Chapter 29: A Chef?!
’What’s her problem?!’
The composure of the terrifying warlord completely shattered.
He coughed aggressively with his broad chest heaving as his face turned a brilliant, burning shade of bright red.
He snapped his head toward the Goddess as his blue eyes went wide with disbelief at her blatant public declaration.
’I-Impregnate?’
Aeliana’s jaw literally dropped open.
The Royal Elf stared at the divine entity in complete shock.
Her highly educated aristocratic elven brain was completely short-circuited.
’From Lady Eluned...? She can speak like that?’
She had spent centuries studying the ancient texts of the pantheons, reading about the stoic untouchable grace of the gods.
Hearing a betrayed Goddess publicly, enthusiastically promise infinite bedroom stamina to a mortal man caused her entire worldview to violently reboot.
The mortal women instantly fell silent.
The cheering died in their throats. Brida suddenly found the stitching on her leather gloves incredibly fascinating.
Tamsin turned the exact color of a ripe tomato with her sharp eyes darting desperately toward the gray sky.
The entire command staff’s cheeks burned with furious blushes as they desperately tried to look anywhere else, pretending they hadn’t just heard the most powerful being in their camp offer herself up like a tavern wench.
’But I agree with her...’ Tasmin thought, she wouldn’t mind to offer herself up to her Lord.
Silas didn’t hesitate.
He recovered his breath, stepped rapidly forward, and lightly but firmly, delivered a sharp precise karate chop directly to the top of Eluned’s silver-green head.
Thwack!
"Ow!" Eluned yelped with her hands immediately flying up to cover the top of her hair.
She looked at him with wide betrayed eyes. Her bottom lip jutted out in a massive, incredibly adorable pout.
"Don’t you know it’s severely taboo to strike a Goddess?" Eluned protested, rubbing her head and looking up at him with wounded pride.
Momentarily forgetting that she had wanted to keep the secret of her being a Goddess away from Aeliana.
"My followers would wage holy wars and burn entire continents to ash for such an insult!"
’Well they wouldn’t but my past followers though.’ Eluned thought, becoming a bit sad.
"My Goddess won’t curse me," Silas grinned.
His composure rapidly returning, he leaned in slightly closer, invading her personal space as his voice dropped into a warm teasing murmur that bypassed her divine authority and struck directly at her heart. "So I can hit her, right?"
Eluned’s pout hopelessly vanished.
The playful authority in his tone completely short-circuited her divine pride.
She was a being of immense, world-shaping power, capable of tearing a mountain in half, but when he spoke to her with that specific voice, she melted into a puddle.
A blazing, furious red blush rapidly climbed up her pale neck and consumed her entire face.
She looked away, entirely unable to meet his piercing gaze.
Eluned stared intensely at the thick bark of the oak tree she had summoned, stubbornly crossing her arms beneath her chest as she tried to compose herself.
"I’ll allow it..." Eluned mumbled softly, completely and totally defeated by her own overwhelming affection for the man.
Silas chuckled warmly as he shook his head slowly at the highly entertaining dynamic of his command staff.
’This is far better than the Territories I used to see on Television...’
Everybody needed to have fun.
The crushing pressure of surviving the Unknown Zone felt entirely manageable when he was surrounded by this level of loyalty.
They weren’t just an army in a way... they were becoming a remarkably dysfunctional protective family.
"Alright," Silas announced, deliberately shifting the focus away from the blushing Goddess.
He turned his attention toward the glowing, dormant stone archway of the Summoning Portal.
Silas raised his right hand. With a subtle pulse of his core, he materialized a thick, highly valuable stack of ten Daily Summoning Cards directly from his spatial inventory.
The heavy metallic silver cards caught the ambient emerald light radiating from the tree.
"Let’s see what the Divine Sanctum has brought us today," Silas said, his voice returning to the measured, authoritative tone of a commander preparing to expand his ranks.
