Tamsin was the first to move.

The Huntress exploded forward, completely ignoring the basic laws of friction.

Her reinforced leather boots kicked off the cracked stone tiles, covering the entire fifty-foot gap between them in a singular blur of lethal speed.

WHOOSH!

She leaped high into the air, perfectly rotating her hips to generate maximum centrifugal force.

Tasmin aimed a devastating sweeping roundhouse kick right at the Goddess’s head.

The air physically cracked around Tamsin’s shin as she fully intended to knock the arrogant deity straight into the dirt and tag her out in the first two seconds of the spar.

Eluned didn’t even blink.

The SSS-Rank Goddess stood there with her hands resting casually at her sides, looking entirely bored out of her mind.

A fraction of a millisecond before the reinforced boot shattered her jaw, Eluned tilted her head precisely one inch to the left.

Tamsin’s foot sailed harmlessly past Eluned’s ear, the violent wind pressure merely ruffling a few strands of the Goddess’s silver-green hair.

Before the Huntress could even begin to register the miss, let alone adjust her center of gravity to land, Eluned’s pale hand shot out like a striking viper.

She didn’t use magic like she promise.

Eluned simply grabbed Tamsin directly by the ankle, dug her fingers into the leather, spun flawlessly on her heel to hijack the girl’s own forward momentum, and violently slammed the Huntress face-first directly into the compacted dirt of the courtyard.

BAM!

A shockwave of dust erupted outward.

Tamsin bounced once, completely having the wind knocked out of her lungs, and went entirely limp, groaning in a haze of sudden concussive pain.

"One..." Eluned counted calmly, not even looking down at the girl. "That’ll teach you to argue for my Lord’s attention with me."

"Get her!" Brida roared.

The heavy infantry surged forward.

Ten heavily armored Shieldmaidens charged simultaneously, their iron-shod boots shaking the ground.

They moved in a textbook synchronized phalanx formation, raising heavy steel kite shields, actively trying to box the Goddess into a corner where her speed wouldn’t matter.

It was a perfect tactical maneuver against a standard opponent however against Eluned, it was literal child’s play...

Eluned didn’t retreat.

She didn’t try to outflank them either, instead she stepped directly into the center of the charging iron formation.

It was an idiotic move but that would be for someone that moved slow... The goddess however moved like liquid water flowing through jagged rocks.

A Shieldmaiden thrust a blunt training spear toward Eluned’s ribs.

The Goddess lazily swatted the wooden shaft aside with the back of her wrist, stepped into the girl’s blind spot, grabbed her extended arm, and executed a flawless judo throw.

She used the armored girl’s own massive body weight to hurl her directly over her shoulder, sending her crashing violently into three other charging Shieldmaidens.

CRASH!

They hit the ground in a tangled heap of groaning iron, bruised limbs, and dented breastplates.

Brida lunged through the opening, her face twisted in combat focus.

The Level 17 Shieldmaiden dropped her center of gravity and threw a massive sweeping right hook designed to cave in a monster’s skull.

Eluned parried it with two fingers.

She caught the heavy gauntlet by the wrist, perfectly redirecting the brutal force in a tight circle. Before Brida could even pull her arm back,

Eluned stepped directly into the warlord’s personal guard.

"That’s cheatin–"

She flattened her hand and delivered a lightning-fast, open-palm strike directly to the exact dead center of Brida’s reinforced iron breastplate.

BANG!

The concussive crack echoed like a cannon shot across the courtyard.

Even without a single drop of offensive mana, the raw physical stat output of the SSS-Rank strike sent the heavy warlord skidding violently backward.

Brida’s boots carved twin trenches into the dirt for a full twenty feet before her balance completely failed, dropping her hard onto her back, gasping desperately for oxygen.

"You’re too slow, Brida..." Eluned taunted, casually examining her fingernails.

She didn’t even have a bead of sweat on her forehead. "Your telegraphing is embarrassing. I could read that punch last Tuesday."

