Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Sky turned his eyes toward the grass... and his jaw subtly dropped beneath his mask.

Imprinted faintly upon the damp soil beneath where Rowenna’s boots had rested was a tiny microscopic glowing geometric pattern... a delicate violet-tinted Rune.

The rune was so microscopic that it was virtually invisible to the naked eye, and it emitted a magical signature so faint, so refined, and so absurdly compressed that Sky’s standard sensory abilities hadn’t even registered its presence while she was standing there.

”She’s a Rune Weaver... or a high-tier Arcanist,” Hiro analyzed calmly with his senses inspecting the microscopic geometric pattern. ”Same difference... The fact that she can passively anchor a rune into the soil through her boots without chanting or drawing a circle shows an absurd level of fine mana control. She is easily a High-Rank spellcaster.”

Sky stared at the tiny glowing rune in the grass, his heart hammering against his ribs in utter horror.

FWOOSH!

Without a second of hesitation, Sky raised his gloved hand, unleashing a sudden violent burst of condensed Light Magic that completely incinerated the grass and eviscerated the tiny runic imprint into harmless ash.

Sky stood over the scorched dirt, his chest heaving as terror washed over him.

”Fuck... Fuck!” Sky cursed out loud, wiping cold sweat from his forehead beneath his mask. ”I almost let this slip completely past me...”

...Though, as the initial panic faded, Sky took a deep shaky breath, forcing his mind to regain control.

At the very least, he now knew the truth.

Vespera’s newest companion was a high-tier Runic Arcanist.

And knowing your enemy’s discipline was half the battle in territory warfare.

In high-tier combat, the most effective way to handle a Rune Weaver depended entirely on their setup time.

There was Mana-Disruption Fields as the first method.

Runes relied on static environmental mana channels to anchor their geometric effects.

Deploying high-frequency mana-scrambling wards or raw shockwaves would shatter unanchored runes before they could complete their circuit.

There was also what was called as Blitz Aggro & Line-of-Sight Denial.

Runic Arcanists were devastating when given prep time to construct defensive fields, but exceptionally vulnerable to high-speed, close-range physical pressure that prevented them from tracing geometry.

And there was the last one which he had used...Targeted Dispel & Element Overwrite.

Counter-inscribing raw elemental mana directly over their anchor points would trigger a runic overload, causing the rune to backfire onto the caster.

... If the rune was connected to the Caster’s body though.

As for this one, he had merely used his Light magic to overwhelm it.

Sky stared off toward the dark forest horizon, his eyes narrowing into a sharp focus behind his mask.

”Speaking of which...” Sky muttered, his voice dropping into a grim uneasy tone as he turned toward Hiro. ”Where the fuck are my scouts?”

Hiro paused, raising an eyebrow. ”Your scouts?”

”I deployed a Hero stealth units to track Vespera’s perimeter earlier,” Sky explained with anxiety gnawing at his gut. ”One elven Guerilla Ranger and one human stealth scout. They were supposed to monitor those mages training in the Umbral Basin and report back ten minutes ago.”

Sky looked out over the quiet dark Ironwood forest with a knot of dread tightening in his stomach.

”Where are they?” Sky whispered into the quiet breeze. ”Are they even still alive...?”

...

Deep within the dark humid forest of the Umbral Basin...

A human woman clad in tight, dark-green stealth scouting clothes... the second scout deployed by Lord Sky was currently clinging to the bark of a massive Ironwood tree for dear life, hugging the trunk so tightly her knuckles were turning white!

Her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, her eyes wide with pure terror as she stared down at the forest floor through the thick leaves.

Just fifty meters away... lay the crater.

A massive, twenty-foot wide, smoking crater had been blasted clean into the solid earth.

Sitting in the center of the crushed granite and shattered roots was her superior officer... the elite elven Guerilla Ranger who had been sent alongside her.

...Or rather, what was left of him.

Just seconds ago, the terrifying pirate commander had delivered a single casual down-handled pommel strike to the elven scout’s head!

The absurd physical force of that single strike had physically exploded the ground beneath him, creating a massive crater, completely dispersing his mana barrier, and knocking him instantly unconscious with a brain-shattering concussion.

