Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 199: Under The Spire [VIII / Bonus Chapter]

Then, Silas moved.

He didn’t panic and he didn’t stumble. In fact, his face was set in a cold smile.

Silas had, of course, easily sensed the fucker preparing to ambush him from the ceiling after taking time to think about it...

That was precisely why he had flooded the floor with water, executed the decoy clones, and purposefully turned his back toward the center of the room... he had deliberately put himself in an easy inviting position to bait the main body into committing to an irreversible aerial drop.

The very microsecond the obsidian spear tip descended within six inches of his neck, Silas violently pivoted on his right heel, spinning his entire torso around with superhuman speed.

He didn’t try to dodge out of the way. He brought his heavy mythril longsword up in a vicious two-handed vertical thrust.

SHWK-CRUNCH!

Silas parried the descending obsidian spear with the crossguard of his weapon, violently deflecting the lethal point past his shoulder, before driving the razor-sharp tip of his mythril longsword straight upward directly through the dead center of Xerxes’s falling chest!

The four-foot steel blade punched completely through the General’s condensed sand core, erupting out the back of the entity’s masonry armor with a sickening grinding sound of shattering glass and tearing earth.

Time abruptly bled back to normal speed.

THUD!

Harper landed heavily on the damp stone floor ten yards away with her boots skidding across the ice as she watched the unbelievable spectacle before her.

Impaled mid-air on the length of Silas’s sword, the Sand General let out a deep echoing groan of ancient disbelief.

Recognizing that its primary physical core had been severely compromised, Xerxes immediately attempted to phase out... desperately trying to dissolve its dense sand body back into a harmless intangible cloud of floating dust to escape the blade and reform elsewhere.

"You’re not going anywhere," Silas stated and before the grains of sand could even begin to separate and disperse into the air, Silas violently clamped his left hand directly onto the General’s armored wrist.

He tapped into his deepest reserves of elemental control, aggressively pumping a continuous pressurized torrent of raw water mana straight up through the blade of his sword and directly into the interior of Xerxes’s sand body!

SQUELCH! GURGLE!

"For somebody that was supposedly part of a legendary group that killed a Lesser God..." Silas told the struggling entity, his golden-ringed eyes glowing with cold disdain as he pumped gallons of pressurized aqua mana directly into its core. "...you sure are a coward."

The effect of the internal water injection was immediate and catastrophic.

The hyper-condensed black sand constituting Xerxes’s body, suddenly flooded from the inside out by high-pressure aqua mana, was completely unable to phase into dust or maintain its structural integrity.

The dry grains absorbed the water like a sponge, violently expanding and bloating at an exponential rate.

Within two seconds, the eight-foot, terrifyingly sleek elemental General was forcibly expanded in the center of the corridor, rapidly transforming into a massive waterlogged and incredibly fat sphere of wet mud.

"No..." Xerxes gurgled, its deep voice heavily muffled and bubbling as its muddy limbs helplessly flailed outward from its rapidly bloating torso. "The glory... of the Sands..."

Silas twisted his mythril sword inside the bloated mud sphere, channeling a final, lethal spike of ice magic directly into the center of the mass.

"Pop." Silas said simply.

KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The massive fat sphere of mud violently detonated from the inside out!

The explosion sent a massive tidal shockwave of wet harmless brown dirt and shattered obsidian shrapnel blasting across the entire thirty-foot intersection, plastering the damp stone walls and ceiling in thick layers of sludge.

Yet another one of the ancient Sand God’s legendary commanders had formally passed away, completely eviscerated by a Lord from the land of the living.

Silas stood calmly in the center of the settling mud shower, slowly lowering his mythril longsword.

He flicked his wrist, smoothly cleaning the wet sludge off the shining steel blade before sliding the weapon securely back into its heavy leather scabbard with a sharp sound.

CLANG!

He didn’t waste a second celebrating.

He immediately knelt down in the mud with his eyes scanning the remains of the General’s core, actively looking around for some kind of high-tier treasure, glowing skill tome, or divine jewel that could naturally be gotten from the corpse of a veteran boss monster.

As his hands sifted through the wet dirt, the dead god’s voice boomed directly from the vaulted stone ceiling above, dripping with sarcastic mockery.

"HAHAHAHA!" Ititus laughed hysterically over the broadcast. "Are you seriously digging through the mud like a starving swine, mortal?! You actually thought there was going to be some magnificent, divine jewel hidden inside the corpse of a low-ranking Lesser General like that?!"

The audio crackled with sadistic amusement as the dead god continued his taunts.

"Xerxes was mere fodder during the Ascension War!" Ititus mocked loudly. "The fact that you actually had to exert yourself and struggled like that against such a minor bottom-tier subordinate is quite pitiful! You are miles away from worthy of my true treasures!"

Silas didn’t even bother looking up at the ceiling, nor did he waste his breath talking back to the pathological lying god.

He completely ignored the theatrical broadcast, his calloused hands systematically sifting through the dense center of the mud blast where the entity’s core had detonated.

A second later, his fingers brushed against something solid, warm, and softly vibrating within the sludge.

Silas pulled his hand back, revealing a small intricately woven pouch made of indestructible golden dragon-leather.

The moment his fingers closed around the item, a translucent blue system tab immediately projected itself directly in front of his eyes.

[Tier 4 Boss Monster ’Xerxes, Lesser General of the Eternal Sands’ has been slain!]

[You have gained 300 UP!]

