Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Silas was briefly smothered against her leather-strained chest, the intoxicating scent of her filling his senses before she released him, her cleavage shaking wildly with every boisterous laugh.

”GWAHAHAHAHAHA!” Thor roared, slapping Silas on the back with enough force to shatter a normal man’s clavicle. ”The ale is safe! The meat is mine! Let the feast begin!”

Without waiting for utensils, Thor plunged both hands into the bowl, ripping off a three-pound roasted shank and tearing into the succulent meat with savage glorious divine enthusiasm.

Juice ran down her chin, her eyes rolling back in pure ecstasy as she popped the spigot on the keg and took a massive five-second swig of dark stout, letting out a satisfied cavern-shaking belch.

”Hey! Giantess! Mind your table manners!” Thora scowled from across the mat, though the dwarf was happily devouring her own box of salted beef and sharp cheese. ”You’re spraying garlic onto the Princess’s rice!”

”Pay it no mind, Master Thora!” the Princess giggled brightly, her azure eyes sparkling as she sat with her legs tucked demurely beneath her. ”It is wonderful to see Lady Thor in such high spirits!”

As the food disappeared, the atmosphere on the picnic mat transformed into a lively chaotic celebration.

”Alright, girls! Who’s up for an eating trial?!” Sarah shouted, waving a skewer of spicy spirit-peppers in the air. ”The frontier wall game! Five spirit-peppers in a single bite without reaching for the water canteen! Winner gets first pick of the dessert pastries!”

”You’re on, Sarah!” Brenda barked, rolling up her sleeves with fierce freckled determination. ”I ate boiled nettles for six months on the border! Your little pepper seeds can’t hurt me!”

”Count me in!” Helen grinned, leaning over the mat.

The girls cheered and clapped, banging their empty wooden cups against the stone floor as Brenda and Sarah stuffed their mouths with the bright crimson peppers.

Within three seconds, both girls’ faces turned the exact shade of ripe tomatoes, their eyes watering profusely as they chewed frantically, refusing to blink with their cheeks puffing out as the rest of the squad roared with hysterical laughter.

”Don’t swallow yet, Brenda! Hold the line!”

”Sarah’s tearing up! Sarah’s reaching for the canteen!”

”I am not!” Sarah choked out, her voice muffled around the peppers, coughing as smoke practically vented from her ears.

Silas sat back, leaning comfortably against the warm wall, watching the women laugh, tease, and shove each other playfully.

’Ah, I’m happy...’

This was what the mining, the walls, and the sovereign upgrades were all about.

Building a sanctuary where the people who bled for him could laugh like children in the middle of a hostile wasteland.

Eventually, the lunch boxes were emptied, the mat was neatly rolled up and returned to Silas’s spatial inventory, and the women strapped their heavy tool belts back onto their hips.

The playful banter faded, replaced once more by professionalism.

Silas hoisted his runic pickaxe over his shoulder, his expression turning serious as he turned toward the eastern quadrant of the geode.

”Form up on me,” Silas ordered quietly. ”We’re heading into the eastern alcove.”

The squad immediately fell into disciplined ranks behind him, their boots crunching softly against the crystalline gravel as they navigated past the towering calcified stalagmites.

Within minutes, they stood at the lip of the sunken bowl-shaped depression Silas had scouted earlier.

The vibrant multicolored prismatic light of the main geode completely vanished here.

In its place was a heavy suffocating aura that pressed against the skin like thick humid fog.

The walls and floor of the sunken grove were completely coated in a bizarre petrified lattice of striking blood-red crystals and pure milky-white diamonds.

They didn’t grow in jagged geometric clusters like the standard gems... they twisted and wound around each other like living, petrified vines, pulsing with a slow eerie heartbeat that sent metallic hums through the air.

The hair on the back of Silas’s neck stood on end.

The entire atmosphere felt remarkably familiar.

It carried the exact same strange and volatile pressure as the lightless cavern where they had discovered that unrecorded white alloy... the one Thora had claimed naming rights over and christened Sil-Graves Silver.

”Look at the grain on these bastards...” Thora whispered, her voice dropping all mockery as she knelt at the edge of the depression.

She pressed her bare palm against a patch of dark stone near the red vines with her clean-shaven face set in deep calculating lines.

”The mana conductivity here is completely mutated. It’s dense as lead, but volatile as blasting powder.”

