Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Kaelia let her head drop back against Silas’s collarbone, her eyes drifting sideways toward Elowynn.

The moment her gaze touched the tall curvaceous redhead, Kaelia’s jaw twitched, and she violently averted her eyes, staring hard at Silas’s brass tunic buttons instead.

She simply couldn’t look Elowynn in the face.

Every time she looked at the corsair, Kaelia felt a cold prickling sensation of pure dread creeping down her spine.

The woman was utterly, completely hopeless. She’d lived for centuries, sailing the seas and commanding a crew of her own, yet she’d looked at three inches of bubbling swine fat and thought it was an acceptable substitute for fresh well water.

’What has that woman been eating all this time...?’ Kaelia wondered in quiet horrified fascination, her mind reeling in revulsion. ’Raw fish pulled directly from the salt tides? Tree bark soaked in dark rum? Dried leather scraps rubbed with gunpowder?!’

A heavy shudder rippled through Kaelia’s petite frame.

’No... no. I’ve decided I don’t want to know... If I ever learn the truth about that woman’s diet, I’ll never sleep again.’

Silas felt the small chef shuddering in his grip and let out a low rumbling chuckle, shifting his arms to hold her closer.

”Take it easy, Kaelia,” Silas teased gently, looking down at her rumpled hair. ”You did your duty... Aki’s Wonderland will have at least one person who can feed the troops without causing an accidental firestorm.”

Ahead of them, the wide stone-paved avenue opened into a circular quartz plaza nestled near the southern wall.

Resting flush against the flagstones was the teleportation circle.

The white marble rim was etched with complex spatial runes that glowed with a dormant silver luminescence, humming quietly with the mana of the territory.

The party came to a halt along the perimeter of the array.

Aki stopped, turning her slender frame toward Silas.

She tucked a strand of long blue hair behind her ear, looking up into his face with round, inquisitive azure eyes.

”We’re here,” Aki said softly, her voice carrying a gentle reluctant edge as she looked at him. ”It feels like you only just arrived, Silas, but we cleared two whole nests, rebuilt the walls, and even finished an entire cooking class... What are you going to do now once you get back to Blessed Land?”

Silas smiled, his dark blue eyes crinkling at the corners as the faint golden ring within his pupils caught the twilight.

”Well,” Silas said casually, shifting Kaelia’s light weight onto his left arm while rolling his right shoulder, ”it’s about time I summoned some new girls for Blessed Land...”

The moment the words left his lips, the air in the plaza seemed to freeze solid.

Behind Silas, all of the Blessed Land girls stopped dead in their tracks.

In terrifying unison, Solenne, Lupina, Morrighan, Aurelia, and Rowenna snapped their heads toward him, their eyes widening in sudden synchronized shock.

Even Solenne’s nine fluffy silver tails, which had been swaying peacefully a second earlier, went rigid as iron rods, bristling outward like an enormous silver halo.

Every single one of them was thinking the exact same thing, well except Solenne of course.

He’d barely started keeping the promises he’d already made to them... and now he wanted to summon more girls and start making brand new promises?

Even Morrighan, standing tall and stoic with her arms crossed, couldn’t stop her heavy spade-tipped tail from slapping against the flagstones.

THUD!

Silas felt the sudden crushing wave of multi-layered female resentment washing over his spine like an icy waterfall, but his charming smile didn’t waver for a single fraction of a second.

Aki blinked, her azure eyes wide with genuine surprise as she tilted her head.

”More summons?” Aki asked, her voice carrying a curious puzzled cadence. ”Already...? But you’ve got so many strong girls already, Silas! A Saintess, a Grand Runemaster, a demon who punches trees in half... why the rush?”

Silas drew a steadying breath, his expression shifting from playful to measured and practical.

”Blessed Land has started attracting a lot of attention, Aki,” Silas explained, his voice dropping into a serious grounded tone. ”People out there are starting to notice us and the moment you start looking like a shining fortress, people start wondering if they can crack your gates.”

He looked back toward the quiet beautiful forest surrounding them, his dark blue eyes steady and clear.

