Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Silas reached down and gently raised Lia’s small hand, lifting it up so the receptionist could see the oversized-shirt-wearing child standing next to him.

”I want to check up on my sister,” Silas explained. ”She’s been living rough, and I need a full biometric sweep to ensure she doesn’t have any lingering infections before we go home and then I need to do some business, of course. Bulk commercial purchases.”

Lia groaned loudly, kicking the base of the marble counter with her worn sneaker.

”I told you, I hate needles! I’m fine! I heal fast!”

”You’ll get a lollipop when it’s over,” Silas told her dryly, not even looking down.

The receptionist, however, wasn’t looking at Lia.

She was still completely mesmerized by how Silas looked with her eyes turning glassy and unfocused as she stared at the sharp line of his throat.

Silas let out an annoyed breath.

He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers directly in front of her face.

CRACK!

The sound was sharp and incredibly loud, infused with just a tiny spark of mana.

The receptionist violently jolted, her shoulders hiking up as she snapped out of her trance.

Her face burned a brilliant shade of crimson, realizing she had just spent ten seconds openly staring at a high-priority VIP client...

”Y-yes!” she practically shouted, scrambling to gather her datapad and a set of access keys from the desk. ”Yes, Lord Silas Graves! We have a fully staffed medical wing on the second floor! Please, follow me!”

...

The waiting room of the Lord Association Building’s VIP medical wing was completely silent, save for the hum of the climate control vents.

It smelled intensely of sterile alcohol and expensive floral diffusers.

There were other smells too... but these were all Silas could describe.

Silas sat on a plush high-backed leather chair that probably cost more than his entire childhood apartment.

His long legs were stretched out with his heavy dark trench coat draped over the back of the seat.

He was holding a glossy, corporate-issued magazine he had picked up off the glass coffee table, casually flipping through an article detailing the shifting market prices for low-tier beast cores.

He wasn’t actually reading it.

His golden-ringed blue eyes were scanning the text, but his evolved senses were entirely focused on the reinforced white door located exactly fifteen feet to his left.

Inside that room was a high-tier Association medical practitioner, a battery of advanced diagnostic scanners and a ten-year-old girl who had spent the entire elevator ride aggressively explaining how much she hated needles.

For the first three minutes, it had been quiet.

Silas had assumed the corporate nurse was just running a standard biometric sweep, waving a glowing runic scanner over Lia’s ribs to ensure the healing potion hadn’t left behind any latent necrosis.

Then, the muffled voices started filtering through the heavy door.

”Alright, sweetie, hop up onto the table,” the nurse’s voice echoed, carrying a sickly sweet rehearsed customer-service tone. ”We just need to administer a standard wide-spectrum inoculation... It’s Association policy for anyone returning from the fringe sectors or the lower wards.”

”I don’t want an inoculation,” Lia’s voice shot back, defensive and sharp. ”I feel fine. My brother already fixed me.”

”I know, I know but we have to be certain. Now, turn around.”

”Turn around? Why do I have to turn around?”

”Because this one goes in the gluteus maximus, sweetie. It absorbs faster into the muscle tissue.”

”My what?! No! You are not sticking that thing in my—”

A brief scuffle echoed through the thick door. Silas heard the distinct squeak of a medical stool sliding across the linoleum floor, followed by the rustle of fabric.

”Hold still, honey,” the nurse coaxed, though Silas could hear the sound of a synthetic cloth face mask being pulled sharply up over her nose. ”I promise, it won’t hurt for long. Just a tiny pinch!”

”Get away from me!” Lia yelled, her survival instincts entirely kicking in against the perceived threat of a syringe.

The nurse, clearly having dealt with hundreds of stubborn brats and their squirming siblings, did not back down.

In fact, Silas clearly heard the woman let out a low, almost devilish laugh.

It was the laugh of a medical professional who had completely stopped caring about bedside manner and simply wanted to get her job done. People did it back on Earth quite some times.

”I said hold still!” the nurse commanded with her voice shifting from sweet to ruthless.

”No! Big Brother! BIG BRO... OW! SON OF A BITCH!”

Lia screamed.

It wasn’t a standard cry of discomfort.

It was a high-pitched, glass-shattering shriek that sounded like she was being actively murdered by a monster.

The sound echoed so loudly it actually vibrated the reinforced glass of the waiting room window.

Silas didn’t jump.

He just let out a long sigh, slowly shaking his head. He closed the glossy corporate magazine, tossed it back onto the glass coffee table with a soft thud, and leaned back in his expensive leather chair, waiting patiently.

Thirty seconds later, the heavy white door clicked and swung open.

The nurse stepped out first.

She was a tall, sharply dressed woman in a pristine white Association uniform, casually pulling the cloth mask down around her neck.

She held a digital clipboard, looking entirely unbothered by the volume of the screaming she had just caused.

Right behind her, looking like a feral cat that had just been sprayed with a hose, was Lia.

The eleven-year-old girl was wearing her oversized dark t-shirt, her messy brown hair frizzy with static electricity.

Her face was flushed a brilliant, furious shade of red, and she was aggressively snarling at the back of the nurse’s head while firmly clutching her right butt cheek with both hands.

”You’re a monster,” Lia hissed, limping slightly as she stepped out into the waiting room. ”You enjoyed that. I saw your eyes crinkle... You were smiling.”

”I have a very fulfilling career, sweetie,” the nurse replied cheerfully, not even turning around to acknowledge the insult.

She walked over to Silas, tapping the screen of her digital clipboard.

Silas stood up from the leather chair, his tall, broad-shouldered frame easily dwarfing the medical professional.

”Status?” Silas asked, his voice low and clinical.

