Chapter 7: Building In The Sovereign Realm [II]
It was like the Forums online had said about the Build Function, it expanded a blue field and gave you what you could build according to your resources, and from what he could see, the barrack formed since that was the first building that Lords were meant to build.
You couldn’t have your Troops sleeping on the ground, could you?
Actually, some lords did do it, though then they came back to the real world and sold the resources to beginning Lords but those were the Lords that didn’t think of them as Humans... Troops were regular humans, even if they didn’t come from the Earth, and besides, if your Troops’ Loyalty went below a certain threshold, they could choose to run away from the Territory or even backstab their Lord if it was really bad.
Putting those thoughts aside, Silas focused.
Hovering right in the center of the brilliant blue holographic projection were three distinct resource tabs.
His inventory had automatically synced with the Build Function, displaying the exact materials the Valoria City government had provided him in his heavy construction bundle.
[Refined Stone: 500 / 500]
[Ironwood: 500 / 500]
[Tempered Iron: 100 / 100]
He focused his mind on the structure, and the interface provided a crisp updated description.
[Tier 2 Armored Barracks]
[Description]: Contains 500 units of refined Stone, 500 units of Ironwood, and 100 units of tempered Iron. Sufficient to construct a Tier 2 Armored Barracks. A highly durable military facility capable of housing, training, and sustaining a fifty-man unit. Provides passive accelerated stamina recovery for resting troops.
Silas didn’t hesitate.
’Construct...’ he commanded mentally.
Instantly, the three resource tabs shattered into a storm of pixelated light. A massive, rushing wind billowed outward from the center of the courtyard, kicking up the black grass of the Umbral Basin.
The holographic blue wireframe suddenly began to fill with physical matter. Heavy blocks of refined stone slammed down from the ether, stacking perfectly upon one another with deafening thuds.
Thick beams of magical Ironwood slotted into the masonry, and molten streaks of tempered iron cooled instantly to form reinforced hinges, barred windows and a heavy portcullis door.
The entire process took less than ten seconds.
A blinding flash of white light signaled the final culmination of the architecture, leaving a massive, two-story brutalist fortress sitting squarely on the stone tiles.
"Whoa!" Silas jumped back, exclaiming in surprise.
It was imposing and radiated an aura of pure military efficiency. He walked up to the heavy iron-banded doors and tapped his palm against the rough stone.
[Armored Barracks]
[Tier]: 2 Construct (Uncommon)
[Durability]: 800 / 800
[Upgrade System: Would you like to upgrade Tier 2 Armored Barracks to Tier 3 Warlord’s Garrison?]
[Cost: 200 UP]
Silas noted the cost.
It seemed the baseline defensive structures like his Ironwood Palisade cost roughly 100 UP to upgrade, but specialized buildings like the Keep and the Barracks demanded significantly more. He pushed the heavy iron doors open and stepped inside.
The interior was massive and two long rows of pristine cots lined the walls, perfectly made and waiting for occupants.
He immediately opened his Lord Inventory and materialized the Military Food Rations and the Standard Weapon Chest, dropping them heavily into the designated quartermaster’s corner of the room.
As he walked further into the barracks, he noticed a sparring area in the back half of the ground floor.
Bolted into the heavy stone floor were several wooden training dummies, their surfaces wrapped in thick shock-absorbing leather.
Silas unclipped the matte-black scabbard from his waist and pulled out his newly purchased Silversteel Spirit Sword. The blade slid free with a sharp satisfying ring.
’Let’s see what a Lord can actually do,’ Silas thought, rolling his shoulders.
He stepped up to the closest dummy, falling into the standard combat stance the Valoria Academy taught all unawakened students.
He executed a series of basic slashes that were clean and precise, but entirely devoid of physical strain. He didn’t put his back into the swings; he just let the weight of the sword do the work.
Swish! Thwack! Thwack!
The Silversteel blade bit deeply into the dummy’s leather and wood, leaving jagged gashes across its chest.
Silas stepped back, nodding in approval.
’Now, let’s try it with mana.’
He closed his eyes and tapped into the Gold Core burning like a miniature sun in his chest. He visualized the energy flowing down his arm and into his grip.
Instantly, the mythril dust lining the core of the sword ignited as a dense, brilliant aura of pure golden mana wrapped around the dark metal of the blade.
The moment the mana surged, Silas felt an overwhelming, explosive strength flood his entire body. The sword felt as light as a feather, yet packed the weight of a sledgehammer. He felt incredibly strong... almost untouchably fast.
