Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

[Only a Lord possessing an uncorrupted Purple Core or higher, with sensory perception attuned to true sight, can distinguish the genuine bleeding Gold Tear from Loki’s treacherous woven mirrors.]

Silas closed the book slowly with the heavy leather cover thudding against the mahogany stand.

He stood perfectly still in the quiet library, his mind processing the sheer scale of the information.

’A bleeding Gold Tear in the sky,’ Silas memorized the visual profile. ’That’s what I need to look for... If there is a genuine golden fracture hanging somewhere above the Umbral Basin fog, that means we aren’t just isolated in the Unknown Zone. We have a direct vertical neighbor sitting right above our heads.’

He looked down at his own hands, flexing his fingers as the golden rings in his eyes pulsed softly in the dim light.

’The text says only a Gold Core can see through Loki’s illusions,’ Silas thought. ’I am Gold core right now and that’s not changing anytime soon... My perception is already operating on a higher frequency. When the storm clears, I need to get up to the highest point of the Keep or climb the mountain ridge behind the foundry and scan the sky directly above our anchor point.’

He thought about the comparison between himself and Odin again.

’The old man built an empire by gathering strong awakeners and fighting his way out of the dirt...’ Silas thought with a quiet feeling of respect settling into his chest. ’He has daughters running his military and handling his spatial warding and while I don’t have daughters, we’re running the exact same playbook... I need to get stronger.’

Before Silas could delve deeper into his analysis of faction management, The heavy, arched starlight glass windows lining the eastern wall of the library suddenly rattled in their reinforced ironwood frames with a deafening sound

CLATTER!

The ambient temperature inside the room even with the high-tier thermal warding active spiked downward by ten degrees in a single second.

You could suddenly see your breath fogging in the air...

Silas turned toward the windows.

The playful gentle snowfall outside had completely vanished as in its place was a howling blizzard.

The Umbral Basin wind had erupted into an atmospheric hurricane.

The pitch-black sky was completely white out, roaring with a deafening freight-train screech as winds exceeding eighty miles an hour slammed directly against the eastern walls of the Keep.

Through the frosted glass, Silas saw the immediate chaos erupting in the courtyard.

The playful snowball fight had turned into a desperate struggle for survival.

The severe wind shear was violently ripping across the cleared slate tiles, instantly freezing the wet slush into slick, treacherous black ice.

Worse still, the hurricane-force gusts were catching the women’s clothing.

Because half the women had run outside in loose linen casual tunics, skirts, and unbuttoned training robes, the wind was violently catching the fabric, whipping their clothes all over the place, ripping skirts up to their ribs, and practically blowing the lighter infantry recruits off their feet.

”Grab the pillars!” Vala’s voice could be heard screaming faintly through the glass as she braced her shoulder against a stone archway, trying to keep three shivering recruits from getting blown across the slate tiles. ”The wind is gale-force! Get to cover!”

”Everyone inside!” Brida bellowed, trying to shield Kaelia with her massive broad body as the freezing blizzard pelted them with horizontal ice-shards.

Silas didn’t waste a microsecond.

He sprinted across the library floor, grabbed the brass handles of the heavy double doors, and violently yanked them inward, throwing the entrance wide open to the freezing storm.

A howling blast of sub-zero wind and blinding snow instantly ripped into the Grand Archive, scattering loose paper scrolls across the floor and blowing the flames of the decorative wall sconces out completely.

”INTO THE LIBRARY! NOW!” Silas roared at the top of his lungs, his deep Gold Core-infused voice cutting cleanly over the deafening screech of the blizzard like a foghorn. ”MOVE YOUR ASSES! GET INSIDE!”

The Vanguard didn’t need to be told twice.

Seventy-two freezing, soaking wet and shivering women scrambled up the snow-covered steps of the portico in a desperate disorganized stampede.

They poured through the open double doors into the library, clutching their whipped skirts and soaked tunics around themselves with their teeth chattering so violently it sounded like a field of crickets.

Morwenna and Eluned were the last to shepherd the infantry girls inside.

The pirate had her arms wrapped around two stumbling scouts, hauling them over the threshold by brute force, while Eluned held her hands wide, maintaining a wind-break wall of dense nature mana at the top of the steps to keep the gale from blowing them backward.

Once Eluned stepped across the threshold, Silas looked out into the howling white void of the courtyard to do a final headcount.

Seventy-two... Someone was missing...

His heightened Warlord eyesight pierced through the swirling blinding white snow.

Down at the bottom of the stairs, half-buried in a snowbank and completely immobilized by the freezing gale, was Thora.

The dwarven blacksmith hadn’t managed to get up after getting hit by the combined snowball execution earlier.

Because she was only wearing her leather forge-apron over a sleeveless tunic, the sub-zero blizzard had instantly frozen the wet slush clinging to her clothes, literally encasing the stubborn dwarf in a stiff shell of black ice.

She was trying to crawl up the icy steps, cursing furiously in dwarven but her short legs kept slipping on the frozen slate.

”Stubborn idiot,” Silas cursed under his breath.

He didn’t yell for her to hurry up.

He simply stepped out of the warm library, plunged directly into the howling blizzard without a flinch, and marched down the steps into the courtyard.

The freezing wind ripped at his dark trench coat, but his Mythic Gold Core flared to life instantly, radiating a dense invisible barrier of thermal heat that melted the snow inches before it could touch his skin.

He reached the bottom of the stairs in three seconds.

”Get your hands off me, my Lord!” Thora chattered violently as he towered over her, her lips completely blue as she tried to swat at him with a frozen soot-stained fist. ”I can walk! A true daughter of the forge doesn’t need to be carried by an oversized—”

Silas didn’t even dignify the complaint with an answer.

