Chapter 17: In The Umbral Basin
The blinding golden light slowly dissipated, leaving behind a massive intricately carved chest resting heavily on the stone tiles of the Blessed Land.
It radiated a thick majestic aura that completely pushed back the creeping freezing shadows of the Umbral Basin.
Hovering just above the heavy lid was a pristine system tab.
[Pioneer’s Vanguard Strongbox]
[Tier: Mythic (Newbie Bracket)]
Silas let out a slow breath, his breath pluming in the freezing night air. He stepped forward, his boots crunching softly against the stone.
With a firm grip, he grabbed the heavy latch and forcefully popped it open.
The heavy lid groaned as it swung back on its hinges, and three distinct, glowing orbs of light immediately floated out of the velvet-lined interior syncing directly with his Lord interface.
[Reward 1: 10,000 Sovereign Credits.]
Silas’s eyes widened slightly.
Ten thousand Sovereign credits. The regular world operated on Spirit Credits... but to buy things from the natives of the Sovereign Realm that existed within known territories, you needed to use Sovereign credits.
To amass ten thousand credits on the second day of the Sovereign Realm trial was a good thing.
Once he established a proper communication array or a trade terminal to access the inter-realm market, he would have a lot of buying power.
[Reward 2: Amulet of the Sovereign’s Gaze.]
[Description: A high-tier tactical accessory. Allows the Lord to seamlessly tap into the visual and auditory senses of any Vassal within a five-mile radius. Greatly enhances battlefield awareness.]
"Now that is a lethal asset.." Silas muttered, plucking the sleek, dark-metal amulet from the air and clasping it around his neck.
The metal felt warm against his collarbone.
As a commander, having a literal bird’s-eye view of the battlefield through the eyes of his archers or scouts was an invaluable advantage but it was the third orb that held his full attention.
[Reward 3: Construct Blueprint - Blood-Iron Watchtower.]
A thick rolled scroll materialized in his hands.
Silas unrolled it eagerly as the territory desperately needed elevated line-of-sight and heavy defensive armaments.
A Watchtower was the perfect next step for his empire!
He pulled up his internal interface to sync the blueprint and check the construction requirements.
[Construct Blueprint: Blood-Iron Watchtower]
[Requirements: 500 Units of Ironwood, 300 Units of Refined Stone, and 10 Units of Abyssal-Marrow.]
Silas completely froze.
He blinked, reading the glowing blue text a second time then a third.
"What the fuck is Abyssal-Marrow?" Silas said aloud with his genuine excitement instantly flatlining into confusion.
He stood there in the freezing courtyard, racking his highly educated brain.
He had spent years in the Valoria Academy libraries memorizing the standard architectural deployment catalogs.
He knew the properties of Ironwood, Refined Stone, Mythril, and even obscure metals like Void-Steel but ’Abyssal-Marrow’ sounded completely fictional.
’You have got to be kidding me...’ Silas thought, glaring at the glowing blue text as if he could forcefully rewrite it. ’The Sovereign Realm gives me a premium, high-tier defensive blueprint, and locks it behind a completely obscure, impossible-to-find crafting material? Where the hell am I supposed to find the marrow of an abyss?!’
"Is everything alright, my Lord?" Eluned asked, tilting her head curiously as she walked up beside him.
The SSS-Rank Goddess had a highly amused smile playing on her lips, her silver-green hair blowing gently in the night wind.
"Everything is perfectly fine," Silas sighed heavily, rolling the useless blueprint back up and shoving it into his Lord Inventory. "I got the blueprints for a tower but the world is just acting like a cheapskate... We can’t build the tower tonight but we can expand our numbers, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do."
"I see my Lord, regardless..." She said as she dragged him off the crate he was sitting down on. "Come hug me to sleep again tonight, think of it as my reward for helping out today."
Silas sighed and he held the hand of the Goddess.
"Sure." He said as he yawned. "Let’s go to bed."
...
A cold wind washed through the entire territory as Silas stood outside in the morning wearing different robes.
