Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

The band remained completely dark.

The tracking runes Silas had shattered earlier had completely disrupted the network for his own so she was completely alone.

In fact, the paralyzing terror of her impending death completely overrode her bodily functions.

Maya began pissing herself with the warm urine soaking through her robes and rapidly sinking into the dry thirsty sand below her thighs.

Fifty feet away, the cause of her terror was currently executing a flawless slaughter.

Lady Seraphina, the striking red-haired daughter of the World Council magistrate was fighting two of their Heroes up front.

The desert wind whipped Seraphina’s crimson-scaled leather armor as she casually twirled her curved dagger in her right hand as the blade was already dripping with fresh smoking blood.

Jaxon’s summoned Hero... the rugged and shirtless middle-aged swordsman let out a furious desperate roar as he charged at the noble woman, swinging his two heavy iron swords in a wild overlapping cross-slash aimed directly at Seraphina’s neck.

”Die!” the swordsman roared.

Seraphina didn’t retreat as she stepped directly into the pocket of his strike.

She raised her curved dagger, aggressively channeling a dense superheated burst of fire mana into the steel.

CLANG!

Seraphina parried the dual-sword strike with effortless precision.

The sheer thermal heat radiating from her dagger instantly superheated the iron of the swordsman’s blades, making the metal glow a dull painful orange.

”You swing like a drunken, half-blind blacksmith,” Seraphina insulted his swordsmanship coldly with her red eyes lacking any pity.

She smoothly slid her dagger down the length of his glowing swords, completely bypassing his guard.

SHWK!

Seraphina slashed her blade horizontally across the swordsman’s exposed scarred torso.

The white-hot edge of the dagger easily parted his flesh, instantly cauterizing the deep wound as it cut, filling the dry air with the sickening sweet smell of searing meat.

The swordsman gasped as his eyes went wide with agony.

Seraphina didn’t let him fall. She grabbed the collar of his trousers, pulled him close, and pressed the flat superheated blade of her dagger directly against his throat.

”Burn,” Seraphina whispered.

A violent explosion of roaring flames erupted directly from the blade. The fire engulfed the swordsman’s head and chest entirely.

He didn’t even have time to scream.

His body turned into a charred smoking husk in less than a second, violently dissolving into dead mana particles as he was permanently unsummoned from the Secret Realm and even back in the territory.

He was dead.

”No!” Maya shrieked from the sand, watching her only physical defense turn to ash.

Before Seraphina could turn her attention to the crippled Lord, a sharp hiss cut through the air.

Maya’s one-armed archer Hero stepped out from behind a jagged sandstone pillar.

He dropped to one knee, drawing his massive darkwood longbow back with his teeth, pulling the string to maximum tension.

”Piercing Volley!” the archer shouted, spitting the string loose.

He shot at her repeatedly. Three heavy armor-piercing mana arrows blurred through the air, aimed directly at Seraphina’s chest, thigh, and head.

Seraphina didn’t panic as she moved with the fluid grace of a predator.

She gracefully ducked beneath the first arrow, spun her body to avoid the second, and aggressively swung her dagger upward to deflect the third.

CLANG!

The third arrow shattered against her blade but Seraphina didn’t stop her spin. She used the momentum to launch herself forward, rapidly closing the distance between herself and the archer.

The archer desperately tried to nock another arrow with his lone hand and his teeth, but he was too slow.

Seraphina closed the gap. She slashed her dagger downward in a brutal diagonal arc.

SNAP!

The superheated blade cleanly cut through the thick enchanted darkwood of his heavy longbow, completely snapping the weapon in half and rendering his primary offense utterly useless.

”You’re done,” Seraphina stated coldly, raising her dagger for a lethal thrust to his heart but the archer was a veteran combatant. He didn’t freeze.

As Seraphina thrust her blade forward, the archer violently threw his body to the right.

He perfectly dodged her lethal slash, slipping just past the burning edge of her dagger.

Using his momentum, the archer drew a jagged rusted iron hunting dagger from his boot with his lone hand.

