

The massive bowstrings, forged from the sinews of the cold blood, snapped forward with enough force to shatter a castle wall.

Three colossal, hyper-compressed bolts of blinding, pure blue mana screamed down from the heavens.

The artillery strikes moved with devastating velocity, trailing massive, spiraling vacuums of displaced air that violently pushed the heavy rain clouds aside, leaving three perfectly clear, smoking holes in the gray sky.

The rookies trapped on the ice screamed, covering their heads with their trembling arms as the gray sky directly above them literally ignited with blinding blue light.

The orbital strikes were flawlessly calculated, utilizing the Watchtower’s Tier 2 targeting enchantments and Fenna as well as Eluned’s peerless sniper aim to perfectly track the massive airborne trajectory of the Mire-Drake Matriarch.

The first heavy, mythril-tipped ballista bolt slammed directly into the Matriarch’s right shoulder while she was still fully suspended in the air with her jaws inches away from the nearest rookie.

KRA-CRACK!

The impact was apocalyptic.

The deafening concussive explosion violently arrested the massive beast’s forward momentum in mid-air.

The beast’s massive, deeply compressed plates of magically infused stone armor... which had evolved specifically to deflect physical blows utterly failed under the crushing weight of the siege weapon.

The thick stone plating shattered into a thousand jagged, lethal pieces of flying shrapnel that tore blindly through the rain, hissing as they struck the muddy water.

Before the beast’s primitive brain could even begin to register the agonizing pain of her shattered shoulder, the second bolt struck true.

BOOM!

The hyper-compressed blue mana slammed directly into the exact center of her heavily armored spine.

The resulting concussive shockwave was so massive and so incredibly dense, that it physically blew the falling monsoon rain completely backward, creating a brief unnatural shimmering dome of dry air over the center of the quarry.

Silas had placed himself between the girls and then spread out his mana covering them in it which stopped the force.

”Fuckkkkk....” Silas gritted his teeth as all the girls looked at his back, the immense wind pressure at their faces died down immediately as they were surrounded by the warm aura of their Lord.

’L-Lord Graves is so cool!’

The Matriarch’s massive spine violently buckled inward under the devastating impact.

The force drove her colossal, eighty-foot, multi-ton body straight down, altering her trajectory and slamming her violently toward the frozen mud instead of the huddled recruits.

The third and final bolt struck just as her soft unarmored belly hit the hard ice.

KRA-BOOM!

The final artillery strike buried itself deeply and ruthlessly into the massive exposed crater the previous two bolts had forcefully opened in her back.

The resulting explosion ripped violently, aggressively through the beast’s dense internal organs, blasting a highly destructive, smoking crater directly into the muddy earth beneath her.

SSPPPLLLLAAASSHH!

The explosive force sent a massive towering tidal wave of dark mud, shattered ice, and boiling water erupting in all directions, washing over the rocks and burning against Silas’s aura.

The Matriarch crashed heavily onto the frozen quicksand, her massive armored body twitching violently in agonizing spasms.

”UWAHHHHH!”

Black corrosive blood poured aggressively from the massive destructive, smoking wounds in her back.

The acidic blood pooled around her, rapidly melting the dark ice beneath her into a steaming foul-smelling puddle.

The five rookies slowly, shakily lowered their arms from their heads, staring up at the smoking, torn clouds and then down at the ruined, bleeding beast in complete shock.

They had just witnessed the terrifying might of the Blessed Land’s defensive siege capabilities.

They had literally been saved by the sky and their Lord too!

Silas dispelled his mana instantly and shot forward, he did not stop moving for a single second!

He knew a Tier 3 Boss was incredibly resilient, possessing a life force that made them practically immortal compared to the standard dispatched beasts of the basin.

Until the system interface explicitly confirmed the kill with a glowing blue tab, the beast was still an unpredictable threat that could easily snap a girl in half with a final death spasm.

’I’ll kill it once and for all!’

Silas didn’t waste the devastating opening his Watchtower had just flawlessly provided.

He utilized his terrifying forward momentum as he planted his heavy boot directly onto a massive protruding pillar of Aeliana’s dark ice, using the solid, unyielding structure as a highly stable springboard.

CRUNCH-SHATTER!

The thick ice violently shattered into a thousand glittering, pale shards under the massive force of his leg muscles as he launched himself incredibly high into the rain-soaked air.