’Eluned is really amazing...’ He thought, she had made different robes for him and she had also made battle clothes with a cape.
Silas checked his internal balance.
[Current Balance: 10 UP]
Sitting on exactly ten Upgrade Points was making his skin crawl.
It felt like standing completely naked on the edge of a jagged cliff.
The dawn wave had been a massive lucrative windfall, but hiding comfortably behind the Ironwood Palisade wasn’t going to generate the points he desperately needed to forcefully evolve his territory.
A true Lord didn’t wait to be attacked...
Silas materialized the ten Daily Summoning Cards he had received at midnight and he walked with purpose toward the glowing stone archway of the Summoning Portal in the center of the courtyard.
’Hopefully another Unique talent comes around.’ He thought and with a sharp flick of his wrist, he slotted the bundle of cards into the console.
The heavy stone archway instantly roared to life as a blinding, pure white light erupted from the swirling ether within the portal, violently pushing back the oppressive shadows of the early morning.
Silas stepped back, resting his hand naturally on the leather hilt of his Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade as ten new silhouettes began to rapidly solidify in the light.
A moment later, the portal snapped shut, and ten new women stumbled out onto the freezing stone tiles.
Just like the previous batches, they were dressed in basic thin linen tunics and crude leather boots shivering violently as the cold air of the Unknown Zone hit their lungs.
Silas’s blue eyes immediately darted above their heads with his command interface actively pulling up their hovering tabs.
[Name]: Gunnhild
[Class]: Heavy Shieldmaiden
[Rank]: C-Rank
[Name]: Freya
[Class]: Bow-Splitter
[Rank]: D-Rank
[Name]: Sigrun
[Class]: Infantry
[Rank]: D-Rank
He scanned the rest of the group.
It was another solid, highly balanced pull—four Shieldmaidens, three archers, and three infantry.
They didn’t have any flashy rare B-Rank magical classes like Rowena but they had the sturdy, muscular builds of front-line brawlers.
Before the new recruits could even fully register the terrifying, bruised-purple sky and the towering Ironwood walls around them, Eluned stepped forward as she had been holding his hand.
The Goddess simply sighed and let a warm, comforting wave of her [Aura of Genesis] bleed out into the courtyard.
The freezing chill vanished, replaced by the scent of fresh pine and blooming flowers.
The new recruits’ racing hearts immediately settled with their fear melting away into wide-eyed awe as they looked upon the radiant Goddess and the striking, dark-haired Lord standing before them.
"Welcome to the Blessed Land," Silas announced. "I am Silas Graves, your Lord. You have been summoned to fight, but you are not alone... You stand with the Vanguard."
The ten women quickly dropped to one knee, offering their loyalty in unison.
"Stand up," Silas commanded. He turned toward the massive stone fortress sitting on the edge of the courtyard. "Brida!"
The heavy wooden doors of the Tier 2 Armored Barracks swung open.
Brida, looking incredibly imposing after her ascension to Level 9, marched out into the courtyard.
Her Steel Aegis was strapped to her back, and she moved gracefully.
"My Lord!" Brida saluted, slamming her fist against her breastplate.
"Get these recruits inside. Equip them from the reserve iron armory and get them a hot meal from the Vault..." Silas ordered rapidly. "That brings our total mortal force to thirty. Brida, you are officially the Garrison Commander. I am leaving you and Hilda in charge of the Blessed Land."
Brida blinked, slightly caught off guard.
"You are leaving the walls, my Lord? It is pitch black outside."
"I am sitting on exactly ten UP Brida," Silas stated grimly with his blue eyes hardening. "We need UP, and we need resources. Hiding behind these walls won’t give us either. You and the majority of the Vanguard will hold the gates... I am taking a strike team into the basin to map the immediate perimeter and hunt down the stragglers from the dawn wave."
Silas turned, his gaze locking onto three other girls. "Tamsin. Rowena... Fenna... Gear up... You’re with me."
"Yes, my Lord!" the three girls shouted simultaneously, absolute excitement flashing in their eyes.
