Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 136: Three Messages

"I told you, I’m not mad about the money," Silas replied evenly, keeping his eyes focused on the wound as he applied a second layer of the potion.

Silas let out a slow breath. "What have you even been doing out there, Lia?"

Lia stared at the ceiling with her voice trembling. "I’ve been living on the streets. Going from place to place... Stealing from tourists just to buy food..."

Silas’s jaw clenched. "Why?"

"Because..." Lia sobbed with her voice completely breaking.

She threw her arm over her eyes, hiding her face as she wept. "The reason I left... was because I didn’t want to trouble you anymore."

Silas’s hand stopped moving.

"You were working so many jobs," Lia cried with the words tumbling out of her in a desperate broken rush. "You came home bleeding every night and... and I knew you were skipping meals. You always gave me the food and said you had eaten at work, but I knew you were lying. You were starving yourself so I could eat."

She curled her small hands into fists against the leather couch.

"I just wanted to help," Lia sobbed. "I tried to steal to help pay the rent, but you got so mad so I thought if I was gone, you wouldn’t have to carry me anymore. You wouldn’t have to work so hard. I didn’t want to be a burden."

She was crying so hard she was physically shaking.

She wasn’t even fully aware that she was crying with the tears just pouring out of her as the heavy guilt she had carried for two years finally broke.

Silas knelt there with the bloody cotton in his hand.

He looked down at the sobbing girl who had sacrificed the only home she had ever known because she thought she was destroying his life.

He didn’t say anything.

He finished applying the rest of the potion.

The wound was completely sealed, leaving behind only a faint pink line across her ribs.

He grabbed a clean towel, wiped away the excess blood, and gently pulled a clean blanket off the back of the couch, covering her up.

When he was done, he reached out and flicked her squarely on the forehead.

Boop!

"Ow!" Lia yelped, pulling her arm away from her eyes and rubbing her forehead. She sniffled, looking up at him with red, puffy eyes.

"You’re dumb," Silas told her bluntly.

He let out a soft, genuine laugh, shaking his head. He reached out and ruffled her messy brown hair.

"As your Big Brother, I wanted the best for you," Silas said with his voice incredibly soft and filled with a deep warmth that he rarely ever showed. "I didn’t mind working those jobs. I didn’t mind skipping meals. I did it because I wanted to. I only ever hoped you were alright."

Lia stared at him with her lower lip trembling violently.

She didn’t hesitate.

She threw her arms around his thick neck, burying her face directly into the collar of his shirt, and began to bawl uncontrollably.

Silas let out a quiet sigh, wrapping his large arms around her small shaking frame. He gently patted her back, letting her cry it out.

As he held her, Silas stared out across the dimly lit living room.

’She really thinks she’s been hiding from me for two years...’ Silas thought inwardly.

The truth was, the very night she had stolen his money and run away, he had panicked.

But after that, he had found her. While he was still in school, doing odd-jobs and scraping by, he had kept tabs on her.

He had seen her watching him from a distance sometimes and he had taken the money he had left over... the money he should have spent on better food for himself and used it to anonymously pay for the crappy rooms she was staying at.

He made sure she had a roof over her head, even if she thought she was sneaking in for free.

He had always been watching out for her, well until he awakened but she didn’t need to know about that.

Silas pulled back slightly, looking down at her tear-stained face. He shifted, sitting fully down on the couch and letting her settle next to him.

"I just hope you weren’t hanging out with any boys while you were out there on the streets..." Silas remarked casually, adopting a stern overprotective older brother tone.

Lia vigorously rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, shaking her head side to side.

"No," Lia mumbled, leaning heavily against his side. "Boys are weird."

Silas smiled, reaching over to pat her head again. "Good girl."

Lia didn’t move away.

She moved her weight, clinging to him like a koala bear. She buried her face into his chest with her breathing finally beginning to slow down as the healing potion and exhaustion pushed her toward sleep.

The apartment was quiet.

The heavy tension had finally broken, leaving behind a peaceful tranquility. Silas leaned his head back against the couch, feeling an immense weight lift off his shoulders.

Before he could even begin to enjoy the quiet, a sharp vibrating buzz broke the silence.

Silas glanced down.

His phone, which was surprisingly sitting right there on the couch cushions next to Lia, began ringing.

Lia, startled by the sudden noise, looked down at the screen.

"No!" Lia yelled, immediately throwing her hand out to grab it.

Silas simply reached over, easily moving her hand out of the way, and plucked the phone off the couch.

In the struggle, his thumb accidentally pressed directly against the ’Answer’ button on the touchscreen.

Silas froze, looking at the caller ID.

Elora.

Silas cleared his throat, quickly trying to put his cold uncaring Lord persona back on. He put the phone to his ear.

"Hello..." Silas answered, fully expecting the icy commanding voice of the aristocratic girl from the academy to come through.

The voice that came through the speaker was indeed icy. In fact, it felt very chilling but the words were unexpected.

"Silas Graves," Elora’s voice echoed through the receiver, she was dangerously quiet. "Why did you spend the last five minutes confessing your undying love for me and my well endowed chest?"

