He ate quietly, savoring the incredible flavors of Kaelia’s craft while listening to his girls trade loud exaggerated stories of the battle.

Honestly, like every other meal, this meal felt like a damn miracle.

Kaelia really outdid herself.

The roasted boar practically melted on his tongue, the thick stews had flavor, and the warmth of the massive stone hearths at the ends of the hall finally chased the biting chill out of his bones.

’I’ll never get used to having an S-Rank Chef around.’

"I’m telling you, I held the entire right flank by myself!" Tamsin bragged, using a heavy iron fork to gesture wildly as she tore into a massive chunk of roasted meat.

Her face was still smeared with dried black blood from the Tide, and she hadn’t bothered to wash it off yet, but her eyes sure looked happy. "Those spinning chain-daggers the Forge-Maiden made? I turned fifty hounds into pure mist! Fifty! I barely even had to move my feet, I just spun and watched them turn into diced meat."

"Please," Fenna scoffed from across the table, taking a long drink from her iron tankard.

The Bow-Splitter captain lowered her cup and rolled her eyes playfully.

"You were just waving your arms around in the mud like a crazy person. My exploding mythril arrows did all the actual crowd control. I blew a crater so deep out there I think I hit the world’s core."

’Eh?’ Silas almost spat out his drink... Was bragging this serious?

"If the Lord hadn’t upgraded my bow, you’d still be out there stabbing crawlers one by one while they chewed on your ankles."

"Both of you were safely behind my shields," Brida interjected with her raspy voice easily cutting through the banter.

The heavy infantry captain didn’t even look up from her plate, taking a massive bite of aether-wheat bread.

"So show some respect to the heavy armor, or next time I’ll open a gap in the line and let the Stalkers test your reflexes. Let’s see how well you spin those chains when a void-beast is actively trying to rip your throat out."

The table erupted into loud laughter.

The relief in the room was contagious. Even Aeliana who was typically reserved offered a small amused smile from behind her teacup.

Silas watched them for a moment.

It was crazy to think that just seven days ago, these girls had been pulled out of a portal looking like terrified people. Now? They were laughing, drinking, and arguing over kill counts like veteran mercenaries who had been doing this for years.

They had survived a trial that was literally designed to slaughter them, and they had walked away without a single casualty.

When the massive wooden platters were mostly picked clean and the girls were leaning back heavily in their wooden chairs, thoroughly satisfied and completely exhausted, Silas decided it was time.

He slowly stood up.

The massive mess hall fell completely silent.

It happened so fast it was almost jarring.

The clinking of tankards stopped instantly. The laughter died in their throats. Seventy pairs of eyes locked onto him in perfect synchronization.

The gravity of his presence commanded attention.

He wasn’t just the guy who fed them at all... he was the untouchable divine anchor of their entire existence.

"You fought relentlessly today," Silas spoke. "You broke a tide that was designed to test us."

He continued, looking down the long tables.

"This territory stands at Level 10 because of your iron, your magic, and your blood. Every single one of you proved your worth out there. The Basin threw all it had at our gates, and you didn’t flinch. You have earned this rest."

He placed his hands on the heavy oak table.

"But the trial is officially over for now," Silas said, letting the heavy words hang in the warm air of the mess hall. "Like I mentioned before... In a few moments, I will have to extract my physical body from this dimension."

An anxious murmur rippled rapidly through the rows of girls as the mood in the room changed entirely.

’Hey, at least they’re not overreacting this time...’

The newer recruits looked at each other with wide panicked eyes.

Hands gripped the edges of the heavy oak tables so tightly their knuckles turned stark white.

The realization that their invincible Lord was leaving them in the dead zone caused a sharp spike of separation anxiety across the entire group of girls.

They had just found a safe place to sleep, and now the guy who built it was telling them he was vanishing.

"I am returning to Earth. To the land where Lords originally come from like I mentioned before." Silas clarified, speaking clearly to make the complex dimensional concept simple for his summoned Vassals to understand. "I must submit a strict quota of high-tier monster corpses to the ruling faction of my world to secure our official Lord standing and our financial funding. That is exactly why I isolated the hundred beasts in the courtyard."

Brida leaned forward with her heavy brow furrowing in deep confusion as her scarred face pulled tight with concern.

"You have to leave us? For how long, my Lord? The horde is broken, yeah, but the basin is still incredibly dangerous. We don’t know what else is out there."

"Time moves differently during an extraction, but it will not be long," Silas promised.

His piercing blue gaze swept over the entire room, ensuring every single girl heard the conviction in his voice.

"My soul is tied to the Blessed Land. I couldn’t abandon this place even if I wanted to. When I return, I will bring supplies we cannot easily forge here. Better raw materials, soft civilian comforts, proper medicine, and gifts to properly reward your loyalty."

Brida’s hardened eyes lit up with the terrifying woman suddenly looking like an eager, excited recruit.

"Gifts? What kind of gifts, Lord Graves?" Brida asked, leaning over the table. "New, heavier iron armor? Sharper mythril swords? Better shield bracings?"

Silas smirked.

’If you only knew,’ he thought to himself.