”How do we harvest it, Thora?” Silas asked, his eyes scanning the pulsing red lattice.

”Carefully, my Lord,” Thora explained, pointing with the tip of her chisel. ”You don’t strike outside the bleed-line here because the white diamonds are the bleed-line... The red crystal is the core while the white diamond is the calcified mana shell. If you separate them cleanly at the junction seam, you preserve both so if you nick the red core with an improper angle, the trapped elemental charge will violently discharge.”

Silas nodded, stepping down into the sunken grove. He gripped his pickaxe, looking back over his shoulder at the squad.

”Keep your eyes wide and your senses sharp,” Silas warned, his voice ringing out with clarity. ”Like I said earlier, caverns with this level of stagnant centuries-old elemental power are prime breeding grounds for entities. Uncontracted spirits born in places like this don’t have bodies of flesh... they manifest directly out of the mana fields. If something stirs, do not hesitate to raise the alarm.”

Aurelia stepped up to his left, her golden eyes glowing with a sharp tranquil vigilance as a faint aura of Argent Flame wrapped protectively around her hands. ”I will keep my senses peeled, Lord Silas... No corrupt or restless presence will escape my notice.”

To his right, Thor casually stepped down into the depression, her massive dwarven pickaxe resting easily in one hand while her storm-blue eyes narrowed as microscopic arcs of blue static crackling across her knuckles.

”Aye! Fear not, Lord Silas! If a spirit dares to bare its fangs at us, I will swat it out of the air like a summer fly!”

Silas looked at both of them, offering a sincere nod. ”Thank you, both of you. That’s precisely why I brought you two to this sector.”

He took a slow deep breath, centering his focus.

’I’m at the second stage of Core Advancement,’ Silas thought, mentally probing the brilliant sea of power humming within his Mythic Gold Core. ’My spiritual perception has expanded tenfold since the Lord War... If there’s an elemental entity lurking in this chamber, my senses should be able to pick up its spiritual footprint just as easily as Aurelia or Thor.’

He closed his eyes, extending his internal mana outward like a delicate invisible web, sweeping across the stone, the twisting red vines, and the vaulted ceiling above.

...Nothing.

The air was heavy, the mana was dense, but there was no hostile intent as no foreign consciousness brushing against his web.

Silas opened his eyes, letting his gaze sweep the quiet alcove.

He shrugged his shoulders, rolling his wrists to loosen his grip on the tool.

”Whatever,” Silas muttered under his breath, shaking off the paranoia. ”Let’s get to work.”

TINK!

Silas brought his pickaxe down, his wrists snapping with precision as he began carefully prying the first cluster of white diamonds away from the crimson vine.

Behind him, the girls, Aurelia, and Thora spread out along the perimeter of the depression with their tools chiming softly in the eerie gloom.

The work continued in steady silence and none of them noticed... well except Thor but even then, it was too weak for her to take seriously.

High above their heads, nestled deep within a shadowy cluster of jagged overhanging blood-red stalactites forty feet up on the cavern ceiling, something stirred.

It was not a beast of fur and bone...

It was a compact fist-sized orb of pure crimson light... an uncontracted elemental spirit.

The orb pulsed slowly, expanding and contracting with the exact heartbeat-like cadence as the crystal vines below.

Two burning pinpricks of pure, curious consciousness flickered within the center of the sphere.

Silently, without releasing a single ripple of hostile mana into the air, the crimson spirit hovered in the darkness of the ceiling, staring straight down at the black-haired Lord harvesting its sacred grove.

...

The rhythmic metallic chiming of dwarven pickaxes against stone continued to echo through the sunken depression of Cavern KB-22.

TINK! TINK! TINK!

Every strike was disciplined.

Following Thora’s strict guidelines, the girls worked along the perimeter of the ancient grove, carefully reading the petrified fault lines where the blood-red vines met the milky-white diamonds.

Near the eastern curve of the bowl, Sarah wiped a drop of sweat from her eyelid with the back of her leather gauntlet.

She rested her steel pickaxe against her boot, arching her back with a soft breathy groan that drew a laugh from Helen.

”My shoulders are going to be stiff for a week,” Sarah murmured, rolling her neck until her joints popped. ”I thought running drills in the mud with Lady Brida was hell, but this? You can’t even put your back into it... You have to snap your wrists like a seamstress.”

