He opened his primary messaging application.

He had been added to an encrypted group chat containing the other three Awakened students from Valoria Academy’s Senior Cohort.

The chat log was moving rapidly with the text bubbles scrolling up the screen as the other two traded exhausted terrified complaints about their survival experiences in the Outer Expanse.

[Marcus]: I swear to the gods, if I ever see another mud-rat, I’m going to vomit. I spent three days hiding on top of my ruined shack because my walls broke on Day Four.

[Leah]: You had a shack? I started in a swamp. I lost two of my spearmen on the first night. The realm is rigged... This is complete bullshit!

[Marcus]: Did anyone else get anything good? I barely scraped together twenty Tier 1 corpses. The Association is going to laugh at me.

Silas read the messages with his expression completely flat.

’Of all the people to be grouped with, why these guys?’ he thought bitterly. ’They spent a week crying in a ditch while their troops died, and now they’re bitching about the realm being rigged.’

Honestly, they were the most pathetic group of all and it didn’t seem people fared better...

Among the chaos of the group chat whining, he noticed a direct private tag from Elora Verinda.

He tapped the notification, opening a separate, private window.

[Elora]: Graves... You survived. The four of us are meeting up at the Solstice Cafe in the central commercial district tonight at 7:00 PM. Be there as we need to discuss the state of the city’s newly Awakened.

...

Silas stared at the message.

The tone was exactly what he expected from the City Lord’s daughter. It was authoritative and it expected complete unquestioning compliance, it was also entirely lacking in any sort of human warmth or relief that he was alive.

His initial instinct was to delete the message, block the number, and ignore her completely.

"I have zero interest in playing academy politics or trading pathetic war stories with rich kids," he grumbled, tossing the phone from one hand to the other but he paused, his thumb hovering over the glass screen.

He remembered the Weapons Exchange back on Day One, right before they had descended.

Elora had stepped in when that greedy, slick-haired armory clerk tried to bleed his account dry on a useless flashy broadsword that would have shattered against the first Shadow Stalker he met.

She had bypassed the garbage and pointed him directly to the blade.

That blade had saved his life multiple times in the Umbral Basin before he managed to upgrade it...

He owed her for that and a Sovereign always paid their debts.

Silas tapped the digital keyboard, sending a brief indifferent reply.

[Silas]: I’ll be there.

He locked the phone and shoved it deep into his front pocket.

He walked into the massive kitchen, grabbed a glass from the sleek overhead cabinets, and poured himself a glass of purified water from the dispenser.

Silas drank it in one long, continuous pull, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

He immediately grimaced.

The water tasted completely empty. It was sterile and entirely lacking the heavy, dense invigorating mana that Kaelia infused into every single meal and drink back at Blessed Land.

It felt like drinking liquid dust.

"What the fuck man..."

The silence of the apartment was beginning to seriously grate on his nerves.

He missed the Warlord’s Garrison.

He missed the heavy clanking of Brida’s iron-clad Shieldmaidens running their morning drills in the courtyard.

He missed Aeliana’s quiet and respectful logistical updates.

He even missed Eluned’s suffocating, incredibly clingy warmth when she tried to sneak into his bed.

’It’s barely been an hour...’

Earth felt empty and it felt fake too.

"I need to get this over with," Silas muttered, placing the empty glass on the marble counter with a solid clink.

He had a massive, urgent agenda to complete before the sun set and he had to go listen to Marcus cry into his coffee.

The strict rules of the Sovereign Realm required newly Awakened Lords to physically submit a quota of thirty Tier 1 monster corpses to the Lord Association Building.

It was the only way to maintain their legal Lord status, keep their territory anchored, and unlock their state-sponsored financial stipends.

If you didn’t pay the toll, the Association revoked your rights and seized your portal access.

Silas had exactly ninety-nine intact Tier 2 corpses and one massive Tier 3 Boss corpse sitting in his digital Lord Inventory.

He needed to dump them at the appraisal desk, collect his astronomical payout, and use that cash to buy the bulk order of civilian clothing he wanted to get for the girls.

He walked to the front door of the apartment, pressing his palm against the glowing central security rune embedded in the steel.

"Deactivate Spirit Lock..." Silas commanded.

The rune flared a bright confirming green.

The heavy titanium deadbolts slid back into the frame with a solid thud.

He pulled out his phone again and opened the premium transportation app.

He had relied on cheap, crowded, foul-smelling mag-trains his entire life when he lived in the slums.

He remembered the feeling of being packed in like sardines with exhausted factory workers.

Now? With the remains of a hundred thousand Spirit Credits already sitting in his account from his initial sponsorship, and millions more waiting for him at the LAB?

He refused to ever set foot on public transit again!

Silas ordered a luxury mag-cab, tapping the option to add a heavy exorbitant hourly retainer fee for the driver to wait for him at multiple stops across the city.

’I’ll probably need him for quite a while... like till night time or something.’

Silas stepped out into the softly carpeted silent hallway of his building.

The heavy steel door locked securely behind him with a sharp click.

He walked to the end of the hall and took the high-speed glass elevator down to the gleaming marble-floored lobby.

The sleek matte-black mag-cab was already idling perfectly at the curb outside the glass doors.

Silas walked out into the cool afternoon air, pulled the heavy back door open, and slid into the plush, custom leather interior.

