Novel Full Chapter 153: The Only Way To Decide
Chapter 153: The Only Way To Decide
Eluned didn’t even blink as she immediately closed the distance between them, stepping right into his personal space.
"Then it should be a no-brainer," Eluned declared, her chin lifting with unshakable faith. "You are walking into an unmapped and dangerous supernatural domain left behind by dead gods probably, my Lord. You will require a living Goddess at your side to overwrite their stagnant laws. I shall accompany you."
"Like hell you will, houseplant!"
Morwenna shoved her way through the crowd of shieldmaidens, her heavy boots stomping across the floor.
The Dread Queen of the Astral Seas was still shivering slightly from the freezing slush soaking her canvas coat, but her stormy gray eyes burned with instant, aggressive defiance.
"The Warlord is a brawler!" Morwenna argued loudly, jabbing a thick, scarred finger at Eluned’s chest. "If the entrance is a trap, you don’t need a woman who talks to flowers! You need a frontline physical combatant who can rip the doors off the hinges and crack skulls! It’s me, Boss. I’m your woman."
Eluned rolled her glowing green eyes, completely unbothered by the pirate’s volume.
"Whatever," Eluned scoffed softly, leaning closer to Silas so only he could hear her next words over the ambient noise of the storm. "I am significantly more interested in this surface Lord who invited you, my Love... I want to see the kind of women my Lord hangs around with in his civilian life. If I accompany you, I can sense their intentions and tell you exactly what they truly want from you."
Silas stared down at the Goddess.
’She wants to go to sniff out Elora’s romantic intentions?’ Silas thought, fighting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. ’Come on man...’
Silas shook his head firmly, raising his hand to silence both of the SSS-rank divine beings.
"No," Silas said flatly, making both of them pause mid-argument. "I want to bring you both, but I can’t."
"Why not?!" Eluned argued immediately with her divine pride genuinely stinging. "Is my mana density insufficient for this surface mission?"
"It has nothing to do with your strength," Silas countered smoothly, his Lord logic locking perfectly into place.
He needed to be smart about this whole thing.
"It’s about security reasons... I am trying to keep my identity as the Lord of the Blessed Land a secret on Earth."
He looked between Eluned and Morwenna, making sure they understood the gravity of the situation.
"If I walk into a monitored Secret Realm that will have a lot of other lords in it with a literal Goddess of Nature or the Dread Queen of the Astral Seas trailing behind me, it isn’t exactly hiding it..." Silas explained grimly. "Anyone with a functioning brain will instantly realize I’m the Lord of Blessed Land that just broke the global ranking curve so I need to go a bit down the ladder for this one. Like I said, other Lords are coming too. I can’t afford the heat."
He looked at them with his voice softening just a fraction. "I apologize to you both but keeping the heat off our anchor point is worth it."
Eluned’s lips thinned into a tight line.
She stared into his golden-ringed eyes for a long moment.
She wasn’t actually offended.
In fact, her intellect completely recognized the reason for his decision.
It made perfect sense.
Their territory was wildly successful, churning out high-tier metals and shattering records like Silas had told her...
Hiding the fact that he was the supreme Lord of this grid from the public over in his vulnerable terrestrial world was an incredibly smart choice.
"In that way, it sounds like we have bounties on our head," Eluned noted astutely, her green eyes flashing as though she was predator.
She tilted her head. "I must ask... how much are we currently worth to these Earth corporations?"
"Eight billion Spirit Credits," Silas answered without missing a beat.
The number rippled through the library. Several of the infantry girls gasped out loud, clutching their chests.
Eluned, however, simply smiled. She practically preened, clearly satisfied that her divine presence had skyrocketed the Lord’s net worth to planetary GDP levels.
If it was like this, then she was sure it was much better to play the shadows.
"Very well. Your logic is sound, my Lord," Eluned conceded gracefully, stepping back.
