Free Web NovelChapter 37: A Better Lord...
"We... we’re alright, my Lord," one of the rookies stammered with her voice shaking violently.
She desperately pulled her iron boots free from the rapidly melting slush of the ice with her hands trembling so hard she could barely maintain a salute as she looked up at him. "We are unhurt. Just... stuck."
Aeliana stepped up to the edge of the massive beast, her pristine silver eyes scanning the colossal smoking corpse, taking in the scale of the destruction.
"Incredible coordination, Lord Graves," Aeliana murmured with her highly educated mind struggling to process the flawless integration of melee and long-range siege tactics.
She was sure the Watchtower would be useful but not this useful...
"The ballistae are terrifyingly accurate. I have never seen a siege weapon track an airborne, moving target with such devastating precision."
"Fenna doesn’t miss and she has Eluned with her.." Silas agreed simply as he looked back over his shoulder toward the distant silhouette of his steel-walled territory cutting through the gray mist. "You did a great job too, Aeliana."
Silas patted her head making the Elf stiffen.
"I’m sorry for treating you the way I did... I just wanted to make sure you would be an excellent soldier and you really are one. I wouldn’t have been able to close the distance in time if it wasn’t for your quick thinking using that Ice magic." Silas smiled as he continued patting her head. "Then I might have lost the girls to drowning."
"Uh..." Aeliana stuttered, her Lord’s hand felt so good against her head... Lord Kal hadn’t patted her head before, it was a simple touch? Why did it feel so amazing? ’I know why...’
It’s because she had worked for her place... She worked for this and impressed him!
"Thank you my Lord and I will make sure to impress you more in the future." Aeliana smiled warmly.
"I’m glad, I’ll be a better Lord... to you from now on." Silas said, making her heart beat wildly, why was he saying all of these embarrassing things?
Silas then glanced at his UP balance.
[Current Balance: 415 UP]
An even wider smile spread across his rugged features.
The total was staggering...
Between the monsters that the girls and him were dealing with, they had hauled in a fortune.
The multi-front war had been a gamble, pushing the womn to their physical limits in the middle of a freezing storm, but it had paid off.
They had broken the Umbral Basin’s resistance!
Silas looked down from the towering carcass of the Boss. "Before we extract the core and head home... let me see you."
He dropped the thermal heat of his Gold Core, allowing the cool rain to finally wash over his dark armor, and walked slowly through the melting ice and mud.
He approached the five shivering rookies. They quickly scrambled to attention, holding their mud-caked iron shortswords against their chests with their teeth chattering.
Silas didn’t issue a harsh critique. He reached out, his large, leather-clad hand clasping the shoulder of the nearest recruit.
"You held your breath and you didn’t panic when the mud pulled you under..." Silas told her, looking her dead in the eyes. "That is the mark of a survivor. You did well today... All of you..."
The rookie’s face turned bright red. Her knees nearly buckled under the direct praise. "Thank you, my Lord!"
Silas offered an approving nod, moving further down the slippery rocks to check on his spellcaster.
He stopped in front of Rowena.
The elite Arcanist was leaning heavily on her wooden staff with her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.
Her beautiful blue robes were ruined by the slop, plastered against her slender frame by the rain.
She was shivering in the cold, but as Silas approached, she tried to stand taller, desperate to project strength.
"My Lord, I..." Rowena started, but she winced, rubbing a nasty bleeding scrape on her forearm where a jagged piece of ice shrapnel had grazed her during the explosive Boss fight.
She glanced over at the five rookies, watching them beam under his praise.
A distinct jealous pout formed on her soft lips.
She had nearly drained her mana core trying to stabilize a gravity well in the freezing mud to save those girls, yet the newbies were getting all the attention...
"Mmph, it hurts... My Lord, take a look."
She let out a soft pathetic whimper, looking down at her bleeding arm, hoping he would notice.
"Let me..."
Silas stepped into her personal space, reaching out and gently taking her slender, bruised forearm in his large hand.
Rowena gasped softly as his rough thumb brushed against the edge of the scrape.
