Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

[That Night]

On the upper surface of the Secret Realm, far away from the collapsing sinkholes of the dungeon drop, the environment was as brutal as ever.

The deadly rain of razor-sharp desert glass was falling again in relentless, vertical sheets, accompanied by a cool howling gale that whipped wildly across the endless sand dunes.

Walking directly through the center of the lethal glass storm, completely unprotected by a magical dome, was Maya.

The young girl looked exhausted.

Her dark leather armor was scored with dozens of minor scratches from the ambient environment, and her face was pale with fatigue but she hadn’t stopped moving.

Trudging right beside her through the deep sand was her remaining companion... her Archer Hero.

The Archer was currently utilizing his mechanical right arm.

He held a long, heavy iron arrow in his mechanical grip and rapidly spun the projectile like a propeller.

He spun the arrow with such terrifying rotational velocity that it generated a high-pressure wind shield directly over their heads.

CLINK! CLINK! SHATTER!

The falling sheets of razor-sharp glass slammed into the spinning arrow shield, violently shattering into harmless clouds of fine white dust before they could even scratch Maya’s leather armor.

The metallic grinding of the mechanical arm was the only sound keeping the crushing isolation of the desert at bay.

Maya walked on her own two feet with her boots sinking into the wet sand as she bitterly cursed under her breath about the miserable hellscape of this Secret Realm drop.

”Stupid sand. Stupid dead god. Stupid glass rain,” Maya muttered, kicking a hardened clump of dirt across the dunes. ”I swear, if we don’t get at least three drops out of this raid, I am retiring to the coastal sectors and opening a bakery.”

Unfortunately she couldn’t because she was now in a government contract... then, she paused at the crest of a high dune.

Through the grey distortion of the falling glass rain, she spotted something about three hundred yards away.

It was a massive smooth structure made of solid blue ice... the original shelter construct Mia had built hours ago and in the inside near the entrance with his dark trench coat billowing slightly in the cool wind, was Silas Graves.

Maya let out a genuine smile of profound relief.

She wasn’t alone anymore.

She raised her left wrist, tapping the glowing communication rune embedded in her leather tether band to contact the leader.

”Boss,” Maya reported eagerly, her voice crackling through the static of the comms. ”I’ve found him. I’ve found Si-Silas... He’s sitting alone at an ice shelter. Should I go meet him and establish a perimeter?”

A thousand miles away, sitting in the command tent of the Valoria camp, Elora Verinda’s cold voice responded immediately.

”Do not approach him alone, Maya,” Elora commanded over the link, her tone sharp and urgent. ”Transmit the exact spatial coordinates of his location to my tab immediately as the mana signatures in that sector are highly erratic.”

Maya reached out her finger to tap the transmission confirmation rune on her glass screen.

However, before her fingertip could touch the interface, another voice cut cleanly through the howling ambient wind.

”That wouldn’t be alright.”

Maya froze. Her blood ran completely cold as that voice didn’t come from her communication band.

It came from directly behind her.

She slowly turned her head and looked up.

Standing at the top of a towering, thirty-foot-tall sand construct directly overlooking Maya’s position, looking down with cold glowing purple eyes, was Harper.

The purple-haired Lord had tracked Maya through the storm.

Harper stood there in the glass rain, her leather armor soaked with her face lacking any sort of emotion.

The wind whipped her long purple hair around her shoulders like a storm cloud as she raised both of her pale hands toward the howling amber sky and her Lord core ignited with terrifying power.

Raw condensed purple electricity began violently sparking and surging down the length of her arms, crackling with so much voltage that the spinning arrow shield of Maya’s Archer began to erratically short-circuit with the mechanical arm grinding and sparking as the electromagnetic interference overwhelmed its runes.

”Lord Harper?!” Maya gasped, taking a stumbling step backward down the dune. ”What are you doing?!”

Harper did not answer.

She did not chant her standard frontline Fulgur Strike as she tapped directly into her second devastating spell she knew with her silhouette illuminating the darkened desert with blinding violet light.

”Sovereign’s Judgment...” Harper spoke, her voice vibrating with pure thunder that shook the sand beneath Maya’s boots.

She brought her hands down, pointing two fingers directly at Maya’s chest.

”...Empress Thunder.”

The amber sky above the desert violently tore open.

A cataclysmic column of pure white-hot lightning descended from the heavens, completely annihilating the falling glass rain in its path.

All Maya could see after that was an explosion of electrical energy striking the earth directly where she stood, instantly followed by the deafening roar of thunder that cracked the very foundation of the ground below her.

BOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!

The deafening apocalyptic roar of thunder finally began to recede, rolling across the endless desert wasteland in a series of deep tectonic tremors that physically vibrated the ambient dust.

The harsh amber sky, momentarily torn apart by the blinding white flash of the Empress Thunder execution, slowly stitched itself back together.

Where the cataclysmic pillar of raw electricity had struck the earth, the landscape had been completely rewritten.

Massive towering sand dunes had been instantly vaporized, leaving behind a glowing crater of superheated, molten glass that hissed violently against the cool wind.

As the thick acrid smoke of burnt ozone slowly cleared, Harper stood perfectly still at the peak of her towering sand construct.

Her purple eyes, crackling with condensed electrical mana, narrowed as she stared through the haze.

At the far edge of the blast radius, hundreds of yards away, two figures slowly staggered to their feet. It was Maya and her remaining Archer Hero.

They were still alive.

The Archer’s specialized mechanical right arm was completely charred, emitting thick plumes of black smoke and erratic, dying sparks as it failed.

He had spun his iron arrow just fast enough, and just hard enough, to generate a kinetic vacuum shield that deflected the worst of the terminal voltage, saving his Lord’s life by a fraction of a microsecond.