”Stop whining and keep tapping,” Helen chuckled, dislodging a clean fist-sized cluster of white diamonds that clattered neatly into her leather collection bag. ”The faster we clear this alcove, the sooner we head back to the bathhouses... Master Thora said these red formations burn hotter than forge embers when they’re processed so imagine the heat in the private quarters if we put it there.”

”Oh, don’t get me started on the baths,” Brenda chimed in from five paces away, her freckled cheeks glowing red as she dropped another gleaming stone into her pack. ”Hot mineral water up to my chin, clean linen sheets... and maybe a certain Lord checking in on the barracks to deliver those commendations he promised.”

A round of soft teasing giggles rippled through the ranks.

Even Vala and Reina, working on opposite sides of the grove, shared a knowing silent smirk.

Reina was meticulously checking the fault lines with a small steel awl, while Vala used her shadow-affinity to catch falling stones before they struck the bedrock, ensuring not a single crystalline facet chipped upon landing.

GURRRRRRRR-ROOOOOM!

A low vibrating rumble like the distant roll of summer thunder shaking an imperial fortress suddenly tore through the cavern, drowning out the chiming pickaxes.

The girls froze mid-swing. Brenda gasped, almost dropping her runic chisel, while Helen snapped her spear forward with a sharp clack.

”What was that?!” Sarah yelped, her eyes darting toward the ceiling. ”Did the fault lines slip?!”

Silas lowered his pickaxe, his brow furrowing as he stepped back from the wall.

His senses swept the stone floor, probing for seismic shifts or collapsing bedrock but nothing was moving as the mountain was stable.

Slowly, every pair of eyes in the sunken grove drifted toward the center of the depression.

There, perched cross-legged atop a rounded limestone boulder, was Thor.

The towering blonde God of Thunder had her pickaxe resting casually across her lap. One massive, muscular hand was pressed firmly against her stomach, which was currently letting out another series of wet seismic gurgles that vibrated the loose shale beneath her boots.

GURRR-RUMBLE!

”Didn’t you literally just eat an entire roasted boar?!” Thora shouted, her hands flying to her hips as she glared at the demigoddess with bewildered indignation. ”A three-pound shank! A five-gallon keg of dark dwarven stout! You inhaled enough calories to keep a siege battalion marching for a fortnight, and your gut is already screaming like a dying hydra?!”

Thor didn’t even look ashamed.

She tilted her head, giving her flat rock-hard abdomen an affectionate pat that echoed with a dull muscular thump.

Her storm-blue eyes turned toward Silas, they were wide, innocent, and brimming with unapologetic divine hunger.

”The mortal shell burns fuel swiftly when glory is at stake, little smith!” Thor declared, her booming voice rattling the stalactites overhead. ”Divine flesh requires divine sustenance! The thunder in my veins demands meat to feed the lightning! Besides, that pig was lean... A great warrior cannot subsist on a mere single beast when the mountain air is so cold and crisp! I can feel my divine essence fading away to nothingness!”

”Fading to nothingness?!” Thora sputtered, her face reddening as she gestured wildly toward Thor’s armor-straining chest and sculpted thighs. ”You take up half the cavern, you overgrown blonde glutton! If you fade any more, you’ll collapse the tectonic plates!”

The Princess giggled behind her hand, her shoulders trembling with amusement, while Aurelia offered a serene patient smile from the other side of the grove.

Silas let out a quiet chuckle, shaking his head.

”Don’t let her near the reserve rations, Thora. If she starts gnawing on the crates, we won’t have anything left to haul the ore.”

He turned back to the rock face, hoisting his runic pickaxe once more.

Tink!

His wrists snapped with fluid precision, cleanly severing another cluster of milky-white diamonds from the blood-red vine.

But as the stone fell into his palm, that same strange prickly chill brushed against the back of his neck.

’There it is again...’ Silas thought, his eyes narrowing slightly in the gloom.

It was faint... so faint that even with his second-stage Gold Core advancement, he couldn’t pinpoint an exact physical vector.

It didn’t carry malice, nor did it possess the greasy suffocating stench of the shapeshifting beasts or the corrupt monsters of the Umbral Basin.

It felt more like a gaze.

An intense curious pair of eyes boring into his skull from somewhere overhead.