Silas soared gracefully, directly over the twitching crippled body of the massive Matriarch.

”Burn...” Silas commanded coldly as he channeled every single remaining drop of his roaring Mythic Gold Core directly down his muscular arms and into the heavy hilt of his weapon.

The Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade responded violently to its master’s call.

The dark-purple veins running through the metal instantly ignited, glowing with a terrifying golden heat that rivaled the energy coming out of Silas’s own core.

The freezing rain hissed aggressively, instantly turning to white steam the exact fraction of a second it struck the superheated metal.

Silas flawlessly twisted his muscular torso in mid-air, utilizing the falling momentum of his entire body to maximize the output of the strike.

’I only have one strike so I have to make it count...’

He brought the glowing golden blade down in a devastating brutal plunge, aiming precisely for the smoking bleeding wound the orbital strikes had ripped open at the very base of the Matriarch’s heavily armored skull.

The strike was perfect.

SHHHHK!

The superheated mythril blade met exactly zero resistance. It effortlessly, flawlessly cleaved through the ruined fragments of the stone plating.

It sank deeply into the dense mutated musculature of the beast’s heavy neck.

The radiant heat of the Gold Core aggressively cauterized the massive wound as the blade passed through the flesh, literally cooking the meat from the inside out and burning away the highly corrosive black blood before it could even attempt to splash onto Silas’s pristine armor.

”CREEEEEEE!”

With a sickening bone-shattering crunch that echoed sharply across the silent quarry, the dark blade completely and permanently severed the thick bundle of nerves comprising the beast’s spinal cord.

The Mire-Drake Matriarch rigidly, violently locked up. Every single muscle in her massive body pulled taut in a final, agonizing reflex.

CLACK!

Her massive jaws snapped shut with a deafening sound that shook the remaining shards of ice.

Her four heavy, crocodilian, scale-covered legs violently kicked out against the mud one final, desperate time, sending a massive arching spray of brown slop high into the rainy air.

Then, the colossal, eighty-foot, siege-wagon-sized beast went entirely limp.

The sickly, corrupted life faded rapidly from her glowing yellow reptilian eyes, and she collapsed onto the frozen mud, becoming nothing more than a towering mountain of defeated smoking flesh.

BOOM!

The flooded quarry violently shook one last time as the massive weight finally settled completely displacing gallons of muddy water and then, the environment rapidly descended into a dead suffocating silence, broken only by the relentless drumming of the monsoon rain against the dark armor of the girls.

Pitter-patter! Pitter-patter!

Silas landed atop the beast’s massive scaly back.

His boots easily found purchase between the shattered bloody stone plates as he kept his grip firmly, tightly wrapped around the hilt of his deeply embedded sword, refusing to let go until he was certain.

His broad chest heaved slightly with his breath pluming in the cold air as the blazing radiant golden aura slowly retracted back into his internal spiritual pathways, leaving him standing in the gloom.

He waited for the undeniable confirmation from the sovereign laws of the world.

A moment later, a massive glowing holographic blue tab violently materialized directly in the exact center of his vision, illuminating the rain.

[Target Eliminated: Mire-Drake Matriarch (Tier 3 Boss)]

[Assist Recorded: Watchtower Ballista Array]

[Lord Silas has slain a Tier 3 Boss! +30 UP]

[You have leveled up! You have leveled up!]

A massive surge of pure energy flooded violently into his system.

The level-up forced his internal mana pathways to violently expand, searing through his veins like liquid fire.

It forcibly knitted his muscle fibers tighter, radically increasing his bone density and total physical output.

The dull exhaustion of the explosive sprint entirely vanished, completely replaced by the intoxicating addictive thrill of ascension.

’I love leveling up...’

He felt stronger, faster, and infinitely more lethal.

”Haah...”

Silas exhaled a long breath, finally relaxing his grip.

He grabbed the hilt of his weapon with both hands and pulled his mythril blade free from the beast’s severed neck with a wet satisfying squelch.

He looked down from the high ground of the corpse at the five rookies.

They were still huddled on the ice, shivering from the cold, staring up at him as if he were a literal god of war descended from the heavens to deliver them from the jaws of hell.

”Check your limbs,” Silas commanded while smoothly returning his dark blade to its scabbard at his hip. ”If anyone is bleeding, if anyone has suffered an acid burn or a twisted ankle, speak up now.”