Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Then, without missing a beat, he seamlessly pushed his mana through the spell.

’Let’s impress her a bit, shall we?’

He used Ice Transformation and the entire swirling ball of water instantly, flawlessly froze solid, turning into a massive sphere of absolute-zero ice.

He smiled proudly, turning to look at Morwenna to show off his progress.

"See, how is it?"

But the Pirate Queen wasn’t smiling.

Morwenna’s face had violently darkened.

The temperature around her physically plummeted as the shadows in the Mess Hall actively seemed to violently stretch and warp around her seated form.

’I think I fucked up...’

Silas could literally only see deep suffocating shadows completely obscuring her upper face, except for her eyes.

Her feral gray eyes had turned red.

CREEEEEEAAK!

The solid steel fork she was holding in her right hand audibly bent and snapped completely in half under the pressure of her grip.

Silas flinched with his survival instincts screaming at maximum volume.

"My Lord," Morwenna asked.

Her voice wasn’t loud... instead it was a terrifying demonic whisper that vibrated the alcohol in his tankard.

"What exact woman have you been out there cheating on me with?!"

Silas’s eyes went completely wide. "Morwenna, I didn’t—"

"Tell me exactly who she is so I can violently cut her head off!" Morwenna snarled, standing up from the bench with the dark watery aura of the abyss actively leaking from her body. "You... you cheater! I am the one meant to teach you Water magic! It is my affinity! Mine!"

Silas panicked. He desperately reached out, grabbing her tightly by the shoulder to prevent her from drawing her sword in the middle of the Mess Hall.

"Morwenna, stop, it isn’t like that!" Silas told her rapidly, his brain frantically searching for the correct de-escalation method. "The person that taught me that... she is nothing to me! She’s just an old crone!"

Aeli’s face twitched.

’Old crone?’ She thought but then she couldn’t deny it, her Aunt was quite old.

He looked deeply into her red eyes, delivering the ultimate pacifier.

"Morwenna, you are my everything."

Morwenna instantly froze.

The dark aura completely evaporated as the violent red faded from her eyes.

She blushed a deep intense shade of crimson, looking away from him as she sat back down, completely mollified.

"Obviously," Morwenna muttered, crossing her arms and acting tough, though a massive smile was fighting to break through.

Silas let out a sigh of relief... He had successfully defused the SSS-Rank bomb.

"Huh?"

Silas froze.

He slowly turned his head to the right.

Eluned was staring at him.

Her green eyes were completely lacking any sort of warmth at all.

Her flawless face was locked into an expression of rage as the wooden table beneath her hands was actively beginning to sprout aggressive razor-sharp thorns.

"If that filthy, washed-up pirate is your everything," Eluned asked with her voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm tone. "then what exactly am I?"

Silas’s golden-ringed eyes widened in horror.

In a desperate attempt to calm down Morwenna, the Lord had accidentally let a far greater and infinitely more destructive power be unleashed!

The silence that descended upon the Barracks Mess Hall was so heavy and so physically suffocating, that even the ambient crackle of the roasting torches along the stone walls seemed to die out.

Silas sat completely frozen at the head of the massive oak table with his bare chest rising and falling as he looked between the two terrifying elemental catastrophes he had accidentally primed.

Around the hall, all the seasoned subjects of Blessed Land... Shieldmaidens, Mages, Archers, the tailor... everyone who would happily charge an adult dragon without blinking collectively held their breath, slowly reaching for their tankards and sliding inch by inch away from the primary table.

Even Aeliana opposite him had frozen with her pastry halfway to her mouth with her green eyes going wide in silent alarm.

Silas swallowed hard, his mind racing at a thousand calculations per second.

’How can I possibly salvage this situation?’ Silas thought. ’If I tell Eluned that she’s my primary woman or that I love her more to calm down her thorns, Morwenna will literally draw the Astral Corsair and attempt to destroy the table! If I try to logically explain that I was just de-escalating a murder threat, both of their egos will shatter and they’ll turn the entire barracks into a crater! And that’s not even mentioning the crowd...’

Silas flicked his golden-ringed eyes past the two rival S-Rank alphas.

All down the length of the hall, Aeliana, Thora, Rowenna, Kaelia, and every single other girl in his faction were staring at him with strange intense and very expectant expressions.

They weren’t just watching a fight... they were actively waiting to hear where they stood in their Lord’s hierarchy.

If he elevated one above the rest, the carefully balanced morale of his entire combat force would collapse.

There was only one mathematical way out of an SSS-Rank encirclement.

He had to completely abandon shame and lean into uncompromising greed.

Silas took a deep breath, expanding his broad chest, and slammed both of his calloused palms flat onto the oak table, ignoring the thorns that scraped against his skin.

"All of you!" Silas exclaimed, projecting his deep voice with enough concussive Gold Core force to rattle the rafters of the Mess Hall. "Every single one of you in this territory... you’re my everything! I can’t live without any of you!"

The silence hung for a single suspended second and then, the emotional dam completely broke.

Across the entire Mess Hall, seventy hardened female combatants instantly turned the color of ripe tomatoes.

Weapons clattered against shields as hands flew up to cover burning cheeks.

"M-my Lord..." Rowenna squeaked from the third table down with her spell completely fizzling out as she buried her face in her arms.

"He... he said he can’t live without us!" one of the heavy Shieldmaiden girls stammered, fanning her flushed face with a napkin.

Even Aeliana dropped her pastry onto her plate with her delicate elven ears turning brilliant crimson as she looked down as a soft helpless smile touched her lips.

On his right, the aggressive thorns sprouting from the table violently retracted, melting back into harmless wood as Eluned gasped.