He stepped up to the heavy, rune-carved control pedestal situated at the base of the archway.
He firmly slotted the glowing cards into the central, recessed groove one by one.
The heavy stone archway violently roared to life.
The ancient runes carved into the pillars flared with intense, blinding power as a massive immaculate flash of pure white ether erupted within the circular ring, entirely washing out the bruised gray morning light and casting long shadows across the wet courtyard.
’Alright, we need a Chef... Bless me Sovereign Realm!’
Silas stepped back, giving the portal room to breathe.
He rested his right hand casually on the heavy leather hilt of his Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade which was an ingrained habit born from the inherent paranoia of the Sovereign Realm.
One could never be entirely certain what the cosmic ether would spit out...
Ten distinct silhouettes rapidly solidified within the swirling ethereal white light.
BOOM!
A moment later, the portal snapped shut as the intense magical energy rapidly dissipated into the damp cold air.
Ten new women stumbled forward out of the archway, stepping onto the dry, sheltered stone beneath the green canopy.
Like all the previous foundational pulls, they were clad in incredibly basic, woefully inadequate starting gear.
They wore thin, rough-spun linen tunics and crude, poorly stitched leather boots.
They immediately wrapped their arms around themselves, shivering violently as the biting unforgiving cold of the Umbral Basin hit their unprotected lungs for the very first time.
The girls looked around with wide, terrified eyes, trying to process their sudden transmigration.
Silas didn’t offer immediate comfort... He immediately pulled up his Sovereign command interface with his eyes rapidly scanning the hovering holographic identification tabs floating above their heads.
[Name]: Eira
[Class]: Infantry
[Rank]: D-Rank
[Name]: Lyra
[Class]: Bow-Splitter
[Rank]: D-Rank
He swiped his gaze past the first five women in the formation.
It was a standard, highly reliable, expected mix of frontline brawlers and ranged support archers.
They were excellent fodder to fill out the perimeter patrol rotations, but nothing that would fundamentally alter the tactical landscape of his empire...
But as his scanning eyes locked onto the seventh woman standing near the back of the bewildered formation,
Silas entirely froze.
His breathing hitched and his broad shoulders stiffened.
The woman was slightly older than the standard, fresh-faced recruits, perhaps in her late twenties.
She possessed a striking, highly focused demeanor despite the terrifying situation.
She had dark hair tied back in a tight, no-nonsense bun. As she nervously rubbed her arms to stay warm, Silas noticed her hands. They were heavily calloused, rough, and deeply scarred but they weren’t the callouses of a warrior who spent her life gripping the heavy hilt of a broadsword or drawing the taut string of a recurve bow.
They were the highly undeniable marks of years spent engaged in intensive burning labor over a hearth.
Hovering directly above her dark hair was not the standard, dull bronze tab of a D-Rank mortal.
It was an unmistakable gold tab.
[Name]: Kaelia
[Class]: Culinary Maestro (Chef)
[Rank]: S-Rank
Silas stared at the glowing golden text.
He blinked twice, his mind completely stalling as he waited for the interface to glitch, fully expecting the system to correct a hallucination born from his own desperate desires.
The golden text remained firmly in place.
Silas’s mind raced back over the stuff he had endured since arriving in the Sovereign Realm.
When they hunted, they ate heavily spiced, roughly roasted, tough monster meat cooked over an open smoky bonfire in the mud.
The food had provided massive, necessary nutritional buffs and restored their stamina, yes.
But it entirely lacked the refined, highly cultivated, expert preparation that truly unlocked the dormant potential of high-tier ingredients.
It was survival food, designed to keep them breathing, not to be enjoyed that much... Even if he liked it.
Just yesterday, he had jokingly built the massive, highly advanced Tier 2 Culinary Haven on a fleeting whim.
He had hoped, at best, to pull a basic, C-Rank camp cook to manage the raw rations and keep the Shieldmaidens from accidentally poisoning themselves with undercooked wolf meat.