She crossed her arms, her gaze sweeping over the crowd of seventy remaining women. "Then I demand to know: who will be following you into the dark? Have you decided?"
Silas scratched the back of his neck, letting out an exhausted breath.
"I haven’t decided at all," Silas admitted. "Honestly, that was why I was telling you all. I need a volunteer."
The exact second the words left his mouth, a synchronized shuffling sound echoed through the library.
The regular infantry girls, the recruits, Kaelia, and the scouts immediately backed off.
They physically retreated three entire paces, pressing themselves into the ironwood bookshelves to get out of his line of sight.
Even Fenna, the elite archer who had just caused an avalanche thirty minutes ago, practically dove behind a reading table.
From what Eluned had just described, Secret Realms sounded like an absolute hassle for their Lord, and most of the girls didn’t want any part of a death-trap left over by a dead god because they didn’t feel like they would be useful enough.
’Even I don’t want to go and have Master protecting me when we’re supposed to be a team.’ Reina thought.
Silas blinked as the crowd parted, leaving only four women standing up front in the center aisle.
Tasmin. Brida. Rowenna. Aeliana.
They were the main hitters.
"I’ll do it," Brida immediately grunted, slamming her massive fist against her breastplate. "I can carry the loot out while you swing your sword, Lord. Put me in and I can also swing too."
Tasmin let out a long exhausted sigh.
The agile Huntress reached out, grabbed the back of Brida’s thick linen collar, and forcefully dragged the massive shieldmaiden backward.
"Hey! Let go of me!" Brida complained loudly, trying to swat the Huntress away.
"Use your brain for five seconds, you walking brick..." Tasmin explained dryly, keeping her grip on Brida’s collar. "There are going to be two people from our territory going in there. The Lord, and one escort. In that case, it doesn’t need to be two physical frontline fighters who both rely on heavy weapon usage."
Tasmin looked at Silas, nodding her head respectfully.
"Our Lord is like a siege engine. He doesn’t need another meat-shield clogging up the hallways. He obviously needs a mage for crowd control and elemental suppression."
Brida grumbled, crossing her massive arms and pouting like a scolded bear, but Silas nodded in firm agreement.
"Tasmin is right," Silas told the shieldmaiden, offering Brida a reassuring look. "I need magical utility for this specific raid... I’ll make it up to you both when the opportunity comes up. I promise."
Morwenna let out a heavy sigh, leaning her broad shoulder against a mahogany reading desk.
"You better, Boss. Or I’m throwing her at you next time we train."
With the physical combatants bowing out, Silas turned his full attention to the two women remaining in the center aisle.
Rowenna and Aeliana.
Rowenna looked as effortlessly beautiful as ever.
The Runic Arcanist was wearing her simple breathable linen robes, running a delicate hand through her messy vibrant blue hair to brush a lingering clump of melted snow from her bangs.
Her dark blue eyes were locked onto him, burning with devotion.
Right next to her stood Aeliana. The Starlight Arcanist had magically dried her pristine white spider-silk robes.
Her silver hair practically glowed in the ambient light of the library with her posture perfectly straight and her eyes radiated a pure loyalty that was impossible to ignore.
"Do either of you want to join me?" Silas asked them directly.
"Yes, my Lord," Rowenna and Aeliana answered simultaneously, in perfect unison.
They slowly turned their heads, looking at each other.
The air between the two Arcanists instantly dropped by ten degrees.
The rivalry between the runic mage and the elven starlight caster was a well-known volatile dynamic in the barracks.
"Since I only need one person," Silas reasoned, rubbing his jaw, "we need to find a way to choose between you."
"A coin flip?" Kaelia suggested meekly from the back of the room.
Before anyone could agree, Thora shouldered her way through the crowd of infantry girls.
The dwarven blacksmith had completely shattered the shell of black ice that had encased her in the courtyard, though her beard and forge-apron were still dripping wet.
