Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 241: The One Who Orchestrated Everything... [Bonus Chapter]

The yellow taxicab pulled to a smooth quiet stop right outside the towering steel-and-glass gates of the LAB Syndicate Building.

Outside, a heavy gloomy downpour was lashing against the pavement, turning the sleek city asphalt into a dark reflective mirror.

The streetlights flickered softly in the storm, casting long eerie shadows across the high-security entrance of the corporate skyscraper.

Inside the cab, Harper sat quietly in the backseat.

She wore Silas’s oversized, dark leather trench coat wrapped tightly around her body, the familiar scent lingering deep within the fabric lining.

”Here we are, miss. That’ll be forty-two Spirit credits,” the cab driver said, glancing back at her through his rearview mirror.

He took the digital payment transfer from her phone card with a soft chime.

As she pushed the door open, he offered a warm professional smile. ”Thank you for riding with us. Have a good evening!”

Harper didn’t respond to him. She didn’t offer a nod, a polite phrase, or even a glance.

She simply stepped out into the pouring rain and let the car door slam shut behind her.

The taxi pulled away immediately with its red taillights cutting through the sheet of falling water before disappearing down the city avenue.

Harper stood alone on the wet sidewalk.

She let out a long sigh with her breath fogging up in the freezing night air.

Raindrops beat steadily against her vibrant purple hair, plastering wet strands against her forehead and cheeks.

She reached down, pulling out her phone from the trench coat’s deep inner pocket as she tapped the screen awake.

The display lit up, showing a single text message she had sent nearly two hours ago:

[Harper]: I’m coming up to the office... We need to talk about the recent mission allocations.

There was no reply. Not a single word, a single notification badge, or even a read receipt.

Harper’s jaw tightened.

ZZZZT... CRACKLE!

A small violent spark of royal purple lightning suddenly coiled around her teeth as she gritted them in silent rising rage.

The tiny electric arc hissed against her tongue before vanishing into her throat.

She shoved her phone back into the trench coat and began walking toward the high-security entrance.

Her father was currently inside that building.

Harper knew, with clarity, that her father was not an innocent man. In fact, calling him ”innocent” or even ”morally grey” was a complete joke.

The volume of wealth, influence, and corporate standing Collin had built up over the last two decades had been carved out through illegal black-market deals, political blackmail, backroom assassinations, and shady syndicate operations.

Yet, for the longest time, Harper had tried to compartmentalize it.

She had tried to tell herself that in the ruthless dog-eat-dog world of awakened Lords and corporate syndicates, everybody had dirty hands. She had tried to justify his actions as the harsh necessity of a father protecting his bloodline.

Throughout her entire life, Harper had never once seen her mother.

She had grown up entirely under Collin’s roof, surrounded by cold stone, armed guards, and stack after stack of files.

The story her father had always fed her was simple: her mother had been a weak foolish woman who tried to betray the family by taking Collin to court over illegal asset seizures.

And almost immediately after launching that legal battle, her mother had suddenly ”lost her life” in a tragic unexplained incident.

Shortly after her mother vanished from existence, Penelope had come to live with them.

Penelope had been brought in under the guise of an orphaned relative but was her sister, and from that very moment, Collin had transformed both of their lives into an endless pipeline of dangerous corporate missions.

Harper had never really stopped to think about her mother before. Well... not until this exact pouring moment.

Harper pushed open the heavy glass doors of the LAB Building, stepping into the warm pristine white marble lobby.

Several junior Lords, corporate executives, and well-dressed receptionists standing behind the front desk looked up as she walked past.

They instantly recognized her... the sharp purple-haired prodigy of the appraisal department.

”Good evening, Miss Harper,” a young receptionist greeted politely with a bow.

”Welcome back, Lady Harper,” a passing junior Lord chimed in.

Harper didn’t smile.

She didn’t acknowledge a single one of them.

She kept her head down with her hands tucked deep into the pockets of Silas’s heavy trench coat, pulling the broad collar up around her neck as she walked straight past the front desk toward the executive elevator bank.

’I feel like I want to explode...’

She pressed the call button.

The polished steel doors slid open with a soft bell tone and Harper stepped inside, turned around to face the lobby, and slammed her finger against the top-floor button... Collin’s private executive suite.

The elevator doors closed, and the elevator began its smooth silent ascent up the sixty-story skyscraper.

As the floor numbers ticked rapidly upward on the digital display, Harper stared at her reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator car.

Her thoughts drifted backward, unspooling the painful ribbon of her childhood.

From the moment she had awakened her lightning and blood magic attributes, Collin had started sending her on missions. After all, she had become a Lord early too.

Sneak into this rival territory’s vault...

Retrieve that classified skill scroll...

Infiltrate that corporate gala and secure leverage on that director...

Put your body on the line... use your looks if you have to...

Harper had always drawn a strict ironclad line at that last command.

She had fought, bled, and used every ounce of her combat prowess to complete those infiltration missions without ever allowing a single man to lay a hand on her.

Who knew whether she would even still be a virgin right now if she hadn’t been strong enough to cut her way out of those sleazy traps?

’Though for this one... I was ready to put my body on the line...’

And yet, despite being forced into the shadows for years, she had been okay with it.

She had been completely okay with entrusting her life to that man. She had accepted being enslaved by her own father, doing his dirty illegal bidding without complaint. And for what?

A modest luxury apartment in the city sector?

Even that apartment was something she paid for herself!

Every single credit that went into buying food, paying utilities, purchasing gear, and funding Penelope’s living expenses came directly out of Harper’s own hard-earned mission rewards and appraisal commissions.

