Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 168: The Secret Realm Of Ititius [VII]

"You heard the radar! Let’s move!" Valerius barked.

Silas and Valerius didn’t waste a singe second.

Driven by pure greed, the two men sprinted forward across the burning sand side-by-side with their heavy boots kicking up trailing clouds of dust as they raced toward the designated coordinates.

Aeliana and Mia followed right behind them, the tall Elf effortlessly pacing her strides to keep the little girl safe as they blurred across the desert floor.

They crested the top of the massive sand dune less than a minute later and then looked down into the shallow wind-scoured basin on the other side of the ridge, the group immediately saw it.

Protruding three feet out of the packed, baking sand was a strange, fascinating artifact.

It didn’t look like a standard weapon hilt or a glowing chest of coins. It was carved from solid gleaming yellow ivory, shaped exactly like a massive golden tooth the size of a man’s forearm.

The surface of the ivory was etched with intricate glowing crimson runes that slowly pulsed with an intoxicating mana signature.

Both Silas and Valerius immediately raised their left wrists, opening their respective digital system tabs to scan the protruding structure and see its exact classification.

The blue holographic screens materialized in their vision simultaneously:

[Name]: Ititius’s Golden Fang

[Tier]: Tier 3

[Description]: A pristine high-density mana item crystallized from the primary biting force of the sand deity Ititius. When ingested or melted down in an upgraded smithy, this fang permanently increases the user’s baseline terrestrial Vitality by +50 points and grants passive permanent immunity to all forms of environmental heat and fire-based debuffs.

Upon seeing the game-changing permanent stat boost and heat immunity displayed on the system tab, all thoughts of polite cooperation and diplomatic truces completely evaporated from their minds.

"Haah! That belongs to me!"

"Get back here, greedy bastard!"

They ran down the slope of the dune toward the artifact at full sprint with their boots sliding in the loose sand. They arrived at the exact same second, both of them reaching down and grabbing the thick shaft of the golden tooth with both hands.

"Keep your grubby, mud-stained hands away from my Vitality boost!" Valerius roared, planting his iron boots into the dirt and trying to hip-toss Silas away from the prize.

"Get your spoiled paws off my fire immunity, Sterling!" Silas barked right back, dropping his center of gravity and throwing his broad shoulder directly into Valerius’s chest plate to block his leverage.

Grunting and cursing at each other, both men aggressively yanked upward on the ivory shaft with their combined physical might, trying to tear it out of the sand before the other could establish a secure grip.

CLICK!

As they forcefully yanked the tooth upward, a loud mechanical sound of heavy stone gears slotting into place echoed from directly beneath their boots.

The moment something slotted deep within the subterranean bedrock, the massive golden tooth they were holding violently destabilized.

The ivory dissolved into a cloud of useless, yellow ambient mana particles, completely vanishing from between their grasping hands.

Silas and Valerius stumbled backward, their hands clutching empty air.

"What the—?" Silas started.

Before either of them could process the disappearance of the loot, the entire desert floor surrounding the basin began to violently quake and churn.

RUMBLE! RUMBLE! RUMBLE!

Massive swirling vortexes of abrasive sand erupted from the dunes all around them as the desert floor literally stood up.

Thousands of tons of packed, heavy sandstone and flowing desert glass rapidly coalesced, pulling together to form towering, monstrous humanoid shapes.

Within five seconds, different golems of sand that were pretty tall... each standing over fifteen feet in height, with thick tree-trunk limbs and glowing, hollow blue runes carved into their sandstone chests completely surrounded all of them in a tight, inescapable thirty-foot circle.

There were exactly six of the towering behemoths, stepping forward with earth-shattering footfalls that shook the basin.

They had formed directly out of the sand, triggered by the removal of the decoy tooth.

Valerius threw his hands in the air, his face turning bright red with absolute, explosive rage as he realized they had been baited again.