Silas blinked with his brain flatlining.

"Huh?"

Silas sat completely frozen on the dark leather couch, the glowing screen of his phone pressed against his ear.

The warmth from applying the healing potion, the smell of garlic and meat sauce from the kitchen, and the heavy exhaustion of the last minutes all violently collided with the freezing voice pouring out of the device’s speaker.

"Do not play dumb with me, Graves," Elora’s voice cut through the static.

Her voice dropped into a dangerously quiet sound that felt like a knife dragging against glass. "I am staring directly at the encrypted chat log on my terminal. You were sending all of those messages. Care to explain yourself?"

Silas’s brow furrowed in utter, genuine bewilderment.

Messages? What messages? He had literally just descended from the Sovereign Realm!

He had been too busy avoiding the homicidal culinary jealousy of a Nature Goddess and an Astral Dread Queen to even look at a screen, let alone text the icy daughter of the City Lord...

He slowly pulled the phone away from his ear.

He didn’t hang up. He just swiped down on the notification bar with his thumb, bringing up the secure messaging application used by this world.

There, sitting right at the very top of his recent contacts, was Elora Verinda’s profile.

Silas tapped the chat log.

His eyes scanned the screen.

His reading comprehension processed the text in a fraction of a second and in that exact same fraction of a second, Silas felt a piece of his soul detach from his body and die a very sudden, incredibly painful death.

Right there, neatly formatted in glowing blue text bubbles was a digital record of his own catastrophic social ruin.

[Silas: Hey beautiful. I literally can’t stop thinking about you...]

[Silas: You are so pretty. I just want to hold your huge breasts and knock you up.]

[Silas: We should totally get married and start a huge family together. Call me back!!!]

Silas stared at the screen. The golden rings around his blue pupils actually flickered in sheer, unmitigated horror.

Silas slowly turned his head to the left.

Lia was still hugging him. The ten-year-old girl, who just a minute ago had been crying her eyes out over being a burden, was currently shrinking away from him.

She had pulled the oversized faded yellow hoodie which he had thrown on the floor back over her head.

She was actively trying to turtle inside the fabric, hiding her face entirely in the neck-hole with her small shoulders shaking slightly as she tried to make herself invisible.

’This little rat,’ Silas thought with a cloud descending over his vision. ’She bypassed a security lock, cooked me a meal, and then casually committed identity fraud just to sexually harass a political powerhouse? It’s too much trouble having a younger sibling...’

He brought the phone back up to his ear. He cleared his throat, desperately trying to salvage whatever microscopic shred of dignity he had left.

"Elora. Listen to me," Silas said, dropping his voice into the most serious thing he could physically manage. "That wasn’t me. My sister did it."

A muffled highly panicked voice squeaked from inside the yellow hoodie on the couch.

"N-no I didn’t! I don’t know what you’re talking about! A ghost did it!"

"She’s lying, she’s sitting right next to me," Silas immediately sold her out to the corporate scion, throwing his ten-year-old sibling under the mag-bus. "She stole my phone while I was distracted."

A long pause hung over the line then, Silas heard a sound he never expected to hear from Elora Verinda.

She laughed.

It wasn’t a warm, bubbly laugh.

It was a cold dry chuckle that lacked any real humor, but carried a distinct feeling of genuine amusement.

"Right. Your sister," Elora said smoothly. "Regardless of your... unique communication strategies, Graves, I actually wanted to meet with you. There is something incredibly important we need to discuss regarding being a Lord. Can we meet up?"

Silas immediately felt his tactical guard snap back into place.

The embarrassment vanished, suppressed by the mindset that he wanted to uphold.

A corporate scion didn’t just casually ask to meet up at night in Valoria City unless they wanted something off the books...

"I’m not going to enter into any contract with you, Elora," Silas stated flatly, cutting straight to the point.

He refused to dance around corporate pleasantries. "Not with your father’s administration, and not with whatever private holding company you’re operating... My territory is quite independent and I’d love to keep it like that."

Elora laughed again, and this time it was even colder.

"Relax your paranoia, Graves. I don’t want you to sign any contracts," Elora dismissed the notion entirely. "I couldn’t care less about binding a rookie Blue Core to a desk job. I only wanted to invite you to a very important location. Just to be sure we are on the same page regarding an upcoming... opportunity and we need to be there in person to talk about it."

An opportunity?

Silas weighed the word.

He hated corporate games, but he also wasn’t stupid. Information was the most valuable currency on Earth.

If the City Lord’s daughter was personally extending an invitation to a secure location, it meant there was something lucrative on the table.

Something the major guilds were likely already moving on...

He let out a long, heavy sigh. He had planned to just buy his books and go back to his fortress.

"Fine," Silas agreed with reluctance. "Where is this location?"

"Great," Elora chuckled. "I’m currently parked outside your apartment complex. In my car. Would you like to be picked up? I could drop you at whatever location you want to go to during the drive while we talk."

Silas blinked with his posture stiffening.

"You’re... wait, what?" Silas stuttered, genuinely caught off guard.