Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 202: Under The Spire [XI / Bonus Chapter]

The Spear Lord completely abandoned his survival sprint, violently pivoting his spear.

He aggressively charged at them at full speed with murderous intent, ready to drive his spear right through Harper’s back but Silas didn’t even bother raising his sword.

He simply maintained his wide gap, casually looking over his shoulder as he kept running.

"Watch your step, Noble." Silas said over the wind. "No seriously, watch your step..."

KRA-KRA-THOOM!

Before the Spear Lord could even throw his weapon, the structural integrity of the ancient stone bridge completely failed.

A massive chunk of the masonry directly where the Spear Lord had been standing just a second earlier violently crumbled away, plummeting downward into the fiery Abyss.

The Spear Lord looked back at the gaping chasm that had nearly swallowed him whole.

His murderous fury instantly evaporated, completely replaced by the primal horror of mortality.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

He dropped his spear slightly, bursting into loud hysterical tears as he immediately turned around and began running significantly faster toward the far end of the cavern, abandoning his revenge in a desperate bid to survive.

Silas rolled his eyes, pushing his Gold Core to its limit as he hit the final stretch.

According to what his perception could see through the settling dust, after he ran up the final violently shaking flight of stairs, the collapsing corridor abruptly ended.

They burst out of the dark tunnels into a massive open expanse.

Floating entirely suspended in the dead center of the cavernous void, held aloft by ancient thrumming anti-gravity runes, was a massive and incredibly wide circular stone platform.

It was the stabilized sector.

That massive floating platform was the only part of the subterranean environment where the tectonic earthquake wasn’t touching.

The air around it was perfectly still, completely separated from the apocalyptic destruction of the labyrinth and currently standing safely on that floating platform were the other surviving Lords!

Silas could immediately see Aeliana, Valerius, and Mia clustered near the far edge, anxiously looking out into the collapsing darkness, scanning the crumbling tunnels for any sign of him.

The very second Aeliana’s glowing silver eyes locked onto Silas’s silhouette emerging from the dust of the final staircase, her pupils dilated into tiny pinpricks of overwhelming relief.

"Lord Sy!" Aeliana cried out, taking a step toward the edge of the platform.

Silas sprinted for the edge of the collapsing corridor, preparing to jump the forty-foot horizontal gap to the floating platform.

However, the dead god’s labyrinth had one final treacherous trick.

The earth directly below Silas’s right combat boot suddenly, violently collapsed into completely pulverized dust!

The Lord didn’t panic.

’You need to be faster than that to catch me off guard...’ Silas thought.

His momentum was already established and he had already pushed off the solid stone a microsecond before it broke, launching himself and Harper into the empty air, soaring directly over the bottomless void toward the safety of the floating arena.

But below them, tragedy struck.

The Spear Lord, who had been desperately running right behind them, wasn’t as fast, and he didn’t have as much momentum.

The edge of the corridor completely crumbled beneath his armored boots before he could jump.

"NOOOOOO!" the Spear Lord screamed in agony as he lost his footing, plummeting downward into the bottomless Abyss.

In a final frantic attempt to save his own life, the falling Spear Lord channeled his unique elemental affinity.

He violently thrust his hand upward, casting a specialized alteration spell.

"Polymer Extension!" he shrieked.

The heavy iron spear in his hand violently morphed.

The rigid metal instantly turned into an elastic and hyper-flexible rubber-like tether.

The Spear Lord whipped the rubberized weapon upward.

The hooked blade of the spear flew through the air, expertly wrapping securely around Silas’s left ankle mid-air!

SNAP!

The sudden, massive drag of a two-hundred-pound armored Lord violently yanking on his leg instantly killed Silas’s forward momentum.

The physics of the extra weight aggressively altered his trajectory as they were going to fall short of the platform and plummet into the Abyss.

Silas hung in the air, feeling the violent tug on his boot. He let out a suffering sigh.

"It’s always something with these people..." Silas muttered under his breath.

Silas didn’t try to kick the hook off as he utilized the physics of the situation.