"This is the second damn trap!" Valerius cursed at the top of his lungs, kicking a pile of dirt in frustration. "What the actual fuck is wrong with this dungeon?! Are there literally any real treasures down here, or is this entire Secret Realm just a giant, elaborate prank designed by a bored sand god to waste my time?!"

"I am going to find Ititius’s actual physical tomb when we get out of here," Silas ranted furiously right alongside him with his patience completely exhausted by the constant trolling. "I don’t care if he’s been dead for ten thousand years! I will dig up his skeleton, throw his bones into fire, and melt him into scrap iron! Who builds a fake, stat-boosting tooth just to trigger a gank squad?!"

Because they were both so aggressively busy screaming curses at the sky and complaining about ancient architectural ethics, they hadn’t even properly noticed that the six fifteen-foot-tall Golems had already raised their massive boulder-sized fists, preparing to smash them into paste.

"Lord Sy! Sir Sterling!" Aeliana’s melodious voice called out from the edge of the circle, smoothly bringing their attention back to the immediate tactical reality of these massive Sand Golems closing in on their positions.

Silas and Valerius both stopped mid-rant, slowly turning their heads to look at the towering, fifteen-foot sandstone behemoths looming directly over them.

Both men let out a simultaneous annoyed sigh of mutual exhaustion with their shoulders slumping as they complained some more.

Watching the two towering armored Lords stand in the middle of a monster ambush and whine like grumpy teenagers made Aeliana laugh out loud.

Right beside her, Mia laughed as well, giggling behind her small hands at how funny and silly the two big men were acting.

They were very funny together...

Regardless of the comedic timing, Valerius drew a sleek high-tier mythril longsword from the scabbard at his waist.

"We need to handle these Golems before they compress the sand and trap us in a pit," Valerius stated, all traces of his earlier whining vanishing as he shifted seamlessly back into a military commander.

"Agreed," Aeliana nodded sharply.

The Starlight Arcanist immediately dropped her maternal demeanor.

She gently set Mia down on the safe, flat surface of a nearby sandstone rock, stepping forward with her hands flaring with blue-white starlight as she agreed to join the frontline clearing.

"Let’s just break them and move on," Silas agreed as well, drawing his massive, forty-pound mythril broadsword.

The heavy blade caught the amber light of the desert sky, projecting a cold shadow across the sand.

Valerius rapidly assessed the battlefield... There were six fifteen-foot Golems surrounding their position.

"We split the aggro evenly," Valerius commanded, his tactical brain assigning targets. "Everyone should take on one of the frontline constructs directly to break their encirclement. I’ll take the two on the left flank! Graves, you take the two on the right! Elf, you hold the center line!"

"Understood," Aeli agreed smoothly, raising her hands to conjure an Arcane Aegis barrier.

Silas paused, his broadsword held low. He blinked, looking around the formation, catching a glaring flaw in Valerius’s assignment math.

’Wait a second,’ Silas thought, his brow furrowing in deep confusion as he looked from the six massive fifteen-foot-tall, boulder-fisting Sand Golems over to the tiny, white-haired elven girl sitting on the rock. ’There are six Golems... Valerius is taking two. I’m taking two, Aeli is taking one. That leaves one fifteen-foot rock monster completely unaccounted for on the rear flank.’

Silas turned his head, pointing a calloused finger at the remaining golem that was currently lumbering straight toward the outcropping where Mia was sitting.

"Valerius," Silas said flatly. "Mia is a little girl. Why the hell are we leaving her alone to deal with a golem?"

Valerius didn’t even look back over his shoulder.

The gold-armored Lord simply smirked, swinging his mythril sword in a practice arc. "Watch her."

Mia however was not at all terrified by the fifteen-foot sandstone behemoth lumbering toward her rock. In fact, she was visibly excited as well.

The little girl stood up on the edge of the sandstone outcropping with her gray cloak blowing wildly in the desert wind.

Her large green eyes flashed with an intense blue light.

