Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 169: The Secret Realm Of Ititius [VIII]

Silas blinked, the blinding spray of wet mud and pulverized sandstone raining down over his heavy leather boots.

He stared at the massive empty crater where the fifteen-foot golem had been standing mere seconds ago with his brain violently trying to process what he had just witnessed.

"Grandmaster in magic...?" Silas muttered, his golden-ringed eyes wide with genuine, shock.

He knew the academic magical rankings perfectly.

They were drilled into every student at the Valoria Academy. Novice, Adept, Master, Grandmaster, and Deity.

A Grandmaster was not just a title... it was a walking, breathing natural disaster. It was the highest mortal classification in existence, sitting directly right behind the threshold of a literal Deity.

Silas looked at the tiny, adorable eleven-year-old girl standing on the rock in her gray cloak.

’This little girl is that high up the magical ladder?’ Silas thought, his mind reeling. ’What the hell had she been doing? Practicing high-density hydro-manipulation since the time when she was in the womb?’

Before Silas could interrogate the terrifying child, the battlefield demanded their attention.

The torrential rain from Mia’s abyssal water strike had turned the outer carapaces of the remaining five Sand Golems into thick heavy sludge, but it hadn’t destroyed their mana cores.

"SKREEEE!"

The five massive sandstone behemoths groaned, their joints cracking as they forcibly pushed through the heavy mud, raising their massive boulder-sized fists to resume their encirclement.

Valerius tightened his grip on his mythril longsword, preparing to charge. "Watch the flanks! They’re pushing through the wet sand!"

"On it," Aeliana said smoothly, stepping past Silas without a trace of hesitation.

The Starlight Arcanist didn’t bother with defensive barriers.

She raised both of her slender hands, pointing her index fingers directly at the lumbering mud-soaked monsters.

Her A-Rank Epic mana core violently flared, illuminating the dark desert surrounding with blinding blue-white light.

"Arcane Piercer," Aeliana commanded.

She didn’t fire a single beam, Aeliana instead unleashed a devastating continuous volley.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Five compressed high-velocity beams of pure, destructive starlight mana lanced across the desert air in rapid succession.

The beams were perfectly aimed, possessing pinpoint sniper accuracy. They punched directly through the thick wet sludge coating the golems’ chests and shattered the hollow blue cores buried deep inside their sandstone torsos.

The five towering Sand Golems instantly froze in place as the magical light faded from their carved chests.

With a deafening crumble, the massive monsters completely collapsed, falling apart into nothing but massive useless piles of wet sand.

Aeliana lowered her hands, brushing a stray lock of silver hair behind her pointed ear, completely unfazed by the localized destruction she had just caused.

Silas lowered his forty-pound mythril broadsword, resting the heavy blade against his shoulder as he turned his full attention back to the little girl standing on the rock.

"How much have you been practicing?" Silas asked bluntly, staring down at Mia. "How do you even become a Grandmaster in elemental magic at your age? The mana density required to hold that much water would rupture a child’s internal pathways."

Mia giggled, a bright, highly mischievous sound.

Suddenly, she bent her small knees and launched herself into the air with terrifying superhuman leg strength.

She jumped a full eight feet straight up, completely clearing Silas’s towering frame, and landed perfectly, sitting directly on top of Silas’s shoulders. She wrapped her small legs around the back of his neck, making herself completely comfortable on his head, just like Thora.

It seemed everybody wanted to use him to do a pillow.

"You are quite misguided about my age, boy," Mia replied.

Silas froze.

Her voice hadn’t just changed... it had transformed! The cute, chirping, adorable tone of an eleven-year-old child completely vanished.

Her voice suddenly sounded incredibly deep and old.

It carried the unmistakable rasp of a woman who had lived for a very, very long time.

He immediately knew that this was an old woman.

