Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Etilga completely ignored Lohan’s silent temper tantrum, focusing her full captivating attention on Vespera.

She studied Vespera’s athletic frame, her broad shoulders in her double-breasted suit, her calm demeanor and the effortless unshakeable aura radiating from her posture.

”I must say, Lord Vespera...” Etilga mused, a soft approving smile touching her lips, ”...you seem to be an extraordinarily strong, composed, and independent woman. You govern an elite territory, command respect without raising your voice, and carry yourself like true nobility.”

Etilga tilted her head, her red eyes sparkling with a strange sudden curiosity.

”Tell me... is your mother perhaps a hidden member of our Bloom Clan? We possess several distant matriarchal branches scattered across the outer territories. If you carry our bloodline, we wouldn’t mind officially recognizing your heritage and taking you into our main house.”

Vespera shook her head calmly, declining the offer without hesitation.

”No,” Vespera answered smoothly with her voice sounding flat. ”My mother was not a member of the Bloom Clan. Honestly... my mom died before I was even born.”

Etilga’s crimson eyes softened slightly, a rare expression of genuine dignified sympathy flickering across her sharp face.

”Ah...” Etilga murmured softly, lowering her cigarillo. ”I see. You have my deepest condolences, my dear. To carry the weight of a territory without maternal guidance is no easy feat.”

Etilga paused, adjusting her posture in her chair.

She took another slow puff from her cigarillo, leaning forward toward her camera lens, her eyes narrowing into an intensely focused sharp gaze.

”Tell me, Lord Vespera...” Etilga asked smoothly, her voice dropping into a low, intriguing register, ”...what do you think of men?”

Vespera blinked beneath her dark hood, taken aback by the sudden bizarre turn in the conversation.

”Men?” Vespera replied cautiously, raising her single gauntleted hand. ”Well... I believe men are go—”

”Men are stepping stones!” Etilga instantly cut her off, her voice ringing with unyielding conviction.

Etilga slammed her booted heel down onto the World Council Magistrate crawling beneath her chair, delivering another firm, authoritative stomp to his back for emphasis.

”Men exist for one singular, divine purpose...” Etilga declared passionately with her red mana flaring around her room. ”They exist to provide raw martial utility, perform heavy manual labor, and elevate the sacred bloodline of great women! That is the fundamental law of nature! That is the sole reason why I am still married to this pathetic bastard under my boots.”

Below her, the high-ranking World Council Magistrate let out a muffled, defeated groan, burying his face deeper into the velvet carpet.

Sitting in her chair, Vespera sweatdropped hard beneath her hood.

’You know that guy is an active member of the World Council, right?!’ Silas screamed in his own head, staring at the poor Magistrate getting used as a human footstool live on camera.

Then again... as Silas quickly remembered the political structure of Lord Society, did it even matter?

Etilga’s older sister was a high-ranking Arch-Magistrate on the World Council tribunal itself.

In truth, Etilga marrying this specific Council Magistrate years ago had been a purely calculated political move to secure legislative immunity and advance her personal family gains.

’But still he can leave right...? The pussy can’t be that good.’

On her feed, Etilga took another drag from her cigarillo, exhaling a thin ring of smoke as her gaze locked onto Vespera with an unsettling intensity.

”Which brings me to my next question, Lord Vespera...” Etilga continued smoothly, a dark secretive smirk spreading across her face. ”...how do you feel about marriage?”

Vespera blinked twice beneath her traveler’s hood, completely stunned.

”Marriage?” Vespera repeated, her deep voice carrying a rare note of utter bewilderment.

Why on earth was marriage being brought up right now?!

They were supposed to be conducting a formal territory interview regarding construction and political recognition, and suddenly this crazy matriarch was asking about her personal marital status live in front of over one hundred million viewers.

Seeing Vespera’s thoroughly confused, speech-deprived expression, Etilga threw her head back and let out a rich melodic laugh.