Mia didn’t pull a weapon, instead she brought both of her small hands up in front of her chest, pressing her palms together as she began making a formal incantation chant.

As she spoke, her voice completely changed.

It no longer sounded like the cute chirping voice of an adorable little child.

It resonated with the deep suffocating weight of an endless, crushing ocean, carrying an ancient power that caused the very moisture in the dry desert air to violently condense around her skin.

"Hear me, dark waters... Tide that swallows the sun... Crush the shore, bind the sky... Rise from the abyss and drown the light."

The exact second she finished the final syllable of the chant, the atmosphere inside the desert basin violently inverted.

A swirling sphere of deep pressurized blue water gathered directly between her small outstretched hands.

Silas, standing twenty feet away with his broadsword raised, felt the magical frequency bleeding off the little girl’s hands.

His golden-ringed eyes widened in sudden recognition. He was well aware of this specific spell.

’Wait, It was the exact same water spell that Morwenna taught me! It’s the standard Tier-1 Aqua Bolt... according to her, That is literally a basic foundational spell designed for novice spellcasters to practice water gathering! It shouldn’t even leave a scratch on a sandstone golem!’

It wasn’t a basic spell anymore though, not in her hands.

The spinning sphere of dark water gathering around her small hands simply multiplied.

In a fraction of a second, the single sphere split into ten distinct globes of pressurized water and then it tripled.

Ten became thirty, swirling around her little body like a localized orbital ring of crushing marine kinetic energy.

And then it quadrupled...

ROOAAAR!

The desert air was completely displaced by the deafening sound of a localized tsunami.

Over one hundred and twenty massive compressed pressurized boulders of deep water materialized in the sky directly above the little girl’s head.

The volume of water she had pulled out of a dry desert atmosphere completely blotted out the burning amber sky, casting a massive cool shadow over the area.

The fifteen-foot Sand Golem lumbering toward her stopped dead in its tracks.

The hollow blue runes on its chest flickered erratically with its rudimentary artificial intelligence completely failing to process how a tiny entity had just conjured an entire ocean above its head.

Mia dropped her small hands forward, pointing her finger directly at the towering sandstone beast.

"Splash!" Mia chirped happily.

She shot it at the Golem.

KA-BOOM!

The entire orbital array of one hundred and twenty compressed water boulders launched forward simultaneously with the speed and velocity of naval siege torpedoes.

The impact was simply... erasure.

The torrent of dark water slammed directly into the chest of the fifteen-foot Sand Golem.

There was no struggle and there was no resistance.

The crushing hydraulic pressure of the water instantly destroyed the whole thing upon impact.

The solid sandstone torso, the tree-trunk limbs, and the reinforced mana core were violently pulverized into microscopic grains of wet mud in less than a tenth of a second.

The explosion of the water blast didn’t just obliterate her target... the residual hydraulic shockwave blasted outward across the desert area, kicking up a massive torrential rain that showered down over the remaining five Golems.

HISSSSSSS! SKREEEE!

The freezing pressurized rain saturated the remaining Sand Golems. Because they were constructed entirely from dry desert sand, the sudden deluge of deep water instantly turned their outer layers into thick immobile sludge.

The other Golems let out agonizing screeches of structural failure as their joints locked up with their movements completely paralyzed by the sudden mud-conversion.

Silas lowered his broadsword, his jaw slightly slack as he stared at the empty, cratered patch of wet mud where a fifteen-foot siege construct had been standing three seconds ago.

He slowly turned his head, looking up at the sandstone rock.

Little Mia was standing there, shaking a few drops of water off her ragged gray cloak. She lowered her small hands, looking down at the shocked Lord and the smiling Elf.

She tilted her head, flashed a bright and adorable toothy smile that bared her fangs, and proudly declared her true individual value to the raid team.

"Despite how small and squishy I look," Mia giggled, placing her hands on her hips with absolute, unshakeable elven pride. "I’m actually almost a Grandmaster in Water Magic!"