"I am over centuries old," the voice spoke from the top of his head. "And you may refer to me as Aeliana’s Grand-Aunt, which is exactly why I possess the rank of a Grandmaster. My mana pathways matured before your current territory area was even fully formed by the Cataclysm."

Valerius, who had been resting his mythril sword on his hip, completely dropped his weapon.

The heavy blade hit the sand with a dull thud.

The gold-armored Lord stared at the little girl sitting on Silas’s shoulders with his jaw hanging open in horrified betrayal.

"You’re an old woman?!" Valerius shouted with his voice cracking slightly.

He pointed an accusatory gauntleted finger at her. "What the hell?! Why haven’t you told me that since the day I summoned you to my territory?!"

Mia looked down at her Master with a cheeky unapologetic grin spreading across her youthful face.

"Well," Mia replied with amusement. "I wanted to have some fun! The other Lords always treat ancient elven scholars with so much boring stuffy respect. Being a cute little girl lets me get away with so much more! I hope you don’t mind, my Lord."

Valerius stared at her.

He looked at the massive craters of wet sand where the golems used to be and he looked at the literal deception he had just endured.

Valerius gritted his teeth with his face turning a shade of dark red. He let out a deeply exhausted sigh, reached down to pick up his mythril sword, and looked the completely other way.

"Whatever," Valerius grumbled to the desert wind, sliding the blade back into his scabbard. "As long as you keep blowing up the monsters, I don’t care if you’re a thousand years old."

Silas watched the interaction with a genuine smirk crossing his face. Silas could get one thing about Valerius.

Honestly, the guy wasn’t that strict at all. He didn’t care about the deception or the broken whatever.

He was very much like Silas; as long as it wasn’t a matter of life or death or something too serious, and as long as his people performed in combat, he wasn’t going to enforce strict useless discipline.

Suddenly, Mia leaned forward. She reached down, her small hands grabbing a fistful of Silas’s dark, messy hair.

"So," Mia dragged his hair slightly, leaning her face upside down directly in front of his eyes. "You’re the one my Aeli loves, huh?"

Silas’s eyes widened.

Aeliana, standing a few feet away, instantly flushed a brilliant hot shade of crimson, looking away toward the dunes in embarrassment.

"You really give off the exact same vibes as that All-Father gu—" Mia continued, her ancient voice analyzing his sovereign frequency.

Silas didn’t let her finish the sentence.

His right hand shot up with blinding speed. He forcefully, firmly clamped his large, calloused palm directly over the little girl’s mouth, completely cutting off her words.

’Is she out of her mind?!’ Silas panicked internally with his heart slamming against his ribs. ’The hell... is she actively trying to reveal that I was a Gold Core?! Or that I possess the same Gold core as Odin?! Right in front of a rival City Lord?!’

Valerius, who was busy dusting the wet sand off his golden armor didn’t notice the massive lore drop being smothered.

Mia grabbed Silas’s wrist, easily pulling his hand away from her mouth with her terrifying physical strength.

She leaned in close to his ear, dropping her voice into a secure conspiratorial whisper.

"You’re hiding it, huh?" Mia whispered, a knowing mischievous glint in her green eyes. "Fair, fair. Earth politics are a messy business. I won’t tell anyone your little secret... just as long as you tell me exactly how far you’ve gone with my Aeli. Should I be expecting to be a Grand-Aunt to a half-human heir anytime soon?"

Silas closed his eyes, fighting off a massive headache.

’I sincerely preferred this woman when she was still acting like a mute kid,’ Silas thought bitterly. ’Not being so incredibly naggy about my personal life.’

Silas leaned his head slightly, whispering back so Valerius and Aeliana wouldn’t hear.

"We haven’t even kissed," Silas whispered bluntly. "I’m busy."

Mia gasped in horrified outrage.

THWACK!

She violently kicked the back of his neck with the heel of her small leather boot.

"Ow!" Silas barked, stumbling a half-step forward in the sand from the unexpected strike.

