Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Julian let out an agonizing shriek as he was forcefully made to land face-first entirely on the hard unforgiving glass floor with the sound of his nose instantly shattering echoed through the clearing.

”Pathetic,” Valerius scoffed.

He violently expelled the compressed air from his boots, shooting off into the air with a massive, localized wind spell.

WHOOSH!

Valerius launched himself fifty feet into the sky, riding a swirling cyclone of green mana but Seraphina was not letting him go that easy.

”VALERIUS!” Seraphina screamed, her humiliation converting into destructive output.

She raised both of her hands with her palms glowing white-hot, and rapidly fired several massive condensed fireballs directly at his ascending form.

FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!

The roaring spheres of flame tore through the air like artillery shells, radiating blistering heat that warped the atmosphere.

Valerius gritted his teeth with his eyes tracking the thermal signatures.

He needed to pull off something completely unorthodox to escape the tracking power of her flames.

’Ah yes...’

He didn’t just push himself with wind, Valerius instead utilized an experimental technique.

”Aero-Displacement,” Valerius muttered.

He actively removed the air friction directly in front of his body, creating a momentary vacuum, while simultaneously condensing the air behind him into a solid explosive platform.

BANG!

He kicked off the invisible wall of air, moving at supersonic speeds as he snapped his body to the right, violently twisting his torso in mid-air.

The first fireball completely missed his shoulder by an inch with the heat singing the edge of his blond hair.

He cast the technique again.

BANG!

He dropped straight down in a jagged unpredictable zig-zag pattern. The second fireball roared over his head, detonating harmlessly in the amber sky.

He flipped backward, letting the third fireball pass right beneath his boots.

Seeing the fireballs fail, Julius stepped forward on the ground.

The spear-wielding Lord gripped his heavy iron weapon, leaning his entire body weight back, channeling dense earth mana into the shaft to increase its piercing weight.

”Fall!” Julius roared.

He threw the heavy spear directly at Valerius.

SHWK!

The weapon blurred through the air with terrifying, armor-piercing velocity, tracking perfectly toward Valerius’s chest.

Valerius was out of rotational momentum from the vacuum steps so he couldn’t dodge in time.

”Mia!” Valerius commanded.

Sitting securely on his shoulder, Mia didn’t blink. She raised her small hands with her voice sounding calm and steady.

”Veil of the unseen, wash away the light!” Mia chanted rapidly.

She cast a high-tier cloaking spell at the exact same second the heavy spear arrived.

A shimmering bubble of bent light and distorted moisture instantly wrapped entirely around Valerius and his Hero, completely refracting the visual spectrum.

All the Lords on the ground watched in stunned silence as the heavy iron spear went slicing through the empty air, hitting absolutely nothing.

It sailed through the space where Valerius had just been, before losing momentum and falling flat onto the dunes a bit away.

Valerius had completely vanished from visual and magical perception and he had escaped.

A long distance away from the chaotic arena, Valerius smoothly hopped through the air, riding continuous sweeping bursts of green wind mana from dune to dune.

The cloaking spell had faded, leaving him alone under the harsh amber sky.

The silence of the deep desert was absolute, save for the whistling of the wind against his mythril armor.

Valerius landed softly on the crest of a massive sweeping sand dune. He let out a long breath, looking out over the endless wasteland.

”Fuck...”

He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but the silence was actually incredibly boring.

He secretly wanted to hang around with Silas some more.

The dark-haired Lord was unpredictable and easy to hang around.

It was a refreshing change of pace from the rigid predictable sycophants of Territula City and Valerius especially did want to hunt for more high-tier treasure with him.

”Down there,” Mia suddenly spoke up, pointing her small finger directly at the base of the dune.

Mia’s passive radar pinged. ”I sense a fluctuation and there is a treasure buried below.”

Valerius didn’t hesitate.

He dropped down the slope with his boots sliding in the loose dirt as he landed on the ground and immediately began rapidly digging into a dense dune of sand with his gauntleted hands.

