Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Both women whipped their heads up, staring at him in wide-eyed shock.

Silas’s smile grew even wider, his golden-ringed eyes glowing with a quiet authority.

”I can upgrade anything, can’t I?” Silas reminded them, gesturing casually around the room. ”I upgraded the stone walls of this Keep. I upgraded our weapons and I upgraded the very place where you sleep. What’s to say I can’t upgrade your classes?”

The shift in the room was instant.

The heavy cloud of hopelessness completely vanished, replaced by an electric jolt of sudden realization that made both women hold their breath.

Brida and Tasmin perked up immediately, their postures straightening as their eyes shone with sudden hope.

They felt a wave of deep self-reproach wash over them... they should have never doubted their Lord at all!

Of course he had a way!

He was Silas Graves, the Lord who shattered every rule the world tried to enforce!

Silas chuckled, reaching up to scratch the side of his face as he added a casual thoughtful observation.

”Well, increasing in ranks does mean that your lifespan will naturally increase as well,” Silas noted, looking at them with an amused glint in his golden eyes. ”So as long as you don’t mind spending a great deal of your life stuck here with me...”

Brida looked at him as if he were completely dense for even phrasing it as a question.

”I would love to spend the rest of my life with you, My Lord!” Brida declared loudly, her voice ringing out through the office without an ounce of hesitation with her cheeks flushing a brilliant crimson.

Tasmin, not wanting to be outdone by the heavy infantry unit for even a single second, immediately took a step forward.

Her dark eyes locked onto his with sharp fierce intensity.

”Even if we die, My Lord,” Tasmin countered smoothly. ”I wouldn’t mind going to the afterlife with you.”

Brida instantly turned her head, glaring at the scout with a dramatic pout.

”Hey! Stop trying to make my declaration sound weak, you sneaky cat!”

Aeli let out a soft, delighted laugh from the side, and Silas chuckled along with them as the tension melted completely into warm familiar banter.

”Alright, settle down,” Silas said, waving his hand to calm them. He looked at the slender scout first. ”Tasmin, come here first.”

Tasmin didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second.

She stepped briskly around the corner of the mahogany desk, stopping directly in front of his chair.

Her chest rose and fell with eager breathless anticipation as she stood at attention.

Silas stood up from his leather chair, reaching across the table.

He pressed his hand firmly against her chest, right over her core, and focused his mind on his system interface.

’I want to upgrade her Class.’

Instantly, the glowing blue panel of the Absolute Upgrade System materialized before his vision.

[Would you like to upgrade Tasmin’s C-Rank [Wilderness Huntress] to S-Rank [Shadow Commander]?]

[Cost: 500 UP]

[Y / N]

Silas paused for a brief second, his golden eyes scanning the text floating in the air.

’Shadow?’ Silas thought with a question mark popping up in his mind as he analyzed the text. ’How does her Huntress class evolve into a Shadow Commander?’

It was a strange unexpected evolutionary branch, but Silas didn’t care about the odd naming convention.

An S-Rank class was an S-Rank class, and 500 UP was a remarkably cheap price to pay to secure a permanent S-Rank commander for his scouting forces.

Silas smiled and selected ’Y’.

The second the choice registered, a surge of dark bubbling energy erupted directly out of Tasmin’s chest!

”Ah...!” Tasmin gritted her teeth, an involuntary moan escaping her lips as her entire body went rigid under his palm.

She stumbled back two steps, clutching her stomach as the dark ethereal power flooded her internal conduits with overwhelming force.

”My... my body feels weird...” Tasmin gasped out, her skin turning pale as her internal structure was forcibly torn apart and rebuilt.

Suddenly, a strange intense purification process began.

Her sweat pores began swelling across her arms, neck, and face, forcing out tiny beads of pitch-black viscous liquid that quickly covered her skin in a dark sheen.

Brida scrunched her nose in disgust, taking a quick step backward and fanning the air.

”Ugh! Tasmin, you’re disgusting! What is that stuff coming out of you?!”

Tasmin, even while trembling from the intense internal heat washing through her body, raised her hand and flipped Brida off without even looking at her.

”Shut... up...” Tasmin grunted between her teeth.

The black liquid oozing from her skin didn’t drip onto the woven rug.

Instead, it reacted instantly to the dark energy flooding the room, transforming into physical writhing shadows!

The shadows rose up around her like dark, pressurized cables, coiling tightly around her limbs and torso until they formed a solid opaque cocoon that completely sealed her inside.

