Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Aeliana’s urgent crystal-clear voice echoed directly next to his ear, carrying a sharp spike of elven mana that physically jolted his nervous system.

Silas’s glowing golden-ringed eyes snapped wide open.

The very first thing his perception registered was that he was not in a bed, nor was he walking on solid ground.

He was currently being carried.

Aeliana had him securely in her slender, pale hands, holding him in a protective carry as she sprinted forward across the desert sand at terrifying superhuman speed.

He looked up.

Looping directly ahead of their trajectory, looming a long distance away against the harsh amber sky, was a massive ancient structure... a towering, sixty-story spire constructed entirely of black fused desert glass and swirling sand.

Silas rapidly turned his head, assessing his immediate surroundings.

The whole group was tightly clustered around him in a high-speed defensive formation.

Aeliana was setting the pace at the group.

Directly to her right, running with heavy, thudding strides, was Valerius Sterling, his gold armor clanking rhythmically.

On Valerius’s shoulder, Mia was actively balancing herself, yawning sleepily while keeping one hand pressed against Valerius’s neck to funnel him stabilizing water mana.

And trailing just a few paces behind them, running with light electric grace, was Harper.

And last but not least, Silas realized they were completely out in the open desert and they were absolutely not alone.

Swarming across the dunes half a mile behind them was a massive, thundering horde of rival Valoria coalition Lords and their summoned Heroes.

”Get back here, Sterling!” a deafening arrogant roar echoed across the sand.

Silas looked back.

Leading the pursuers was the armored Spear Lord riding atop a massive, two-ton armored siege Rhino that was violently tearing up the sand as it charged.

Trailing right beside him was Lord Julian, his twin swords drawn, and several other purple core and blue core elites.

”Valerius!” Silas barked, completely shedding his drowsiness as he looked at the blonde aristocrat running beside them. ”What the hell is going on?! Why is half the Lords hunting us like dogs?!”

Valerius offered a breathless, grimacing smirk as he hurdled a jagged sand rock.

”Welcome back to the land of the living, Graves! While you were busy snoring away in the Elf’s lap, that sadistic dead god triggered the third Quest for all remaining Lords!”

Silas didn’t wait for permission. He placed his hands on Aeliana’s shoulders and violently pushed off, jumping cleanly out of her hands.

He hit the desert sand running, his boots sinking into the grit as his mana instantly ignited, matching Aeliana’s top speed stride-for-stride.

SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!

Three high-velocity steel-tipped armor-piercing arrows suddenly screamed out of the sky, fired from the backline archers of the pursuing horde directly toward Aeliana’s exposed back.

Silas didn’t even look over his shoulder.

He smoothly drew his mythril longsword in a single fluid motion, bringing the blade up in a lightning-fast horizontal parry.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

He effortlessly deflected all three arrows mid-sprint, shattering their wooden shafts and sending the razor-sharp broadheads spinning harmlessly into the sand dunes.

”Explain the quest!” Silas demanded, keeping his eyes locked on the distant sand spire.

”It’s that damned map you took from Harper!” Valerius shouted over the howling wind of their sprint. ”Ititus broadcasted a global notification across the entire Secret Realm! He announced that the Treasure Map leads directly to the Vault inside that Sand Spire where his highest-tier divine treasures and the primary Realm Core are stored!”

Valerius spat a mouthful of sand as his face went dark with rage.

”But here is the catch! The map acts as an active high-frequency magical homing beacon! Every single Lord within fifty miles can currently sense our exact spatial coordinates on their system interfaces! The god literally told all of them to hunt down and slaughter whichever group is holding the scroll before they reach the Spire doors!”

As if on cue, the dead God’s voice boomed from the amber heavens, vibrating with sadistic glee.

”Run, little mice, run!” Ititus laughed hysterically over the broadcast. ”The Spire doors will seal the moment the map holder crosses the threshold! If you want my greatest treasures, you must tear the scroll from their cold dead hands! Show me a bloodbath!”