She was holding a fresh mug of alcohol she had somehow procured from the kitchens.
"A coin flip is for cowards and accountants!" Thora barked, slamming her mug down onto a reading table.
She turned, her eyes gleaming with instigating malice as she looked between the two mages.
"Let ’em fight for it!" Thora bellowed, pointing a soot-stained finger directly at Rowenna. "My money is on the elf anyway! The blue-haired lass is entirely too top-heavy with her runic nonsense, but Aeliana? Aeliana has significantly bigger breasts! It gives her a much lower and sturdier center of magical gravity! It’s basic physics hehe~!"
The library went completely, terrifyingly silent.
Rowenna’s head snapped toward the dwarf. Her blue eyes blew wide open in outrage.
She slowly looked down at her own chest, then looked over at Aeliana’s chest, her face flushing a violent shade of crimson.
Aeliana didn’t blush.
The Starlight Arcanist simply lifted her chin, offering Rowenna a devastatingly polite and unapologetic smile of superiority.
"YOU STUNTED SOOT-COVERED MOLE!" Rowenna shrieked at the top of her lungs, completely losing her refined magical composure.
The air pressure in the library violently buckled as thick, glowing violet gravity runes instantly began etching themselves into the ironwood floorboards beneath Rowenna’s bare feet.
Aeliana didn’t back down. The elf’s hands flared with blinding compressed blue-white starlight mana, ready to construct an Aegis barrier at a microsecond’s notice.
The two mages were completely pissed off to the point that they were baring their teeth at each other like feral wolves.
"Whoa, hey!" Silas stepped forward, immediately raising his hand to channel his aura to calm them down before they blew a hole in the roof of his newly made archive. "Stand down! We aren’t destroying the library!"
"We want to spar!" Rowenna demanded, pointing a shaking, furious finger at the elf. "Right now! I will show her exactly where my center of gravity lies!"
"I accept the challenge," Aeliana agreed smoothly, the starlight crackling around her wrists.
Silas looked at the two furious mages, then glared at Thora, who was currently hiding behind Brida’s massive legs and snickering into her ale mug.
"Fine..." Silas sighed, realizing there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. "But we are doing this outside. In the snow. I am not letting you two detonate my three-hundred-thousand-credit book collection."
He turned to Rowenna. "Your staff is too lethal for a friendly spar. You’ll be provided a regular ironwood staff from the armory instead of your regular one."
Rowenna scoffed, her blue eyes flashing with volatile mana.
"I don’t need a staff to use magic, Lord Graves. My hands will be more than sufficient to bury her."
Within five minutes, the entire group had relocated.
They were back outside in the freezing howling courtyard of the Keep.
The apocalyptic blizzard was still coming down in violent sheets of white powder, but the seventy-three women had formed a massive wide circle in the center of the slate tiles, completely ignoring the freezing wind in their eagerness to watch an apex magical duel.
The snow was accumulating rapidly, coming down hard enough to obscure the distant perimeter walls, but the two girls were standing thirty feet apart in the center of the ring, staring each other down through the flurry.
"Hehe~ One vibrator on the blue-haired one!" Thora yelled from the sidelines, still instigating from the safety of the crowd. "Anger makes the magic burn hotter!"
Silas stood on the edge of the circle with his dark trench coat whipping violently in the sub-zero gale.
Morwenna had abandoned the frontline crowd entirely.
The Dread Queen was currently clinging tightly to Silas’s right arm, pressing her side firmly against his ribcage.
She was doing it to leech off the immense radiating body heat of his body in the freezing storm, but she rested her chin on his bicep with a sigh.
"This is going to be incredibly boring, Boss," Morwenna complained loudly, rolling her gray eyes at the two mages. "It’s a battle of two squishy casters... There’s no physical impact and no crunching bones. It’s just going to be them standing thirty feet apart throwing flashing lights at each other until one of them runs out of juice. There’s no way that it’ll be interesting."