"What about me?" Eluned asked with her lip quivering.
"Naturally you’re with me." He replied making her nod her head.
Ten minutes later, the heavy Ironwood gates of the Blessed Land groaned open as the massive iron hinges protesting slightly against the freezing wind.
The strike team stepped out into the terrifying pitch-black void of the Umbral Basin.
But unlike standard Newbie Lords who had to slowly, painstakingly hack their way through dense necrotic thickets while constantly looking over their shoulders for ambushes, Silas’s team had a literal highway.
They walked directly down the center of the massive, two-mile-long trench of pure devastation that Eluned had casually carved with her Nature’s Execution beam yesterday morning.
The trench was a physical scar on the world... a massive perfectly smooth canyon where towering Ironwood trees and corrupted earth had been instantly vaporized into fine ash.
Rowena walked near the front with her staff raised.
She was actively channeling her newly expanded Level 8 mana pool, maintaining a floating, softly glowing blue arcane rune that illuminated the path ahead of them.
"It’s unnervingly quiet..." Fenna muttered with an arrow already loosely nocked on her magical recurve bow as she scanned the jagged, purple-miasma-filled treeline on either side of the trench. "Usually, you can hear the wolves howling by now or those disgusting stone-scaled reptiles grinding their claws."
"They’re terrified," Tamsin replied, her twin daggers drawn as she moved with the silent fluid grace of a master scout.
She pointed to the perfectly smooth ash-covered ground of the trench. "Lady Eluned didn’t just burn the earth... The residual mana from her attack is literally suffocating the immediate area so the lower-tier beasts can feel a predator’s scent lingering in the dirt. They won’t dare step foot in this region."
Silas walked in the center of the formation with his Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade resting easily in his right hand.
The dark purple veins of the mythril actively drank in the dim light of Rowena’s rune, giving the weapon a highly lethal glow.
He glanced over at Eluned.
The Goddess was walking completely unbothered with her hands politely clasped in front of her dress as if she were taking a midnight stroll through a royal garden.
"You really did carve us a perfect road, Eluned..." Silas smiled.
"I aim to please, my Lord," Eluned replied, offering him a bright blindingly cute smile that completely contradicted the violence she had used to create the path.
Because the residual divine mana actively repelled the standard Tier 1 and Tier 2 monsters lurking in the dark woods, the strike team advanced with terrifying unimpeded speed.
They covered the two-mile distance in less than forty minutes... but eventually, the perfectly smooth, ash-covered trench abruptly ended.
The unnatural clearing transitioned violently into a dense, twisted thicket of massive thorny purple briars.
The trees here were older, their trunks completely warped and bleeding a thick, foul-smelling black sap as the air grew immediately heavier, completely devoid of Eluned’s lingering warmth.
Tamsin suddenly threw her fist straight up into the air which was the universal tactical signal for an immediate halt.
The strike team froze instantly. Fenna drew her bowstring back to her cheek, while Rowena lowered the brightness of her arcane rune to avoid drawing unnecessary attention.
"What is it, Tamsin?" Silas whispered, stepping up beside the Wilderness Huntress. "Do you hear movement?"
"No, my Lord," Tamsin whispered back with her survivalist eyes piercing the heavy gloom.
She used the tip of her dagger to carefully part a massive cluster of thick necrotic briars.
"I don’t hear anything... That’s the problem... It’s too quiet but look through the gap."
Silas leaned forward with his blue eyes narrowing as he peered through the heavy rotting vegetation.
Hidden entirely beneath the overgrown, creeping vines were the moss-covered remains of a collapsed stone wall.
The masonry was incredibly crude, the stones hastily stacked and long since shattered by brutal impacts.
In the center of the ruined perimeter, completely choked by dead weeds, sat a cracked, gray stone pedestal.
It was a dead territory core... so it was the absolute wreckage of a former Newbie Lord.
"Rowena, light," Silas commanded softly.
Rowena stepped forward, raising her staff. The blue arcane rune flared brighter, casting a cold eerie light over the ruined courtyard.
