Chapter 278: Aeli’s Upgrade
The atmospheric pressure inside the room instantly shifted, turning the air misty red to their eyes... a natural sensory phenomenon caused by the sudden extreme blood pressure spike in their eyes.
"Ghk...!" Tasmin’s knees buckled slightly with her breath catching in her throat as ten times her physical body weight pressed down on her shoulders.
Beside her, Brida let out a sharp grunt, her heavy boots sinking two inches into the shock-absorbing floor mats.
Ten times gravity was no joke.
Even for an S-Rank warrior, having your internal organs, your blood, and your muscle tissue suddenly weigh ten times their natural mass was a brutal disorienting experience.
’But it feels good as well...’ Tasmin thought.
Rowenna watched them nervously from the doorway.
In her pocket, she carried the amulet Silas had given her yesterday.
She briefly wondered if she should use it to increase the gravity, but quickly decided against it... she knew Tasmin and Brida were testing their true limits.
’Besides I’m not trying to kill them, am I?’
Brida had completely underestimated the sheer downforce of 10x gravity, but her pride refused to let her yield.
"Tch... piece of cake!" Brida growled through gritted teeth.
Brida dropped flat onto her hands and toes, assuming a wide push-up position on the glowing violet rune.
Her heavy un-bound breasts hung down, locked rigid under the intense gravitational pull, but she locked her core and began slowly lowering her chest toward the floorboards.
"One... Lord... Silas..." Brida grunted out, her arms trembling violently as she pushed her heavy frame back up.
"Two... Lord... Silas..." Brida counted out slowly, her muscles burning as she fought the ten-fold downforce.
Beside her, Tasmin didn’t do standard push-ups.
The Shadow Commander drove her palms into the floor, kicked her long legs straight up into the air, and assumed a vertical handstand position against 10x gravity.
"Hnnn-gh...!" Tasmin gritted her teeth, her silver eyes glowing as sweat instantly beaded across her forehead.
Tasmin slowly bent her elbows, lowering her head toward the floor, and then forced her shoulders to push her entire ten-fold body weight back up.
Tasmin had a lingering gut feeling.
"Fuu..."
With the official Lord War against "The Unmovable Wall" approaching in six days, she knew Lord Sky’s two-hundred-man army undoubtedly possessed high-tier elemental control casters.
What if they deployed heavy gravity arrays or suppression traps on the battlefield?
If she couldn’t move, react, and fight under extreme gravitational pressure, she wouldn’t be able to protect Silas when the war began.
THUD!
Mid-push-up, Tasmin’s left elbow buckled under the immense weight, and she tumbled out of her handstand, hitting the mat with a sharp exhale.
"Agh!"
Even with an S-Rank Shadow Commander class, 10x gravity was an excruciating physical test.
Tasmin gritted her teeth, wiping the sweat from her eyes, and looked over at Brida.
The Titan Bastion was still grinding through her push-ups with her face red and her muscles straining as she continued.
"...Three... Lord... Silas... Four... Lord... Silas...!"
’Fuck you.’
Tasmin’s silver eyes flared with fierce unyielding pride. She flipped back over, drove her hands into the mat, and kicked back up into her handstand position.
"HAAA!" Tasmin growled, forcing her shoulders to press upward against the crushing downforce.
She executed five handstand push-ups in a row, her athletic frame trembling with raw effort.
Once her shoulders hit near-exhaustion, Tasmin dropped back onto her boots, sank into a low combat stance, and began throwing rapid sharp shadow-punches into the heavy air.
Though they were very slow and she could barely move... at least it was going.
SWISH... SWISH...
Her punches were noticeably much slower than her usual high speed, but every single strike was forcing her neural pathways and muscle fibers to adapt to the heavy atmospheric resistance.
She could have easily used her [Shadow-Submersion Drift] to bypass the physical weight entirely... but Tasmin wanted her physical body to grow stronger on its own merit.
Watching the two S-Rank warriors push themselves to their physical limits inside her gravity well, Rowenna felt a sudden powerful wave of motivation surge through her chest.