Inside the dark pod, Tasmin felt the power moving up her spine, expanding her conduits, reshaping her muscles, and refining her neural pathways to incredible speeds.

”Ahn~ So much...”

POP!

With a sharp resounding sound, the shadow cocoon completely shattered into fine dark dust, revealing Tasmin standing proudly in the center of the office.

The physical changes were striking and immediate.

Her previously solid black hair now had brilliant, shimmering strands of pure silver running through the locks.

Her skin was impossibly smooth, glowing with a healthy vitality, and her figure had matured significantly... her waist was narrow, and her chest was visibly fuller and curvier against her leather armor.

However, accompanied by her striking new appearance came a foul and extremely pungent odor that rapidly filled the office which was the lingering scent of all the deep physical impurities that had been purged from her body during the transformation.

Tasmin’s cheeks flushed bright red as she caught a whiff of herself.

She looked deeply embarrassed to smell like that in front of Silas, but her embarrassment was quickly washed away by the volume of power humming through her limbs.

”I... I feel so much stronger!” Tasmin exclaimed, her eyes wide as she looked down at her hands.

To test her new body, she raised her right hand.

A swirl of pitch-black shadow materialized instantly around her palm like a dark, living flame.

”What about physical power?” Brida asked, ”Shadows aren’t nothing compared to physical pow—”

She threw three lightning-fast punches into the air.

SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!.

Her movements were so rapid that her forearms turned into continuous blurs of motion!

She drew one of her chained daggers and casually dropped it toward the floor.

Before the steel could touch the rug, the shadow beneath her boots opened like a dark mouth, swallowing the blade whole.

A second later, the shadow cast by Silas’s mahogany table opened, and the dagger shot out, burying its tip cleanly into the side of the wood!

Silas blinked, thoroughly impressed by the seamless spatial trick. He focused his vision, opening her brand-new status screen to inspect the full breakdown.

[Name]: Tasmin

[Title]: Wilderness Huntress —> [Shadow Commander]

[Rank]: S-Rank

[Level]: 30 (EXP: 0/30000)

[Loyalty]: 100 (Diehard / Love)

[Vitality]: 400

[Mana]: 3300 / 3300

[Active & Passive Skills]:

[Shadow-Submersion Drift]: Allows Tasmin to physically sink into shadows and spatial seams, granting temporary invulnerability to physical attacks and rendering her entirely invisible to sensory or optical wards. (Cost: 100 Mana/minute)

[True Severing Edge]: Enforces an armor-piercing property onto her twin blades and chains. Attacks bypass 50% of the target’s physical and magical armor hardness, applying a lingering void-bleed that resists low-to-mid tier healing magic. (Passive)

[Voltaic Chain Execution]: Channels high-voltage, super-heated crimson flames through her Eclipse-Thread chains to bind, isolate, and decapitate targets from up to 30 meters away (Cost: 250 Mana/cast)

[Phantom Leap / Blitz]: Accelerates her neural reflexes to supersonic speeds, leaving residual shadow illusions in her wake as she blinks directly into an opponent’s blind spot. (Cost: 150 Mana/cast)

[Predator’s Mark]: Locks her gaze onto a single high-value target or monster core, highlighting their weak points in glowing red and granting a 30% critical damage boost against them. (Cost: 80 Mana/cast)

[Shadow Strengthening]: By merging her shadow with her physical body, Tasmin can double all of her stats including her mana. (Cost: 100 Mana/cast).

Silas’s eyes widened as he read through the skill list.

Her stat increases were massive, her mana pool was huge, and her ability to double her output with shadow merging made her a menace in high-tier combat.

”Congratulations, Tasmin,” Silas said, smiling warmly at her. ”You really turned into something fierce.”

Tasmin didn’t just thank him with words. Overcome with pure joy and the intoxicating rush of S-Rank power, she instantly activated [Phantom Leap]!

ZIP!

She vanished from her spot and reappeared right at Silas’s side behind the desk and then she threw her arms tightly around his neck, hugging him with all her strength despite the foul smell radiating from her skin.

Tasmin then leaned up and kissed him on the cheek.

”Thank you, My Lord!” Tasmin cried out softly, her voice overrun with joy. ”I feel so much stronger... I’m so glad I get to keep my position as your Commander!”

Silas patted her head, though he winced slightly as his fingers touched her slimy hair.