”She is completely clear, Lord Graves,” the nurse reported, swiping through the biometric data. ”No latent diseases, no parasites, and absolutely zero traces of miasma poisoning. Her caloric density is a bit low, indicative of long-term malnutrition, but her internal organs are functioning perfectly.”

The nurse paused, raising a curious eyebrow as she looked up from the clipboard.

”Oddly enough,” the nurse noted, ”her bloodstream is heavily saturated with a concentrated high-tier healing potion... The signature on the liquid is amazing. It rapidly sealed a severe laceration on her ribs. Whoever administered it knew exactly what they were doing, though it was slightly overkill for a mortal child.”

”I like to be thorough,” Silas answered smoothly, offering zero explanation as to how a supposed Blue Core rookie got his hands on such healing supplies. ’It’s not like I obtained them illegally.’

It was just given to him for free the moment he purchased the place.

Lia immediately scurried around the coffee table, hiding behind Silas’s heavy dark trench coat. She pointed an accusing finger at the woman holding the clipboard.

”Punch her in the face, Big brother!” Lia demanded, rubbing her stinging backside. ”She stabbed me with a harpoon! Tell her she’s fired!”

Silas looked down at the furious ten-year-old, then looked back at the nurse, completely deadpan.

”Thank you for your time,” Silas told the nurse, entirely ignoring his sister’s demands for physical violence. ”I appreciate the thoroughness.”

The nurse offered a professional, highly practiced smile, completely ignoring the snarling child.

”Of course, Lord Graves. Have a wonderful evening.”

The woman turned on her heel and walked back into the medical wing, the heavy white door clicking shut behind her.

”You are useless,” Lia grumbled, kicking the leg of the glass coffee table. ”You kill giant monsters right? But you won’t even hit a lady who stabbed me in the butt.”

”Because she was doing her job, and you need to build up an immune system,” Silas countered effortlessly. He reached down, grabbed the collar of her oversized shirt, and steered her toward the exit of the waiting room. ”Stop complaining. You survived, right now I have business to handle.”

They walked out of the quiet medical wing and stepped back onto the bustling brightly lit second-floor balcony that overlooked the massive ground-level reception lobby of the Lord Association Building.

The receptionist from earlier... the one Silas had snapped out of a completely unprofessional trance was waiting for them near the elevator banks.

She was holding a glowing datapad with her posture incredibly straight. The moment she saw Silas approaching, her cheeks flushed slightly and she offered a deep respectful corporate bow.

”Is your sister feeling better, Lord Graves?” the receptionist asked, her voice carrying a nervous, eager-to-please tremor.

”She’ll live,” Silas answered, dismissing the medical visit entirely.

He stepped up to the receptionist with his golden-ringed blue eyes locking onto her. ”I need to transition to the commercial sector of the building. I have a surplus of refined raw materials from my territory. I want to sell alloys to the LAB.”

The receptionist blinked, quickly tapping her datapad. ”Of course, my Lord. We have several automated kiosks on the main floor that can process basic iron, copper, and standard Sovereign Realm scrap—”

”I don’t want a kiosk,” Silas interrupted.

He wasn’t here to dump rusty goblin swords for pocket change. ”I am carrying high-density industrial and arcane metals so I need a certified corporate appraiser. It would be better if you were to take me to the secure vaults.”

The receptionist swallowed hard, intimidated by the weight of his presence. She didn’t argue.

She simply nodded, swiping her security card over the elevator terminal.

”R-right away, Lord Graves. Please follow me.”

The heavy steel doors of the private elevator slid open. Silas and Lia stepped inside, followed closely by the receptionist.

She tapped a glowing rune on the control panel, and the elevator immediately descended, bypassing the crowded public floors and plunging deep into the lower levels of the Association Building.

Lia clung to the fabric of Silas’s trench coat, her large brown eyes wide as she stared through the glass back wall of the elevator.

The scale of the LAB’s underground commercial hub was staggering.

As they descended, they passed massive reinforced warehouse floors filled with heavily armored forklifts, glowing runic conveyor belts, and dozens of corporate workers cataloging crates of glowing beast cores and monster hides.

It looked like a militarized shipping facility, flowing with the endless lucrative economy of the Sovereign Realm.

Silas watched the floors blur past, his mind ruthlessly calculating his upcoming move.

He needed Earth currency.

He needed a massive influx of Spirit Credits to purchase the Starlight Ink, the paper rolls for the new library, and the high-end cookbooks for Kaelia and the other book for Morwenna and Eluned too...

But beyond that, he needed liquid capital to maintain his civilian cover and support Lia now that she was back in his life.

He couldn’t just walk up to a teller and demand two million credits. He had to trade for it.

The mine he had secured in the Umbral Basin was currently churning out raw materials at an exponential rate, thanks to Thora’s mythril-laced pickaxes and the tireless work of the infantry girls.

He had hundreds of units of alloys sitting securely inside his Lord Inventory.

The trick was figuring out exactly how much to sell.

If he dumped ten thousand pounds of Star-Iron onto the open market tonight, the Association would instantly flag his account.

They would launch a full-scale corporate investigation into his territory to find out how a supposedly rookie Blue Core was out-producing industrial mining guilds.

He had to sell just enough to get the cash he needed, while keeping the rest hidden to artificially restrict the supply and keep the market prices heavily inflated...

The elevator slowed, coming to a smooth halt.

The doors slid open, revealing a quiet heavily fortified corridor lined with polished black stone and glowing security runes.

At the end of the hall stood a pair of massive vault doors, guarded by two Association enforcers wielding heavy kinetic rifles.

”This is the primary appraisal floor,” the receptionist explained quietly, gesturing down the hall. ”Only certified Guild Masters and high-yield independent Lords are permitted down here.”