"Are you one of those oblivious dense protagonists in these terrestrial Earth novels?!" Mia whispered furiously, aggressively pulling his hair again. "You possess a Prime Body and a loyal elven arcanist! Knock her up already!"

Silas reached up, grabbed her small face with his large hand, and physically pushed her head back away from his ear.

"Stop reading trashy literature..." Silas grumbled.

Before he could properly reply to that perverted sentence, the environment around them violently changed.

FWOOSH!

A massive, howling gust of dry wind ripped across the desert basin as a dense blinding sandstorm instantly kicked up, swirling around their boots and reducing visibility to less than thirty feet.

Simultaneously, the brass Treasure Radar still gripped in Silas’s left hand began wildly vibrating.

PING! PING! PING!

"I’m guessing that’s your tracker right?" Valerius shouted, drawing his sword again as he squinted into the blowing sand.

Silas looked down at the radar. The screen wasn’t just showing a dot... it was tracking a fast-moving erratic magical signature directly above them.

He looked up into the howling sandstorm that was starting to blot out the amber sky.

Cutting through the thick clouds of dust, glowing with a brilliant pure golden light, was a massive object.

It was a golden kite, soaring through the turbulent winds on its own accord, trailing long razor-sharp ribbons of condensed wind mana behind it.

Both Silas and Valerius immediately raised their eyebrows, aiming their Lord tabs at the flying object to analyze it through the storm.

The blue holographic screens flashed in their vision.

[Name]: Ititius’s Golden Wing

[Tier]: Tier 3

[Description]: A flight item forged from the compacted desert winds of the Secret Realm. When equipped, this artifact completely bypasses baseline gravity laws, granting the user permanent, sustained, high-velocity flight capabilities and a passive +40 boost to their base Agility stat.

Once they read the description and saw the game-changing gains displayed on the system tab, all diplomacy evaporated instantly.

Permanent sustained flight? In a world where spatial control dictated survival, it was a priceless artifact!

Valerius didn’t negotiate.

He bent his knees with his mythril boots digging into the sand, and aggressively dashed forward first, launching himself toward the nearest towering sand dune to gain elevation.

"Hehehehee~ Mine!" Valerius cheered with his noble dignity completely abandoned in the face of raw loot.

"Wait up, you bastard!" Silas shouted, completely ignoring the sand whipping against his face as he launched himself into a dead sprint right after the gold-armored Lord.

Aeliana stood in the swirling dust, watching the two powerful men aggressively race each other up a massive sand dune like greedy children chasing a balloon.

The Starlight Arcanist chuckled softly with a genuine warm sound that carried over the wind as she tapped her white staff against the ground.

"Let us secure the prize, Grand-Aunt," Aeliana said.

Her body dissolved into a flash of blue-white light as she utilized her Spatial Teleportation, going right after them into the storm with pure Starlight.

Unfortunately for the other people scattered across the brutal unforgiving expanse of this desert, survival wasn’t that easy at all.

Miles away from the golden kite, on a vast flat plain of scorching cracked sandstone, the reality of the True Vault Floor was enforcing a brutal bloody tax on the weak.

Maya lay flat on her back with her sleek lightweight robes soaked through with freezing sweat and coated in abrasive dirt.

She was currently half-buried in the shifting sand, completely unable to move as her left ankle was twisted at a sickening unnatural angle, shattered by a heavy shockwave.

Lying right beside her, completely unresponsive, was Jaxon.

The Lord was knocked out cold. His thick reinforced armor was violently rent open across the chest plate, and thick dark crimson blood was steadily pouring out onto the baking sandstone, pooling around his motionless body.

Maya’s hands were shaking violently.

Her chest heaved with short hyperventilating gasps of pure terror.

She was frantically tapping the smooth black surface of the spatial tether band strapped to her wrist, desperately trying to send a distress signal to Elora.

"Help!" Maya screamed at the top of her lungs with tears streaming down her dirty face. "Elora! Silas! Please, help!"