The cabin was soundproofed, immediately shutting out the annoying ambient noise of the Silverleaf District.

The driver, a middle-aged man wearing a sharp pressed corporate suit, glanced up at the rearview mirror to greet his premium passenger.

"Good afternoon, sir. Destination is the Lord Association Build—"

The driver’s voice completely died in his throat.

His eyes locked onto Silas’s reflection in the small rectangular mirror.

The driver’s hands visibly tightened on the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

His knuckles turned stark white as a cold sudden sweat immediately broke out on the back of his neck, soaking the collar of his expensive shirt.

Silas wasn’t doing anything aggressive.

He wasn’t scowling as he was simply sitting back against the soft leather, looking out the tinted window at the passing skyscrapers.

But the weight of his Gold Core mana naturally bleeding into the air, combined with the predatory sharpness of his new features, completely filled the enclosed cabin with an oppressive gravity.

And then there were those eyes... Those vibrant blue eyes with the glowing gold rings staring passively back in the reflection...

The driver felt the instinctual terror of a rabbit that had just realized it was trapped in a small, locked box with a waking tiger.

His breathing hitched and his heart hammering against his ribs in panic.

"Is there a problem?" Silas asked calmly.

His blue eyes shifted, meeting the driver’s terrified gaze in the mirror.

The gold rings around his pupils seemed to actually catch and amplify the ambient light from the dashboard, glowing with an unnatural intensity.

"N-no, my Lord," the driver stammered with his voice cracking.

He frantically averted his eyes, completely unable to hold the eye contact, and swallowed hard.

He slammed his foot on the accelerator. "Apologies. En route to the LAB immediately."

The mag-cab pulled away from the curb with a sharp lurch, hovering silently inches above the pavement as it smoothly merged into the heavy bustling afternoon traffic of Valoria City.

...

Silas leaned his head against the cool glass of the window, watching the city roll by.

The towering, gleaming glass spires of the commercial district, the massive holographic billboards advertising basic alchemical beauty products, the wealthy citizens walking designer pets down pristine sidewalks... it all looked so incredibly fragile.

Before his awakening, Valoria City had felt massive and untouchable.

It was this looming, oppressive machine that ground down guys like him who grew up in the slums but right now? Looking at the structural integrity of the banks and the corporate high-rises, Silas realized his infantry could breach the local reserve in under ten minutes.

A single condensed ballista bolt from the Blood-Iron Watchtower would level an entire city block... probably...

The people walking on the streets were completely soft.

They lived their luxurious, ignorant lives protected by a military and corporate structure built entirely on the backs of Lords bleeding out in the mud of the Sovereign Realm.

’Look at these pathetic bastards,’ he thought bitterly. ’Walking around with their overpriced coffees, complaining about the weather. They wouldn’t last five seconds against a Stalker.’

The stark contrast between the two worlds was jarring, but it only cemented his resolve.

He wasn’t going to play the local corporate game.. He wasn’t going to kiss the ass of some guild executive.

He was going to drain Earth of its resources, funnel the wealth back into the Umbral Basin, and build an empire that could crush Valoria City into dust if it ever dared to threaten him.

He caught his reflection in the tinted glass of the cab window and almost didn’t recognize himself again.

"Ah, for fuck’s sake," Silas groaned under his breath. "I’m going to have to deal with people staring at me all damn day now, aren’t I?"

Twenty minutes later, the cab slowed down, pulling into the massive congested plaza surrounding the Lord Association Building.

"Keep the engine running," Silas instructed.

He grabbed his phone and tapped it against the scanner mounted on the partition to authorize the retainer fee. "I will be out in an hour."

"Yes, my Lord. I won’t move an inch..." the driver replied quickly.

He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the dashboard, visibly sweating, desperate to avoid the suffocating weight of Silas’s golden-ringed gaze in the rearview mirror.

Silas pushed the door open and stepped out onto the crowded pavement.

The LAB was a colossal brutalist structure forged from heavy gray stone and reinforced steel.

It was designed to handle the massive logistical nightmare of the Awakened, and today, the plaza outside the main entrance was chaos.

Thousands of surviving students from academies across the city were filtering back into the real world, and the reality of the Novice Trial was on full horrifying display.

Silas walked toward the grand stone stairs, his hands shoved in his pockets as his eyes swept over the crowds.

It was a scene of absolute misery.

Teenagers who had bragged about pulling Red and Green Cores just a week ago were sitting on the stone curbs, weeping uncontrollably.

Some were missing arms or eyes, screaming as the Association’s medical staff dragged them onto stretchers and hauled them toward the triage tents.

Others just stared blankly at the concrete, completely dead inside.

They were traumatized by the sheer violence of the Outer Expanse, probably having spent the last week watching their few summoned militiamen get torn apart and eaten alive by goblins while they hid in a dirt hole.

’And these are the lucky ones who didn’t get their cores shattered,’ Silas thought, shaking his head. ’They thought this was a game and now they get to live with the PTSD.’

Scattered among the broken survivors were the real monsters.

Corporate Guild recruiters wearing sharp silk suits moved through the crowds like vultures.

They were shoving predatory contracts into the faces of anyone who looked relatively intact, aggressively offering cheap buyouts for their miserable failing territories.