Collin hadn’t provided a single dime of real support. He didn’t care about her... He didn’t care about Penelope. He didn’t care about either of them... not even for a fraction of a second.

’Why... Why am I such an idiot...’

And the only reason Harper had finally and fully realized this heartbreaking truth... was because of Silas Graves.

Harper’s fingers tightened against the leather fabric of the trench coat, clutching it tightly across her chest.

’Silas actually cares about me...’ Harper thought with her chest swelling with a strange aching warmth that made her throat feel tight.

The contrast was staggering.

What Silas had given her in a matter of days was completely, fundamentally different from anything her father had ever offered her since the day she was born.

Silas had pulled her back right from the very brink of death when death was devouring her core.

He had healed her with his own resources.

He had helped her stand up when her legs were failing.

He had treated her like a human being... a valuable cherished person rather than a disposable pawn to be deployed and forgotten.

Harper didn’t even know if what she felt for Silas was ”love” in the way people in romantic novels talked about it.

She was too broken, too battle-scarred, and too inexperienced to fully understand those complex emotions.

But one thing she knew with terrifying certainty: she wanted to keep receiving that care.

She wanted to stand by his side, she wanted to feel his warm hands on her shoulders, and above all else, she refused to let anyone hurt him.

Why was it so different?

Harper stared at her reflection in the elevator glass with a tear mixing with the rainwater on her cheek.

’Why did a complete stranger in the Sovereign Realm treat me with more love than my own father ever did?’ Harper wondered bitterly in her mind. ’Did I not deserve that same kind of care from the man who gave me life? If my mother were still alive today... would she have loved me like Silas does?’

DING!

The high-pitched ping of the elevator shattered her train of thought.

The doors slid open, revealing the top-floor executive hallway.

The air up here was cold, scented with expensive cologne and polished mahogany, lit by dim ambient LED strips embedded along the floorboards.

Harper staggered slightly as she stepped out of the elevator car.

ZZZZZZT! KRA-THOOM!

Thick, violent coils of royal purple lightning suddenly erupted across her entire figure. The air pressure inside the hallway plummeted instantly.

Her mana was spiking completely out of control, reacting to her overflowing emotional turmoil.

She felt a burning agonizing soreness settling deep inside her throat... a physical sensation that always occurred whenever her lightning affinity reached a critical overload, demanding to be unleashed in a destructive blast.

At the far end of the hallway stood a heavy, reinforced oak door... Collin’s private office.

Standing guard right outside the entrance were two elite armored mercenaries holding submachine guns.

Hearing the crackling electric hum, both guards snapped their heads toward the elevator, raising their weapons.

”Miss Harper?!” the left guard called out, surprised. ”Wait, you can’t go in there right now! Director Collin is on an important—”

WHOOSH!

Harper didn’t even speak as she blurred across the twenty-meter hallway like a purple bolt of lightning.

BANG! BANG!

Before either guard could pull his trigger, Harper delivered two lightning-infused palm strikes flush into their stomachs.

The heavy force smashed through their mythril armor plates, instantly driving the wind out of their lungs and shutting down their nervous systems.

Both guards collapsed sideways onto the carpet, completely knocked out cold before their bodies even hit the floor.

Harper stopped in front of the heavy oak door.

She didn’t kick it down immediately. Instead, she reached out with her trembling right hand, turning the polished brass handle just a fraction of an inch, opening a tiny silent crack in the doorway so she could listen to what was happening inside.

Inside the luxurious, dimly lit office, Collin was standing near the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the rainy city skyline.

He was holding a glass of aged whiskey in one hand and a encrypted satellite phone to his ear with the other, chuckling softly into the receiver.

”...Yeah, I hear you, brother,” Collin’s voice echoed arrogantly through the room, completely unaware of the girl standing outside his door. ”Don’t worry about the timeline. I’ll need her dead in a few years anyway.”

On the other end of the line, a muffled male voice asked a brief distorted question.

”Are you talking about that purple-haired girl? Your daughter?”

Collin let out a loud mocking laugh, taking a sip of his whiskey.

”Yes! The daughter of that stupid naive woman!” Collin scoffed with utter disdain. ”God, every single time I look at that Bitch’s face, it’s so bloody annoying. She looks just like her mother. It makes my skin crawl.”

Outside the crack in the door, Harper went completely still as the blood in her veins ran ice-cold.

Collin leaned back against his mahogany desk, swirling the liquor in his glass as he continued talking into the phone with a sickening grin.

”The only reason I’ve even kept her and that useless sister of hers alive this long is because they do the dirty work for my infiltration missions,” Collin bragged casually into the receiver. ”They get me the black-market skill scrolls, they clear out rival assets, and they don’t ask questions. But once their utility runs dry... I need them both to die traceless, just like that woman did.”

The voice on the phone laughed heartily back at him. ”Ha! Cheers to that, brother! Clean work.”

”Cheers,” Collin chuckled smoothly. ”Once those two girls are completely out of the picture, I’ll be able to claim full inheritance rights over the entire family estate and her mother’s hidden Mana Core vaults. Honestly, those two useless brats should have died from the poison years ago...”

Outside the door, Harper’s eyes went wide as saucers.

Poison...

The word echoed in her mind like a thunderclap.

Her mind flashed back to years ago... to the mysterious agonizing illness that had suddenly struck her out of nowhere, eating away at her core, leaving her bedridden and dying until her blood had overpowered it.

’It was him...?’ Harper realized, her mind fracturing under the weight of the betrayal. ’The poison that almost destroyed my core... the pain I suffered for months... it wasn’t a rival syndicate attack... It was him! He tried to murder me!’