Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 184: Thieving Elf

She spun in mid-air with her dagger leaving a trailing arc of fire that decapitated two scorpions simultaneously.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

She landed heavily, her boots kicking up molten glass, and thrust her palm forward.

A concentrated blast of fire erupted from her empty hand, incinerating a charging beast into a pile of smoking ash.

"Haah! Get that fuckers!"

But the exertion of fighting through the lingering fatigue of the suppression collar was catching up to her.

Her breath came in ragged painful gasps and her limbs felt as heavy as lead.

An eight-foot scorpion lunged from her blind spot on the right.

"Fuck!"

She raised her dagger to parry, but the impact of the heavy glass pincer violently knocked the weapon from her grip.

The dagger clattered across the stone floor, sliding out of reach.

"No!" she gasped.

The beast reared back with its razor-sharp stinger descending toward her unprotected throat but her moment of final resistance was cut short by the environment itself.

KRA-KRA-THOOM!

The massive tectonic chain reaction from Silas shattering the Tier 4 Eye in the Lower Abyss finally reached her isolated right corridor.

The bedrock floor directly beneath her heavy boots violently fractured into spiderwebs.

The stone walls tore apart, the ceiling caved in, and the ground simply dropped out from under her feet.

"No!" Seraphina shrieked as she lost her footing, plummeting helplessly into the suffocating darkness of a bottomless chasm alongside the screeching glass monsters.

She closed her eyes, desperately trying to conjure a thermal updraft to slow her descent, but her mana reserves were completely drained from destroying the collar and incinerating the horde.

The wind roared in her ears as she fell through the black void, debris and jagged glass showering around her.

Suddenly, a dark blur shot down from the collapsing cavern above her at terrifying velocity.

Before Seraphina could even scream, strong calloused hands grabbed her out of the free-fall, effortlessly snatching her out of the air and pulling her securely against a broad armored chest.

"You better not die on me," a calm voice muttered right next to her ear.

Seraphina snapped her fiery red eyes open.

It was Silas.

The dark-haired Lord had bounded across the falling debris to rescue her but because he already had Aeliana clinging securely to his back with her arms wrapped around his neck, Silas had to improvise his carrying mechanics to transport two grown women out of a collapsing pit.

To maintain his physical balance and secure her weight against the brutal G-forces, Silas had his right arm wrapped around her waist, while his left hand was clamped firmly, securely, and unapologetically directly under Seraphina’s ass.

Seraphina’s entire face instantly flushed a violent blinding shade of crimson that completely rivaled her hair.

"Y-you—!"

Before she could even utter an insult, Silas violently kicked off a falling boulder.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

He shot upward through the collapsing chasm like a rocket with his boots physically bouncing off massive, falling chunks of bedrock like stepping stones.

He navigated the vertical destruction with flawless agility, rapidly ascending toward the sunlight streaming from the upper layers.

Every time his boots slammed against a falling rock, the impact jolted through his frame, forcing his grip to tighten around Seraphina to prevent her from slipping out of his grasp.

Seraphina blushed so hard she felt physically dizzy.

She was completely paralyzed by the proximity to the man who had already seen her lower half hours prior, and who was currently holding her firmly by her rear end as they bounded up a collapsing chasm!

’Why does this keep happening to me...?’

She could feel the heat radiating from his chest, the thumping of his heart, and the strength in his arm as he fought gravity itself to keep them both alive.

"Let go of me, you brute!" she tried to protest, her voice muffled against his collarbone, but her arms instinctively wrapped around his broad shoulders to hold on for dear life.

"If I let go, you become desert pavement, Seraphina! Stop squirming!" Silas barked back, his eyes tracking a massive twenty-ton slab of ceiling falling directly toward them.

He didn’t dodge around it.

He planted his right boot against a falling pillar, compressed his mana into his calf, and launched himself directly at the descending slab.

As they closed the distance, Silas thrust his right knee upward, smashing it directly into the center of the falling stone.

KRA-CRASH!

The twenty-ton boulder violently shattered into thousands of harmless fragments, clearing a vertical path to the surface.

