Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

’If I had nothing to lose...’ Silas thought coldly with his blue eyes narrowing at the glowing screen. ’If it was just me, I would use my real name. I would walk into the High Council, take their money, and if they tried to screw me, I would drop Morwenna and Eluned into their lobby and let them burn the building to the ground...’

He slowly looked up from his phone, staring at the closed oak door of the fitting room.

’But I have Lia now and not only that, I have to be very careful...’ Silas realized.

If he exposed his true identity as the Warlord of the Blessed Land to the World Government, he wouldn’t just be risking his own neck.

The major corporate guilds were absolutely ruthless. They didn’t fight fair. If they couldn’t control him through contracts, they would look for leverage.

They would find out about his eleven-year-old sister living in his apartment.

They would send an elite strike team of assassins to kidnap her while he was offline, and they would hold her hostage until he signed over the deeds to the territory.

There was also the possibility of them tracing down where Blessed Land was in the Sovereign Realm and raid it as Lords, killing him and taking control of his people.

’I can’t bring her into the Sovereign Realm.... And I need to be stronger to protect not only her but myself and my women.’ Silas thought with a deep frustration burning in his chest. ’Only awakened Lords and registered summoners can cross the planar threshold... A baseline human child would be atomized by the transit pressure, or instantly poisoned by the ambient miasma in the Sovereign Realm, and that’s without mentioning the Umbral Basin so she has to stay on Earth.’

He rubbed his temples.

He needed to build an entirely fake identity.

He needed a proxy Lord, a mask, or some kind of impenetrable corporate shell company to interact with the High Council so the name Silas Graves remained completely unconnected to the Blessed Land.

Before he could fully map out the logistics of creating a fake corporate entity, his phone buzzed violently in his hand.

The blaring red High Council notification vanished, replaced by a direct, highly encrypted ping from Elora Verinda.

Silas swiped the message open.

[Elora: I see the High Council just put an eight billion credit reward on the Blessed Land. The entire city is going crazy. But that’s a problem for later.]

[Elora: Oh right, I forgot to tell you about a specific parameter for this Secret Realm expedition tonight.]

Silas frowned with his eyes scanning the text.

[Elora: Because it is a volatile spatial fracture, the entry is severely restricted to prevent a mana collapse. You cannot bring your entire squad....]

Silas felt a sharp spike of annoyance.

He had fully planned to bring Morwenna, Eluned, and Aeliana to completely steamroll whatever ancient boss monster was guarding the vault.

He read the final line of the text message and his eyes went completely wide.

[Elora: To this Secret Realm expedition, you may only bring one of your Summons... whether it be your Hero or Troop.]

Silas blinked, staring at the glowing screen of his phone.

The rhythmic bass of the boutique’s classical string music played softly in the background, but his brain had completely stalled out in the plush velvet chair.

He stared at the final text message Elora had just sent him.

[Elora: To this Secret Realm expedition, you may only bring one of your Summons... whether it be your Hero or Troop.]

Silas didn’t hesitate. His thumbs flew across the digital keyboard.

[Silas: What?]

He watched the screen.

At the bottom of the encrypted chat window, three small gray dots appeared, pulsing in a wave to indicate that Elora was actively typing her response.

The dots vanished and a new text bubble popped up.

[Elora: Like I said, the mana of the spatial fracture is quite volatile. If we flood the entrance with too many high-density entities at once, the portal will destabilize and collapse the ruin... The absolute capacity the threshold can handle without triggering a spatial cave-in is already hit if everyone brings one of their Troops or Heroes. I am bringing one of my elite elemental guards and you are allowed to bring at least one person with you which is why you have to think very carefully about the person you are bringing to the expedition.]

Silas leaned his head back against the velvet chair, letting out a long, heavy sigh. He stared at the ceiling of the Weaver’s Spire.

’So much for steamrolling the boss with an army...’ Silas thought bitterly.

He tapped the screen.

[Silas: Oh... I see...]

He watched the chat interface, expecting her to send a location ping or a time for the raid so he could start prepping his gear.

The three gray typing dots appeared again. They pulsed for a few seconds.

[Elora: That’s fine, now about the date...]

Silas’s golden-ringed eyes went completely wide. He physically jolted in the velvet chair, staring at the word ’date’.

’I thought she was joking before...’

Before he could even process the sentence, the message bubble instantly vanished from the screen. It was deleted so fast it was almost as if it had never been there.

A split second later, a new brief message replaced it.

[Elora: Ok.]

Silas lowered the phone slowly, letting it rest on his knee. He stared blankly across the aisle of the boutique, completely ignoring the mannequins draped in expensive silk.

’What the hell?’ Silas thought. ’I don’t think I’m so handsome that the School Belle would be this anxious to want to go on a date with me.’

Elora Verinda was the City Lord’s daughter.

She was cold and ran her faction like a corporate CEO... She didn’t make typos, and she certainly didn’t accidentally invite slum-born independents on romantic outings while negotiating high-tier mercenary raids.

’Unless she’s trying to honey-trap me to secure the Secret Realm loot,’ Silas analyzed coldly. ’She knows I have physical strength and she might be trying to play an angle. Or... her auto-correct just completely botched whatever sentence she was actually trying to type.’

He pushed the bizarre text message to the back of his mind. He didn’t have time to decipher the romantic intentions of a noble teenager but... the major thing was quite different.

The restriction of the Secret Realm raid had completely flipped his tactical approach on its head.

If he was only bringing one of his people to the raid, he needed to think carefully.

