Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 203: Offending A God [Bonus Chapter]

They broke completely through the illusionary ceiling, instantly emerging into a different and breathtakingly immaculate environment.

The floating platform locked perfectly into place, forming the central floor of a massive and brightly illuminated subterranean chamber.

The walls were not damp stone, but polished flawless white marble lined with intricate, branching veins of pure gold.

Hanging from the high vaulted ceiling were dozens of massive, glowing crystal chandeliers that cast a warm radiant light over the room.

And resting perfectly dead center in the room, hovering securely above an ornate inscribed marble pedestal, was a massive glowing core entirely made of swirling, luminous golden sand.

This was the true Realm Core.

And this entire luxurious, immaculate chamber was meant to be the dead god’s ultimate Vault.

"Welcome to the Apex!" Ititus introduced the room, his voice echoing from the marble walls with deep divine pride and overwhelming arrogance. "This is my true Vault! The pinnacle of the Secret Realm! This is where my greatest, most priceless treasures were kept safe from the Ascension War!"

Silas stepped off the platform with his heavy boots clicking sharply against the polished marble floor.

He didn’t look impressed. After all, who would be? This place looked very suspicious.

Silas walked slowly around the glowing Realm Core with his golden-ringed eyes actively scanning every single corner of the massive empty room.

There were no heavy iron chests... There were no racks of glowing Mythril weapons... There were no skill tomes, no divine artifacts and no mountains of Gold.

"Right," Silas stated dryly with his voice echoing in the empty space. "So, what exactly is the treasure? Because all I see in this massive room is a giant ball of gold sand."

At the far end of the luxurious room, resting entirely alone upon a small, elevated velvet cushion, was a beautifully crafted and incredibly ornate glass jar.

Suddenly, the empty glass jar pulsed with a golden light as a voice spoke directly from the container.

"It is I," the voice echoed, filled with immense, unadulterated divine arrogance. "The God of Sand, Ititus! And I... am the only treasure that you will ever need."

The immaculate and brightly illuminated polished white marble walls of the Apex Vault fell into a profound silence.

The dozens of crystal chandeliers hanging from the vaulted ceiling cast a warm, radiant glow over the surviving Lords of the Secret Realm raid.

Every single Lord, Hero, and elemental entity standing on the floating platform was completely frozen in place.

Silas stood near the center of the room with his mythril longsword still resting loosely in his grip and his golden-ringed eyes staring blankly at the transparent ornate glass jar resting on the velvet cushion.

Did he just hear that correctly?

"I’m sorry," Valerius finally broke the agonizing silence, his voice echoing loudly across the massive empty chamber.

The blonde noble stepped forward, his heavy gauntlets clanking against his armored thighs as his face twisting into a mask of pure confusion. "Did you just say... you are the treasure?"

"Indeed!" the dead god Ititus proudly declared, his divine voice vibrating cheerfully from the glowing glass container.

Valerius blinked, looking around the massive completely barren room.

He looked at the giant, swirling ball of golden sand hovering over the pedestal, and then back at the jar.

"Okay, fantastic," Valerius said, his tone dripping with forced politeness and mounting irritation. "We love a good self-esteem moment. But where is the actual treasure this time? Where are the Mythic skill tomes? Where are the Tier 4 weapons? Where are the treasures you have amassed over your lifetime?!"

The glass jar pulsed with a slightly darker offended golden light.

"I just told you, mortal!" Ititus repeated, his voice losing a fraction of its cheerfulness and taking on a defensive tone. "There is no material ’ultimate prize’! I myself am the prize! I am the God of the Eternal Sands! My knowledge, my ancient wisdom, and my divine guidance are worth infinitely more than mere steel or gold! What kind of sane, ambitious person wouldn’t want to have a literal god formally contracted to their territory?!"

Once again, the massive Vault fell into deafening silence.

Aeliana, standing behind Silas, slowly blinked her green eyes with her flawless face completely deadpan.

Mia, perched casually on Aeliana’s shoulder, let out an audible snort of laughter and Elora Verinda crossed her arms with her icy blue eyes narrowing in disbelief.

’I can’t believe my ears...’

Seraphina’s jaw literally dropped open, her red eyes twitching with mounting fury.

Upon seeing everybody’s total, unenthusiastic silence, the sand god quickly attempted to justify his own divine worth.

"Do you simpletons not understand who you are looking at?!" Ititus demanded, his voice booming across the marble room as the golden sand core violently swirled in agitation. "I am a veteran of the Ascension War! I commanded armies of millions! I shaped the very deserts of the mortal realm!"

The god’s voice swelled with immense pride as he began rapidly listing half the things that he had achieved in his ancient life.

"I brought entire empires to their knees!" Ititus boasted loudly. "I constructed pocket dimensions that defied the laws of physics! I even personally took out a giant primordial crimson dragon that caused mass genocide across the western continents! I crushed her beneath a mountain of glass and sealed her away forever!"

Aeliana and Silas exchanged a brief glance.

They both knew exactly which crimson dragon the god was bragging about, considering that the daughter of the very same dragon was currently back in their territory.

However, the rest of the surviving Valoria coalition remained completely silent.

Nobody clapped, nobody bowed and nobody looked even remotely impressed.

The transparent jar pulsed rapidly. The sand god puffed its invisible chest out, his voice echoing with demand.

"Well?!" Ititus shouted. "Continue basking in my glory! Bow before your new divine patron!"

"Are you absolutely fucking kidding me?!"

The furious cracking voice didn’t come from Silas, Valerius, or Seraphina.

It came from the Spear Lord.

