Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Silas tilted his head back with a thoughtful smirk touching his lips as he analyzed the logic of the whole thing.

’If I already possess Tier 3 spell scrolls for all of these elemental branches,’ Silas reasoned pragmatically inside his thoughts, ’then as long as I actively cast them in battle and truly understand their structural flow... reaching Adept rank should just be a matter of repetition and execution, right?’

It was an avenue he would definitely need to experiment with later tonight or maybe tomorrow.

Silas opened his eyes, looking up at Aeli, who was holding the sleeping dragoness against her side.

”Aeli,” Silas commanded smoothly. ”Take Talira up to her room and lay her on her bed. And once Thora gets back from her border run... tell her I have a new assignment for her.”

Aeli tilted her head, her silver hair swaying. ”What kind of assignment, My Lord?”

”I want Thora to begin forging a specialized set of battle armor for Talira,” Silas instructed. ”It needs to be engraved prominently with the official crest of the Blessed Land. And make sure the design adapts seamlessly when she transforms into her true dragon form... tell Thora to add an extra reinforced, mythril-tipped spike at the end of the tail for maximum impact.”

Hearing the sheer tactical savagery of adding a tail-spike to a primordial dragon, Aeli’s eyes lit up. She snapped a sharp, crisp salute, her chest puffing out proudly.

”Consider it done, Lord Silas!” Aeli beamed.

With a subtle shimmer of spatial mana, Aeli activated her short-range teleportation, vanishing from the training vault along with Talira in a flash of silver light.

Left entirely alone in the quiet stone room, Silas let his head fall back against the wall once more.

’So little time...’ Silas thought, feeling a rare wave of mental exhaustion washing over his mind.

There was an overwhelming mountain of tasks piling up on his shoulders.

He had six days left before an undefeated Classic Lord brought a two-hundred-man army and a rolling iron fortress to his front gates.

He had to manage territory expansions, oversee the construction of new residential barracks, train his single-armed disguise, and upgrade his core personnel.

And worse yet... what was going to happen after this Lord War was over?

Eventually, the World Council and the global news networks back on Earth were going to demand an official appearance from ’Lord Vespera.’

He was going to have to navigate high-society politics, corporate headhunters, and international government meetings using a fake, single-armed female identity.

’Man... my life used to be so simple,’ Silas groaned internally, rubbing his temples. ’I just need to close my eyes for a few minutes...’

He didn’t mean to fall asleep.

He just wanted a quick ten-minute breather to clear his head before he had to transform back into Vespera, haul a mountain of raw monster meat, and ride out to meet Lord Sky at the border clearing.

Breathing in the cool air of the vault, Silas let his eyelids drift shut, slipping into a light, peaceful slumber.

A few minutes later, a gentle spatial ripple hummed in the corner of the vault.

Aeli stepped back into the room after safely tucking Talira into her bed.

Seeing her Lord sitting against the stone wall with his eyes closed with his chest rising and falling in steady relaxed rhythms, the arcanist softened her posture completely.

She walked over on silent feet, kneeling down beside him.

With extreme care and gentleness, Aeli reached out, shifting Silas’s upper body so that he was lying flat on his back, placing his head comfortably across both of her soft lap-cushioned thighs.

Aeli looked down at her Lord’s handsome face.

In the dim torchlight of the vault, she could see the faint lines of tension around his eyes... the subtle physical toll of carrying an entire territory’s survival on his shoulders.

”You try far too hard, My Lord...” Aeli whispered softly, her melodic voice filled with an overwhelming heartbreaking tenderness. ”You carry everything for all of us... you truly deserve to get some real sleep.”

She reached down with her slender fingers, gently brushing a strand of dark hair away from his forehead.

Seeing a small bead of sweat glistening on his jaw from his intense duel with the dragon, Aeli felt a sudden uncontrollable surge of affection rising from the very depths of her soul.

Her breath caught in her throat. Her pale cheeks flushed a delicate pink, her green eyes darkening with a deep light.