’He can do that...?’ Seraphina thought and Silas on the other hand sweatdropped.

’I hope she doesn’t notice...’

Silas carried them both completely to safety. With a final explosive kick against a protruding ledge, he burst through the remaining layer of upper bedrock, landing on the solid, baked surface of the Secret Realm’s desert layer.

They were back outside. Massive, gaping holes in the ice cavern ceilings above them were exposing the harsh amber sun, and continuous heavy streams of hot desert sand were actively pouring down through the fractures into the destroyed dungeon below.

The moment Silas’s boots stabilized on the solid sand, Seraphina violently threw herself out of his grip.

She scrambled backward across the dirt with her face burning so hot it was practically emitting steam and her hands flying instinctively to cover her chest as she glared at him with wide horrified eyes.

"You... you unrepentant pervert!" Seraphina insulted him loudly, her voice cracking with embarrassment as she pointed a trembling finger at his nose. "Don’t ever touch me again! Don’t look at me! I hate you!"

She didn’t give him a single second to explain or apologize.

Seraph instantly channeled her remaining fire mana into the soles of her boots and shot straight up out of the crater, rocketing away across the desert dunes like a fleeing meteor with her face burning red.

Silas stood there in the sand with his trench coat covered in grey dungeon soot, watching her fly away toward the horizon.

He let out a long exhausted sigh, rubbing the back of his neck until it popped.

’Well,’ Silas thought pragmatically, brushing a layer of dust off his sleeves. ’Valerius is a big boy so he will be alright dealing with her when she lands. Let’s just get back to Aeli.’

He turned back toward Aeliana, who had slipped down from his back and was standing gracefully on the hot sand.

She looked in the direction Seraphina had fled, her pointed elven ears twitching with mild disapproval.

"She lacks emotional discipline, My Lord," Aeliana noted calmly, smoothing her white robes. "Should I have frozen her feet to teach her manners?"

"No, let her go," Silas chuckled tiredly. "We have enough problems on our hands. Let’s find a safe zone and assess what we actually gained from that hellhole."

...

Meanwhile, deep within the Far Left Tunnel, things were transpiring in an entirely different, highly lucrative manner.

Valerius was practically howling with victorious laughter as he surveyed the massive room he had just stumbled into.

"EHAHAHAHAHA!"

This specific side of the subterranean complex wasn’t being destroyed at all.

The violent spatial collapse initiated by Silas in the center had completely missed this isolated reinforced structural pocket.

It was a perfectly preserved chamber carved from polished white marble and it wasn’t a prison or a combat arena.

It was the actual storage treasury where the dead god Ititus had kept the confiscated goods from the ancient enemies he had defeated!

This was the exact source where all the real, high-density treasure signatures on their radar had been originating from!

Valerius and Mia stood in the center of the illuminated treasury, and they both laughed out loud in pure Lordly triumph.

Lining the polished marble walls were dozens of ornate stone pedestals, and resting upon every single one was a glowing, perfectly preserved magical artifact.

There were roughly thirty different items in here... ranging from humming spellbooks and enchanted rings to heavy mythril gauntlets and a quick system scan confirmed they were all solid, undeniably real Tier 2 to Tier 3 Sovereign treasures!

"We hit the motherlode!" Valerius cheered, his eyes shining with absolute greed as he rubbed his iron gauntlets together. "Not a single fake mirage in sight! We are going to clean this place out!"

He stepped toward the nearest pedestal with his boots clicking sharply against the marble floor.

Resting on the stone was a magnificent silver broadsword, its hilt wrapped in pristine blue dragon-leather, radiating a potent wind-affinity aura that made Valerius’s own core hum in resonance.

"Oh, you are a beauty," Valerius murmured, reaching his gauntleted hand out to claim the weapon.

VWOOP.

Suddenly, Aeliana appeared directly behind him in a blinding, instantaneous flash of blue starlight.

Valerius jumped, spinning around with his hand on his sword hilt. "By the gods... Elf! Don’t sneak up on me like that!"

