Chapter 28: Can Blessed Land Have Men?
’N-no, he won’t answer me...’ She thought.
Aeliana was certain that he was still mad at her most certainly but if there’s one thing she was sure of...
’He isn’t going to let this territory fall,’ Aeliana thought quietly.
She stood beneath the sprawling vibrant canopy of the massive oak tree that Eluned had summoned directly from the cracked stone tiles of the courtyard.
The air beneath the thick, interwoven green leaves was dry and remarkably warm which was a striking contrast to the torrential downpour hammering the rest of the Blessed Land.
For the first time since she had been dragged through the summoning portal, the Royal Elven Arcanist felt the icy grip of her own grief begin to thaw.
’He will burn the basin to the ground before he lets a single monster breach these walls...’ Aeliana concluded with her eyes tracking his broad shoulders.
The brutal lesson he had carved into her mind the previous afternoon in the dark ravine still echoed in her thoughts.
He was a terrifying entity draped in dark-purple mythril, but he was exactly the kind of monster required to carve a thriving empire out of a dead world.
Silas stepped under the green canopy, moving out of the torrential downpour.
He raised his hands, shaking the cold water from the heavy, dark fabric of his robes.
The water droplets scattered across the dry stone floor. As he turned his head to survey the command group gathered around the portal, he accidentally made brief eye contact with the Elf.
His interface instantly flickered as a soft, highly pristine blue light flared, indicating a passive update in his peripheral vision.
[Hero Aeliana - Loyalty: 40]
’Damn already...? Well this is really good...’
The glowing digits reflected seamlessly in his irises.
Just twenty-four hours ago, she had been hovering in the lower digits, paralyzed by the horrific trauma of losing her previous Sovereign but now she had jumped from a highly unstable, grief-stricken liability to a functioning loyal vassal overnight.
The brutal grueling lesson in the ravine, forcing her to haul the weight of her own undisciplined failure, had worked exactly as intended but he kept his striking expression entirely neutral.
He did not offer her a warm, coddling smile, nor did he scowl. He simply offered her a brief, acknowledging nod before averting his gaze to address his primary commanders standing beneath the leaves.
"The water reserves are looking excellent..." Silas stated.
He gestured with a leather-clad hand toward the open courtyard, where the downpour was actively slamming against the paved stone.
Out in the deluge, Brida and the Shieldmaidens were actively hauling dozens of freshly sealed wooden crates and heavy iron basins toward the storage cellars.
The women were completely soaked to the bone, their canvas tunics plastered to their heavily muscled frames, but they were laughing, reveling in the massive influx of clean, drinkable water.
"But we have a severe infrastructural bottleneck that needs immediate resolution," Silas continued, pulling his attention back to the pressing matters of territory management.
He looked directly at the Captain of the Recon Division.
"The Barracks is at maximum capacity. Stuffing thirty-one soldiers into a twenty-man facility is going to rapidly degrade morale and completely ruin your sleep cycles... Exhausted soldiers make fatal mistakes on the walls, and I will not tolerate a breached perimeter because a guard fell asleep at her post."
"It was a bit crowded last night, my Lord," Tamsin admitted, stepping forward slightly.
The Huntress crossed her arms over her tight leather tunic and leaned her back against the thick trunk of Eluned’s oak tree.
She rubbed the back of her neck with a tired exasperated sigh with her sharp eyes carrying the heavy bags of someone who had spent the entire night dodging elbows.
"Gunnhild kicks in her sleep like a drafted mule," Tamsin grumbled, shaking her head. "And Freya talks in her sleep... Loudly... We definitely need a secondary housing wing before someone gets a black eye in their sleep, or before I personally throw one of the rookies out into the rain."
"Which means we need hundreds of units of refined lumber and stone to construct the extension," Silas sighed, reaching up and running a calloused hand through his dark hair.
He looked past the edge of the green canopy, staring out toward the towering, rune-carved steel walls that separated their growing sanctuary from the endless horrors of the dead forest.
The architectural blueprints required a staggering amount of raw Upgrade Points to manifest, and the basic scavengers roaming the immediate perimeter would not provide enough capital to fund a Tier 2 housing facility.
"I am going to have to take the veterans out on a massive hunting expedition today..." Silas calculated. "We need to secure the UP to fund the architectural blueprints before nightfall."
He paused.
A sudden thought crossed his mind regarding the heavy manual labor that lay ahead of them.
’It should be like that right?’
A high smirk suddenly touched his lips, transforming his usually cold expression into something far more mischievous.
He dramatically stepped forward and dropped heavily to one knee on the dry stone beneath the canopy. He clasped his hands tightly together in a theatrical display of mock reverence, tilting his head back and looking directly up toward the interwoven green leaves as if addressing the heavens themselves.
"Soveireign Realm..." Silas announced loudly. "I am begging you. Give me some massive, heavily muscled male lumberjacks in today’s pull. I need some broad-shouldered men to haul the Ironwood so my women doesn’t have to carry heavy logs in the mud."
The reaction from his command staff was instantaneous.
Tamsin and Brida, both hardened, incredibly lethal warriors who spent their days bathed in monster blood and executing corrupted horrors, violently grimaced.
Their faces twisted in complete disgust at the very prospect of introducing men into their ranks.
The idea struck them as deeply offensive.
"Absolutely not!" Tamsin declared, immediately pushing off the trunk of the oak tree.
She stepped forward with her hands firmly planted on her hips with her sharp eyes narrowing in deep offense. "We are not sharing our pristine training yard with a bunch of grunting, unwashed men! They would ruin the entire dynamic!"
"We will haul the lumber ourselves, my Lord!" Brida agreed fiercely, stomping her heavy boot against the stone tiles.