Aeli tilted her face forward, leaning down low until her lips brushed against his.

SLURP...

Aeli extended her soft pink tongue, lightly licking across Silas’s lower lip, tasting the salty trace of her Lord’s sweat.

A soft shuddering sigh escaped her throat as she pulled back a fraction of an inch, resting her forehead against his with her heart hammering wildly against her ribs.

’I don’t care about the wars... I don’t care about anything else...’ Aeli thought passionately, staring at his closed eyelids with adoration. ’I just want you to rest... I want to protect your peace forever.’

Later that evening, as the dark twilight of the Umbral Basin settled over the land...

Silas stood in the main Keep courtyard, fully rested and refreshed.

Standing right beside his right hip was Aeli, looking unusually cheerful with her cheeks carrying a permanent rosy glow as she held her hands behind her back.

They were standing directly outside the Tier 2 Frost-Sealed Vault... the massive standalone cold-storage facility built into the western side of the Keep courtyard.

The heavy steel doors of the vault were flung wide open.

Out from the dark interior billowed a thick, rolling cloud of freezing white preservation mist, sending a frigid chill washing over the warm cobblestones.

Inside, rows of glowing blue frost-runes illuminated hundreds of hung monster carcasses, organized neatly along iron hooks and steel butchery tables.

Silas looked at the billowing frost mist with a thoughtful glint in his golden eyes.

’I seriously need to spend the points to upgrade this place to Tier 3 soon,’ Silas evaluated mentally. ’The Tier 2 Frost-Sealed Vault is decent, but as our population doubles and we start handling multi-ton monster harvests from regional raids, we need a high-capacity cryo-vault that can preserve food indefinitely without mana degradation.’

He flicked his eyes toward the upper right corner of his vision, summoning his system interface to check his current currency.

PING!

[Current UP Balance: 1,240 UP]

Silas’s eyes widened slightly in genuine satisfaction.

The field hunting squads had gone completely above and beyond today.

Between Morwenna’s Abyss Corsairs clearing the riverbanks, Brida’s Team Bravo smashing heavy beast nests, and Fenna’s artillery team sniping flying Tier 2 monsters from the Watchtower, they had shattered the thousand-point milestone.

He had more than enough Upgrade Points to execute his planned S-Rank ascensions for Aeli and Rowenna, with plenty left over for structural renovations... though more hunts would need to happen tomorrow.

Earlier, when the field teams had returned to the Keep gates, Silas had made sure to personally greet every single woman, praising their hard work and handing out extra rations.

He had even tried to give Morwenna a special compliment for her squad’s staggering kill count though the feral Pirate Queen had merely smirked, scoffed dismissively, and demanded that instead of verbal praise, Silas had to sit down with her later tonight so she could teach him the advanced high-velocity footwork of her Tidal-Blade Arts.

Not only that, but Morwenna had casually agreed to act as his personal sparring partner over the next few days to help him fully master fighting inside Vespera’s single-armed body.

Standing there in the courtyard, looking at Morwenna’s sharp gorgeous face, Silas felt a sudden dangerous urge.

’Damn...’ Silas thought. ’I honestly just want to grab her waist and kiss her right on the mouth...’

However, Silas quickly checked his own desires.

While he had already established an intimate affectionate bond with Eluned... having shared passionate kisses and romantic promises with the Nature Goddess... his relationship with Morwenna was built on a slightly different wilder dynamic.

Morwenna was a prideful fierce Dread Queen of the seas.

If he tried to force a romantic move on her out of nowhere without properly earning her heart through combat and drink, he was far more likely to take an SSS-Rank water-blade to the ribs or a sharp punch straight to the face.

And Silas preferred keeping his face intact whenever possible.

HEAVE... CRASH!

A heavy metallic thud shattered Silas’s train of thought.

Stepping out of the freezing mist of the Tier 2 Frost-Sealed Vault were Tasmin, Brida, and a squad of heavily armored Shieldmaidens.