Harper watched them limping away into the punishing glass storm and she didn’t pursue them.

She let out a long deeply exhausted sigh with her pale shoulders slumping slightly.

The mana expenditure of calling down natural lightning had severely drained her Lord core.

’That’s according to plan...’

She stepped off the towering sand pillar, allowing gravity to take her as she dropped down thirty feet, her leather boots hitting the baked desert floor with a soft sound.

As she landed, her eyes caught a pulsing blue light half-buried in the soot.

It was Maya’s severed communication band.

It had been blown off her wrist by the concussive shockwave of the lightning strike and landed directly at Harper’s feet.

Harper crouched down smoothly, her purple hair falling over her shoulder as she picked up the glowing leather band.

From the tiny, cracked communication crystal embedded in the center, Elora Verinda’s cold voice crackled through the static.

”Maya?” Elora’s voice demanded with her voice uncharacteristically tense. ”Report your status immediately. What was that sound? The atmospheric pressure in your sector just violently spiked. Do you have a visual on Graves?”

Harper brought the cracked crystal close to her pale lips.

A slow and possessive smile curved across her face.

”Silas Graves belongs to me,” Harper whispered into the comms and before the Valoria City Lord’s daughter could even attempt to process or respond to that completely unhinged statement, Harper closed her fist.

CRUNCH!

She squeezed her hand, utilizing a burst of static electricity to completely pulverize the communication crystal into a handful of useless, sparking dust. She let the debris fall from her fingers with the wind immediately carrying it away.

Harper turned her back on the crater, adjusting the collar of her soaked leather armor.

Her purple eyes locked onto the distant, perfectly smooth structure of solid blue ice barely visible through the raging glass storm.

Without another word, she began walking toward the ice construct.

[Inside the Ice Construct.]

The atmosphere was completely, starkly different from the apocalyptic hellscape outside.

The thick, magically reinforced walls of solid blue ice completely blocked out the howling wind and the endless metallic clatter of the razor-sharp glass rain.

It was freezing, yes, but the ambient mana provided a protective calm.

Silas let out a heavy, tired sigh, adjusting his posture slightly to keep the blood flowing to his legs.

He was currently seated flat on the hard ice floor, completely pinned down by two exhausted immortals.

Aeliana had her head resting softly and securely on his left lap, her flawless face buried into the fabric of his dark trench coat as she slept peacefully.

On his right lap, Mia had her small head completely sprawled across his thigh, softly snoring with a tiny bubble of spit expanding and contracting rhythmically from her lips.

Across the small, illuminated cavern space, Valerius was sitting with his back against the ice wall, aggressively polishing his mythril sword and glaring at Silas.

KRA-THOOM!

A massive muffled boom suddenly shuddered through the solid ice walls of the shelter and the entire cavern vibrated, sending a shower of loose frost cascading from the ceiling.

Silas and Valerius both flinched with their combat instincts instantly flaring as they looked toward the entrance.

They waited for a breach, but nothing followed the explosion. It was just the continued, muted howling of the storm.

”A heavy detonation,” Valerius muttered, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the lingering vibrations. ”That’s a high-tier elemental discharge... It’s so high that it might be an artifact so that means—”

”Lords are fighting in the distance,” Silas agreed softly, careful not to raise his voice.

He looked down at the two white-haired elves completely draped across his lap.

Neither Aeliana nor Mia had even twitched.

They were sleeping completely through the shockwave of a high-tier spell.

Silas smirked, shaking his head. ”And these two are completely dead to the world... what incredible situational awareness.”

Valerius scoffed loudly, sliding his polishing rag down the steel of his blade.

”Do not attempt to change the subject, Graves,” Valerius complained bitterly, pointing his sword directly at Silas. ”I am still furious. I found that perfectly preserved marble treasury first! I cleared the entrance! And your little Elf completely bypassed my guard, snagged all of the high-tier treasures right off the pedestals, and teleported away! It was highway robbery!”

Silas sighed with a genuine unapologetic smirk crossing his face.

He slowly reached out, placing his calloused hand firmly onto Valerius’s armored shoulder.

”Valerius,” Silas said. ”In the Sovereign Realm, it is finders keepers. She secured the assets faster than you did. But... thanks for scouting out the treasures, friend. Your contribution to my territory’s economy is deeply appreciated.”

Valerius’s noble face instantly flushed a shade of furious pink. His cheeks heated up a bit as he aggressively pulled his shoulder away from Silas’s grasp, scowling deeply.

”I am not your friend, and I did not scout them for you!” Valerius hissed, violently sheathing his sword with a sharp sound.

CLANG!

He crossed his heavy iron gauntlets over his chest plate, looking away for a moment before his expression changed into one far more serious.

”Speaking of consequences,” Valerius muttered, leaning forward slightly. ”You saw Seraphina completely naked earlier today, right?”

Silas’s smirk vanished instantly. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, the headache of the impending political fallout returning in full force.

”I only saw the lower half...” Silas corrected him quietly, though he knew it made zero difference to the nobles.

”It doesn’t matter what percentage of her flesh you saw, you fool,” Valerius warned, his voice dropping into a serious whisper. ”I’m sure you know this already, but her father is a World Council Magistrate. He holds direct administrative authority over three different coastal sectors and commands a private army of high-tier Lords. He is very, very influential. When we return to the City, Seraphina is going to scream for your execution.”

Silas let out a long sigh, resting his head back against the cold ice wall.

”I know,” Silas admitted, his golden-ringed eyes staring at the ceiling as he mathematically calculated his odds of survival against a Magistrate’s hit squad. ”I’m currently wondering how the hell I am going to avoid any sort of legal or physical trouble from this.”