”Oh, don’t look so alarmed, my dear!” Etilga chuckled playfully, waving her hand. ”You aren’t getting married to a man! Perish the thought! As a strong independent woman of your caliber, taking a pathetic man as a spouse would only dilute your authority!”

Etilga leaned close to her camera feed, her red eyes gleaming with wild ambitious excitement.

”You... are going to get married to my oldest daughter! My heir!”

’Huh?’

Vespera sat completely frozen in her leather chair, her brain halting entirely.

Etilga clapped her manicured hands together, continuing with immense enthusiasm.

”Yes! It is the perfect arrangement! My oldest daughter is a prodigy, but she is currently being blinded by a foolish temporary infatuation! She claims she likes some ordinary slum boy and wants to marry him since he saw her naked.”

Etilga offered a cold, dismissive sneer, flicking her cigar ash dismissively.

”Naturally, I am going to personally get rid of that useless guy she likes and wants to marry. Once he is permanently erased from the picture, my daughter will need a proper partner to lead the Bloom Clan into the next era!”

Beside her, Vespera let out a dry nervous chuckle, a mountain-sized sweatdrop virtually dripping down her forehead beneath her dark traveler’s hood.

’Get rid of the guy she likes and wants to marry... That saw her naked?!’ Silas screamed in utter horror within his soul.

Wait a second! The guy that saw her naked... WAS HIM! IT WAS SILAS GRAVES!

This crazy crimson-haired mother was literally sitting on a live stream, in front of over one hundred million citizens, openly plotting to murder him so that her daughter could marry VESPERA... WHO WAS ALSO SILAS GRAVES IN DISGUISE?

’IS THIS WOMAN SERIOUS?!’ Silas panicked internally. ’SHE WANTS TO KILL ME SO THAT MY FEMALE DISGUISE CAN MARRY MYSELF?! WHAT KIND OF TWISTED PARADOXICAL HORROR MOVIE IS THIS?!’

He was right to complain and over-exaggarate... After all, this came too suddenly.

On the stream feed, Etilga clapped her hands together with immense delight, completely unaware of the mental breakdown happening inside Vespera’s head.

”So! What about it, Lord Vespera?” Etilga asked eagerly, her eyes shining with ambition. ”Marrying my oldest daughter, merging our territorial resources, and keeping the sacred matriarchal bloodline pure! As the independent, powerful woman that you are, I am entirely certain you descend from an ancient offshoot of our bloodline anyway! So now, all that remains is to finalize the formal betrothal contract—”

”I refuse,” Vespera interrupted firmly, raising her single gauntleted hand in a sharp, absolute gesture!

Etilga froze mid-sentence, her red eyes widening in genuine surprise. ”Eh...?”

Vespera slowly lowered her hooded head, resting her hand face-first against her lap as a long sigh escaped her lips.

Inside Silas’s soul, a single agonizing thought repeated over and over in pure, deadpan exhaustion.

’Why the fuck did I even agree to do this stream in the first place?!’

...

The live stream broadcast finally came to a grinding merciful halt.

When the three floating silver camera drones finally powered down their glowing blue LED lenses and hovered back up toward the upper hull of The Unmovable Wall, Vespera collapsed backward into her high-backed leather chair, letting out a long and thoroughly exhausted sigh that rattled her chest.

She looked drained.

Her shoulders, usually broad and unyielding beneath her charcoal-black tailored suit jacket, slumped against the leather padding.

Beneath her dark traveler’s hood, Vespera felt as if her very soul had been dragged through a meat grinder.

Beside her, Lord Sky turned his head, his full-face streaming mask reflecting the morning light while his dark designer sunglasses rested awkwardly over his eye-lenses.

Even behind his mask, he could see the overwhelming fatigue radiating from her frame.

”Man...” Sky muttered, shaking his head as he unclipped his comm-transceiver. ”You look like you just survived a Tier 6 dungeon raid.”

It was supposed to be a quick five-minute co-host segment. Five minutes of easy banter to hype up the network before their official territory war next week...

Instead, the stream had stretched into a grueling, twenty-minute geopolitical nightmare.

