Chapter 295: Lord Sky’s Secret?
Silas blinked, raising an eyebrow.
’Does she already have an upgrade forged for the ring?’
Thinking that her dwarven blacksmithing genius had discovered a way to enhance the ring’s disguise parameters or boost its mana efficiency, Silas reached into his tunic pocket, pulled out the sleek Disguise Ring, and handed it over to her.
Thora caught the ring, bringing it right up to her face.
She squinted her eyes, turning the metallic band over in her fingers, inspecting the intricate internal rune channels etched along the inner curve.
"Hmm..." Thora hummed thoughtfully, rubbing her chin with a serious expression. "Hmm... yep. Just as I thought."
After three long seconds of intense inspection, Thora casually tossed the Disguise Ring right back into Silas’s waiting palm.
Silas caught the ring, looking at her in total, deadpan confusion.
"So...?" Silas asked, tilting his head. "You don’t have an upgrade for the ring or something?"
Thora shook her head, offering a cheerful, completely unbothered grin.
"Nope! What were you expecting, My Lord? The ring’s disguise is already perfectly forged! I can’t upgrade something that’s already at max efficiency!"
Silas’s lips twitched slightly. "Then why did you jump on me and ask to inspect it?"
Thora’s expression shifted, taking on a surprisingly sharp glint as she leaned in closer to him.
"Because inspecting the ring confirmed a theory I had," Thora explained, her voice dropping slightly so it wouldn’t carry across the clearing. "I discovered something extremely specific about that ring’s origin craft... and I need to lay it on you."
Silas straightened his posture, his blue eyes sharpening instantly.
"Alright. Lay it on me."
Thora crossed her arms over her leather apron, looking Silas directly in the eyes.
"Remember when we were looking for materials and saw my sister, Brenna, working as a smtihy inside Lord Sky’s territory?" Thora asked seriously.
Silas nodded firmly.
"Yeah. I remember. What does Brenna have to do with this disguise ring?"
Thora tapped the silver ring sitting in Silas’s hand with her voice dead serious.
"Well I remembered the specific spatial rune geometry etched inside this disguise ring isn’t a standard template... It is a proprietary royal dwarven forgery technique created exclusively by our Father back in the Underground Mountain Realm like I said before but this ring is part of a paired set!"
Silas raised an eyebrow. "A paired set?"
"Yes!" Thora nodded vigorously. "Father only ever forged two items like this, I completely forgot! The first item is this silver ring you’re holding right now..."
Thora paused, pointing her finger toward the distant border horizon where The Unmovable Wall was stationed.
"...And the second item is the exact full-face streaming helmet that Lord Sky wears over his head!"
Silas stood completely still on the grassy field.
His brain halted entirely as he stared at Thora with a completely blank deadpan expression.
Thora leaned in closer, whispering with certainty.
"Father forged those two artifacts specifically to allow high-ranking individuals to completely invert their physical gender, voice, and facial features under a flawless disguise! Meaning... I heavily suspect that ’Lord Sky’ is using that helmet to operate under a male disguise..."
Thora looked Silas dead in the eyes and concluded:
"...Which means Lord Sky is actually a WOMAN!"
"..."
Silas stared at her blankly with his right eye violently twitching beneath his brow.
So, in short...
What Thora was saying... was that the hyperactive, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, iced-juice-drinkingstream-obsessed Lord Sky...
...MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A FEMALE LORD OPERATING UNDER A MALE DISGUISE THIS ENTIRE TIME?!
Silas stood under the morning sun with his jaw set flat.
’Damn...’
He was a lot more surprised than he let on, after all, what kind of woman acted like that.
"Or..." Thora added, rubbing her soot-stained chin with a thoughtful squint-eyed expression, "...it might just be a man disguising himself as another man. Hell, Boss, there are plenty of possibilities so we shouldn’t excuse that too."
POK!
Silas didn’t even hesitate. He reached out his right hand and delivered a sharp energetic finger-flick directly to the middle of Thora’s forehead.