’They’re working so hard...’ Rowenna thought, her blue eyes shining with admiration. ’I want to train too! I want to push my limits alongside them!’
Rowenna took a step forward, intending to step into the gravity well to test her own core endurance—
FLASH!
Before Rowenna’s boot could even touch the edge of the violet rune... A sudden brilliant burst of silver spatial light erupted beside her!
Aeli materialized out of thin air, grabbing Rowenna’s wrist.
"Borrowing her for a moment!" Aeli announced happily.
ZIP!
Before Tasmin or Brida could even react, Aeli triggered her short-range spatial teleportation again, vanishing from the training room with Rowenna in a flash of light.
The moment Rowenna vanished, the active [Runic Gravity Well] instantly collapsed, the violet light extinguishing from the floorboards.
THUD!
The sudden instantaneous removal of 10x gravity caught Brida completely off-guard.
With the crushing downforce suddenly vanishing into thin air, Brida’s fully tensed arm muscles pushed upward with maximum S-Rank force... sending her heavy muscular body shooting forward like a catapult.
Brida flew across the mat and crashed flat on top of Tasmin with her heavy chest and body pinning the woman to the floor.
BANG!
"GAH!" Tasmin let out a sharp gasp, pinned beneath the Titan Bastion.
Tasmin’s silver eyes flared with murder-filled rage as she glared up at the giant woman lying on top of her.
"Bitch..." Tasmin growled through gritted teeth. "...get the fuck off of me!"
Brida grinned cheekily, rubbing the back of her head. "Oops. My bad."
...
FLASH!
Aeli and Rowenna materialized cleanly inside Silas’s top-floor office.
They appeared directly in front of the broad mahogany desk. Silas was sitting in his leather chair, looking up from his holographic blueprint menu with a calm smile.
Rowenna blinked her blue eyes, looking around the office in total, speechless confusion as she tried to catch her breath from the sudden spatial jump.
Silas rested his hands on his desk, his golden-ringed eyes locking onto both of his primary mages.
"Are you both prepared for today?" Silas asked. "I assume Aeli already filled you in on why you’re here?"
Neither woman spoke for a second.
Silas didn’t wait for them to answer.
He leaned forward slightly, his sharp features radiating unshakeable Warlord confidence as he continued.
"I have chosen the two of you to rank up next. You will be evolving to S-Rank today... joining the ranks of Brida and Tasmin as our territory’s primary anchors. Are you both ready?"
Hearing his words, Rowenna’s heart completely stopped beating inside her chest.
Her blue eyes widened to the size of dinner plates with her throat going completely dry.
S-Rank?!
He was going to upgrade her from a simple B-Rank Runic Arcanist straight into an S-Rank legend?!
Beside her, Aeli’s eyes were glowing with intense tearful joy.
Both women stood up straight, bowing their heads deeply toward their Lord.
"We are ready, Lord Silas!" Aeli and Rowenna answered in synchronized passionate harmony. "Thank you for this incredible honor, My Lord!"
Silas smiled warmly, nodding his head.
"Good."
He looked at Aeli first.
"Aeli, step forward."
Aeli stepped up directly to the edge of his desk, her silver hair swaying over her shoulders and her heart hammering wildly against her ribs with breathless excitement.
Silas looked at her, channeling a mental command to his system interface.
’System,’ Silas commanded internally. ’Initialize Aeliana’s evolution screen.’
Inside his mind, Silas reflected on the Upgrade Point costs.
’Upgrading Aeli from A-Rank to S-Rank shouldn’t cost as much as C-rank to S-Rank did,’ Silas calculated. ’My priority right now is establishing a solid core roster of S-Rank commanders to secure the territory, while gradually elevating the average ranks of the girls so nobody feels left behind.’
PING!
A sleek blue system prompt tab materialized in Silas’s vision.
[Would you like to upgrade Aeliana’s A-Rank [Starlight Arcanist] to S-Rank [Astrea Archon Of The Stars]?]
[Cost: 300 UP]
[Y / N]
Silas’s golden eyes glinted with deep satisfaction.
300 UP! That was a massive 200 UP savings compared to a baseline S-Rank evolution!
’Astrea Archon of the stars is a cool name too though...’