Silas crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes narrowing as he ran through his Vanguard roster.

’I can’t bring Eluned... Just bringing Morwenna or Eluned will cause a lot of trouble.’ Silas thought instantly, he had been joking when he had thought he would include those two. ’She is the Goddess of Nature... Her aura literally causes grass to grow out of the floorboards wherever she walks as long as she wills it. If I walk into a Secret Realm with a mythic-tier divine entity trailing behind me, Elora will instantly realize I’m not a baseline Blue Core. She’ll put two and two together, and my identity as the Lord of Blessed Land gets exposed to the High Council.’

He shifted his weight in the velvet chair.

’Neither could I bring Morwenna either,’ Silas concluded.

The Dread Queen of the Astral Seas was an SSS-rank powerhouse, but subtlety was not in her vocabulary.

She carried a massive anchor and solved ninety percent of her problems by throwing her enemies through walls or outright killing them.

She was a divine-level brute force anomaly. There were no two ways about it; bringing either of them would be revealed instantly that he was the Lord of Blessed Land...

Going downward through the roster... he could bring Brida.

The heavy shieldmaiden was a physical juggernaut, completely capable of tanking boss-level hits.

He could bring Tasmin. The Huntress was a lethal, high-speed striker who could navigate a dark ruin flawlessly. He could even bring Vala or Elara for baseline scouting utility but he had to think about it. He had to talk to the girls about it as well to decide.

’However, from a purely tactical standpoint,’ Silas thought, rubbing his chin. ’Personally, Aeliana or Rowenna would fit the bill.’

Silas was a physical warrior.

He wielded a forty-pound mythril-laced broadsword, wore heavy armor, and relied on explosive close-quarters violence to butcher his enemies.

If Elora’s scouts were right and the boss monster guarding the vault was heavily armored, throwing more physical damage at it wasn’t the most efficient strategy.

He needed elemental suppression so in short, he needed crowd control.

’Mages wouldn’t be bad at all,’ Silas noted.

Aeliana was an Arcanist but Rowena... Rowena was the Runic Arcanist. They were both the same but different.

She was a dedicated Mage. If an ancient, heavily armored boss monster charged them in the dark, Rowena could drop a Tier 2 ten-times gravity well on the floor, pin the beast to the stone, and let Silas casually execute it.

Well, he would talk about that when he got home and went back to the girls. He locked his phone and slipped it into his inner coat pocket.

Right on cue, the heavy velvet curtain of the primary fitting room slid open.

Lia came out for the last time.

She wasn’t wearing the aggressive dark spider-silk gear Elise had tailored for her earlier.

That was packed away for whenever they needed to move through the city or run from corporate guild enforcers...

This time, Lia was wearing quite a beautiful dress that she could comfortably wear at home.

It was a simple, knee-length dress woven from incredibly soft, high-grade white cotton, completely free of the stiff restrictive corsets or gaudy bows that the noble children usually wore.

It had long, loose sleeves that gathered neatly at the wrists, a modest neckline, and a subtle dark blue ribbon tied loosely around the waist.

She wore a pair of clean, soft wool leggings underneath and simple, comfortable leather flats.

She didn’t look like a heavily armed street rat, and she didn’t look like a porcelain doll. She just looked like a normal incredibly well-cared-for eleven-year-old girl.

Lia stepped out onto the pristine hardwood floor, looking down at the hem of the white dress. She twirled slightly with the soft fabric flaring out around her knees as a small innocent smile broke across her face.

She looked up at Silas, nervously shifting her weight.

”I like it,” Silas said immediately.

Lia’s smile widened, her dark eyes shining with happiness.

Elise, standing right behind her with a glowing datapad, practically melted at the domestic interaction.

They thanked him, took her back behind the velvet curtain, and made her pull it off so it could be folded, pressed, and properly packed away with the rest of her massive haul.

A few minutes later, Silas was standing at the polished white marble counter.

Lia stood right next to him.

She was back in the oversized dark gray t-shirt he had given her, though she had managed to roll the sleeves up enough to free her hands.

She was bouncing slightly on her worn-out sneakers, buzzing with the leftover adrenaline of trying on more expensive clothes in one hour than she had seen in her entire life.

Elise stood behind the counter, rapidly tallying the final additions to the massive order.

”Alright, Lord Graves,” Elise smiled professionally, her fingers tapping the glowing runic terminal. ”For the five sets of denim, the ten breathable combat shirts, the three enchanted spider-silk jackets, the heavy winter sleepwear, the water-resistant boots, the white cotton home dress, and the magically compressed duffel bag to carry it all...”

Elise paused, ensuring the total was correct.

They called the price.

”The final total comes to exactly 200,000 Spirit Credits,” Elise announced clearly.

Lia went completely rigid.

The bouncing instantly stopped. The color drained out of her face so fast she looked like a ghost. Her jaw dropped open, her brown eyes bugging out of her skull as she stared at the glowing terminal.

Two hundred thousand?!

Lia’s street-rat brain short-circuited... She literally went into a seizure.

She grabbed the fabric of Silas’s trench coat with both hands, violently shaking his arm as she hyperventilated.

”Big Brother!” Lia gasped, her voice completely failing as she stared at the blonde clerk in horror. ”Two hundred thousand?! For shirts?! Are they woven out of solid gold?! Cancel it! Cancel it right now! We can go to the thrift market! I don’t need the jackets! I don’t need the dress! Big Brother, I’m going to be homeless again!”