It was horrifying...

This was a nightmare-inducing horror!

The human female scout trembled uncontrollably against the tree trunk, tears of panic welling in the corners of her eyes.

There was nowhere to run...

The mages were surrounding the entire perimeter, their staffs glowing with fire, ice, lightning, and wind, completely locking down every single physical escape route through the canopy.

Realizing that stealth was completely useless and that she was going to be hunted down next, the human scout’s survival instincts snapped.

’If I stay in this tree, they’re going to freeze me solid or burn me alive!’ the female scout panicked with her teeth chattering wildly. ’I have to fight my way out! I’ll feign a high-tier leaping attack at the commander, force her to parry, and use the recoil to vault backward through the upper canopy!’

SWISH!

The human woman drew her twin stealth daggers, channeling every single drop of her nature mana into her legs!

”DIE, YOU PIRATE WITCH!” the woman screamed at the top of her lungs, leaping out from the foliage with explosive force.

She turned into a high-speed green blur, diving straight down toward Morwenna with her twin daggers extended, closing the fifty-meter distance in less than a fraction of a second.

”Pirate witch huh, what’s a new one? Couldn’t you think of something better?”

Even Dread Queen was what one of her enemies had called her before she killed him and she liked it but she needed a better nick-name now.

’Ugh... Should I ask Captain?’

Morwenna was currently standing atop the lip of the smoking crater, her iron side-saber held loosely in her hand.

Her sharp face was twisted into a thoroughly flustered frown.

As the female scout plummeted down toward her head with lethal killing intent—

CLANG!

Morwenna didn’t even look up.

She casually raised her iron side-saber, effortlessly parrying the full-powered two-handed dagger strike as if it were a minor bug bouncing off an iron wall.

The violent shockwave tore through the air.

BOOM!

The force shattered the female scout’s daggers into a dozen flying metal shards.

”Haa...”

The human scout gasped in utter terror mid-air.

The overwhelming physical pressure radiating from Morwenna felt like an entire ocean crashing down upon her spine, completely paralyzing her nervous system.

Before the scout could even attempt to trigger her recoil vault—

Morwenna turned her stormy gray eyes upward, staring directly into the terrified woman’s eyes.

Morwenna’s cheeks were flushed bright red with embarrassing frustration. She looked at the falling female scout and asked in an irritated voice.

”Are you a virgin?!”

The human scout’s brain completely short-circuited...

Facing a high ranked commander mid-combat, being asked such an absurd question left her unable to talk.

”Y-YES! YES I AM A VIRGIN!” the female scout screamed in terrified panic!

Morwenna’s face instantly twisted into an expression of soul-crushing rage and disappointment.

”ANOTHER ONE?!” Morwenna roared in utter despair.

FLASH!

Morwenna executed a single hyper-velocity horizontal slash with her side-saber.

VWOOSH... SLICE!

A blinding crescent of compressed blue magic sheared cleanly through the air, bisecting the human stealth scout completely in half mid-air before her boots could even touch the dirt.

THUD! THUD!

The two halves of the scout crashed into the damp moss, blood pooling into the soil as her soul dispersed into harmless ambient light.

Morwenna stood atop the lip of the smoking crater with her iron side-saber resting at her side, her face flushed red as she threw her head back and screamed at the top of her lungs to the heavens.

”WHY THE FUCK IS EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS FOREST A VIRGIN YEARS AFTER MATURITY?! IS THERE NOT A SINGLE EXPERIENCED ADULT IN THIS ENTIRE REALM WHO CAN GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER?!”

”...”

Around the crater’s perimeter, the mages stood completely frozen in place, their mouths hanging wide open, their staffs trembling in their hands as they stared at their flustered screaming Dread Queen in the same horror.

They were virgins too. Were they going to die?

The wind stopped blowing and the forest fell dead silent.

Morwenna stood there in the quiet clearing, her cheeks burning red, panting as the echoing silence of the Umbral Basin answered her frantic scream.

’Fuck...’

...

The sun shone bright over the rugged border ridges of the Umbral Basin, casting long golden shadows across the dirt trail.

