Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 172: The Secret Realm Of Ititius [XI]

"Gold Cores are not held back by the pathetic normality of regular Lords," Mia explained, dropping into the role of a stern instructor. "Like other baseline cores, there are several distinct stages of the Core which lead to Core Advancement."

Silas perked up, leaning forward slightly.

He was genuinely confused about Core Advancement.

When he had first awakened his Lord core in the beginning, he was already informed that the higher his levels got, the more the Core was being refined and compressed into a smaller denser state.

At Level 20, the first major Core Advancement was supposed to happen, but Silas didn’t feel any structural changes to his own core as he now approached that threshold.

"Why isn’t it refining automatically?" Silas asked.

"Because the advancement parameters for Gold Cores are quite different from what the regular humans now," she corrected him bluntly. "You do not simply level up by butchering beasts...To achieve the Second Stage of Core Advancement, a Gold Core Lord needs to have achieved an Adept Mastery in at least eight different elemental affinities."

Silas’s jaw dropped. He choked on his own spit, almost spitting out in disbelief.

"Eight?!" Silas hissed as his eyes wide. "The hell?! Why is it so complicated? Most Lords spend their entire lives just trying to master one or two!"

"Because you are forging the foundation of a divine territory," Mia stated simply, as if the answer was incredibly obvious. "An octagonal lattice of elemental mana is required to safely contain the density of a sovereign soul... Once you reach the Second Stage of Core Advancement, you will then be able to freely use and assimilate other higher-tier affinities. You will be able to harness the Soul affinity, and the Star Affinity like my Aeliana, who was born with it. Furthermore, the volume expansion is astronomical."

She paused, making sure he understood the scale of the power she was describing.

"In standard Lord terminologies," Mia said, "a Second Stage Gold Core holds an ambient capacity of about 30,000 mana."

Silas stared at her.

Thirty thousand mana?

He currently operated in the two-thousands and the overwhelming destructive potential of thirty thousand mana made him both surprised and incredibly excited to learn.

He could drop meteor strikes with that kind of juice.

Mia suddenly leaned forward, closing the distance between them. She tilted her small head up and took a long invasive sniff of his dark trench coat.

Silas stiffened.

’The hell is she doing?’

"I can smell Goddess Eluned on you," Mia murmured with her green eyes softening slightly with a strange warmth. "The scent of ancient nature mana is unmistakable."

She looked up at him.

"Please... make sure you keep her safe," Mia requested softly. "And happy, too. She deserves everything in the world."

Silas looked down at the little girl, recognizing the unspoken pain in her eyes as Silas nodded firmly.

"That was the plan," Silas said softly. "I protect my people."

Mia smiled, it was a bright and genuinely happy expression. It looked a lot like when Aeliana smiled.

Then, the Grandmaster’s demeanor completely vanished, replaced by the expression of a drill instructor.

Mia reached out, grabbed Silas tightly by the collar of his coat, and violently dragged him downward.

"Hey!" Silas grunted.

She dragged him directly under the sand.

The sound barrier actively spread over them, expanding into the earth like a drill, forcefully pushing the sand away and hollowing out a chamber directly beneath the ice shelter.

Above them, through the translucent ceiling of their new underground bunker, the shards of glass that were raining outside fell harmlessly around them as the barrier expanded outward.

"Since you’ve already started learning the basics of water magic," Mia announced, dusting the sand off her cloak as the barrier settled and solidified into a glowing dome. "I am going to teach you three spells today... These are water magic techniques fitting of a Gold Core Lord. They are advanced, but not too advanced for your current capacity, and they will be incredibly helpful, especially in the Sand dunes like these where moisture is scarce."

Silas dusted off his coat, rolling his shoulders as he fully committed to the training arc.

"I’m listening."

"The first is Abyssal Sever..." Mia lectured, pacing in front of him. "It allows you to compress ambient water into a razor-thin pressurized blade of fluid aqua energy capable of cleanly slicing through solid mythril armor. The chant is as follows... ’Currents of the deep, compress and divide. Water that shears the stone, form the edge.’ Try it."

Silas raised his hand.

He focused on drawing the moisture from the subterranean air.

"Currents of the deep, compress and divide. Water that shears the stone, form the edge."