Her arrogant scowl completely vanished, replaced by a radiant flattered blush that spread all the way down her neck.

She brought her hands up to her cheeks, looking away with a haughty sniff that completely failed to hide her delight.

On his left, Morwenna’s abyssal aura evaporated into thin air.

The Pirate Queen opened her mouth to argue, closed it, and then aggressively crossed her arms over her chest, looking fixedly at the ceiling while her ears burned a bright red.

"Tch. Greedy Captain..." Morwenna muttered under her breath, though the small pleased smirk breaking across her face betrayed her entirely.

Sitting on the table, Talira slowly raised her tankard of alcohol to her lips with her vertical crimson pupils narrowing as she observed the collective blushing meltdown of the entire territory.

’Shameless,’ the Crimson Dragon called him out coldly in her internal draconic thoughts, taking a long sip. ’Utterly, despicably, unimaginably shameless. To look at so many armed females directly in the eye and deploy such flattery without his pulse even spiking... Human males are truly the most deceitful insatiable predators in the mortal realm. Very disgusting.’

Despite her internal sneer, Talira’s tail swished restlessly under the table with her ancient mind secretly cataloging the effectiveness of the maneuver.

With the SSS-Rank detonation successfully defused, Silas quickly pivoted to business before their embarrassment could transform back into rivalry.

He turned toward Eluned, clearing his throat.

"So," Silas asked, leaning slightly closer to the nature mage. "When exactly are we going to start the training? I want to get my hands on those elemental spells as soon as possible."

Eluned’s green eyes lit up with renewed purpose. She leaned into his bare shoulder with her confidence returning tenfold.

"We can start immediately after we are completely done eating, my Love," Eluned told him softly, her voice dripping with affectionate promise. "Your physical stamina must be fully replenished before we attempt high-tier mana manipulation."

To ensure his stamina was met, Eluned immediately picked up a fresh silver fork, loaded it with a thick juicy slice of seasoned boar meat, and gently pressed it to his lips.

Silas didn’t argue... he opened his mouth and accepted the bite, chewing the rich savory meat.

Not to be outdone by even a fraction of a second, Morwenna instantly stabbed a massive piece of roasted tentacle with her own replacement fork and aggressively shoved it toward his face.

"Eat up, Captain," Morwenna instructed firmly, feeding him directly after Eluned.

As Silas chewed the spiced seafood, the Pirate Queen leaned across his chest, glaring right at the nature mage.

"And hold your horses, weed. I am letting you teach him your nature tricks first today... but only if he proves he has actually mastered his water foundations enough to satisfy me. If his fluid control is sloppy, I’m keeping him in the arena until his forms are clean."

"My Lord’s control is flawless, pirate," Eluned sniffed arrogantly, feeding Silas another slice of boar. "He will pass your petty tests in moments, and then he will belong to the forest."

Silas simply sat between them, dutifully chewing and swallowing as the two SSS-Rank divine beings stuffed him full of protein with his mind already shifting into combat gear for the grueling hours ahead.

Ten minutes later, the meal was cleared, and the heavy wooden doors of the Mess Hall swung shut behind them.

Silas, Morwenna, and Eluned walked in focus across the open courtyard of the Blessed Land Citadel, heading directly toward the primary fortified structure.

While the exterior of the Keep looked like a traditional, massive medieval fortress built from white stone and timber, its true architectural value lay deep beneath the earth.

Because Silas had upgraded the Keep to a bona fide Tier 3 stronghold, the system had automatically expanded its underground footprint, carving out specialized facilities directly out of the bedrock.

’So in other words, I have an underground bat cave.’

They descended a long wide stone staircase that spiraled down past the living room as the air grew progressively cooler and denser with mana the deeper they went.

Finally, they stopped in front of a pair of massive, twelve-foot-tall double doors forged from reinforced mythril-alloy and dark obsidian, etched with glowing blue dampening runes.

The Citadel possessed a sprawling outdoor training ground next to it which was where him and Morwenna had first done the first style in the rain, but it also possessed this... a personal restricted training vault explicitly designed for Lords and high-tier Heroes to unleash destruction without leveling the living quarters above.

Up until today, Silas had been so continuously occupied with either handling the territory and more so he had never actually felt the need to step foot inside this subterranean vault.

Silas reached out, placing his palm against the runic plate in the center of the obsidian doors.

The array flashed golden as it read his Lord signature, and the heavy doors slid open with a smooth pressurized hiss.

A massive training ground came into view.

The vault was easily two hundred yards across and vaulted fifty feet high, supported by massive columns of reinforced self-healing runic masonry.

Along the upper edges of the walls, intricate arrays of mechanical and magical circulation vents steadily cycled fresh chilled air from the surface, creating a cool atmosphere that prevented the room from turning into a humid furnace during intense physical exertion.

The floor was paved with thick interlocking slabs of dark runic stone designed to absorb impact and automatically reconstruct themselves after taking structural damage.

Before Silas could even take a full step over the threshold, a blur of tattered leather and gray fabric rushed past him.

Morwenna practically sprinted into the room with her shoulder brushing against his chest with enough force to almost knock him off balance.

The Pirate Queen skidded to a halt ten yards into the vault, slowly turning in a full circle as her feral gray eyes swept across the massive high-ceilinged expanse, the reinforced pillars, and the high-tier elemental dampening wards.

"We had a room like this?!" Morwenna exclaimed with her jaw dropping slightly in genuine shock as she looked back at Silas. "Are you kidding me, Captain?! We could have taken advantage of this all this time! Do you have any idea how many times I had to hold back my Tidal slashes out in the courtyard so I didn’t accidentally decapitate a squad of girls or blow the roof off Kaelia’s kitchen?!"