Aeliana offered a brief polite nod, completely ignoring his startled reaction.

"Lord Sterling. I am glad to see you are alright. However, the lower structure has failed so we urgently need to leav—"

Aeliana paused mid-sentence.

Her glowing silver eyes drifted past Valerius’s shoulder, locking onto the thirty glowing Tier 2 artifacts lining the marble pedestals.

The starlight around her form flared brightly as she rapidly calculated the immense financial and military value of the room’s contents.

Valerius saw the exact moment her pupils dilated and his paranoia spiked to maximum.

He immediately stepped in front of the shelves, holding both of his armored arms out wide in a desperate attempt to block her view.

"Now hold on just a second!" Valerius tried to say, his voice rising in panic. "I found this room first! These belong to the me! You shouldn’t take—!"

But before he could even finish the word "them", Aeliana’s fierce devotion to Lord Silas’s territorial expansion completely overrode any concept of manners.

Aeliana blurred forward with terrifying speed.

WHOOSH!

Aeli completely bypassed Valerius’s guard with her pale hands moving like lightning as she aggressively snagged an entire armful of artifacts directly off the stone pedestals... sweeping at least fifteen glowing Tier 2 treasures into her arms in a single flawless motion.

She grabbed enchanted breastplates, runic daggers, utility rings, and even the silver wind-sword Valerius had been eyeing seconds prior.

"Hey! Put that back!" Valerius yelled, lunging forward to grab her wrist.

He grasped completely empty air.

"For Lord Sy," Aeliana stated completely deadpan, looking him dead in the eye with zero remorse.

VWOOP!

She teleported instantly, vanishing back to Silas’s side with half of the room’s priceless inventory before Valerius could even blink.

"YOU THIEVING ELF!" Valerius shouted at the empty air, his face turning bright red as he clutched his meticulously groomed blond hair in agony. "GRAVES! I am going to murder you and your entire household! I swear it upon my family crest!"

Sitting lazily on his armored shoulder, Mia chuckled warmly, resting her chin on her small hand as she mercilessly teased her Lord.

"You really should have been faster on the draw, My Lord," Mia smirked, thoroughly enjoying his financial suffering. "She cleanly outplayed you. While you were busy drooling over a sword, she treated this place like a free market."

"Shut up, Mia! She literally robbed us blind!" Valerius fumed, pacing back and forth in front of the half-empty pedestals. "That was fifteen Tier 2 artifacts! Do you know how much gold that represents in the auction houses?!"

"Enough to buy a small city," Mia yawned. "Which is exactly why you should stop whining and grab whatever is left before the ceiling crushes your skull."

As if on cue, Valerius’s tantrum was cut short by the environment itself.

KRA-THOOM!

The massive walls of the polished marble treasury suddenly began to violently shake.

The protective spatial ward covering the chamber flickered and died, emitting a high-pitched whine as the whole thing collapsed.

The high ceiling above them began to crack, massive fissures of black void tearing through the white stone as heavy chunks of marble showered down around them.

The chain-reaction collapse of the dungeon had finally reached their isolated wing.

"Damn it all!" Valerius cursed loudly.

He didn’t waste another second complaining.

He sprinted along the perimeter of the room, rapidly sweeping his gauntleted arms across the remaining pedestals, hastily shoving the remaining fifteen Tier 2 artifacts directly into his Lord inventory interface.

Rings, boots, belts, and shields vanished into his digital storage in a rapid succession of blue flashes.

A massive section of the marble floor collapsed directly behind him, revealing a bottomless black pit.

Valerius spotted a narrow glowing emergency exit tunnel collapsing at the rear of the chamber.

Channeling high-pressure green wind mana directly into his boots, Valerius violently hopped out of the crumbling treasury.

He pushed off the falling stones, riding the violent air currents through the collapsing tunnel while screaming curses at Silas Graves with every single bound.

"Graves! I am going to bill your territory for this!" Valerius roared as he shot up through the vertical shaft with his armor scraping against the narrowing stone walls before he violently burst out onto the surface sands.