Fenna tried to be smart.

The nimble rogue utilized the distraction of the heavy infantry to scale a nearby wooden weapon rack.

She kicked off the top rung, launching herself into a silent, high-velocity aerial dive, trying to tackle Eluned directly from the blind spot above her head.

Eluned didn’t even bother looking up.

She simply took half a step backward.

As Fenna plummeted past her face, Eluned reached up, grabbed the rogue entirely by the back of her leather collar mid-air, and smoothly slammed her straight down onto the ground right next to the groaning Tamsin.

THUD!

"Two," Eluned noted, looking down at the dazed rogue.

It was honestly embarrassing.

It wasn’t a sparring session... It was like watching a grandmaster martial artist brutally dismantle a dozen toddlers at a playground!

The rest of the Vanguard side-girls... the archers, the scouts, the rear-guard infantry realized the heavy hitters were already eating dirt and rushed in out of loyalty.

Eluned merely sighed, finally uncrossing her arms.

"Fine. Let’s clear the trash."

She weaved through the chaotic crowd with her silver-green hair whipping around in a gorgeous, terrifying arc as she delivered a sequence of precise anatomical strikes.

She dropped low, executing a flawless, 360-degree sweeping leg kick that violently cut the feet out from under five charging scouts at once.

They hit the stone tiles with a synchronized chorus of pained yelps.

A heavy-set infantry girl tried to tackle her from behind.

Eluned smoothly pivoted, driving a sharp, two-knuckle jab directly into a specific nerve cluster in the girl’s shoulder.

The infantry woman’s entire right side instantly went completely paralyzed, dropping her to the grass like a severed puppet.

WHOOSH! BAM! CRACK!

She was tossing fully armored, battle-hardened mercenary women around the training courtyard like they weighed absolutely nothing.

Every single time a girl stepped into her three-foot radius, they were instantly put down by a deflection, a joint lock, or a completely unavoidable trip.

Aeliana tried to flank her from the rear, rushing in with her wooden training staff humming with a faint layer of blue acceleration magic.

The Elf thrust the blunt end of the staff directly toward the back of Eluned’s knees.

Eluned didn’t even turn around.

She reached her hand behind her back and caught the incoming wooden staff perfectly between her thumb and index finger and the force instantly died.

Aeliana’s eyes went wide, her boots skidding to a halt.

She tried to yank the staff back, but it felt like the wood was encased in solid concrete.

’As expected of Goddess Eluned...’

Eluned smoothly yanked the staff forward, pulling the Elf completely off balance.

As Aeliana stumbled directly into her personal space, Eluned turned around and tapped her lightly on the center of the forehead with a single manicured finger.

"Boop," Eluned said cheerfully. "You’re dead~"

Aeliana groaned in deep frustration, letting go of the staff and falling backward onto the grass in total defeat.

Within exactly ten minutes, the entire private courtyard was a complete disaster zone.

All the women of Silas’s elite crew were scattered across the cracked stone tiles and the ripped-up dirt.

The air was filled with the sound of groaning, panting, and the clinking of dented armor as girls rolled over, rubbing their bruised shoulders and completely exhausted muscles.

Eluned stood in the exact, dead center of the ruined courtyard.

She was completely untouched. Her breathing was at a perfectly steady resting pace.

There wasn’t a single speck of dust, dirt, or grass on the hem of her pristine dress.

She let out a long satisfied sigh, casually dusting her pale hands off.

"Well," Eluned said with a smug punchable grin spreading across her flawless face as she looked down at the sea of defeated women. "It seems the Lord’s bed remains exclusively min—"

CLANG!

The heavy loud sound of thick cast iron directly impacting a human skull echoed sharply across the quiet courtyard.

It sounded like a church bell ringing inside a submarine.

Eluned’s entire body went completely rigid.

Her smug grin instantly froze.