’My Lord is so close...’
Like Tasmin and most of the other girls, Rowena had a crush on her Lord too... he was just an amazing man, she had come from an Academy in the Sovereign Realm and her Lord seemed to be her age.
But he was so much better than any other man she had seen so far, those snotty noble bastards could not dream of doing half the things that he was capable of.
’Also my Lord seems like he’ll be a very good Father.’ Rowena thought, she barely got to spend time together with him but perhaps that would change if she were to become his Official partner.
Silas channeled a tiny pulse of mana into the glowing emerald rune on his own forearm.
The energy flared, washing a soothing green light directly over Rowena’s cold skin.
The bleeding scrape instantly closed, leaving flawless unblemished skin behind but he didn’t immediately let go.
He kept his hand wrapped warmly around her forearm with his thumb slowly stroking her wrist.
"You anchored the entire western front with your gravity magic, Rowena," Silas murmured with his blue eyes holding hers captive through the rain. "I owe you a great debt today."
Rowena’s breath hitched.
The freezing cold vanished from her body, replaced by a rushing wave of heat that started in her chest and flooded her veins.
Her face turned the color of a ripe tomato, her blue eyes melting as she stared up at him.
"I... it is my honor to serve you, my Lord," Rowena whispered back, completely spellbound with her grip loosening on her staff.
Standing a few feet away on the rocks, Aeliana watched the entire intimate exchange.
The Royal Elf awkwardly gripped the fabric of her muddy linen robes.
Her silver eyes darted quickly between Silas’s hands wrapped around the Arcanist and her own uninjured arms.
She desperately wanted to step forward...
She wanted to show him a phantom bruise or a scuffed knee, just to feel the warm weight of his touch and hear his direct praise after her massive spellcasting effort even though he had praised her.
Her pale cheeks flushed a faint pink as she shyly looked away, biting her lower lip, frustrated by her own hesitation.
She couldn’t just whimper for attention like a commoner, could she?
Silas finally stepped back, clapping his hands together once to break the spell.
"Rowena, Aeliana. Extract the core from this beast," Silas ordered, looking toward the distant silhouette of the Blessed Land. "We have what we need so we are going home to build a fortress." frёeωebɳovel.com
He would extract the corpses into his Inventory as they went.
...
The heavy rune-carved steel gates of the Blessed Land groaned with a deep sound as the thick iron-wrought chains hauled the massive barricades slowly upward.
The torrential monsoon was still pouring from the bruising gray sky, turning the dead earth of the Umbral Basin into a treacherous mire.
But as the three distinct strike teams converged on the perimeter and marched back into the fortified courtyard together, they did not look like a ragged survival camp retreating from the dark. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
They looked like a conquering army!
The Vanguard was soaked to the bone.
Freezing rainwater plastered their hair to their foreheads, and their heavy iron armor was caked in gray mud and the corrosive foul-smelling black blood of a hundred slaughtered mutations.
Yet, despite the grueling physical toll of the multi-front war, the morale radiating from the forty-woman formation was astronomical.
As the gates thudded shut, securely locking the nightmare of the Unknown Zone outside, the rigid silence of the march finally broke.
The courtyard instantly filled with the chaotic chatter of the freshly blooded newbies.
The overwhelming adrenaline of their first true deployment was rapidly boiling over into unmasked awe as they huddled together, comparing the horrors they had just survived.
"Did you even see Captain Tamsin?" one of the northern ridge rookies gasped, her hands shaking as she aggressively wiped mud from her iron breastplate. "An Acid-Crawler the size of a wagon lunged right for my throat! She threw herself into the mud and took the venomous bite directly into her own flank to save me! I thought she was dead but then she just... glowed! The acid vanished, and she butchered the rest of the horde like a demon! She moves like a shadow!"
"That’s nothing," a heavy-infantry rookie from the eastern thickets argued with her chest heaving with immense pride as she tapped her overlapped iron shield. "Captain Brida didn’t even let the beasts touch us! The mutated boars charged like a battering ram, and she just anchored the line. We stood shoulder-to-shoulder, a flawless wall of iron, and ground the entire pack into sausage without a single girl taking a scratch. She is an unyielding fortress! I felt like nothing could break us!"
