Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 192: Under The Spire [I]

"I promised you that your death would be swift for touching what is mine..." Seraphina stated coldly.

Floating in the air, Harper didn’t cower.

She wiped a trail of blood from her lip, a wild grin stretching across her face as blinding purple lightning violently flashed across her skin.

"Try it, you silver-haired freak," Harper told the woman, her voice crackling with static.

BOOOOM!

Seraphina didn’t hesitate.

She lunged forward with her boots completely melting the glass floor as she moved at supersonic speeds.

She swung her right arm in a massive, sweeping arc, unleashing a devastating, sixty-foot-wide crescent blade of white-hot fire directly at Harper.

Harper didn’t attempt to block the solar-tier heat.

She violently manipulated her electromagnetic field, dropping out of the air like a stone to avoid the blade, then instantly blasting forward across the sand to close the distance.

"Fulgur Lance!" Harper roared.

She thrust her hands forward, firing a dense continuous beam of purple lightning directly at Seraphina’s chest.

KRKKKKK!

Before the lightning could connect, the desert sand violently erupted between them.

Elora Verinda was not going to sit on the sidelines and be ignored.

To match these two terrifying monsters, Elora had completely closed her eyes, biting her lip until it bled as she tapped into her deepest reserves of power.

’These two are truly on another level...’

Elora unleashed the pure power of frost, violently freezing the sand, the ambient moisture, and the melted glass across the entire battlefield.

A massive twenty-foot-thick wall of solid blue ice erupted from the ground, perfectly intercepting Harper’s lightning beam.

The ice violently shattered, sending massive shards flying across the arena like shrapnel as they all went at each other simultaneously.

There were no alliances and there were no truces.

Elora was desperately trying to kill Harper for her betrayal, violently raising massive razor-sharp pillars of ice from the ground to impale the floating lightning mage.

At the exact same time, Elora was desperately trying to kill Seraphina, firing hundreds of high-velocity ice shards to suppress the overwhelming solar heat that was actively melting her armor.

"Die, you rat!" Elora screamed, slamming her hands against the frozen sand.

SHWK! SHWK! SHWK!

Three massive ten-foot-long spears of solid ice shot out of the ground directly beneath Harper.

Harper was attacking as well as desperately defending.

She twisted violently in the air with her purple hair whipping around her face.

She used her blood to violently increase her reaction time, cleanly dodging the first two ice spears but she was fighting a two-on-one battle against monsters.

The third ice spear clipped her right side, brutally tearing through her leather armor and slicing a deep horrific gash across her ribs.

Blood sprayed through the air, immediately vaporizing into steam as Seraphina arrived.

"Burn!" Seraphina roared, completely ignoring the ice.

Seraphina lunged directly through Elora’s freezing barrage, the white-hot flames of the Primordial Spirit effortlessly melting the ice shards before they could even touch her skin.

She closed the distance on Harper, driving a devastating, fire-wrapped punch directly toward the lightning mage’s face.

KRA-THOOM!

Harper barely managed to cross her arms, forming a desperate static shield.

The impact of Seraphina’s punch violently shattered the electrical barrier, sending Harper crashing backward into the frozen sand.

CRUNCH!

Before Harper could even roll to her feet, Elora capitalized on the opening.

She slammed her boot down, violently raising a jagged spike of ice that punched cleanly through Harper’s left calf, physically pinning her to the desert floor!

"AGGGGH!" Harper shrieked in agony with her blood pouring over the blue ice.

Elora panted heavily, her blue hair plastered to her sweaty forehead.

She was deeply wounded herself with her arms covered in severe electrical burns from Harper’s earlier strikes but her summoned Hero... a high level Frost Mage equipped with baseline healing magic was standing safely on a distant dune, desperately channeling green restorative mana into Elora’s back, actively healing her minor wounds over the course of the battle.