Silas let out a deeply exhausted sigh, sheathing his sword as he ran.

”I hate this go. So what do we do now? We can’t outrun a siege Rhino all the way to the Spire without getting surrounded by their outriders.”

Before Valerius could offer a tactical formation, Harper accelerated her stride, pulling up directly alongside Silas.

Her purple eyes were glowing with intense electrical mana.

Unlike her pathetic, shivering performance from the night before, her face was set in an expression of resolve.

”You keep running,” Harper told them with her voice clear and commanding over the wind. ”I am the one who handed you that map... I am the one who implicated your group in this beacon trap and therefore, I will be the one to deal with the pursuing Lords.”

She slid to a halt in the sand, turning her back to the towering Sand Spire and facing the thundering army of rival Lords charging across the dunes.

”I will hold the rear and buy you the time you need to enter the Spire,” Harper stated.

Before anyone could speak, before Silas could even open his mouth to question her sudden suicidal heroism, Harper blurred forward with a spark of lightning.

She grabbed the lapels of Silas’s dusty trench coat, pulled him down toward her face, and aggressively pressed her lips directly against his cheek in a firm kiss.

Silas froze mid-stride, his eyes widening in shock.

Harper pulled back, offering him a breathtaking, wild smile that sparkled with violet static.

”If I don’t die out here today, Silas Graves...” Harper whispered, her eyes locking onto his. ”...you better take me out on a proper date when we get back to Valoria.”

”Hey! Get your filthy lips off my Lord!” Aeliana snarled, her elven pointed ears standing straight up as she reached for her dagger, ready to skin the lightning mage alive. ”I better not catch you touching him again!”

However, the verbal reprimand fell on empty ears.

Silas had already stopped moving for a split second due to the shock of the kiss, while Valerius and Mia kept running at full speed toward the Spire.

”Graves! Keep moving! Don’t let her dramatic nonsense slow us down!” Valerius roared from fifty yards ahead.

Silas gritted his teeth, grabbed the furious Aeliana by the arm, and forcibly pulled her along as he resumed his sprint toward the towering black spire, leaving Harper completely alone in the desert sand.

Harper stood perfectly still, watching Silas’s retreating back as he shrank into the distance.

She touched her fingers to her lips with a smirk crossing her face.

’That should be the best way to win his paranoid heart over, right?’ Harper thought to herself, calculating the emotional leverage. ’By selflessly sacrificing myself on the battlefield to save his life? When I survive this, his psychological defenses will be completely shattered. He won’t be able to refuse me.’

She slowly turned around, facing the thundering rival Lords.

The armored Spear Lord and his two-ton siege Rhino were less than two hundred yards away and closing fast.

To his left was Julian, and pushing through the center of the formation, riding a summoned wind-steed with her face contorted in cold rage, was Elora Verinda... the City Lord’s daughter whom Harper had violently betrayed and attacked with natural lightning the previous afternoon.

Harper spread her arms wide. Her Lord core ignited, burning with blinding power.

”Come!” Harper screamed at the incoming army.

CRACK! KRA-THOOM!

A deafening explosion of hyper-condensed purple lightning erupted from her skin, violently whipping around her body in jagged, ten-foot arcs of pure electrical destruction.

The sand beneath her boots instantly flash-melted into a crater of glowing black glass.

She didn’t wait for them to charge her. She tilted her body forward and blasted forward across the dunes like a human bolt of lightning, intercepting the group dead center.

BOOOOOM!

Harper slammed directly into the charging two-ton siege Rhino like a falling meteor.

She didn’t use a weapon as she thrust her open palm directly into the reinforced iron plating protecting the beast’s massive forehead.

”Fulgur Impact!” she roared.

The concussive electrical discharge was so catastrophic that it generated a visible shockwave of white static that ripped across the desert floor.

The iron armor shielding the Rhino’s head was instantly vaporized.

Raw millions-of-volts electricity violently flooded into the beast’s skull, completely frying its brain matter and nervous system in a microsecond.