While entirely suspended over the Abyss, Silas twisted his core, aggressively spinning his entire upper body like a horizontal centrifuge.

He used his own immense physical weight, the rotational power and the elastic tension of the Spear Lord’s spell to execute a flawless mid-air slingshot!

The violent rotational force whipped the Spear Lord completely up from the Abyss.

"WAAAAAAAAAH!" the Spear Lord screamed at the top of his lungs as he was violently launched up and over Silas’s head like a human cannonball.

The screaming noble soared across the massive gap, crashing heavily onto the solid stone of the floating platform and rolling to a bruised groaning halt.

A fraction of a second later, having expertly used the counter-rotational force to secure his own trajectory, Silas landed perfectly on both boots on the edge of the floating platform, completely unharmed.

The moment his boots stabilized on the safe ground, Silas was immediately forced to let go of Harper.

FWOOSH!

Aeliana blurred forward with terrifying speed.

She didn’t just offer a normal polite greeting hug as the usually composed disciplined Arcanist completely abandoned all decorum and professional boundaries.

Aeliana threw her pale arms around Silas’s neck and aggressively attached her entire body to his frame.

She leaped up, wrapping her slender, pale legs tightly around his waist, completely burying her face into his shoulder as she trembled with relief.

"Lord Sy, you’re a big fool!" Aeliana reprimanded him as she squeezed him tight enough to bruise his ribs. "Stop getting into completely suicidal dangerous situations without me covering your flank!"

Silas, caught off guard by the intensity of the embrace, instinctively wrapped his arms securely around her lower back to support her weight with a genuine smile touching his lips.

"I’m alright, Aeli," Silas murmured quietly into her white hair, patting her back. "I made it."

Standing awkwardly beside them, having been unceremoniously dropped to her own two feet, Harper slowly adjusted her head, rubbing her temple where she had bumped it during the landing.

"Ow," Harper muttered, completely disoriented.

She looked around the massive floating platform, taking in the surviving Lords as her confidence instantly evaporated into anxiety.

Standing a few yards away, glaring at her with cold intensity, were both Elora Verinda and Seraphina.

Harper visibly shrank back, instinctively sliding behind Silas’s broad back.

She wanted none of the smoke that inherently followed these two apocalyptic women.

She had already survived their three-way deathmatch once on the surface... Harper wasn’t eager to get vaporized by solar fire or impaled by ice in a confined space.

Across the platform, Maya and her mechanical-armed Archer were sitting heavily on the stone.

They were actively glaring at Harper with undisguised venom for her previous betrayal in the glass storm.

And sitting on the ground directly next to Elora’s boots, looking absolutely hollow, devastated, and deeply traumatized, was Jaxon.

The young Lord was tightly clutching a glowing, perfectly preserved Hero Summoning Card in his trembling hands, staring blankly at the stone floor.

Silas’s golden-ringed eyes flicked toward the card.

He really, really wanted to snag that high-tier item from the boy’s hands to bolster his own Territory’s military strength but as he analyzed the situation, he firmly decided against it.

Given the undeniable fact that Jaxon’s summoned Hero... the swordsman who had guarded his flank on the surface was no longer standing beside him on the platform, Silas could immediately deduce the grim reality.

The guy’s Hero had died for quite a while.

Silas actually felt a brief rare twinge of genuine pity for the kid so he wasn’t going to rob a grieving Lord on a safe platform.

Seraphina, however, was not dealing with grief.

She was dealing with a different and dangerously violent emotion.

The fiery noblewoman stood with her arms crossed tightly under her breasts, her crimson hair blowing wildly in the heavy wind generated by the collapsing labyrinth below them.

Her glowing red eyes darted aggressively between Silas, who was currently holding Aeliana by the thighs, and Harper, who was actively hiding behind his back wearing absolutely nothing but his oversized black trench coat.

’Why the hell did that stupid sadistic god mathematically match those two together in the dark?!’ Seraphina thought frantically with her jealousy spiking to maximum.