She slammed her thick, blood-stained iron gauntlet aggressively against her breastplate as the metallic ring echoed loudly under the canopy.
"We do not need male recruits dragging mud into the Barracks and complaining about the cold! The Soldiers are a sisterhood! We bleed together, we fight together, and we certainly do not need lumberjacks getting in our way!"
Fenna, the Captain of the Bow-Splitters, nodded vigorously in the background.
The archer had her arms crossed incredibly tight over her chest with her expression mirroring the heavy infantry captain’s disgust.
Tamsin took another deliberate step closer to her kneeling Sovereign.
Her cheeks were flushing a faint, embarrassed crimson, but her voice remained incredibly bold, driven by a fierce, undeniable loyalty.
"The only man we want to sleep under the same roof with is our Lord!" Tamsin announced proudly, lifting her chin in defiance.
Silas blinked.
’Huh...?’
He was completely caught off guard by the fierce unified rejection of his joke.
He hadn’t expected them to take the comment so literally, nor had he anticipated the possessive harem energy radiating from his mortal commanders.
He stood up slowly, a deep, genuine chuckle rumbling in his chest as he held his hands up in a gesture of peaceful surrender.
"Alright, alright. Stand down," Silas laughed, his blue eyes gleaming with amusement. "I appreciate the fierce loyalty, truly, but the summoning pool is highly randomized. It pulls souls from across the Sovereign Realm based on the foundational ether. I don’t actively control the gender of the recruits."
’Do I?’ Silas suddenly thought.
He had been summoning girls all the time so far so there was a chance.
The smile slowly faded from his lips. Silas had utilized the portal for multiple days.
He had pulled thirty mortal troops so far, plus the specialized scouts.
Every single one of them, from the heavy, towering Shieldmaidens to the agile, eagle-eyed Bow-Splitters, had been female.
It was a statistical impossibility for a completely randomized, cosmic gacha system to completely exclude male summons over three consecutive days of high-volume pulling.
The math simply did not align with a randomized algorithm.
’So that means I can only summon women right? Give or take?’
Silas closed his eyes, mentally querying his Upgrade System interface since the Sovereign Interface didn’t answer questions...
’System, can I summon men? Or is it only women?’
A pristine glowing tab materialized directly in the center of his dark vision.
[Query Acknowledged: Examining Summoning Parameters.]
[Anomaly Detected.]
[Territory Trait: Divine Sanctum actively overrides standard probability.]
[Detail: The Divine Sanctum trait generates a highly specific, sovereign-tier metaphysical frequency. This unique frequency acts as an overpowering celestial beacon across the dimensional ether, exclusively attracting female entities, priestesses, and divine warriors to your banner. As long as this trait remains active, the Summoning Portal will indefinitely restrict all mortal troop pulls to the female gender. The territory is fundamentally coded as a sanctuary for maidens.]
[Warning: This trait also completely blocks the establishment of spiritual contracts with male Heroes. Any male entity attempting to cross the threshold of the portal will be forcefully rejected by the overarching laws of the Blessed Land.]
Silas stared at the glowing blue text burning in his mind with his jaw slackening slightly in silent realization.
’So I’ll be with women all my life?’
The Sovereign Realm hadn’t been giving him female recruits by random chance.
The very foundation of his territory, the incredibly rare, overpowered trait that had allowed him to pull Eluned in the first place, was actively, intentionally hard-coding his empire into a sprawling matriarchal powerhouse.
He was literally barred from ever summoning a male soldier!
His entire army, from the lowest D-Rank spearman to the highest SSS-Rank mythic deity, would be exclusively composed of women.
"Well," Silas said aloud, opening his eyes and casually swiping the holographic tab away with a flick of his wrist.
He looked at the highly defensive, crossed-armed women standing in front of him.
Their expressions were still twisted in deep disapproval over the hypothetical lumberjacks.
"It seems your complaints have already been registered by the heavens," Silas announced dryly.
"The Sovereign Realm designates this territory as a Divine Sanctum," Silas stated, meeting the defensive glares of his commanders.
He would have read out what the System told him but he wasn’t trying to confuse them.
Brida narrowed her scarred eyes with her grip tightening on her iron shield.
"A Sanctum, my Lord? What does that mean for the Vanguard?"
"It means the unique trait that allows me to summon high-ranking female heroes has permanently bled into my standard troop summonings..." Silas explained with a small smile touching his lips. "The foundational laws of the Blessed Land act as a beacon that exclusively attracts women to my banner... It will actually forcefully reject any male entity attempting to cross the threshold of the portal so essentially, every single person we ever summon will be a woman."
Tamsin pumped her fist high into the air in undeniable triumph, a massive grin splitting her face.
Fenna cheered loudly, reaching out and eagerly high-fiving Hilda, who had just walked under the green canopy to escape the rain.
Brida let out a highly satisfied, rumbling grunt of approval, the white-knuckled grip on her heavy iron shield relaxing entirely.
The sisterhood was officially preserved by the laws of the cosmos!
But it was Eluned who delivered the most devastating reaction.
The Goddess of Nature’s emerald eyes flared with immense, undeniable pride.
The knowledge that her Sovereign’s territory was an exclusive sanctuary for women, and that she was the premier, highest-ranking deity within that sanctuary, filled her with overwhelming joy.
She puffed out her chest, proudly displaying her flawless curves beneath her emerald silk dress then she raised her delicate, pale fist into the air with terrifying, completely uninhibited enthusiasm.
"I will give you infinite stamina in bed, my Lord! You’re free to impregnate as many women as you need!" Eluned shouted with her melodic voice easily carrying over the roaring sound of the pouring rain.
Silas violently choked on his own spit.