He lunged forward and brutally stabbed the blade directly into the lower left side of Seraphina’s stomach.

SHWK!

The iron blade pierced through the gaps in her crimson-scaled armor, sinking two inches deep into her flesh.

Seraphina gasped with her eyes going wide as a sharp agonizing spike of pain registered in her brain but the pain didn’t incapacitate her.

It infuriated her instead.

The ambient fire mana radiating from her core violently flared. The rusted iron dagger buried in her stomach instantly began to glow white-hot, burning the archer’s hand.

”Aargh!” the archer cried out, forced to release the hilt of his weapon as the metal seared his palm.

Seraphina gritted her teeth, ignoring the blade sticking out of her gut.

She pivoted her weight, loaded her hips, and delivered a devastating committed front kick directly into the center of the archer’s chest.

CRUNCH!

The sheer kinetic force of the A-Rank kick shattered his sternum.

The archer was violently launched upward into the air. He flew backward for fifteen feet before his back slammed heavily onto the hard unyielding sandstone ground.

”Gaaah!” the archer cried out in pureagonizing pain with his body violently throbbing from side to side in the dirt as he clutched his caved-in chest, completely paralyzed and unable to stand.

Seraphina didn’t finish him off. She reached down, gripped the glowing hilt of the dagger embedded in her stomach, and pulled it out with a sickening squelch.

She tossed the bloody blade into the sand with her advanced Lord vitality already beginning to clot the wound.

She turned her attention back to the primary target.

Seraphina slowly walked over the hot sand, proceeding directly toward Maya.

As she walked, she casually flicked her wrist.

The superheated energy of her curved blade instantly vaporized the blood coating the steel, burning the blood off her blade with a sharp hissing sizzle.

She stopped directly over the terrified trembling Lord mage.

Seraphina looked down at the puddle of urine soaking the sand beneath Maya’s robes and a look of disgust crossed her beautiful features.

She pressed the tip of her white-hot dagger directly against the soft skin of Maya’s throat.

”Give me the exact spatial coordinates and the location of Silas Graves,” Seraphina demanded coldly. ”Tell me where he is, and I will let you bleed out peacefully instead of roasting you alive.”

Maya sobbed, her whole body shaking violently against the sand.

”I don’t know!” Maya cried out, her voice cracking with desperation. ”I swear to the gods, I don’t know! The spatial tether bands broke! We got separated in the teleportation! I haven’t seen him since the First Layer!”

Seraphina stared down at her, reading the terror in the woman’s eyes.

She knew Maya wasn’t lying as a coward didn’t have the mental fortitude to lie with a burning blade at her throat.

Seraphina sighed, a heavy, disappointed sound.

”Get gone, then,” Seraphina told her bluntly.

She raised her dagger, fully intending to stab forward and plunge the blade directly through Maya’s skull to eliminate a potential rival asset.

FWOOSH!

Before the blade could descend, a howling gust of freezing absolute-zero cold wind violently shot through the dry desert air.

The blizzard slammed directly into Seraphina’s flank like a physical battering ram.

The force of the frozen wind caught the red-haired noble completely off guard and Seraphina let out a startled gasp as she was forcefully thrown off her feet.

She rolled violently across the scorching sand with her armor scraping against the abrasive dirt, until she finally skidded to a hard stop ten feet away.

Seraphina immediately pushed herself up into a low defensive crouch, raising her burning dagger as she looked toward the source of the attack.

Standing thirty feet away, her dark corporate blazer perfectly intact and her posture radiating authority, was Elora Verinda.

The City Lord’s daughter had just arrived. Standing right beside her, holding her glowing leather-bound spellbook, was her own Hero... the pristine disciplined ice-mage.

Elora’s eyes were completely devoid of warmth.

She stared directly at the World Council magistrate’s daughter, projecting her dense aggressive Purple Core aura across the desert basin.