[Loot Acquired: Shifting Sand]

[Tier: 2]

[Description: A sealed pouch containing three pounds of primordial, highly conductive desert grains harvested from the Ascension Era. When integrated into the mana pathways of an individual possessing the Earth, Sand, or Glass affinity, this catalyst exponentially increases construct versatility, shape-shifting speed, and structural density. Can be manipulated to assume weaponized or defensive states without standard incantations.]

Silas read the system interface with a look of deep disappointment crossing his sharp face.

He smoothly took the pouch of Shifting Sand and stored it directly into his endless Lord Inventory interface with a wave of his hand.

He let out a long deeply exhausted sigh, shaking his head at the ceiling.

"Unbelievable," Silas muttered bitterly to himself, stepping out of the mud. "Usually, when a Lord risks his neck and steps foot into an ancient Secret Realm drop, they expect to see Tier 4 artifacts lying around, and sometimes even Tier 5 sovereign treasures if they kill a named boss. But a Tier 2 catalyst for a multi-stage Secret Realm? This dead god is too cheap... It’s almost as if he’s completely broke and just throwing scraps at us to hide his empty treasury..."

Hearing his blatant financial insult, the magical broadcast on the ceiling abruptly clicked off with an angry static hiss, plunging the corridor back into silence.

Silas turned around, looking across the thirty-foot intersection toward the base of the staircase.

Harper was standing there on the damp stone with her bare legs trembling slightly as she leaned against the masonry.

She was still covered in a thin layer of soot and glittering glass dust from her mid-air twister escape, and his oversized black trench coat was hanging loosely from her shoulders.

Her chest was heaving and her purple eyes were wide as she stared at him with complete awe.

Silas walked over to her, his expression softening just a fraction from his usual cold demeanor.

"You shouldn’t have worried about me," Silas told her quietly, stopping two paces away. "And you definitely shouldn’t have broken cover and jumped out of the Safe Zone with a depleted core just to intercept an aerial drop. I had the angle covered from the start."

Harper stood there for a second, absorbing his gentle reprimand.

Then, her flawless face flushed a brilliant shade of pink.

She aggressively puffed out her pale cheeks in an adorable uncharacteristic display of childish frustration, instantly canceling the lingering electrical static of her spell.

"You could have warned me you were baiting him!" Harper complained, crossing her arms tightly over his trench coat and sticking her chin in the air. "I literally thought you were about to get impaled! I turned my own blood into lightning just to save your stubborn neck, you ungrateful brute!"

Silas actually let out a small genuine chuckle at her pouting expression. He didn’t argue with her logic.

He simply reached out, casually placing his hand on her shoulder to steady her trembling frame.

"Let’s go back," Silas instructed her quietly. "Your stamina is bottomed out."

Harper nodded, her defensive posture instantly melting under his touch.

She stood up properly, leaning a fraction of her weight against his side as they slowly walked side-by-side back up the sweeping stone staircase toward the upper corridor.

As they ascended, the landscape of the subterranean labyrinth had changed.

There were no more distant blood-curdling screams echoing through the dark tunnels, there were no more sounds of tearing flesh or crushing stone.

The initial chaotic slaughter of the night cycle’s curfew enforcement had concluded.

Whatever rival Lords had been stupid enough to wander the corridors during the blue light had either decided to stay at their Safe Zone or been permanently eliminated by the roaming Lesser Generals.

Once they reached the top of the stairs and stepped safely back inside the thirty-foot glowing blue ring of their Safe Zone, Silas decided to run a practical experiment.

"I just need to check..."

He turned around, facing the dark stairs.

With deliberate slowness, Silas lifted his right combat boot and purposefully stepped backward... placing his foot completely outside the glowing blue boundary line of the Safe Zone, standing in the unprotected blue light of the corridor.

He stood there for five solid seconds with his hand resting casually on his sword hilt, waiting for the dungeon to react.

Nothing happened.

There were no sand pillars erupted from the floor and no massive obsidian blades materialized from the shadows.

In short, nobody came after him.

A moment later, Ititus’s voice sighed directly from the ceiling masonry above his head, sounding deeply bored and disappointed.

"You are of absolutely no fun, Silas Graves," the dead god complained over the audio link. "You already slayed the general and you can stand out there all night if you want, I am not wasting another one of my Generals on a brute who inflates my commanders with water until they explode... Go to sleep."

Silas smirked, stepping his boot safely back inside the blue ring. "Good to know."

He walked toward the center of the Safe Zone, where Harper had already sat down heavily on the damp stone floor, hugging her knees to her chest while wrapping his trench coat tightly around herself to ward off the chill.

"I will take the first watch," Harper offered immediately, looking up at him with tired, serious purple eyes. "You fought the General, butchered the wolves, and carried me through the tunnels. Your physical stamina has to be lagging so let me guard the perimeter while you rest."

Silas rolled his shoulders, letting out a heavy sigh as he stood over her.

"No. I will do so instead. Your core is still actively repairing its pathways. If an enemy Lord stumbles into this intersection, you won’t have the raw output to repel them. Lay down and sleep."

"I am not a helpless damsel, Silas!" Harper argued, glaring at him stubbornly. "I am a Valoria City elite! I can hold a watch for four hours without collapsing!"

They stood there in the center of the glowing blue ring, fiercely arguing back and forth for several minutes over the military logistics of the watch schedule.

Silas completely refused to yield his responsibility for security, while Harper stubbornly refused to feel like a useless burden.

Finally, Harper threw her hands up in defeat, offering a practical compromise.

"Fine!" Harper huffed, crossing her arms. "If neither of us is going to sleep while the other watches, then we should just stay awake together! Or better yet... I can manually project an automated defensive barrier around our perimeter. That way, the magic holds the watch, and we can both actually relax without staring into the dark!"