"Ow!" Thora yelped, wincing and clapping a hand over her forehead, though her dense dwarven skull barely registered the physical impact.
"Stop making me panic like that," Silas grumbled, his eyes narrowing into a deadpan glare.
Silas rolled his shoulders, staring out toward the northern horizon where The Unmovable Wall was parked in the distance.
He ran his hand through his short dark hair, letting out a long, heavy breath through his nose.
Regardless of whether Lord Sky was actually a woman operating under a masculine disguise helmet, or just an eccentric guy wearing a tropical Hawaiian shirt and designer sunglasses over a face mask... it didn’t change a single damn thing.
So what if Sky was a woman...?
That didn’t magically wipe the ledger clean.
Sky still owed Silas sixty percent of the massive stream ad revenue generated from today’s broadcast and future broadcast too... Was he supposed to let that go because the fucker was a woman?
FUCK NO!
And more importantly, their territories were still locked into an official Lord War scheduled to erupt next week.
Was Silas supposed to suddenly take it easy on a rival territory ruler just because he suspected there might be a woman under that armor?
HELL NAH!
In the ruthless dog-eat-dog ecosystem of the Sovereign Realm, mercy toward an opponent was just a fast track to getting your own territory annexed and your resources looted.
Business was business, and war was war.
Thora stepped closer, leaning her shoulder against Silas’s waist.
She looked up at him with a wicked suggestive grin spreading across her soot-smudged face, whispering like a literal devil directly into his ear.
"So... don’t you want to fuck her, Boss~?"
Silas’s right eyebrow twitched violently.
"I mean, think about it~" Thora purred, her voice dripping with unhinged, degenerate mischief. "You’ve already done the deed with Eluned! You’ve already taken a Nature Goddess into your bed! So what’s stopping you from adding a streaming Lord to your personal harem, huh~?"
Thora aggressively nudged his hip with her elbow, nodding enthusiastically.
"Though, of course, before you go around conquering rival Lords outside our border, you should definitely breed all of the women in our territory first... That’s just proper logistics, Boss! Keep the bloodline strong at home before expanding the empire~"
Silas raised his palm, placing it flat against Thora’s cheeky face, and forcefully shoved her back a full step.
"I want to win the war, Thora," Silas stated flatly. "Nothing more, nothing less."
Thora stumbled back, letting out a boisterous booming laugh that echoed across the clearing.
She wiped her nose with the back of her leather blacksmith’s apron and gave him a thumbs-up.
"Bah! Don’t you worry about that, Boss! We’re gonna crush those fuckers!" Thora declared arrogantly, slapping her broad chest. "We’ll win the war hands down! Now come on... stop standing around talking about Sky’s pants! I want to watch you build!"
Silas looked down at the dwarven smith with a smirk touching his lips.
"Alright, alright," Silas muttered. "Watch and learn."
Silas turned around, stepping out into the middle of the wide, flat grassy field located between the Territory Library and the Warlord Foundry.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, clearing his mind, and mentally commanded his personal system to open.
HUMMM.
A familiar and minimalist digital interface materialized directly in his mind’s eye, projecting a brilliant blue holographic display into his eyes.
Silas navigated past his core attributes, passing his Vitality and Mana meters, and clicked directly into the [Territory Management] sub-menu.
Directly beneath his main territory statistics, a glowing golden icon pulsed with raw energy... the [Build Tab].
The second Silas’s finger touched the holographic prompt—
SHRRRRR!
The ambient atmosphere in the grassy clearing violently shifted and a hum of spatial mana rippled through the air as the Sovereign Realm synchronized with his location.
’I wasn’t able to notice these before...’
A massive glowing light-blue architectural grid expanded across the field.
The translucent grid lines mapped out the physical terrain with mathematical precision, highlighting elevation, soil density, and structural clearance in glowing numbers.
’Or did the interface change because I’m in second stage of Core Advancement.