Silas reached his broad right hand across the desk, placing his palm firmly on Aeli’s smooth shoulder.
Silas tapped [Y]!
BOOM!
The second his mental finger confirmed the selection... A blinding explosion of pure, radiant white starlight mana erupted from Silas’s palm, instantly engulfing the entire office in a cosmic flash.
Aeliana felt her conscious perception instantly detach from the polished mahogany floorboards beneath her boots.
The familiar desk, the tall arched windows overlooking the Umbral Basin, the scent of cedar wood, and even the towering six-foot-two physical presence of her Lord vanished in a fraction of a second, swallowed whole by a vast boundless ocean of pure radiant luminescence.
It was a physical and spiritual sensation unlike anything the elven arcanist had ever experienced in her centuries of existence.
During the past few days, she had stood on the sidelines of the Blessed Land, watching with a mixture of quiet awe, deep curiosity, and subtle envy as Tasmin and Brida underwent their own miraculous transformations under Silas’s direct touch.
She had spent late nights in her quarters wondering what it actually felt like to have one’s baseline physical and magical essence forcefully reconstructed from the ground up by their Lord.
Now, she finally understood.
The white energy didn’t merely wrap around her skin or envelop her clothes like a physical blanket.
It penetrated straight through her flesh, pouring into her soul and washing through her internal mana channels like warm liquid starlight.
Every single cell in her body vibrated at a hyper-accelerated harmonic frequency.
The sensation was so overwhelmingly intense, it was so heavenly and intoxicating, that Aeliana’s lips parted completely against her will.
"Mnnn-ahhh~"
A soft breathless sensual moan escaped her throat, echoing softly into the endless white void.
Gradually, the blinding radiance surrounding her figure began to shift.
The infinite light pulled inward, condensing around her floating body until it formed a tight, smooth, reflective dome that isolated her completely from the outside universe.
Aeliana blinked her eyelashes, her breath catching in her throat as she looked around the sealed space in utter bewilderment.
’What the hell...?’ Aeli thought, her mind spinning in a hazy cloud of confusion.
She felt completely trapped within the dome.
Her boots rested on a floor that felt like smooth, liquid glass, completely static and motionless.
She looked at her surroundings, realizing that the inner walls of the white dome were entirely reflective... acting as a seamless high-definition mirror that reflected her image back at her from every conceivable angle.
She stepped forward, leaning her upper body closer to inspect her reflection and flinched back in speech-depriving shock.
"Who... who is this?"
Aeli didn’t recognize herself.
She stood there in the center of the dome with her mouth slightly agape as her silver-gold eyes scanned her reflected image.
Her delicate elven ears, which had previously been elegant but modest in length, were noticeably longer now, sweeping upward in sharp incredibly graceful curves.
Aeli raised her trembling fingers, lightly brushing her fingertips against the pointed tips of her ears.
The second her skin made contact with the tips, a sharp, electric jolt of heightened feedback shot straight to her brain.
Her ears felt infinitely more sensitive than before... capable of picking up atmospheric pressure shifts, thermal currents, and distant mana ripples with terrifying crystalline clarity.
"My... my hair..." Aeli whispered softly, her melodic voice carrying a gentle celestial echo that vibrated against the reflective dome.
Her pristine moonlight-silver hair had completely transformed. It was no longer silver.
It had transmuted into a breathtaking radiant shade of starlight blonde... not a flat natural or artificial blonde, but a brilliant shimmering blonde that mirrored the exact celestial bodies she loved to observe through her telescope late at night when she was a child.
"Beautiful..."
Tiny microscopic specks of glowing cosmic dust drifted gently from the ends of her hair, floating in zero-gravity waves around her shoulders.
And her eyes were different too.
Her previously simple green irises had shifted into multi-layered luminous cosmic orbs that constantly pulsed with mana.
’I don’t even need a disguise...’ She thought, she looked nothing like the original Aeliana so there was no other need to hide her face for Lord Sky and his stream.
She looked down at her body with her breath hitching in her throat for a third time.
’H-huh...’