He reached down, grabbed the thick leather strap of her forge-apron with his right hand, and effortlessly hoisted the one-hundred-and-eighty-pound muscled dwarven blacksmith straight up into the air.

Before she could swing her fists, Silas casually flipped her upside down and slung Thora directly over his broad right shoulder like a sack of wet grain.

”PUT ME DOWN!” Thora shrieked, kicking her short legs wildly against his chest as she hung upside down over his back. ”MY DIGNITY! MY ANCESTRAL HONOR! YOU’RE CARRYING ME LIKE A SLAUGHTERED BOAR!”

’When did she start caring about honor?’ Silas thought.

”Shut up and stop wriggling, Thora, or I’m dropping you back in the drift,” Silas ordered coldly, clamping his arm like an iron band around the backs of her knees to lock her in place.

He turned around, leaning his broad shoulders into the howling blizzard, and marched calmly back across the frozen slate courtyard since she was quite a bit away from the steps

He carried the screaming blacksmith up the snow-covered steps of the portico and stepped firmly across the threshold into the Grand Archive.

Once inside, Silas reached out with his left hand, grabbed the heavy ironwood double doors, and slammed them shut against the storm.

CLANG!

He threw the heavy runic deadbolts into place, completely sealing the library off from the howling blizzard outside.

The deafening screech of the wind was instantly muffled to a low distant hum against the reinforced starlight glass.

Silas walked over to the open reading area near the front tables and unceremoniously dumped Thora off his shoulder onto a plush leather sofa.

The dwarf bounced once on the cushions, sitting up with her hair wild and her face burning red, grumbling furious curses under her breath as she pulled a blanket over her freezing shoulders.

Silas turned around to face his women.

The sight was chaotic as usual.

Seventy-three women were crowded into the spacious front reading hall of the Tier 3 library.

They were shivering, wringing freezing water out of their soaked linen tunics, and brushing thick clumps of melting snow out of their hair.

Kaelia and Rowenna were already moving rapidly among the recruits, distributing dry towels and channeling gentle thermal pulses from their mana cores to warm up the shivering infantry girls.

Despite the freezing ordeal, morale was astronomically high.

The girls were laughing, swapping stories about the snowball fight, and teasing Thora about getting carried into the library like a sack of potatoes.

Silas stood in front of the heavy wooden doors as he sighed.

He couldn’t put it off any longer.

If he was going to survive the Secret Realm raid tonight and keep the Blessed Land off the High Council’s radar, he needed to make his preparations right now...

Silas cleared his throat with his deep voice effortlessly cutting through the chatter of the library.

”Alright,” Silas spoke, his voice changing from casual older brother to the authority of their Lord. ”Oh wait, it’s good that you’re all here... It’s time to talk.”

The laughter and murmurs ceased instantly.

Seventy-three women stopped wringing out their clothes.

Brida lowered her towel. Morwenna crossed her thick arms over her chest, leaning against a bookshelf with her eyes sharpening.

Aeliana stepped forward with her green eyes locking onto his face with instant high-level focus.

Eluned, standing near the front of the crowd with her wool shawl wrapped tightly over her green silk dress, tilted her head slightly with her brow furrowing in genuine curiosity.

”About what, my Lord?” Eluned asked softly, speaking for the entire room. ”Has a new military threat appeared on the perimeter grid?”

Silas looked at the Goddess of Nature, then scanned the faces of his elite commanders, his Warlord logic locking into absolute focus.

”Ahem...” Silas said, meeting their collective gaze. ”I was invited to go to a Secret Realm.”

”I was invited to go to a Secret Realm.”

The silence that followed Silas’s declaration was absolute.

Inside the warmly lit cedar-scented air of the Tier 3 Grand Archive, seventy-three women simply stared at him.

The howling blizzard battering the starlight glass windows suddenly felt very far away.

For the vast majority of the girls... the heavy infantry girls, the logistical recruits, the scouts summoned from the summoning pools pools... the term meant absolutely nothing.

They exchanged confused, nervous glances, wringing the freezing melted snow out of their linen tunics.

”A Secret Realm?” Vala muttered from the middle of the pack, her brow furrowing. ”Is that some kind of hidden resource node?”

Eluned stepped forward, the heels of her boots clicking sharply against the polished ironwood floorboards.

The Goddess of Nature pulled her thick wool shawl tighter over her green silk dress, her glowing green eyes narrowing with ancient knowledge as she prepared to impact it.

”It is not a simple resource node, recruit,” Eluned corrected her, her melodious voice carrying a dark razor-sharp edge that commanded the entire room’s attention. ”A Secret Realm is a spatial graveyard.”

Eluned turned to face the Vanguard, taking on the role of the faction’s living mythic encyclopedia.

”They are extremely rare and volatile anomalies left over by former dead deities or ancient cosmic architects,” Eluned explained coldly. ”They are dimensions designed to administer lethal trials to anyone foolish enough to enter. The promise is always the same: complete the trial, claim the ancient rewards inside the vault. But make no mistake.”

She looked back at Silas with her expression turning very serious.

”Most Secret Realms are nothing more than a catalyst for slaughter. An excuse engineered by dead gods for spilling fresh blood onto ancient stone to keep their waning mana signatures alive...” Eluned warned. She stepped closer to him, crossing her delicate arms. ”What kind of Secret Realm is it, my Lord? And what are the specific rules of engagement?”

Silas cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. He felt the collective weight of seventy-three heavily armed women waiting for his tactical breakdown.

”Uh... I really don’t know,” Silas admitted, keeping his voice deadpan. ”I was invited an hour ago by another Lord on the surface world. But she sent me a parameter right before I ascended back here and I can only bring one person with me.”

The library went dead silent again.

A one-person escort limit for a raid into a lethal, blood-harvesting spatial anomaly?!

Impossible!