Together, they were dragging a colossal, six-foot-tall wooden trade crate bound in thick iron straps.

Tasmin wiped a thin layer of frost from her leather shoulder guard, stepping up to Silas with a crisp bow.

”Report, Lord Silas,” Tasmin announced formally. ”We have successfully packed and sealed the first major trade shipment for ’The Unmovable Wall.’ This crate contains roughly four tons of prime, freshly harvested game from today’s Basin raids... consisting primarily of Tier 2 Umbral Wolf flanks and high-density bird meat.”

Silas rolled his golden eyes playfully with a smirk touching his lips.

”More bird meat, huh?” Silas chuckled. ”It seems like new monster species are really starting to pop up everywhere in the Umbral Basin.”

Over the past few hours, almost every single returning hunter had complained about encountering flock after flock of strange metallic-feathered raptor birds.

While they were significantly smaller than the twenty-five-foot Abyssal Iron-Weave Roc that Silas had bisected earlier, they were still aggressive Tier 2 airborne predators that hunted in packs.

Clearing them out was going to be a daily, annoying chore for the Scouts.

”Thanks for getting this sorted so quickly, girls,” Silas praised, stepping forward and tapping the iron trade crate.

FLASH!

With a subtle spatial hum, the multi-ton crate of frozen meat vanished cleanly into his Lord Inventory.

Brida rested her massive axe against her shoulder, taking a heavy step forward as her brown eyes looked at Silas with a rare, serious edge.

”Captain...” Brida asked with her deep voice carrying across the quiet courtyard. ”Are we really going to war against those ’Unmovable Wall’ people in six days?”

She hadn’t been present at the western border during the initial meeting, but as an S-Rank Titan Bastion... her high-tier physical perception had picked up the lingering pressure radiating from Lord Sky’s direction miles away.

She knew those invaders were no push-overs.

Before Silas could answer, a boisterous female voice called out from the side of the vault.

”Of course we’re going to war with them, big girl,” Morwenna spoke up drily.

The Pirate Queen was casually sitting atop a wooden supply crate, swinging her long, leather-clad legs.

In her right hand, she held a long sharpened wooden stick. Impaled on the end of the stick was a thick, roasted, six-inch-wide oversized worm monster... another newly discovered fauna of the Umbral Basin.

Morwenna took a hearty, crunchy bite out of the roasted worm, chewing contentedly.

That particular worm monster had an absurd secret... Despite looking utterly repulsive on the outside, its inner meat tasted shockingly like sweet roasted chicken.

In fact, less than ten minutes ago, Morwenna had shamelessly pinned Silas against the Keep wall and forcefully stuffed a piping-hot piece of the roasted worm directly into his mouth just to see the shocked expression on his face when he tasted chicken.

Silas still couldn’t completely wrap his head around the mind-boggling reality that a giant slimy Basin earthworm tasted like high-grade poultry.

Morwenna swallowed her food, waving her wooden skewer dismissively as she looked at Brida.

”We’re going to face them, and we’re going to crush them,” Morwenna declared with absolute, arrogant supreme confidence. ”I felt their presences from across the forest earlier. There are a few moderately annoying and troublesome bugs hiding inside that rolling metal box of theirs... but honestly? If I were currently at my full, unsuppressed power... I could beat their entire two-hundred-man army in my sleep! Hell, I could beat them while in a coma!”

Brida blinked her wide eyes, looking at the Pirate Queen with genuine curiosity. ”And... what about right now? At your current suppressed level?”

Morwenna took another crunchy bite of her chicken-worm, offering an utterly toothy smirk.

”Right now? I’ll still beat them in my sleep,” Morwenna replied smoothly. ”What the hell did you think I was gonna say?”

”...”

Silas stared at her with an eyebrow twitching violently as a massive sweatdrop formed on the back of his head.

’Why the fuck did you even bother repeating the phrase if the answer was literally going to be the exact same thing?!’ Silas complained in his own mind, feeling like a complete idiot for briefly expecting a bit of humbleness from her.