Her mind raced. She knew exactly what had happened during their three-way battle.

Harper’s leather armor had been completely destroyed by her solar fire.

If Harper was currently standing here, wearing Silas Graves’s trench coat, it meant she had been completely exposed to the elements.

’If this was the case...’ Seraphina realized with her face flushing a violent shade of red. ’...and considering the physical state she was in after our battle... did that mean Silas had seen her completely naked?!’

Seraphina scowled deeply, her teeth grinding together as she glared daggers at the dark-haired Lord.

’Not only did this fucker see me completely naked behind a sand dune on the very second day...’ Seraphina fumed internally with her hands sparking in white-hot uncontrollable fire. ’...but he also saw this manipulative, lightning-attuned harlot naked too?! In the dark?! Alone in the dungeon?! What an unrepentant shameless man!’

Aeliana, finally pulling herself back slightly from Silas’s neck to look at his face, immediately noticed the heavy black trench coat missing from his broad shoulders.

She slowly turned her head, her glowing green eyes locking directly onto Harper.

Aeliana’s expression went completely blank as the starlight in the cavern visibly dimmed around her.

"You," Aeliana demanded, her voice dropping to a frosty temperature that rivaled ice with her pointed elven ears standing straight up. "I highly request that you take off my Master’s trench coat immediately... It does not belong to you."

Harper blushed deeply, her pale face turning crimson as she clutched the lapels of the dark fabric much tighter around her chest.

She looked away, deeply embarrassed to confess her state in front of the entire Valoria elite.

"I... I can’t," Harper admitted softly, her voice barely a trembling whisper. "I am completely naked underneath."

Seraphina’s scowl deepened into fury.

Her Primordial Fire Spirit mark began to violently glow across the left side of her face, radiating intense heat.

She was about to completely crash out. She was ready to summon a devastating fireball and incinerate both the trench coat and the harlot right off the floating platform.

However, her bound spirit practically pulsed with soothing warmth.

’The Primordial Fire Spirit actively fed a calming rhythm directly into her core, forcibly cooling her raging jealousy down before she could commit mass murder in a Safe Zone.

’I-I’m not jealous... don’t get it wrong, I just don’t think he should be seeing women naked.’

Seraphina took a deep shuddering breath, aggressively crossing her arms and looking away.

Before the tension could escalate into physical violence, Valerius stepped forward, clapping his heavy iron gauntlets together with a loud sound.

"Well!" Valerius announced loudly, smoothly cutting through the lethal hostility.

He walked up to Silas, offering a genuine relieved smirk. "Good job for making it here in one piece, Graves. I thought for sure the sand was going to swallow you and your new... companion."

"I don’t die that easily," Silas replied, finally setting Aeliana securely back down onto her own feet.

Suddenly, the deafening roar of the collapsing labyrinth beneath them began to fade.

The massive floating circular platform violently shuddered as a deep thrum vibrating through the stone floor.

"Congratulations, my surviving little Lords!"

Ititus’s voice boomed directly from the center of the platform, vibrating with genuine finality.

The dead god sounded thrilled that his twisted game had reached its climax.

"You have successfully outrun the destruction and proven your worth!" the god announced. "Now, prepare yourselves for the final ascent!"

The massive stone platform slowly, steadily began moving upward.

It rapidly accelerated, acting as a massive anti-gravity elevator, carrying the surviving Lords straight up through the gaping dark vertical shaft of the labyrinth.

They ascended at terrifying speed with the damp stone walls blurring past them.

They were heading straight up, completely about to violently collide with the solid unbreakable bedrock ceiling of the Abyss!

"Brace yourselves!" Valerius shouted, raising his heavy mythril shield and bracing his boots.

Aeliana grabbed Silas’s arm with her eyes wide.

But there was no impact.

The exact second the platform touched the thick stone ceiling, the ancient magic activated flawlessly as the entire platform, and every single person standing on it, seamlessly phased completely through the solid rock as if it were nothing but an optical illusion.

FWOOSH!