Over two hundred and fifty million concurrent viewers had tuned into the broadcast, watching live as Lohan Sterling who had managed to frantically buy back enough corporate shares on the open market to unblock his muted microphone and Etilga Bloom engaged in a ruthless, verbal tug-of-war over Vespera.

One of them had tried to pressure her into bringing the Blessed Land into his global corporate guild network, while the other had tried to force her into a matriarchal betrothal contract to marry her daughter and merge family bloodlines.

Sky stood up from his chair, placing a heavy sympathetic hand on Vespera’s suit-clad shoulder.

”Are you hanging in there, Vespera?” Sky asked softly, his voice dropping its hyperactive streaming tone for a moment.

Vespera didn’t even bother looking up. A sigh escaped her lips beneath her hood.

”I am not okay,” Vespera replied, her smooth voice flat and completely devoid of life. ”Not in the slightest.”

Sky let out a loud, jovial laugh, waving his gloved hand dismissively as he stepped around the folding table.

”Now you see why I avoid face-to-face meetups with high-society nobles like the plague!” Sky declared cheerfully, leaning against an Ironwood trunk. ”They are an exhausting, self-important, and utterly unhinged breed of people! Give them five minutes of camera time, and they’ll try to buy your soul, restructure your debt, and marry off your entire family!”

Beneath her hood, Silas’s golden-ringed eyes narrowed into razor-sharp, murderous slits.

He stared up at Sky with an expression that looked like she wanted to slaughter his entire ancestral bloodline.

’You two-faced fucker...’ Silas cursed viciously in his internal thoughts.

Wasn’t Sky the exact snake who had put her up to this Q-and-A in the first place?!

He had literally baited her into sitting in that chair under the guise of a ”simple, harmless five-minute stream” fully aware that high-tier family heads were waiting in the private lobby to ambush her.

Sky was nothing more than a calculating view-hungry snake in the grand scheme of things, leveraging every second of her presence to line his own pockets.

As if sensing the suffocating aura beginning to leak from Vespera’s frame, Sky cleared his throat behind his mask, quickly raising his hands in a placating gesture.

”Look, look! I know that got a little out of hand,” Sky admitted smoothly, stepping closer. ”So, considering how ridiculously well my stream performed... and how much raw engagement we generated. I was thinking... I should probably compensate you for your trouble.”

Vespera’s head snapped up instantly.

The exhaustion in her aura vanished, replaced by the sharp focus of a hardened Lord.

”Compensate me?” Vespera repeated, leaning forward in her chair. ”How?”

Sky smirked behind his mask, folding his arms over his bright Hawaiian print shirt.

”Well, my personal channel just pulled in millions of credits in direct ad revenue, super-chats, and high-tier sponsorships during those twenty minutes,” Sky explained, gesturing toward the mobile fortress. ”I was thinking I’d give you a nice, generous twenty percent cut of the broadcast profits as a gesture of goodwill.”

”Sixty-fourty,” Vespera countered immediately, her deep voice dropping into an unyielding tone.

20? For all that work? What was he... A slave?

Sky nearly choked on his breath.

”Sixty-fourty?! Are you insane, Vespera?! It’s my channel! My equipment! My network servers!”

”And it was my face, my reputation, and my sanity that got dragged through the dirt in front of two hundred and fifty million people.” Vespera argued sharply, leaning back and crossing her single gauntleted arm over her chest. ”You used my presence to pull in the heads of the Bloom and Sterling families. Without me in that chair, you would have been streaming to your audience. Sixty percent goes to the Blessed Land, forty stays with you.”

’Wow... Harsh.’

”Fifty-fifty!” Sky tried to bargain, sweating beneath his mask. ”That’s my final offer! Half the ad revenue!”

”Sixty-fourty,” Vespera repeated calmly, her gaze locked onto his mask like an unshakeable iron wall. ”Or I issue a public statement on the global forums declaring that The Unmovable Wall ambushes guest co-hosts with predatory corporate contracts. Let’s see what that does to your viewer retention during next week’s war.”