Two feet deep, his fingers brushed against cold metal.

Valerius pulled it out and brushed the dirt away. It was a sleek, silver ring etched with glowing blue runes and he immediately opened his Lord tab to analyze it.

[Name]: Zephyr’s Loop

[Tier]: Tier 1 (Utility Artifact)

[Description]: A minor atmospheric conduit. When equipped, this ring actively thins the ambient air resistance around the user’s mana pathways, effectively increasing one’s elemental spell casting speed by 1.5x.

Valerius read the description and hissed in profound disappointment.

”Tier 1?” Valerius scoffed, tossing the ring lightly in his palm. ”I dug through boiling dirt for a baseline trinket? This Secret Realm is a joke.”

But logic won out over his pride as he slid the silver ring onto his index finger, put it on regardless of the low tier, and channeled his mana.

He cast another Wind spell to send himself into the air again.

WHOOSH!

The casting time was noticeably faster now. The cyclone formed almost instantly, completely lacking the usual half-second of elemental drag and the ring was actually incredibly efficient.

As he soared smoothly into the air, riding the slipstream, Mia leaned against his armored neck.

”Do you want to see Lord Silas again?” Mia asked with her voice sounding too innocent.

Valerius stiffened. He looked away, his cheeks reddening a bit under the harsh sunlight.

”Not at all,” Valerius denied quickly, crossing his arms over his chest plate as he flew. ”He is a thief and a scoundrel... I am perfectly fine operating solo.”

Mia raised a single judgmental white eyebrow as she leaned forward, hanging upside down over his shoulder to look him dead in the eye.

”Is that so?” Mia asked, her tone dripping with smug knowingness. ”Because I distinctly remember a certain gold-armored Lord pacing around his private study just last month.”

Valerius stiffened, refusing to look at her. ”I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

”Oh, I think you do,” Mia grinned, poking his cheek. ”You were whining. ’Oh, everyone in high-society is so fake! No one is real! I just want one single person in this entire miserable Realm I can talk to who doesn’t have a hidden political agenda!’ Does that ring a bell, Master?”

Valerius avoided her gaze, his jaw tightening as the truth hit home.

”Well,” Valerius argued weakly, ”Seraph is there and she is honest, my twin sister is back at her own territory.”

Mia didn’t say a word as she just gave him a long, incredibly knowing look.

Valerius knew she was right.

He also knew that those were entirely not an option as well. Seraphina currently wanted to murder every male in a ten-mile radius, and his twin sister was a completely different brand of exhausting...

Valerius sighed heavily with his broad shoulders slumping in defeat.

”Fine,” Valerius muttered. ”Well, if he gives me a signal, the—”

FLASH!

A burst of pure blue-white starlight suddenly flashed in the distance, illuminating the horizon like a small supernova for a second.

Mia smirked, pointing a small finger toward the fading light. ”There’s your signal.”

Valerius didn’t even try to hide his grin.

He leaned into the wind currents and shot over there at maximum velocity.

...

Standing atop a sprawling plateau of solid desert glass, Silas lowered his hand.

”I’m only doing this because you explicitly wanted to meet Mia again,” Silas told Aeliana, keeping his voice flat and professional.

Aeliana stood beside him with the lingering starlight fading from her fingertips. She nodded, a bright warm smile finally breaking through her previous icy demeanor.

”Of course, Lord Sy,” Aeliana replied smoothly.

But internally, Aeliana was genuinely happy.

She was deeply relieved to see that her Lord was actually making friends.

It wasn’t like she wanted him to stop being fiercely focused on the territory’s expansion, or anything like that but Aeliana was happy that her Lord was making guy friends.

WHOOSH!

The sharp sound of cutting wind announced his arrival.

Valerius landed gracefully on the glass plateau with his boots clinking softly.

He stood up straight, brushing a speck of dust off his mythril armor, trying to look incredibly nonchalant about responding to the beacon.