A sloppy unfocused blob of water materialized in his palm, completely lacking a sharp edge as it fell to the sand with a wet splash.

THWACK!

Mia kicked him in the shin.

"You are not trying to wash your hands! You are trying to sever a spine! Compress the mana!"

Silas gritted his teeth, forced the mana tighter into a stream, and chanted again.

This time, a crescent-shaped blade of pressurized water formed over his knuckles, humming with force.

"Better," Mia nodded. "The second attacking form is Tidal Impact... It is a blunt-force projectile technique that condenses a massive volume of heavy water into a cannonball, designed to completely shatter the internal organs of heavily armored beasts through hydraulic shock and the chant is... ’Weight of the ocean, gather in the palm. Crushing depths, release the tide.’"

Silas didn’t hesitate.

He thrust his right hand forward, locking his feet in the sand. "Weight of the ocean, gather in the palm. Crushing depths, release the tide!"

A massive sphere of dark blue water formed in front of his palm.

The weight of the spell dragged his arm downward for a fraction of a second before he stabilized it with his strength.

"Good," Mia praised. "Now, the third spell. It is pure utility for gathering water magic and turning it directly into Ice."

Mia paced back and forth across the sand chamber with her hands behind her back.

"The spell is Ice Transformation, and it is categorized under Water magic, not Ice magic, because Water mages can use Ice the exact same way that Fire mages who are strong enough and can release enough intense heat can use raw plasma. It is simply extreme manipulation of your own elemental output. The chant is: ’Still the currents, banish the heat. Let the fluid sleep in absolute zero.’"

Silas listened intently, absorbing the mechanics of the spell then over the next few minutes, he practiced the spells over and over again with his hands glowing with blue light as he formed the water constructs, failed, adjusted the temperature, and formed them again.

It would be easier if this was an area with a body of water but forming water out of the moisture of the air was simply too hard... It wasn’t impossible though.

"Alright," Mia announced, stopping her pacing and dropping into a low balanced combat stance. "Theory is over as you must defend yourself."

They began to spar and it started the moment she finished speaking.

"Try this first, big guy!"

Three water bullets shot from her fingertips before Silas even finished blinking.

The first one clipped his ribs, the second smashed into his collarbone and snapped his head sideways, and the third caught him right between the eyes.

His skull rang like a bell and he tasted copper in his mouth.

’The hell... She’s really fast with it.’ Silas thought, but then again, the woman had lived centuries so of course she was fast.

"Still the currents, banish the—" he started, raising a palm and trying to form the ice shield.

She hit him again on the shoulder this time. The pressurized water bullet spun him halfway around and sent him stumbling through the wet sand.

The force of the water was high and he was suppressing his usual stats this time since he was trying to learn.

"Stop chanting!" she barked with her voice sharp as shattered glass. "Your core already knows the shape! You’re just wasting air and getting your face beaten in!"

Silas wiped his eyes.

’Is that so...?’

He just shoved his mana into the mold she’d shown him and pushed and the Abyssal Sever came out unstable but sharp enough to make the air hum.

He threw it at her.

WHOOSH!

She sidestepped with a hair’s breadth of room.

The water blade carved a deep trench into the sand wall behind her as sand poured into the cut like blood from a wound.

"That was much better," she admitted. "Again."

He threw another then another...

Wild, sloppy arcs that hissed past her ears and shredded the walls around her.

She weaved through them like they were nothing, but he caught the shift in her footwork as she was moving quicker now and actually paying attention instead of just humoring him.

’Alright then, let me take it up a notch.’ Silas thought as he switched to Tidal Impact.

He summoned the sphere and immediately regretted it as he’d overloaded the spell.

The mass of dark blue water was too heavy and his arms dropped under the weight. He almost ate sand trying to hold it up.

’That’s what I get for limiting myself...’ Silas thought but he wasn’t going to stop it, he had insane physical strength and he didn’t want to hurt her less Aeli came out and started looking at him different.

"WEIGHT OF THE—" he started, then cut himself off. ’Trust the core, dumbass.’

He launched it and the sphere shot forward, dragging a tail of mud and debris behind it.

Mia raised a single hand, flicked a needle-thin blade of water into its center, and the whole thing detonated in his face.