Curious, he paused and opened his personal status screen. He had only glimpsed past it earlier when navigating to the Build Tab.
[Lord]: Silas Graves
[Level]: 1
[Vitality]: 20
[Mana]: 20
Silas nearly jumped in alarm.
His stats hadn’t just increased; they had absolutely skyrocketed. Before the Awakening Ceremony, his Vitality and Mana had both been a 2 which was the absolute baseline for a healthy awakened human but simply by forcefully upgrading to a Mythic Gold Core, his raw physical and magical attributes had multiplied tenfold.
He was, mathematically speaking, ten times stronger, faster, and more durable than a normal man.
’No wonder I feel this strong...’ Silas thought, a grin spreading across his face.
He gripped the hilt of the Spirit Sword with both hands as the golden mana flaring violently. Using that newfound, explosive strength, he pivoted on his heel and unleashed a massive, sweeping horizontal slash aimed dead center at the training dummy.
The blade didn’t just cut the wood.
KRA-BOOM!
The golden mana detonated upon impact. The training dummy violently exploded into a thousand splintered fragments, the concussive shockwave of the strike ripping through the air and completely taking out the three adjacent dummies in a deafening crash of shattered timber and torn leather.
Silas gasped, his jaw dropping as he gaped at the massive crater of destruction he had just carved into his brand-new Barracks.
"Oh, shit..." he whispered, worried he had just destroyed his own training equipment.
However, the Sovereign Realm’s architecture was built for exactly this. A faint blue magical grid appeared over the shattered remains.
The splinters and torn leather immediately began levitating, rapidly regenerating as the broken parts came back together like a reversed video. Within three seconds, all four training dummies stood perfectly intact once more.
Silas let out a long breath he didn’t realize he was holding. "Thank God."
He sheathed his sword, the golden mana fading into the scabbard, and walked back out into the cool air of the Umbral Basin courtyard.
It was time to move onto the Summoning Portal, which sat pristine and dormant in the middle of his new Territory.
As he approached the white stone archway, he stared at the swirling, empty space between the pillars.
"I hope the Divine being I summon teaches me how to use a sword properly..." He muttered to himself.
It was common knowledge in the academy. People who summoned high-tier martial Heroes often spent their downtime being trained by them.
The Heroes possessed centuries of combat experience downloaded directly from the ether. Since Silas was guaranteed to summon a Divine being, they had to know how to use swords, right?
It was also highly advisable for Lords to summon their Heroes before generating their regular troops.
Depending on how overwhelmingly strong and charismatic your Hero was, the base loyalty and morale of the standard troops would increase significantly, especially since the Hero acted as the second-in-command directly after the Lord.
As he reached the Summoning Portal, he reached into his Inventory and pulled out the Hero Summoning Card.
It was a heavy card that felt cold to the touch, its black interface completely devoid of markings until his thumb brushed against it.
He stepped up to the portal and placed the card directly onto the circular stone holder embedded in the archway’s pedestal.
The moment the card made contact, the stone holder locked it into place and the portal roared to life as a geyser of pure, incandescent golden light erupted from the archway, shooting violently upward into the sky.
It pierced straight through the translucent Novice Barrier up top, illuminating the dark, bruised clouds of the Umbral Basin as if making a cosmic announcement to the entire world.
A golden tab materialized directly in front of him.
[Would you like to Summon A Hero?]
[Y / N]
Silas tapped Y, and the pillar of light glowed impossibly brighter.
[In The Center Of The Sovereign World, Within Yggdrasil]
The World Tree was massive, a living breathing continent of primeval bark and emerald foliage that reached infinitely into the sky.
Its colossal branches were said to stretch so far they touched the very gates of Asgard, supporting the weight of entire magical ecosystems.
But deep within those branches, buried in the darkest, suffocating innards of the World Tree, a tragedy had been hidden away for centuries.
A silver-haired woman was suspended in the abyss, pinned mercilessly against the ancient wood by hundreds of thick, sentient roots.
The vines wrapped around her wrists, her throat, and covered almost her entire body, siphoning the divine energy right out of her veins.
Her head hung limp, her once-vibrant green eyes now dark, hollow and utterly dead.
Her name was Eluned.
She used to be the former Spirit of the World Tree... a mortal woman who had ascended to become a Goddess. She had seen so many things, protected so many realms, and loved the creatures that took shelter beneath her canopy.