Silas pushed his way through the heavy briars with his boots crunching against the dead long-forgotten earth.
The air inside the ruined perimeter felt incredibly heavy and stagnant... It was suffocatingly quiet as not even the biting wind of the Umbral Basin dared to howl through this specific patch of the woods.
"Spread out. Perimeter check..." Silas ordered. Tamsin and Fenna immediately fanned out with their weapons drawn, sweeping the shattered stone walls for any signs of an ambush.
Silas walked toward the center of the ruins, his gaze locking onto something resting near the cracked dead territory core.
Leaning heavily against the crumbling stone pedestal was the slumped, moss-covered skeleton of a human.
The bones were clad in rusted, completely rotted iron chainmail as a rusted shattered iron broadsword lay in the dirt a few feet away, entirely useless.
Silas stepped up to the ancient corpse. He stared down at it, the harsh gritty reality of the Sovereign Realm washing over him like a bucket of ice water.
He slowly extended his left hand, gently pressing his fingertips against the pale exposed clavicle bone of the fallen Lord.
CRUMBLE!
The absolute moment Silas’s skin made contact and the structural integrity of the skeleton violently failed.
The bone instantly turned into a pile of fragile gray dust, shattering completely under the slightest pressure.
The rusted iron chainmail collapsed into the dirt with a hollow pathetic clatter.
A tab flickered to life in the dim light, projecting directly above the dust.
[Territory Wreckage Detected: Red Lord Core Failure.]
[Historical Data: Year 214.]
A heavy chilling silence fell over the strike team as they read the floating text.
The notification starkly proved the brutal reality that the instructors at Valoria Academy had drilled into Silas’s head.
This wasn’t some ancient legendary battleground...
This was a Newbie Lord.
Someone who had been here hundreds of years ago, probably with a weak pathetic Red Lord Core, failed to clear the basic waves of the basin and died completely alone in the dark.
’They were completely forgotten by the universe...’ Silas thought with his grip tightening on the heavy leather hilt of his Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade.
He looked down at his own chest, where his Mythic Gold Core thrummed with overwhelming power.
He wasn’t going to end up a pile of dust in the dark.
"My Lord," Fenna whispered, stepping backward from the edge of the ruined walls. "I don’t like this. The ambient mana here feels... strange."
There was no guttural growl of a wolf. There was no rustle of leaves or snapping of twigs and from the absolute, pitch-black darkness of the ruined Keep’s cellar directly in front of Silas, the shadows violently warped.
A blinding hyper-compressed beam of searing, corrosive purple light shot forward from the dark, traveling at supersonic speeds directly toward the center of Silas’s face.
The attack was flawlessly executed and it completely bypassed human reaction time but Silas wasn’t relying solely on human reaction time.
Before Silas could even raise his mythril blade to parry, Eluned was already moving.
The SSS-Rank Goddess didn’t flinch, and she didn’t panic... She simply raised her delicate palm with terrifying grace.
A flawless, geometric shield of pure emerald light instantly bloomed into existence just inches from the bridge of Silas’s nose.
KRA-KOOM!
The corrosive purple beam slammed into the divine shield, violently detonating upon impact.
The shockwave of the blast shattered the remaining stone walls of the dead territory, kicking up a massive suffocating cloud of gray dust and debris.
"Ambush!" Tamsin roared, her twin daggers flashing as she dropped into a low combat stance.
The unnaturally quiet graveyard had just become a warzone.
From the pitch-black cellar, the darkness actively began to writhe and churn as the single beam hadn’t been a lone sniper.
It was a volley!
VWOOM! VWOOM! VWOOM!
Half a dozen more blinding, highly lethal purple beams erupted from the shadows... crisscrossing through the ruined courtyard like a barrage of heavy artillery fire.
"Rowena! Fenna!" Silas roared over the deafening explosions with his golden aura violently igniting around his body as he finally drew his black mythril blade in a fluid deadly arc.
The hunt for UP had just turned into a desperate fight for survival.