CLIP-CLOP... CLIP-CLOP.

The rhythmic thud of wolf paws echoed through the quiet valley as two massive, armored Blessed Wolves trotted side by side.

Riding atop the lead mount, Valkyrie, was Silas in his single-armed Vespera disguise wearing the charcoal-black, double-breasted suit beneath his dark traveler’s coat, with Thora’s custom silver-and-gold Sil-Grave Arm Guard glinting brilliantly under the morning light.

Riding beside her on the second Blessed Wolf, Luna, was Rowenna.

The newly evolved S-Rank Grand Runemaster looked breathtaking, her long silky dark hair flowing in violet-tinted waves over her shoulders as she let out a small sigh.

Vespera tilted her head beneath her traveler’s hood, adjusting her reins with her gauntleted right hand as she turned her golden-ringed gaze toward the Grand Runemaster.

”Rowenna,” Vespera spoke smoothly. ”Did you plant the runes?”

Before they had ridden out to The Unmovable Wall earlier that morning, Vespera had pulled up her status interface and noticed a set of high-tier [Listening Runes] unlocked under Rowenna’s expanded skill tree.

Recognizing an opportunity to gather intelligence on a rival Lord, the two of them had quietly formulated a covert plan... while Sky was distracted by whatever negotiation and the live stream broadcast, Rowenna would secretly anchor hidden listening runes throughout The Unmovable Wall to eavesdrop on Sky’s private communications afterward.

Rowenna turned her head, her deep blue eyes sparkling with a sweet, confident smile as she held Luna’s reins.

”I did, My Lord,” Rowenna reported smoothly, her voice sweet yet full of pride. ”During the twenty minutes we were inside the material holds and near the main treads, I successfully planted roughly fifty listening runes across his territory’s core infrastructure... excluding the single, obvious rune I deliberately left in the open for them to find.”

Vespera’s neck trembled slightly beneath her high collar with an internal sweatdrop forming behind her forehead.

Fifty hidden runes?

She had been standing directly beside Sky the entire time... watching her walk through the fortress holds, talk to people, and interact with a lot of things; however Vespera hadn’t detected a single ripple of ambient mana or a single physical trace of rune placement.

To anchor fifty high-grade runes without triggering Sky’s automated perimeter wards or alerting his sensory power was a terrifying feat of magical stealth.

’Having an S-Rank Grand Runemaster in your territory is a cheat code...’ Vespera reflected in internal thought.

Not only was she able to fully utilize Rowenna’s absurd utility... mapping out enemy strongholds, anchoring hidden surveillance, and gathering real-time intelligence without raising an alarm but if an enemy ever deployed a runic caster of their own, Rowenna would be able to read through their techniques, dismantle their runes, and turn their own magic against them like an open book.

That was an overwhelming victory in Vespera’s book.

Honestly, it didn’t even matter that Lord Sky and his Hero, Hiro, had eventually discovered that single microscopic suppression rune on the grass near her chair. What did Sky want to do about it?

Rowenna possessed such versatility across the entire tab... from spatial suppression to a lot of things that even if Sky knew she was a Runic Arcanist, he wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to counter her actual setup.

Vespera wasn’t worried in the slightest.

”What are the runes picking up right now?” Vespera asked, her interest piqued. ”What are they saying?”

Rowenna smiled, raising her slender right hand from the reins.

HUMMM!

A delicate glowing violet rune materialized smoothly above Rowenna’s palm, floating in the air like a tiny, intricate geometric snowflake.

Rowenna lightly tapped her manicured index finger against the edge of the floating matrix, tweaking its frequency channels to synchronize with the distant signal.

Instantly, a crisp clear audio projection erupted from the glowing rune.

”Fuck... Fuck!” Sky’s panicked, stress-filled voice echoed directly into the quiet forest, vibrating with anxiety! ”I let this slip completely past me! The one Hero and the stealth scout I sent to monitor those Vanguard mages training in the Basin... they’re completely dark! Their comm-signals vanished! They’re dead! They’re fucking dead, Hiro!”

’As I said... I think he’s drunk.’