Meanwhile, Seraphina’s wounds from the flying ice shrapnel simply burned with white-hot fire, the sheer thermal density of the Primordial Spirit instantly cauterizing and sealing her flesh the microsecond it was cut.

"It’s over, Harper!" Elora declared, raising both hands to summon a final, massive execution block of ice to crush the pinned lightning mage.

But Harper was not done doing damage.

Pinned to the ground, bleeding profusely from her ribs and her impaled leg, Harper’s purple eyes violently flared with completely unhinged, psychotic lethality.

"If I die..." Harper rasped, blood bubbling past her lips as she grabbed the ice spike piercing her leg with both hands. "...I am taking both of you entitled bitches to hell with me!"

ZZZZZZZZZT!

Harper completely abandoned her defensive spells as she poured every single remaining drop of her Lord core directly into the Blood spell.

A catastrophic, blinding wave of purple electricity erupted from her pinned body.

The raw voltage traveled directly through the ice spike pinning her leg, violently back-feeding through the magical connection straight into Elora’s core!

"Ahhhh!" Elora shrieked, dropping to her knees as her nervous system violently convulsed under the massive electrical overload.

At the same time, Harper fired a desperate blast of lightning directly at Seraphina’s chest, managing to cleanly pierce through the solar flames and strike the Magistrate’s daughter, sending Seraphina stumbling backward with a smoking crater in her armor.

At the climax of the brutal bloody battle, when Harper was genuinely near death with her organs actively failing and her vision swimming with dark spots...

Standing at the base of the towering, sixty-story black sand Spire, Silas Graves was currently ignoring the distant explosions entirely.

He stood directly in front of the massive, completely featureless iron doors that sealed the entrance to the Spire.

The doors were engraved with ancient indecipherable runes, and they completely lacked a physical keyhole or a handle.

Valerius, Aeliana, and Mia were clustered around him, staring up at the imposing structure.

"So," Silas sighed, wiping sweat from his brow. "We made it. We have the map. How exactly do we open the damn door?"

As if waiting for the prompt, the dead god’s voice boomed directly from the black glass walls of the Spire itself.

"Congratulations on surviving the sprint, my little Lords!" Ititus laughed cheerfully, his voice echoing across the empty dunes. "To unlock the Vault and claim my ultimate treasures, simply place the Treasure Map directly against the center of the iron door!"

Silas and Valerius immediately looked at each other with their faces identical masks of deep suspicion.

"Absolutely not," Valerius stated flatly, shaking his head. "I am not touching that door."

"Agreed," Silas nodded, crossing his arms.

They stood there for a full minute, arguing on whether to even follow the instructions at all.

They decided they couldn’t trust the pathological lying god enough to do exactly what he said.

The last time they followed his literal directions with the cave riddle, the floor collapsed and dropped Silas as well as the rest of them into the Abyss.

"He probably meant the exact opposite," Silas deduced. "If he says put it on the door, it’s a trap. We should put it on the ground."

"Sound logic," Valerius agreed, stepping back. "Put it on the ground."

Silas didn’t hesitate.

He took the heavy roll of paper out of his coat, crouched down, and placed it completely flat on the black sand directly in front of the door.

For a moment, nothing happened then, the god’s voice echoed again, and this time, the sadistic cheerfulness was completely gone.

"You idiots," Ititus sighed deeply, his voice sounding genuinely exhausted. "This time, I actually wasn’t joking."

Silas’s golden eyes widened.

"Wait—"

KRA-KRA-KRA-THOOM!

Massive, glowing red fault lines violently shot across the entire body of the sixty-story tower.

The structural integrity of the ancient Spire, triggered by the incorrect placement of the map, completely failed as the black glass shattered, the iron doors buckled, and the massive towering structure violently collapsed!

All of their eyes widened in paralyzing horror as millions of tons of black sand, fused glass, and iron plummeted directly down toward them.

"Aeli!" Silas roared, reaching for her.

But it was too late.