But the five rookies who had marched with Silas into the western quarry simply shook their heads, looking at the other newbies with wide yet intensely reverent eyes.
"You fought grunts," the lead western rookie whispered, her voice trembling as she looked toward the tall broad-shouldered silhouette of her Sovereign. "We fought a monster the size of a siege wagon. It trapped us in magical quicksand. But the Lord... gods above, the Lord didn’t even flinch. After the Watchtower rained artillery from the heavens, he leaped off a shattered pillar of frozen mud. His sword was glowing with this blinding roaring golden heat. He plunged it straight through the beast’s armored spine and executed it in a single strike. It was like watching a god of war."
Silas walked slowly toward the center of the courtyard, the rain drumming against his dark-purple armor.
Before he could even fully survey the gathered troops or call for his commanders, Eluned rushed out from beneath the vibrant green canopy of her magical oak tree.
The SSS-Rank Goddess did not care about the thick mud coating his boots or the foul-smelling monster blood staining his mythril plating.
Her emerald eyes scanned his tall frame frantically for injuries. Finding none, she let out a deep sigh.
She raised her pale hands, her eyes glowing with intense nature magic.
WHOOSH!
A warm refreshing breeze erupted around Silas. The magical gale swept completely over him, acting as a flawless cleansing system.
The freezing rainwater was instantly vaporized. The thick gray mud and corrosive black blood crusting his robes and skin were lifted and blown away into the air, leaving his dark hair perfectly dry and his combat gear pristine.
"Welcome back, my Lord," Eluned murmured softly, stepping close enough that her silk dress brushed against his greaves. "The Watchtower kept its promise as not a single shadow touched the girls from above."
"You executed the strikes perfectly, Eluned," Silas praised warmly.
He didn’t just offer her a polite nod of recognition. He stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her delicate waist, and effortlessly hoisted the Goddess directly into the air.
"Ah!" Eluned gasped in shock with her hands automatically flying to his broad shoulders as her bare feet left the stone tiles.
Silas spun her around once in the rain, pulling her tight against his chest before setting her gently back down.
He leaned in, moving a strand of silver-green hair from her face, and pressed a warm kiss directly to her forehead.
"Thank you for watching over the girls," Silas said softly, his blue eyes locking onto hers. "You saved their lives today."
Eluned’s entire brain short-circuited.
The overwhelming public display of physical affection and genuine gratitude completely melted her divine composure.
A brilliant furious red blush consumed her pale cheeks, spreading rapidly all the way down her neck.
She squeezed her eyes shut, leaning her forehead against his clean robes as she desperately tried to hide her flustered happy smile.
"I-it was nothing, my Lord," Eluned stammered softly, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs.
Behind them, the entire group fell into a dead, heavy silence.
The intense jealousy radiating from the forty mortal women was palpable.
They stared at the blushing Goddess with their eyes narrowing dangerously.
They had just fought a literal, bloody war in the mud and the freezing rain, taking acid burns and boar charges, and the tree spirit who stayed perfectly dry on the Watchtower was getting all the physical rewards.
Silas chuckled, releasing Eluned and turning his attention back to his troops.
Tamsin and Brida stepped forward from the ranks, halting a few paces away. They snapped to attention, saluting sharply by slamming their fists against their chests.
Tamsin’s leather armor was ruined on her right side, exposing the pale skin underneath, but the flesh itself was unblemished thanks to the Genesis Rune.
Still, the Wilderness Huntress subtly shifted her weight, trying to proudly hide a wince.
The flesh was healed, but the phantom pain of having venomous acid melt her nervous system still lingered in her refined senses.
"Northern ridge is completely cleared of crawler nests, Lord Graves," Tamsin reported with a grin splitting her face. "We hauled the heavy chitin plates back to the Vault and will be going to retrieve the corpses of other monsters... the rookies held their nerve."