Her wide glowing eyes rolled entirely back into her head, exposing nothing but the whites of her sclera.

The SSS-Rank Goddess’s knees buckled inward, and she folded exactly like a cheap aluminum lawn chair, face-planting directly into the dirt completely unconscious.

Standing right behind her, holding the exact posture of a baseball player who had just hit a home run, was Kaelia.

The S-Rank Chef was still wearing her pristine white cooking apron. She was gripping a massive forty-pound cast-iron frying pan with both of her delicate hands.

She hadn’t emitted a single ounce of killing intent and she hadn’t triggered any combat skills as her culinary class naturally masked her presence, letting her walk right through the chaotic battlefield completely unnoticed while carrying a piece of kitchenware that weighed more than a cinderblock.

Kaelia was trembling slightly with her wide innocent eyes looking down at the unconscious, drooling deity twitching at her feet.

The entire courtyard of groaning soldiers went instantly dead silent as the women paused their groaning to stare at the gentle, soft-spoken cook in disbelief.

Kaelia slowly lowered the massive frying pan, resting it against her knee.

A small adorable blush spread across her cheeks as she looked around at the battered Vanguard.

"D-did I win?" Kaelia asked softly with her voice barely a whisper.

Brida, lying flat on her back in the dirt ten feet away, slowly raised a trembling thumb into the air.

"Yeah, girl," the warlord wheezed, rubbing her bruised sternum. "You won."

---

The Receptionist walked quickly with her sensible office heels clicking rapidly against the polished marble floor of the Lord Association Building.

Her hands were visibly shaking.

She didn’t lead him toward the standard elevator banks where the ordinary Lords queued up to deposit their miserable little goblin ears.

Instead, she bypassed the public sector entirely and led him toward a heavy, reinforced steel security door at the very back of the administrative wing.

She swiped her high-clearance badge over a glowing runic scanner.

The thick metal doors hissed open with a pneumatic release, revealing a wide descending stone ramp that led deep into the subterranean bowels of the massive, bureaucratic fortress.

As Silas walked down the ramp, the filtered floral-scented air of the upper lobby was rapidly replaced by a foul industrial stench.

It smelled aggressively of potent alchemical preservatives, concentrated bleach, burning ozone, and the reek of rotting butchered monster flesh.

It was a smell Silas was incredibly familiar with.

The terrified clerk stopped completely at the bottom of the ramp, refusing to step onto the main floor.

She gestured with a trembling finger toward a massive underground warehouse lined with thick, heavy concrete sorting pools before practically fleeing back up the stairs to the safety of her pristine lobby desk.

Silas didn’t mind.

He adjusted the collar of his dark coat with a smile touching his lips as he prepared to completely, irreversibly shatter the Association’s financial ledgers for today.

The subterranean appraisal basin stretched out like a massive cavern beneath the LAB.

It looked less like a corporate office and more like a high-tech industrial slaughterhouse.

Heavy, humming fluorescent magical lights buzzed aggressively overhead, casting a harsh sterile glare over the sprawling rows of thick concrete pools.

Silas walked forward, his heavy boots echoing loudly off the concrete.

Sitting behind a metal desk near the center of the warehouse was the chief appraiser.

He was a grizzled and fat, thoroughly exhausted-looking man wearing a thick blood-stained alchemical rubber apron and a pair of heavy magnifying goggles pushed up onto his receding hairline.

He was chewing aggressively on the end of a cheap unlit cigar, rapidly flipping through a stack of paper ledgers.

He didn’t even bother looking up as Silas approached the desk.

"Drop your bag on the scale, kid," the appraiser grunted with his voice sounding exactly like grinding river gravel. "Thirty Tier 1s, right? Standard slimes, goblins, or mutated rats? Keep the elemental cores separate from the physical pelts if you want the full market value. If I have to dig a core out of a sternum myself, I’m docking you a ten percent processing fee."

Silas stopped right in front of the desk.