”I can’t sit back and relax just because our walls are thick,” Silas continued. ”Walls only do so much... I want to summon a few more girls now, while things are quiet, so I’ve got time to train them and fit them into Blessed Land properly. If I wait until something goes wrong, they’ll just be panicked new summons with no idea what they’re doing.”

Aki listened intently, nodding her head in slow respectful understanding.

”That makes a lot of sense,” Aki admitted, her royal discipline shining through as she appreciated the logistical foresight. ”A Lord who sits around resting is usually a Lord whose walls get breached. I’ll probably try to do the exact same thing once my territory calms down a bit... but right now, I’m going to have my hands completely full. I’ve got five new Shieldmaidens, five dwarven smiths who need ore quotas, and thirty garrison girls who just learned how to handle an iron pot... I need to spend the next few days getting to know everyone and settling their routines first.”

”Good plan,” Silas smiled, stepping onto the outer rim of the teleportation circle. ”A territory needs time to digest its growth...”

He shifted his mana slightly, preparing to awaken the glyphs beneath his boots.

He looked back over his shoulder at the blue-haired princess, offering her an easy welcoming wave of his free hand.

”Tell you what, Aki,” Silas said with a warm grin. ”You’re free to drop by Blessed Land later this evening with Ther’Abella and Elowynn if you want to see who comes through the portal... The travel circle will be open of course. You can meet the new summons, and maybe Kaelia will have recovered enough to bake some fresh honey rolls for supper.”

Before Aki could even open her mouth to answer, a sharp indignant hiss tore through the twilight air.

”Absolutely not!” Ther’Abella snapped, stepping forward with her arms crossed rigidly over her stained breastplate, her constellation marks flaring with cold defensive light. ”I’ve got no interest whatsoever in crossing that dimensional threshold merely to watch the usurper collect more women for his shameless menagerie! An officer of the Viridian Guard doesn’t waste precious tactical hours watching common summons stumble out of an archway! We’ve got defensive patrols to organize, boundary markers to set, and—”

”Oh, come on, Ther’Abella!” Elowynn cut in, throwing a heavy, leather-gloved arm casually over the elf’s rigid shoulders.

The tall corsair grinned broadly, leaning her weight against Ther’Abella with shameless pirate familiarity, her amethyst eyes flashing with bright eager excitement.

”Don’t be such a stiff-necked stick in the mud!” Elowynn teased, shaking the elf’s shoulder until Ther’Abella’s teeth clicked. ”I want to go! I’ve never seen a high-tier Blessed Land summon! What if he pulls an astral corsair? What if he pulls a master weapon-smith? Besides, you heard the man... he mentioned fresh honey rolls! You know our pantry only has salt biscuits and bitter tea right now! You want to chew on dried roots tonight while Blessed Land is eating warm pastries?!”

”I’m perfectly content with dried roots!” Ther’Abella hissed, struggling to shrug off the heavy arm draped over her neck. ”A disciplined warrior—”

”Ther’Abella, please?” Aki spoke up, stepping close to the elf’s other side.

The blue-haired princess clasped her hands together in front of her chest, looking up into her chief officer’s cold blue eyes with the most innocent puppy-dog gaze she could muster.

Her lower lip gave a tiny imperceptible tremble, her azure eyes wide and luminous in the twilight.

”I really want to go, Ther’Abella...” Aki pleaded softly, her sweet voice dripping with royal charm. ”Silas has helped our territory so much today... he upgraded our entire town, he raised our walls to Tier 4, and he helped us take the number two spot on the Lord Leaderboard. It would be terribly rude and ungrateful of us to decline an invitation to his Keep on the very evening of our victory... Wouldn’t it? Just for an hour? To show our respect as his loyal vassal?”

Ther’Abella looked down at Aki’s big, pleading blue eyes then she looked at Elowynn, who was grinning down at her like a mischievous tavern brawler.

The ancient elven officer’s jaw worked silently for three agonizing seconds, her pride waging a violent desperate war against the overwhelming pressure of two stubborn women who clearly weren’t going to take no for an answer.