His mind immediately jumped back to the incredibly awkward conversation with Aeliana in his office that morning, and the massive embarrassing list of exact clothing measurements that he had taken now..

Yeah, he really doubted Brida would be this hyped if she knew he was going shopping for lace and linen instead of iron and steel.

"That is a surprise, Captain," Silas replied smoothly, his eyes flashing with dry amusement. "But I assure you, you will appreciate it far more than another breastplate."

He looked down at his right side, where Eluned sat.

The SSS-Rank Goddess of Nature was staring up at him with massive watery emerald eyes.

Her pale hands were clenched tightly in the fabric of her dress.

She knew this was coming; he had warned her in the Citadel just before the bells rang.

But logically knowing something and physically watching it happen were two entirely different things.

The reality of him actually leaving... of his solid body vanishing from her sight was tearing violently at her deeply devoted heart.

"Lady Eluned has the wall," Silas announced loudly, shifting the heavy burden of command with his voice echoing for all seventy women to hear. "She speaks with my exact voice until I return. Do not slack on your patrols. The trial is over, but this basin is still crawling with nightmares waiting for us to drop our guard. I want this place locked down tight as it only gets worse from here."

Tamsin stood up from the table, her twin daggers rattling against her hips. She didn’t look afraid... she looked fierce.

"We will hold the gates, my Lord!" Tamsin swore, slamming her fist against her chest.

The entire room echoed the salute as the sound of seventy fists striking armor rang out in devotion.

Silas gave them a final, approving nod.

He stepped away from the table, creating a bit of space, and focused his mind inward.

He pulled up the glowing blue Sovereign interface in his head.

Below it was a pulsing golden tab.

[Ascend]

’Alright,’ he thought. ’Let’s see how this works.’

Silas mentally selected the command.

The reaction was instantaneous.

A blinding, deafening pillar of pure white light tore directly through the stone ceiling of the Garrison, locking entirely onto his body.

It didn’t break the roof... instead it just bypassed physical matter entirely.

The air pressure in the room vanished, replaced by a strange burst of cosmic energy that made the hairs on his arms stand up.

"Come back soon," Eluned whispered. She reached her hand out toward the light, a single tear cutting down her pale cheek.

"Keep them safe," Silas replied. His voice sounded weird, echoing strangely as his physical form began to dissolve into the ether.

It didn’t hurt, but he felt entirely weightless.

The seventy women of the Vanguard stood up from their tables, raising their hands and waving goodbye to the silhouette of their Sovereign.

The white light consumed him entirely, burning brighter than the sun for a fraction of a second.

When the light snapped out of existence, Silas Graves was completely gone, leaving the warm crowded mess hall in heavy waiting silence.

The blinding pillar of white extraction light snapped out of existence, and gravity reasserted its brutal grip.

Silas’s eyes tore open.

He inhaled sharply with his chest heaving as his lungs desperately pulled in a massive breath.

His entire body tensed up on pure instinct.

He braced himself for the biting ash-laced wind of the Umbral Basin, or the coppery sickening stench of slaughtered beasts and black mud.

Instead, he inhaled the perfectly climate-controlled triple-filtered air of modern civilization.

He lay flat on his back, staring up at a smooth pristine white ceiling.

’What the...’ he thought, his brain struggling to process the sudden shift.

The unforgiving cold of his boots and the weight of his dark combat robes were gone.

He was resting on the incredibly soft, yielding surface of the premium mattress in his master bedroom.

The transition was a violent shock to his nervous system.

For seven straight days, he had existed in a perpetual state of awareness.

He had slept with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, constantly listening to the guttural roars of mutated nightmares echoing through the dead forest outside his walls.

Now, the suffocating silence of his luxury apartment in the Silverleaf District pressed against his eardrums.

It was so quiet it actually hurt.

The only sound in the sprawling room was the hum of a commercial mag-car speeding through the distant Valoria City skyline outside his floor-to-ceiling windows.

It was jarring. Just moments ago, he had been with the girls and now, he was alone in a silent glass box.

"Okay. Okay, I’m back," Silas muttered to himself with his voice sounding too loud in the empty room.

He pushed himself up, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress.

His bare feet touched the sleek, polished hardwood floor.

He instinctively reached toward his waist with his combat-honed reflexes automatically searching for the familiar grip of his weapon.

His fingers brushed against cold metal.

Resting neatly on the bedsheets beside him was the Tier 3 Sovereign’s Greatsword.

The system had recognized the soul-bound weapon and carried his inventory back across the dimensional threshold.

’Thank the gods,’ he thought, grabbing the hilt just to feel the reassuring weight of it. ’If I had to leave that behind, I probably would have lost my mind.’

Silas exhaled a long slow breath, running a hand over his face.

He intended to stand up, walk to the massive attached bathroom, and splash freezing water over his head to ground himself in this reality.

He needed to wash the mental grime of the basin away before he could even think about going into the Lord Association building to sell those monster corpses.

But the moment he put his full weight onto his legs, his entire skeleton locked up.

"Ah... fuck!"

A deep groan ripped through his clenched teeth. Silas grabbed the edge of the heavy wooden dresser beside his bed with his knuckles turning white as his knees violently buckled.

The post-descent metamorphosis had begun.