Silas scrolled through his unlocked blueprint catalog, skipping past basic wooden palisades, automated defense turrets, and resource storage vaults, until he locked onto the specific civic structure he had planned for today.
[BLUEPRINT SELECTED: Tier 2 Multi-Floor Living Quarters]
[STRUCTURE TYPE: High-Density Luxury Residential Complex]
[CAPACITY: 40 Private Luxury Suites / En-Suite Bathrooms]
A high-definition three-dimensional holographic wireframe of the building materialized above the blue grid.
It showed a sprawling, three-story architectural marvel... built with heavy, dark obsidian stone walls, thick ironwood support columns, wide glass windows, and a high-gabled slate roof designed to withstand extreme weather.
Silas grabbed the floating holographic wireframe with his mind, dragging it across the grid until it aligned perfectly with the stone pathway leading toward the Library.
[RESOURCE CHECK IN PROGRESS...]
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- Obsidian-Slate Stone: 300 / 300 Units [AVAILABLE]
- Ironwood Support Beams: 600 / 600 Units [AVAILABLE]
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[CONFIRM CONSTRUCTION OF TIER 2 LIVING QUARTERS?]
Silas looked at the glowing resource confirmation window.
Thanks to the 4,000 units of Obsidian he had just hauled from Sky’s mobile fortress, his stone supply was practically overflowing.
’Construct.’ Silas commanded silently.
BOOM!
The exact second his mental command triggered the prompt, a blinding shockwave of golden sovereign light exploded outward from his chest.
The air in the clearing vibrated so violently that the surrounding grass bent flat against the soil.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Massive precision-cut blocks of pitch-black Obsidian-Slate Stone materialized out of thin air, crashing down from the sky with deafening, rhythmic impacts that shook the earth beneath their boots.
The dark granite blocks stacked upon one another with automated, mechanical perfection, locking together with heavy interlocking masonry grooves.
CRACK! CRACK!
Thick, polished beams of dense, dark-brown Ironwood slotted seamlessly into the stone foundations, forming a massive earthquake-proof internal skeleton.
HISSSSSSS!
Streams of liquid steel alloy and tempered iron poured from the ether, wrapping around the wooden support joints and window frames like molten armor, cooling instantly with loud pressurized bursts of white steam.
High above, heavy slate tiles rained down onto the high-vaulted roof structure, snapping into place row by row, while thick enchanted glass panes forged themselves into the window frames without a single crack.
The entire construction process took less than ten seconds.
FLASH!
A brilliant blinding wave of pure white light washed over the newly formed structure, signaling the final culmination of the Sovereign Realm’s automated building process.
When the glowing light faded and the steam cleared... a towering magnificent three-story residential complex stood proudly upon the grass.
The building was breathtaking.
The dark polished Obsidian-Slate walls radiated a subtle, luxurious purple sheen under the sunlight.
Ironwood accents framed the double-oak front doors, and wide glass balconies lined the upper two floors.
"By the Ancestors..." Thora breathed out, her small mouth hanging wide open as she looked up at the massive building. "Now that is some serious dwarven-grade masonry!"
Rowenna stepped up beside Silas, her deep blue eyes sparkling with genuine admiration.
"It is magnificent, My Lord. The mana flowing through those granite walls is exceptionally stable."
Silas smiled, rolling his shoulders as he took a step toward the entrance.
"Come on," Silas said, gesturing toward the heavy oak doors. "Let’s go explore inside."
They walked up the short flight of polished stone steps leading to the main entrance.
Silas pushed open the thick oak doors, revealing a grand sunlit foyer lined with smooth, polished hardwood flooring that gleamed like glass.
Just inside the threshold was a long, recessed stone shoe rack.
Silas stopped, looking down at his boots. "Shoes off, everyone. Let’s keep the new floors clean."
"Right on it, Boss!" Thora agreed cheerfully.
Silas, Thora, and Rowenna unlaced their footwear, placing their leather boots neatly into the wooden cubbies near the entrance before stepping onto the cool, smooth hardwood floor in their socks.