The battered, bruised, and traumatized noble violently pushed his way to the front of the group.

His gold armor was heavily dented, his face was covered in soot and dried tears from nearly falling into the Abyss, and his hands were trembling with outrage as he pointed his iron spear directly at the glowing glass jar.

"You made us do all of this... for absolutely no reason?!" the Spear Lord screamed, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "You forced us through a meat grinder! You dropped us into a death trap, made us fight your psychotic Sand Generals, and collapsed an entire labyrinth on our heads!"

The Spear Lord was hyperventilating.

"Not only did you not even have anything reasonable to offer us," the Spear Lord continued to rant, "but you have actively led to the gruesome deaths of a lot of elite Lords that came down here today! Entire people were wiped out! And for what?! For a jar of talking dirt?!"

"He has a point!" Seraphina suddenly chimed in, stepping forward with her hands igniting in red hot fire.

Her red eyes burned with killing intent as she glared at the jar.

"Secret realm, my ass! This is a complete scam! I could have gotten better higher-tier loot just by doing standard B-Rank subjugation quests at the Lord Association Buildings back in Teres City!"

"This is a farce," Elora Verinda agreed coldly, her blond hair whipping around her face as the temperature in the room plummeted. "You are an impoverishe washed-up deity attempting to trick Lords into carrying your shattered soul out of exile."

"You are really broke!" Valerius Sterling joined the roasting, pointing his heavy mythril sword at the pedestal. "You are poor! You are a destitute impoverished fragment of a forgotten era! Why did you even legally register a Secret Realm with the Sovereign System if all you had to offer was yourself?! We spent days eating things in this fucking miserable desert, losing our Heroes, and there was nothing at the end of it!"

The entire group began shouting at once, fiercely complaining and violently cursing the god for wasting their time, their resources, and their lives.

Throughout the entire, overwhelming barrage of insults, the glowing glass jar remained completely silent.

Silas stood back, his Gold Core slowly vibrating within his chest.

He let out a long sigh. He was incredibly pissed off too. He had fought a Tier 4 artifact, packs of Dire Wolves and monsters as well as an ancient Sand General for absolutely zero financial return.

But as the shouting continued, Silas’s paranoia aggressively flared.

He didn’t like how the usually cheerful, sadistic God had suddenly turned entirely silent under the insults.

"Valerius," Silas muttered, taking a slow step backward and raising his sword. "Shields up... Now."

Before Valerius could even ask why, the god finally spoke.

His voice didn’t boom with arrogance this time. It was a dark sinister whisper that bypassed their ears and resonated directly inside their skulls.

"I was being quite benevolent by offering you my contract," Ititus whispered. "But as of right now..."

KRA-SHATTER!

The ornate, transparent glass jar resting on the velvet cushion violently exploded into a million microscopic fragments!

"...I promise you that you will all die screaming!" the god roared.

The massive swirling core of golden sand hovering over the pedestal instantly destabilized.

Before anybody could even react, before Seraphina could throw a fireball or Valerius could raise his shield, the golden sand violently rushed upward and exploded outward in a catastrophic, omni-directional shockwave!

The golden sand slammed into every single Lord and Hero in the room, completely enveloping them in a suffocating unbreakable cocoon of hardened grit.

FWOOSH!

The physical laws of the Vault completely inverted. The ceiling of the marble chamber instantly dissolved into a massive vertical tunnel leading straight up toward the sky.

"AGGGGH!" Valerius screamed as he was violently ripped off his feet.

The Lords were popped up and launched toward the surface like high-velocity artillery rockets!

Silas felt the immense bone-crushing G-force slam into his chest as he was blasted upward through miles of bedrock, subterranean dirt, and sand at supersonic speed.

The golden sand cocoon protected his body from being shredded by the earth, but the velocity was completely paralyzing.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Like meteors breaking through the earth’s crust, the surviving members of the group violently erupted from the surface of the desert!

They soared hundreds of feet into the blindingly bright, sunlit amber sky before gravity finally caught them.

The golden sand cocoons instantly dissolved, and they each plummeted downward, landing heavily on the rolling sun-baked sand dunes of the surface world.

Silas hit the ground in a flawless roll, instantly bouncing to his feet with his mythril sword drawn and his golden-ringed eyes scanning the horizon.

He was back on the surface.

The sky was bright amber, the heat was baking, and the endless desert stretched out in every direction.

The other Lords... Seraphina, Valerius, Elora, Harper, the Spear Lord, and Maya as well as many others were scattered across the surrounding dunes, coughing and groaning as they picked themselves up from the brutal landing.

"Where is he?!" Seraphina screamed, her hands erupting in flames.

The golden sands that had launched them to the surface didn’t disperse into the wind.

Instead, the millions of grains rapidly coalesced in the dead center of the desert, violently spinning into a towering howling sandstorm.

"I assumed that something like this would happen," the god’s voice echoed from within the roaring vortex. "Mortals are inherently greedy, ungrateful parasites. Which is exactly why I rushed you to my Vault!"

The howling sandstorm began to aggressively compress.

The volume of the golden sand folded in on itself, solidifying and taking on a distinct physical shape.

"If you will not serve me," Ititus declared, "then you will die for me!"

As the dust completely cleared, Silas’s eyes widened in disbelief.

Standing in the center of the desert, formed entirely from luminous golden sand, was a towering, eight-foot-tall man.

The god possessed four massive, heavily muscled arms, his physique sculpted with impossible perfection.

He had long, flowing blond hair made of spun golden glass, and a face that looked like it had been carved by the heavens themselves.

He was a peerless incomprehensible beauty!