The massive, two-ton beast let out a digitized shriek of agony, its legs buckling instantly as it skidded across the sand, flipping end-over-end before crashing to a dead smoldering halt.

The Spear Lord riding atop the beast was violently thrown from his saddle, launching forty feet through the air before crashing heavily into the sand dunes, his spear clattering away.

Before Harper could recover her stance, two rival combatants dived from the flanks with their swords slashing for her ribs.

Harper twirled in the sand, her purple hair trailing static. She dodged the first blade, but the second elite predicted her movement, driving a serrated dagger deeply into her left shoulder.

SHWK!

Blood sprayed across the sand.

Of course, when fighting a dozen elite Lords and Heroes simultaneously, she got countered and wounded but Harper didn’t flinch.

In fact, she mostly let herself take the blow to secure a clamp.

The moment the elite’s dagger pierced her flesh, Harper grabbed the man’s wrist with an iron grip, smiling wildly into his horrified eyes.

”Got you,” she whispered.

She channeled her signature technique... Thunder Blood.

The spell instantly altered her biological composition, converting the iron in her boiling blood into a hyper-conductive liquid electrical medium.

ZZZZZT!

The blood spraying from her wounded shoulder violently ignited with purple lightning.

The high-voltage current traveled directly up the blood-slicked dagger, bypassing the elite’s magical wards and flooding into his arm.

”AHHHHH!”

The man screamed in agonizing torment as his muscles violently convulsed, his core completely overloading before he collapsed into the sand, smoking and paralyzed.

”You whore!” a furious voice shouted from her right.

It was Lord Julian.

The handsome man dived forward, wielding twin enchanted rapiers that blurred with lethal speed.

He slashed at her legs, trying to sever her mobility while spouting arrogant bullshit.

”You think a woman can hold us the Elite?!” Julian sneered, thrusting his rapier for her throat. ”You should have stayed in the ballroom where you belong, playing dress-up for your betters! Know your place and die!”

Harper tilted her head, barely avoiding the rapier tip as it sliced a thin line of blood across her cheek.

Her glowing purple eyes locked onto Julian’s arrogant face.

”My place?” Harper repeated, her voice dropping into an eerily calm, vibrating harmonic.

She stepped directly into his guard, completely ignoring his second sword as it pierced her thigh.

She raised her right hand, pointing her index and middle fingers directly between Julian’s eyes.

”My place is standing over your ash...” Harper said.

”Thunder Lance!”

KRA-THOOM!

A beam of concentrated purple lightning erupted from her fingertips at point-blank range and the beam struck Julian dead center in the forehead.

There was no time for him to scream.

The heat of the spell completely eviscerated him. His magical shields shattered like wet paper, his flesh and armor instantly vaporizing into atomized dust.

The lightning beam continued punching through his skull, scoring a half-mile trench of melted glass through the desert sand behind him.

Julian’s twin swords fell clattering to the dirt, followed a second later by a pile of fine, smoking grey ash... the only physical remains of the arrogant Lord.

Seeing the leaders instantly eviscerated into ash, the remaining purple-core Lords and their summoned Heroes tensed, backing away in terror from the bleeding lightning-draped woman standing in the center of the carnage.

SQUELCH!

Harper pulled the rapier from her thigh with a sickening sound, tossing the bloody steel aside as her electrical blood immediately cauterized the wound.

She breathed heavily with her stamina draining rapidly as she stood alone over the defeated vanguard.

Suddenly, a massive drop in atmospheric temperature froze the air behind her.

SHING!

A razor-sharp lance of solid blue ice shot from the blind spot of a sand dune, aiming directly for the back of Harper’s neck.

Harper violently twisted her torso, throwing herself backward into the dirt just in time.

The ice lance missed her throat by a millimeter, shearing off a lock of her purple hair before embedding itself deeply into the carcass of the dead Rhino.

Harper scrambled to her feet, wiping blood from her mouth as she looked up.

Walking over the crest of the sand dune, surrounded by a swirling blizzard of freezing snow, was Elora Verinda.