But she had been betrayed.
The very people she had nurtured and protected had turned on her. A conspiracy, woven with dark magic and political greed, had successfully framed her for the brutal assassination of the Elven Overlord... a king who had been her most trusted confidant and best friend.
The grief of his death had blinded her, making her vulnerable. In that moment of weakness, the trap was sprung.
She was ambushed, chained, and dragged into the sunless depths of the tree by the true orchestrator of the betrayal: her own sister, the usurper who now sat on the throne as the new Spirit and Goddess of the World Tree.
For countless cycles, Eluned had hung here in the dark, her divine power slowly drained to feed her sister’s reign.
She had long ago given up hope. Nobody wanted to hear her out... Nobody wanted to see the truth from a convicted traitor... The isolation and the betrayal had shattered her mind...
She begged for death every waking moment, but the roots kept her alive, a perpetual battery for a stolen empire so death never came.
However, today...
[Ding!]
A sharp chime pierced the suffocating silence of her prison.
Eluned’s dead hollow eyes twitched. She slowly forced her heavy head to look forward. Hovering in the darkness, cutting through the shadows of the roots, a glowing blue tab flared to life.
[You have been summoned to be a Hero for a Lord.]
[Y / N]
’Summoned...? To be... a Hero?’
Eluned stared at the glowing letters, her mind struggling to process the impossible.
She thought she was hallucinating. Was this some sort of sick, twisted joke crafted by her sister to torture her further?
Or perhaps she was finally going completely delusional from the isolation? She was a fallen Goddess, a convicted traitor locked in the highest-security prison in the cosmos. Could someone like her even be summoned as a Hero by a mortal Lord?
’Will this Lord listen to me...?’ The desperate thought echoed in the hollow caverns of her mind. ’Is this some sort of saving grace?’
She didn’t care who it was. She didn’t care what dimension they were in. If it meant getting out of this darkness, if it meant escaping the roots that drank her blood, she would serve a demon if she had to.
Regardless of the risks, Eluned opened her cracked dry lips.
"Yes," she muttered. She hadn’t used her voice in a very long time, so it was a bit raspy and barely a whisper that broke the silence.
The interface flared, a new text box replacing the old one.
[Your level will be forcefully reset from Level 999 —> Level 1. You will lose some of your Priority Skills; however, you will retain the remaining foundation of your Mythic Skill Tree.]
Eluned actually chuckled which was a dry bitter sound that rattled in her chest.
What did she care about Priority Skills? She had lived for millennia. She had so many divine skills and magical affinities that she had forgotten to count them all centuries ago.
Power meant nothing in this dark abyss. All she wanted... all she truly desired to see... was the person who was brave enough, or crazy enough, to save her.
"Yes." She said it louder this time.
Immediately, a blinding, incandescent golden light erupted from her chest. The cosmic authority of the Sovereign Realm’s absolute rules overwrote the magic of Yggdrasil.
The thick, parasitic roots that bound her instantly withered and turned to ash, tearing away to reveal her beautiful, voluptuous body.
Before the World Tree, or her traitorous sister, could even react to the massive fluctuation in mana, Eluned completely vanished.
The golden light streaked upward, completely engulfing the courtyard of the Umbral Basin.
When the blinding flash finally receded, Eluned found herself standing on one knee on the cold stone tiles. She gasped as her lungs were filled with the crisp air of the outside world.
Eluned slowly raised her head, her shimmering silver-green hair cascading over her shoulders. She looked up and saw a handsome, black-haired man standing just a few feet in front of her.
He was wearing an incredibly casual black hoodie and denim shorts, holding onto a matte-black scabbard with a sword inside.
Silas was looking down at her with a gentle, slightly awkward smile that instantly melted the centuries of ice wrapped around her heart.
"Uhh... Uh... I didn’t actually have a grand speech saved," Silas said, looking a bit shy as he scratched the back of his neck with his free hand. "But will you be my Her—"
He didn’t even get to finish the sentence.
Immediately, the Goddess surged forward off her knee, tackling him in a desperate, crushing hug.
The sheer force of the embrace threw them both off balance, and the two of them fell heavily to the ground with Silas’s back hitting the stone tiles.
Eluned buried her face tightly into the fabric of his hoodie, her hands gripping him as if he were the only solid thing left in the universe.
"Of course, I’ll be your Hero... I’ll be your Goddess... I’ll be anything you want, just please... please... don’t abandon me."