Silas turned, a wicked smirk crossing his face. He casually waved his hand at the blond Lord.

”Quick, catch...” Silas said.

Valerius tensed instinctively as Silas suddenly threw a heavy black orb directly at him.

Valerius’s reflexes kicked in. He snatched the projectile out of the air with his gauntlet and he immediately opened his Lord tab to see what kind of high-tier grenade had just been lobbed at him.

The blue screen flickered:

[Name]: Gale Trap

[Tier]: Tier 2 (Prank Artifact)

Valerius saw that it was actually a treasure. However, before Valerius could even react to the classification, the artifact destabilized.

FWUMP!

It exploded but it didn’t release shrapnel or fire.

It released a massive pressurized burst of pure chaotic wind directly into Valerius’s face.

The force violently pulled his meticulously groomed blond hair straight back, tangling it into a chaotic frizzy mess and making it stand completely on end like he had just been struck by lightning.

Valerius stood there with his hair pointing in every direction as his eyes were wide with disbelief.

He glared at Silas.

”You miserable rat!” he cursed.

Silas threw his head back and laughed loudly, a genuine, booming sound that echoed across the dunes.

”You should see your face,” Silas chuckled, wiping a tear of amusement from his eye as he stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. ”Where are we going hunting ne—”

”Ahem.”

The annoying omnipresent recording of the dead god started again, cutting off Silas’s sentence and making them all instantly stiffen.

”It seems all of you have successfully dealt with my General!” Ititus’s voice boomed happily across the sky. ”What a great guy he was! He absolutely loved to battle!”

The god didn’t immediately reveal the next objective. Instead, he launched into an incredibly long unnecessary monologue.

”He was fiercely loyal, yes, but he had incredibly specific tastes,” Ititus continued, his voice taking on a gossipy conspiratorial tone. ”He loved his constructs. Especially the sand women! I had to carve them with extra... structural density... just to keep him entertained during the long centuries!”

Valerius and Silas completely groaned, rubbing their temples in absolute irritation.

”We don’t care about your dead General’s fetishes!” Valerius shouted at the sky.

”Skip to the loot!” Silas grumbled.

They didn’t care about this shit.

”Now,” Ititus finally shifted gears with his voice turning sinisterly cheerful. ”If you seek the next major treasure, I will gracefully help you find it! You’re here for treasure after all! But first, you must survive the second trial.”

The ground beneath their boots began to vibrate faintly.

”You see,” Ititus explained, ”all of you are currently given exactly ten minutes to find the nearest designated structural shelter! Or else... you’ll be sent entirely down into an even deeper darker layer. A dungeon where I keep all of the people I killed.”

The Lords tensed with their hands dropping to their weapons.

”And trust me,” Ititus whispered, his voice echoing with genuine malice. ”You do not want to be sent into the dungeon... I have starved the Abyssal Sand-Crawlers for millennia. Their carapaces are immune to magic, their venom melts mythril, and they hunt entirely by the sound of a beating heart. Now start. Your timer begins, and it’s in the sky!”

The god’s voice completely vanished.

High above them, burning brightly against the amber sky, a massive glowing red timer appeared.

[10:00]

It began clicking downward fast.

Valerius didn’t hesitate.

He immediately channeled his mana. ”Let’s get moving. If we ride the wind, we can scan the horizon for a shelter before—”

”Hold on,” Silas said sharply, raising his hand to stop the Lord.

Valerius stopped, turning to him in disbelief. ”Hold on? Did you not hear the dead god? There are magic-immune beasts down there! Even prankster gods lie about safety!”

Silas crossed his arms, his golden-ringed eyes narrowing.

”Prankster gods lie for sure,” Silas agreed flatly. ”And even when they tell the truth, they twist it but look at the things from my point of view.”

He pointed to the sky.

”What if there were actually incredible treasures hidden down in the dungeon? Think about it.”