The Royal Elf didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second.

She abandoned the measurement book on the obsidian desk with the heavy leather cover slapping against the stone.

Her silver eyes ignited with fierce mana as her combat instincts took over.

"At your command, Lord Graves."

Silas turned his dark gaze toward the splintered oak doors with his hand naturally dropping to rest against the heavy mythril pommel of his Umbral Mythril Greatsword which was the Tier 3 evolution of his weapon

"A horde is here," Silas declared. "Let’s go break it..."

...

The deafening toll of the Watchtower’s alarm bells tore through the quiet dawn, vibrating deep within the chests of everyone standing inside the Warlord’s Garrison.

Silas didn’t hesitate.

He burst out of the Sovereign’s Citadel with his dark combat robes snapping in the biting morning wind.

He crossed the sprawling stone courtyard in seconds, boots hitting the spiral stairs of the Blood-Iron Watchtower with the force of a battering ram as he took the steep winding stone steps two at a time so he could think.

’With all these monsters we’ve killed, I should be able to fulfill my LAB requirements easily.’

His lungs pumped the freezing air with his Gold Core feeding raw stamina directly into his muscles.

Aeliana and Eluned matched his pace, their robes trailing behind them as they reached the seventy-foot observation deck.

Fenna was already mounted on the northern ballista.

The archery captain’s knuckles were stark white as she gripped the heavy iron handles, her eyes staring through the glowing blue magical reticle hovering just inches from her face.

The Abyssal Marrow woven into the core of the siege weapon was hissing, venting cold white mist into the gray air as the heavy artillery primed itself for a catastrophic launch.

"Distance!" Silas barked, stepping up beside her and resting a hand on the rough stone parapet.

"Two miles and closing fast, my Lord!" Fenna shouted over the howling wind, keeping her eyes locked on the optics. "It’s not a hunting pack... It’s a big tide as the entire treeline is moving..."

Silas narrowed his eyes, peering out over the drop-off and into the endless gloom of the Umbral Basin.

He didn’t need the magically-assisted scope to see the threat.

The dark dead forest to the north was literally trembling. Massive, petrified Ironwood trees were snapping and falling, their thick trunks giving way with loud cracks that echoed across the dead earth.

They were being pushed aside by an unending ocean of mutated flesh!

He activated his own sensory perception, focusing his vision past the gray fog.

The horde was a sprawling chaotic nightmare.

Hundreds of Tier 1 and Tier 2 monstrosities were charging blindly through the ash and mud.

There were massive, armored Mud-Hounds with frothing jaws, jagged Acid-Crawlers tearing up the soil, and mutated Iron-Boars running shoulder-to-shoulder.

They were driven into a frenzy by the cosmic shift of the final evaluation wave with their primitive brains rewired to seek out the heart of the Blessed Land and tear it to the foundation.

But as Silas scanned the vanguard of the tide, his gaze caught on a familiar, shifting silhouette slipping through the chaos.

Void-black fur... elongated limbs and six glowing red eyes...

"Shadow Stalkers," Silas murmured, his grip tightening on the stone parapet until his leather gloves groaned under the pressure.

There wasn’t just one alpha this time.

There were dozens of the terrifying predators leaping through the brush, using the chaotic mass of the lesser beasts as moving cover.

They bounded from shattered tree trunks to the backs of the charging boars, moving with coordinated grace.

They had come to the Blessed Land to avenge their slaughtered kind most probably... but the Stalkers weren’t the true threat.

Lumbering at the dead center of the tide, towering over the canopy of the dead forest itself, was a colossal mass of gray bone and thick, ropy muscle.

It was a bipedal nightmare. A creature forged from the malice of the basin.

The Tier 3 Boss dragged a crude, massive club behind it... a weapon forged from the jagged, interlocking spine of some long-dead leviathan.

The beast’s skin was thick, leathery, and studded with protruding bone spurs.

Every time its heavy, clawed foot struck the mud, a tremor rippled through the earth, carrying all the way to the deep stone foundations of the Watchtower.

A distinct chime rang out in Silas’s mind, piercing through the noise of the wind and the bells as a blinding red holographic text box materialized in the sky, hovering directly above the charging horde like a beacon of execution.

[Warning: Boss-Tier Horde Siege Commencing.]

[Condition: Defend the Territory Core to finalize the Novice Trial.]

[Failure Condition: Annihilation.]

’Is it because I have a gold core that my life is so hard...?!’ Silas exclaimed inwardly, Sure talented lords got hordes but still... wasn’t this a bit too much?

"Let them come," Silas stated coldly, swiping the warning away with a flick of his wrist.

He didn’t care about the world’s threats.

He had spent the last week dragging his Vanguard through the mud, building a fortress out of blood and iron and he wasn’t going to let a mob of rotting meat take it from him on the final day.

He turned his back to the sprawling tide of monsters and looked at Aeliana and Eluned.

"Get to your stations. The trial ends today."

Silas descended the tower rapidly. His boots echoed all the way down the spiral as he stepped off the stone stairs and back into the massive courtyard.

The scene waiting for him was breathtaking.

Seventy women stood in perfect formation across the polished stone tiles of the training yard.

The scale of his military force was staggering to behold.

The several heavy-infantry Shieldmaidens and mages formed the frontline though the mages were at the back.

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their heavy iron boots anchored firmly to the ground.

Their dark iron tower shields were raised and locked together, overlapping flawlessly to create an impenetrable wall of metal that stretched across the courtyard.

Brida stood at the exact center with a smile on her face.

Behind the shield wall stood the Bow-Splitters.

with their feet planted wide, their hands resting on the fletching of the arrows in their quivers, waiting for the command to draw.

Even Kaelia, the S-Rank Chef, had abandoned her station.