BOOM!

The shockwave threw him flat on his back as water and sand rained down on him like a coffin lid.

"Come on Lord Sy, get up~" she said.

He got up.

"Could you stop speaking like that...?" Silas muttered and then he looked at the puddles around him. "Honestly, how do pure mages manage this? I’d rather stick with being a swordsman."

But then he noticed it... all the water from his failed spells and all the moisture in the air from the water spells.

’This could work... Ice Transformation!’

He reached out with his mana and drained the heat.

PSSSSSSS!

The temperature cratered as ice crept across the floor, climbing up Mia’s boots and frost spiderwebbed across the walls.

His own breath turned to thick mist and the entire chamber went from a swamp to a freezer in three seconds flat.

Mia looked down at her frozen feet then up at him with one eyebrow raised.

"Tha’ts quite clever... You’ve gotten the hang of Ice Transformation quite quickly, I can see why you Gold Cores are monsters. I spent almost a decade doing what you just did."

Mia flexed and the ice shattered into a thousand pieces but Silas didn’t wait.

He was already moving.

"I thought you were quite talented, a decade for Ice Transformation, really?" Silas asked as he closed the distance and threw a heavy punch, trailing a wake of pressurized water.

She caught it on her forearm and the impact shuddered through both of them.

"Not quite talented at all, you could say the reason why I’m a Grandmaster now is simply because of hardwork, Hmph!"

She threw his hand back and he retaliated by throwing a hook but she ducked.

"Well then, I still believe you’re amazing."

He brought a knee up and she twisted away.

’A-amazing?’ Mia thought, she hadn’t heard of that one before and Silas followed with a Tidal Impact pressed against his palm like a hydraulic knuckle and drove it straight into her crossed guard.

BOOOOOM!

The impact was thunderous with her boots carving twin trenches through the sand as she slid backward.

Mia looked up.

"Ah... you flirted to make me lose my cool, that’s not manly at all Mr. Lord!" Mia said while her face turned pink.

"Flirting?" Silas asked while blinking, was he flirting with her?

The Grandmaster’s face reddened as she realized that she had misread the whole thing.

"U-uh, forget I said that! Regardless, today was really good and I’m quite surprised by what you’ve managed to accomplish."

"Thanks, same time tomorrow?" Silas asked and Mia nodded slowly as she took a step toward him with her hands clasped behind her back.

She was close now with her small frame looked almost fragile in the dim blue light of the water-drenched chamber.

"Of course, I’ll teach you more."

Silas blinked.

"However," Mia murmured. "there is one lesson you haven’t learned right now."

Silas tensed.

"Never," Mia breathed, "drop your guard after a short person."

She blurred... One moment she was in front of him.

The next moment she was behind him with her small hand already raised and before he could react, Mia’s hand came down.

CHOP!

Her fingertips connected with the exact pressure point at the base of his neck... the junction where his skull met his spine, where the nerves bundled together like a coiled serpent.

A razor-thin pulse of mana channeled directly into his central nervous system, bypassing his physical defenses entirely as Silas’s vision went white.

’I’m being knocked out again... Fuck!’

[The Next day]

Silas awoke with a groggy groan with his cheek pressed flat against the cold, hard ice of the cavern floor.

"Lord Sy! Wake up!"

He blinked his eyes open with his vision slowly clearing.

He had been dragged back up to the surface level of the shelter.

Silas looked up and saw Aeliana standing directly above him.

The silver-haired Elf was folding her hands tightly in front of her waist, her flawless face completely lacking its usual warmth.

Her green eyes were narrowed into an unimpressed glare.

"Lord Sy..." Aeliana said. "I wasn’t aware you liked my grand-aunt that much."

Silas frowned as he slowly looked down at his own body.

He was laid across the ground right in front of the cavern entrance and curled up comfortably against his side, sleeping in his arm like a teddy bear, was Mia.

The "little girl" was fast asleep, softly snoring with her white hair splayed out across his chest.

Silas stared at the ceiling of the ice cavern with the memory of the brutal training session flooding back into his aching skull.

’Fuck...’ Silas thought, letting his head drop back against the ice in pure defeat. ’Why do these women like knocking me out?’