”I’m glad too, Tasmin,” Silas said, pulling back slightly with an amused smirk. ”Now go take a bath. You smell terrible.”

Tasmin’s face burned redder than a hot iron.

She hurriedly yanked her dagger out of his desk, sheathed it at her waist, and practically sprinted out of the office to find the washrooms.

Once the door closed behind her, Brida stepped up to the table.

She had been remarkably patient, watching her friend’s transformation with wide awe-filled eyes.

”Is it my turn yet, My Lord?” Brida asked, leaning forward eagerly over the mahogany wood.

”Come over,” Silas nodded, gesturing to the space before him.

Brida stepped up to the desk, standing tall and bracing herself.

Silas reached out, placing his hand flat against her chest armor, and opened his system interface once more.

[Would you like to upgrade Brida’s C-Rank [Shieldmaiden] to S-Rank [Grand Titan Bastion] ?]

[Cost: 500 UP]

[Y / N]

Silas pressed ’Y’ without hesitation.

FLASH!

A bright golden-brown energy burst out from his hand, enveloping Brida’s entire frame in a pillar of radiant light!

Her transformation unfolded completely differently from Tasmin’s shadow evolution.

Instead of swelling her body into a massive bulky shape, the divine power actually deflated her visible muscle volume slightly...

Her physique streamlined, turning compact and perfectly balanced.

Her bone density increased tenfold, and her newly refined muscles coiled tight like steel cables beneath her skin.

The golden energy formed a glowing pod around her, coiling in thick radiant bands as she absorbed the massive influx of power.

Brida could feel every cell in her body expanding, her physical durability multiplying at a terrifying rate.

’All this is because of my Lord...’

Feeling the surge of power reaching its peak inside her chest, Brida threw her head back and let out a booming battle roar that shook the dust from the rafters.

”RAHHH!”

CRACK!

She flexed her entire body, completely shattering the energy pod from the inside out.

Golden light scattered across the office like falling glass before fading into the air.

Brida stood there, panting lightly as she looked down at her hands. She felt lighter, faster, yet infinitely sturdier than she had ever been in her life... a walking fortress anchored to the earth.

She perked up immediately, smoothing her hands down her streamlined sides, and looked up at Silas expectantly.

”My Lord! How do I look?!”

Silas looked at her refined form and smiled approvingly. ”You look incredible, Brida..”

He pulled up her status screen to inspect the upgrade:

[Title]: Shieldmaiden —> [Grand Titan Bastion]

[Rank]: S-Rank

[Level]: 30 (EXP: 0/45000)

[Loyalty]: 100 (Diehard / Fanatical)

[Vitality]: 5000

[Mana]: 2000 / 2000

[Active & Passive Skills]:

[Unyielding Bedrock Body]: Expands her muscle and bone density to extraordinary levels. Grants complete immunity to stagger, physical knockback, and displacement effects from targets below S-Rank. (Passive)

[Full Counter]:: Her shield absorbs 50% of all incoming physical and elemental impact energy, storing the force within the central boss to detonate outward as a concussive shockwave upon command. (Cost: 150 Mana/activation)

[Domain Barrier: Bastion Ground]: Slams her shield into the dirt, erecting an impenetrable 30-yard spatial defensive dome around herself and her squad that blocks high-tier spell artillery and heavy kinetic strikes. (Cost: 400 Mana/cast)

[Earth-Shattering Cleave]: Infuses her weapon with compressed earth energy, executing a heavy downward strike that splits the ground open in a 30-meter line and crushes enemy formations. (Cost: 300 Mana/cast)

[Aegis Charge]: Surges forward like a runaway locomotive behind her shield, forcefully plowing through enemies and violently ragdolling anything standing in her path. (Cost: 180 Mana/cast)

Silas stared at her Vitality stat.

Five thousand? She was a literal walking fortress now, capable of taking hits that would flatten a whole lot of things.

”Congratulations, Brida,” Silas said warmly. ”You’re an absolute tank.”

Brida’s eyes softened completely.

She crept closer to the table with her tough soldier facade completely melting away.

Like Tasmin, the deep purification process had forced black foul-smelling impurities from her pores, leaving her skin covered in a dark sheen, but she didn’t care about the smell in this moment.

She dropped onto both knees directly in front of his desk, looking up at him with deep tearful emotion in her amber eyes.

”My Lord...” Brida said softly, her voice trembling.

”Yes?” Silas asked gently.

[Author’s Note]

The Bonus Chapters will come tomorrow.