”I strongly suggest you keep your burning knives to yourself, Seraphina,” Elora warned her. ”I do not care who your father sits next to on the Council. You are actively touching my people. If you attempt to execute her, I will freeze the blood in your veins and leave you as a statue in this desert.”

Seraphina narrowed her red eyes, calculating the odds.

Her stomach was bleeding, her mana was depleted from the fight with the Heroes, and Elora’s ice-mage was currently standing at full operational capacity.

It was a losing fight... unless she used her own Hero.

Elora didn’t stop there.

She looked past Seraphina with her gaze locking onto the charred smoking pile of ash that used to be Jaxon’s middle-aged swordsman Hero.

Elora’s jaw tightened.

A combat summon like that being lost when he was someone that could use the Sword God style was a massive financial loss for the guild she planned to make.

”You permanently killed his frontline physical combatant,” Elora stated coldly, turning her gaze back to Seraphina. ”That is a direct destruction of Verinda Guild assets... I require immediate corporate compensation and by that, I request a Hero Summoning Card from you for this.”

Seraphina scoffed, a bitter angry sound escaping her lips but she knew the unwritten rules of Sovereign Realm engagement between major political houses.

If she refused to pay the blood tax, Elora had full legal justification to execute her right here in the sand.

Seraphina let out a heavy frustrated sigh.

She reached into the dimensionally expanded pocket of her crimson-scaled armor, accessing her Lord Inventory that she linked there then she pulled out a glowing silver-bordered Hero Summoning Card.

”Take your trash,” Seraphina spat.

She threw the valuable card directly to the ground, letting it fall into the hot sand between them.

Seraphina slowly backed away, keeping her dagger raised defensively. Her red eyes bypassed Elora entirely, locking onto the vast open desert behind them.

”When I find Silas Graves...” Seraphina promised with her voice dropping into a dark whisper. ”I am going to kill him.”

Without waiting for a response, Seraphina spun on her heel.

Utilizing an advanced burst of fire-mana to boost her agility, she sprinted off into the dunes, rapidly disappearing into the heat-shimmering horizon.

Elora watched her go until she was completely out of sight.

Only then did the City Lord’s daughter let out a long exhausted sigh, rubbing the bridge of her nose to fend off an impending migraine.

She slowly walked forward, picking up the valuable Hero Summoning Card from the dirt and sliding it into her own inventory then, she walked over to where Maya was still lying in her own urine.

Elora looked down at the trembling support mage, trying as much as humanly possible to hide her a disgust at the pathetic display of cowardice.

”Get up, Maya,” Elora ordered flatly. ”And heal Jaxon before he bleeds out completely.”

As Maya frantically began channeling low-tier restorative green mana over Jaxon’s chest wound, Elora reached into her Lord Inventory again.

She pulled out something incredibly complex and expensive.

It was a high-tier fully articulated mechanical prosthetic arm, forged from lightweight mythril and etched with highly responsive neural-sync runes.

Elora held the heavy mechanical arm out, offering it to Maya.

”Put that on your archer’s other hand,” Elora commanded, gesturing toward the crippled one-armed Hero groaning in the dirt nearby. ”The neural runes will adapt to his biology within seconds.”

Maya stared at the expensive prosthetic, her hands shaking as she took it. ”Y-yes, Lady Elora. Thank you.”

Elora crossed her arms over her chest, her expression shifting into absolute, ruthless tactical focus.

”Silas’s wristband seems to have undergone a suspicious mechanical issue,” Elora noted coldly.

She didn’t believe for a single second that Silas had accidentally broken his tracking device.

He was playing his own game in the dark.

Elora leaned forward, her eyes locking onto Maya’s terrified face.

”So, your primary mission parameters have changed,” Elora instructed her, her voice leaving absolutely no room for failure. ”You are going to take your newly repaired Hero, and you are going to track the ambient mana currents across this desert. You will find Silas Graves, wherever he is hiding.”

Elora stood up straight. Her eyes began glowing with a dense terrifying blue light that completely dominated the immediate vicinity.

”Now.”