A long defeated groan wheezed past Ther’Abella’s lips.

Her shoulders slumped in total, agonizing surrender, and she pinched the bridge of her pale nose with two gloved fingers.

”Fine...” Ther’Abella grumbled through clenched teeth, her face turning pink with bitter reluctance. ”One hour... Not a single minute more, my Lady and if any of his foul beasts try to touch my hair, I’m drawing starlight steel.”

”Yay!” Aki cheered, clapping her hands together, while Elowynn laughed loudly, giving the elf’s shoulder a boisterous slap.

Silas chuckled at the trio, amused by how easily the ancient elf could be dismantled by a pair of sweet eyes and the promise of a warm pastry.

”We’ll see you three on the other side then,” Silas said.

Aki waved at him with both hands, bouncing up and down on her toes, while Elowynn blew him a shameless kiss and Ther’Abella pretended to be extremely interested in a nearby tree.

Silas channeled a dense steady pulse of his Mythic Gold Core mana straight down through the soles of his boots.

VUUUM!

The dark ring around the circular platform flared with brilliant blinding silver and gold light.

The spatial glyphs etched into the marble roared to life, shooting upward in a spinning cylindrical cage of incandescent spatial ether that wrapped around Silas, Kaelia, and the five Blessed Land women.

The air warped with a concussive atmospheric pop.

POP!

The blinding pillar of light collapsed inward upon itself, leaving the quartz plaza completely empty beneath the quiet purple sky of Aki’s Wonderland.

A heartbeat later, on the other end of the link, the spatial ether blossomed outward with an echoing roar.

VWOOOM!

The sudden transition brought the crisp cool scent of pine needles, crushed mountain herbs, and the faint unmistakable tang of cold river water.

Silas blinked against the sudden shift in light, his boots finding solid, familiar stone.

They’d materialized directly atop the primary travel platform nestled along the eastern side of the Keep in Blessed Land.

Overhead, the sky had already turned a deep velvet indigo, and heavy gray clouds had rolled in over the mountain peaks.

A few soft flakes of snow were drifting down through the cold air, settling on the flagstones in a thin white frost.

The Keep’s five stories of dark stone loomed against the twilight, its windows already glowing with warm lantern light.

Down in the valley, the lanterns of the crafting quarters were flickering, and the distant ring of Thora’s heavy forge hammer echoed through the peaceful air.

CLANG! CLANG!

Silas drew a deep refreshing breath of the mountain air, shifting Kaelia in his arms as he stepped off the glowing marble platform onto the flagstones of the inner courtyard.

”Ah, nothing beats the air at home,” Silas murmured, stretching his neck with a satisfied smile.

In his arms, Kaelia cracked one eye open as a snowflake landed on the tip of her nose.

She wrinkled it, let out a tiny sneeze and burrowed deeper into his chest, mumbling something sleepy about cold weather and ruined eggs, however Silas chuckled and tucked her a little closer.

He’d barely taken two paces toward the heavy oak doors of the Keep when the silence of the courtyard was shattered.

Before Silas could take another step, five distinct figures moved like a closing ring of iron, instantly surrounding him on all sides.

Lupina darted in front, planting her boots wide on the pavers, her hands on her hips as her bushy silver tail twitched with furious demanding energy.

Aurelia stepped smoothly to his left flank, her white vestments swishing against the stone, her golden-amber eyes fixed upon his face with a look of terrifyingly serene judgment.

Rowenna materialized on his right, her little notebook clutched like a shield against her ribs, her cheeks burning pink with suppressed emotion.

Behind him, Morrighan stepped forward like a dark wall, her obsidian horns casting long shadows over his shoulders, while Solenne fanned all nine of her silver tails outward, blocking the rear path completely.

Five pairs of eyes locked onto Silas’s face simultaneously, the sheer intensity of their collective stares heavy enough to make the stone pavers groan.

Lupina leaned forward, baring her sharp little fangs in a fierce suspicious grimace.

”Alright, Lord Silas,” Lupina demanded, her silver wolf ears pinned flat in absolute unyielding determination, ”were you actually serious back there on the plaza?!”