But now... He had just pulled an S-Rank Culinary Maestro, A master of the culinary arts, blessed by the Realm itself.
Silas felt a genuine, highly uncharacteristic, overwhelmingly profound sting of tears prick the absolute corners of his eyes.
The stoic terrifying Lord persona completely shattered under the overwhelming promise of properly seasoned, expertly cooked, hot food.
"A Chef," Silas whispered.
He didn’t walk. He practically sprinted forward, entirely abandoning his imposing posture.
Silas dropped heavily to his knees on the hard stone directly in front of the bewildered shivering woman.
He reached out and aggressively grabbed Kaelia’s rough, calloused hands.
He clasped them warmly between his own hands.
He looked up at her with his blue eyes shining as if she were the single greatest, most invaluable treasure the entire Sovereign Realm had ever produced in its long, bloody history.
"You are a Chef," Silas praised the heavens"Thank the gods... Thank the absolute cosmos..."
Kaelia stared down at the incredibly handsome Lord currently kneeling at her crude leather boots.
She was thoroughly speechless.
"I... Uh..."
Her mind, already reeling from the shock of the summoning portal, completely short-circuited.
Kaelia’s face flushed a deep burning crimson at the incredibly sudden intimate physical contact from a man who radiated such immense, terrifying authority.
"M-my Lord?" Kaelia stammered with her voice shaking.
She was completely terrified, highly confused, and entirely unsure if she was about to be executed or worshipped.
Before Silas could elaborate on his immense joy or properly welcome his new quartermaster, the stone tiles beneath his boots violently cracked.
A thick aggressive green root violently erupted from the stone floor.
The magical root snapped securely around Silas’s waist like a highly pressurized, unbreakable whip.
With a sharp uncompromising jerk, the nature magic violently yanked Silas backward.
It dragged his heavy iron boots loudly across the stone tiles until he was standing completely upright again, depositing him roughly ten feet away from the flustered Chef.
Silas stumbled slightly, catching his balance with practiced ease, and looked over his broad shoulder.
Eluned was standing there, her right hand raised, actively controlling the aggressive root.
The Goddess of Nature’s emerald eyes were narrowed into a fierce lethal stare directed entirely at the newly summoned Chef.
Her pale cheeks were puffed out in an incredibly deep offended pout.
"You may value her mortal skills, my Lord," Eluned hissed softly. "But you do not kneel for a mortal and you certainly do not hold her hands with such disgusting affection."
Silas cleared his throat loudly.
His face burned with a highly rare, incredibly intense rush of genuine embarrassment.
He glanced around the courtyard and saw the entire Vanguard, from Brida to Tamsin, actively biting their lips, covering their mouths, and desperately trying to suppress their uproarious laughter at witnessing their terrifying Sovereign get yanked around by a jealous tree spirit.
The thick green root smoothly uncoiled from his waist, retreating harmlessly back into the cracks in the stone floor as if it had never existed.
Silas quickly dusted off his dark black robes, forcefully re-establishing his towering posture.
He locked his blue eyes onto the ten shivering women.
"Welcome to the Blessed Land," Silas announced. "I am Silas Graves, your Lord. The world outside these steel walls is a rotting, necrotic nightmare designed to kill you but as long as you follow my commands, maintain discipline, and execute your duties, you will not die in the dark. You stand with the Vanguard."
The ten new recruits, including the highly flustered and thoroughly bewildered Kaelia, immediately dropped to one knee on the cold stone, bowing their heads and pledging their absolute, unwavering loyalty to the man who had summoned them.
"Stand up," Silas ordered, his tone brisk and efficient.
He gestured toward the heavily armored, highly amused veterans standing nearby. "Brida. Tamsin. Take the nine combat recruits to the Armored Barracks... Get them fitted with standard iron gear, issue them dry clothing, and brief them on the perimeter patrols... We are officially at forty-one mortal troops so I want strict squad rotations established by noon."