She stood near the heavy wooden doors of the Culinary Haven with her white apron stained with the morning’s prep work.

She was gripping a heavy razor-sharp obsidian meat cleaver with trembling but determined hands.

Kaelia was a non-combatant, but she refused to hide while her sisters held the line.

The wind howled over the towering black plates of the Steel-Weave Palisade, carrying the distant roars of the approaching horde.

The smell of wet ash and rotting blood was already beginning to seep over the walls.

Silas walked to the front of the formation.

He stopped directly in front of Brida and Tamsin, turning to face his entire army.

He didn’t pace back and forth... He didn’t yell frantically or wave his arms to drum up cheap morale. Instead Silas stood tall with, the wind tearing at his dark hair.

His piercing blue eyes locked onto the rows of waiting soldiers, making eye contact with as many of them as possible as the women stared back at him.

Despite the heavy iron armor weighing them down, and despite the terrifying, ground-shaking roars echoing just outside the walls, their focus was consumed by the man standing in front of them.

They were undeniably smitten by the imposing presence of their Sovereign.

The lewd jokes and the hot spring banter from the night before and other nights were gone, replaced by a deep reverence.

He was their Lord, their commander, and the man who held their lives in the palm of his hand.

But it wasn’t just his physical appearance that held them captive in the face of death... It was the unshakeable certainty he projected.

He stood before a horde that could level a territory, and he didn’t look afraid. He looked hungry.

If Silas Graves told them the sun would rise in the west, they would brace their shields for the heat.

"Listen to that sound..." Silas commanded.

He slowly raised a hand and pointed a single finger toward the towering black metal of the northern steel wall.

"Out there is an ocean of rotting flesh. Hundreds of beasts, driven entirely mad by the Basin, throwing themselves at our gates to see if we break. They think we are prey and they think this is a survival camp probably but they couldn’t be more wrong."

Silas drew his dark mythril blade with the deep-purple metal hissing as the biting morning air struck it.

"Look around you," Silas commanded with his voice rising. "Look at the heated stone beneath your boots... Look at the steel walls that encircle you..."

He paced the length of the formation withhis blue eyes sweeping over the rows of armored women.

"We did not beg the dirt for a sanctuary. We ripped it from the ground. We bled in the mud, we hunted the apex predators of this basin, and we forged a territory while the rest of the world hid in the dark!"

The girls tightened their grips on their weapons.

The leather wrapped around their hilts groaned under the pressure.

Their eyes began to burn with a rising fervor.

The terror of the incoming tide was rapidly being replaced by the intoxicating gravity of their Sovereign.

"Today is the final evaluation..." Silas declared, raising his heavy mythril sword high above his head with the dark metal catching the ambient light of the Citadel. "The world expects us to cower behind these gates and pray the metal holds. It expects us to survive. We do not hide. We do not cower. We are the soldiers of the Blessed Land, and we are going to open those doors and break them where they stand!"

The response was a deafening unified roar.

Seventy women slammed their iron shortswords and spears against their heavy tower shields in perfect unison, the mages slammed their staff against each other and for the Bow-Splitters... well they hit their hand on their weapons.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The crash echoed like thunder across the courtyard with a massive battle cry that completely drowned out the roars of the approaching Tide.

’I’m glad that was motivational enough... People don’t really give lords credit.’ He thought, he had to think about that speech on the spot.

The fear of the siege vanished.

It was burned away, replaced by a violent hunger to prove their supremacy over the wasteland.

They were the executioners!

From the shadow of the Watchtower, Eluned stepped forward.

The Goddess of Nature walked into the center of the courtyard, her silver-green dress billowing around her ankles in the wind.

She looked at the iron-clad mortal women who had bled for her Lord over the past week, who had marched through freezing rain and corrosive acid and a deep pride swelled in her chest.

She stopped beside Silas with her bare feet touching the cold stone. She looked up at him, her emerald eyes glowing with a fierce light.

"You will not march into this storm alone..." Eluned spoke with her melodic voice resonating with world-shaking power.

She closed her eyes and raised both of her pale hands toward the bruising gray sky.

The massive, vibrant green oak tree she had grown near the portal shuddered as if struck by a hurricane.

Its broad leaves ignited, glowing with a blinding, incandescent light that chased the shadows from the courtyard.

[Active Skill: Aura of Genesis]

Eluned didn’t just cast a standard buff. She tore open the floodgates of her mana pool.

Even though the Goddess had started at Level 1, like her Lord, she was at Level 10 now and her starting reserves had gone from 5000 to 20,000!

A roaring tidal wave of brilliant emerald light erupted from her body, washing completely over the entire seventy-woman formation.

The impact of the divine magic was staggering.

The green light sank directly through their heavy iron armor, etching glowing complex geometric runes directly into their skin.

’I can finally use the added parts of Aura Of Genesis.’ Eluned thought, not only was the skill able to generate infinite stamina but she had given them higher strength too.

The exhaustion in their muscles from the morning drills instantly evaporated as their lungs expanded, drawing in oxygen.

The Aura of Genesis forcefully overwrote their mortal limitations, granting every single soldier in the courtyard infinite stamina and vastly accelerated cellular regeneration as well as higher stats

Brida let out a deep laugh, rolling her shoulders as she felt her Level 15 musculature coil with explosive power.

The ache in her joints was gone. Tamsin gripped her twin heavy chain-daggers, her pupils dilating as her senses sharpened to a razor’s edge.

They felt invincible!

Silas looked at the glowing green runes pulsing on his own skin, feeling the endless reservoir of divine energy coursing through his veins, feeding his Gold Core.

He looked at the massive double doors of the main gate.

"Operators!" Silas barked, pointing his dark blade at the barricades. "Open the gates!"