The collapsing tower fell, instantly consuming Silas, Valerius, Aeliana, and Mia under an inescapable avalanche of absolute darkness.

The force of the collapsing Spire didn’t just stay there.

It violently spread outward across the desert like a massive, rolling tidal wave of black sand and debris.

The shockwave roared across the dunes, consuming the pursuing Lords that had fallen behind, completely burying their summoned Heroes, their mounts, and their ambitions in seconds.

The tidal wave of destruction continued expanding, racing across the desert miles away until it reached the molten crater where the three girls were fighting to the death.

Seraphina was currently standing over the bleeding broken body of Harper. She had summoned a superheated, white-hot flaming spear and driven it cleanly through Harper’s chest, pinning the lightning mage to the glass.

"Hehe... What did you say about taking us with you, bitch?"

Seraphina was physically lifting her up by the shaft, her silver hair whipping wildly as she looked into Harper’s fading purple eyes, thoroughly enjoying the sight of the blood spilling down the steel.

Suddenly, a massive shadow fell over them and Seraphina slowly turned her head with her glowing red eyes widening as she looked up.

A hundred-foot-tall tsunami of black sand and shattered glass was roaring directly toward them.

The avalanche washed over them instantly, violently consuming Seraphina and the bleeding Harper under millions of tons of suffocating debris.

A hundred yards away, Elora saw the wall of death approaching.

"What the fuck is that?!"

Elora’s summoned Hero desperately tried attacking it, firing massive blasts of ice to shatter the wave.

KKKKT! KKT!

When that didn’t even dent the momentum, the Hero slammed her staff into the ground, summoning a massive, fifty-foot-thick wall of solid blue ice to protect her Lord but the apocalyptic mass of the collapsing Spire was absolute.

CRASH!

The avalanche of black sand violently broke through the ice wall like wet paper, completely consuming Elora and her Hero, dragging them down into the suffocating crushing darkness of the earth.

[In ???]

Drip! Drip!

The echoing sound of water slowly dripping onto stone eventually penetrated the suffocating darkness of Silas’s mind.

"Wake up, my little Lords!"

The god’s voice suddenly boomed, waking Silas up with a violent jolt.

Silas gasped, his eyes snapping open.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, coughing violently as he expelled a lungful of dry, ancient dust.

"Welcome, survivors!" Ititus cheered happily over the invisible broadcast. "You failed the door puzzle! But fear not! You were not crushed to death! You have simply been dropped into the Treasury Dungeon! This is the true labyrinth where the real treasures were kept safely beneath the Spire!"

Silas forced himself up into a sitting position on the cold stone floor, his head spinning.

"However," the god continued, his voice dripping with sadistic amusement. "In the chaos of the sand collapse, all of your little factions and alliances have been completely separated and randomized across the labyrinth! You are all entirely alone in the dark!"

Silas’s heart hammered in his chest.

Separated?

"Listen closely!" the Lord instructed them, his voice taking on a heavy, serious tone. "Hidden somewhere in this labyrinth is the Realm Core! As long as you find the Core, you can completely absorb its power! Doing so will not only actively destroy this Secret Realm, but it will automatically guide you to my most valuable, divine treasures! Happy hunting!"

The broadcast clicked off, leaving Silas sitting in the damp, dimly lit stone corridor.

Silas coughed out again, wiping soot from his eyes as he sat up properly.

"Aeli?" Silas called out, his voice echoing down the dark tunnels. "Valerius? Mia?"

He rapidly searched his immediate surroundings, looking down the branching corridors but he didn’t find them.

The group had been completely scattered as he was alone then, he heard a wet ragged cough from the shadows nearby.

Silas instantly drew his mythril longsword, his Gold Core flaring as he spun toward the sound.

Lying in a crumple broken heap near a collapsed stone pillar was a body.

Silas slowly lowered his sword, his eyes narrowing as he walked over to investigate.

He winced visibly at the sight.

It was the charred mutilated body of Harper.