He didn’t reach into his coat for a dripping canvas bag and he didn’t wear a shiny spatial ring on his finger like the wealthy nepotism-funded aristocrats who usually flooded these halls.

’I still don’t get the thing of wearing luxury storage rings when you already have a Lord Inventory too... what the hell man?’

"I am not depositing thirty." Silas stated.

His deep voice completely cut through the ambient hum of the warehouse ventilators, making a chill go down the man’s spine.

The appraiser sighed heavily, finally looking up from his ledgers, clearly preparing to lecture another failing novice about mandatory quotas but his annoyed dismissive expression immediately faltered.

He took in the sight of the young man standing across from him.

The golden sovereign ring burning violently within Silas’s cold blue eyes made the older man instinctively lean backward in his rusted metal chair with the hairs on his arms standing up.

’Why the hell is a handsome bastard here?!’

"Look, Lord Graves, I saw your registry ping on the network," the appraiser said with his voice instantly losing its rough edge, taking on a careful highly professional caution. "I know you’re an Excellent-Grade Blue Core... I know the first survival trial is brutal out there in the fringe zones but the quota is an absolute thirty. If you only brought back fifteen or twenty pelts, the Association’s automated system will immediately freeze your weekly stipends. I don’t make the rules, pal. I just count the meat."

"You misunderstood me," Silas corrected him, his expression entirely flat, completely devoid of warmth. "I brought one hundred."

The appraiser froze.

The cheap unlit cigar slipped completely from the corner of his mouth, bouncing off his rubber apron and landing on the bloody concrete floor with a tap.

"One... hundred?" the man stuttered, blinking rapidly as his brain tried to process the impossibility of that number.

He stared at Silas, desperately looking for any sign of a joke or youthful exaggeration.

"One hundred corpses? Boy, did you miscount? Did you bring me a hundred pieces of a single goblin? Or did you just spend the entire seven days doing absolutely nothing but butchering the lowest, weakest standard fodder in the dirt?"

"I didn’t miscount," Silas confirmed smoothly. "Point me to a pool big enough to hold them."

The grizzled man swallowed hard with a drop of cold sweat rolling down his temple.

He stood up, grabbing a heavy rune-etched clipboard from his desk.

He walked past Silas, giving the young terrifying Lord a very wide respectful berth, and led him toward the absolute largest sorting basin in the sector.

It was a massive empty concrete pool, easily the size of an Olympic swimming arena, designed specifically to hold the combined massive hauls of entire corporate guild squads returning from week-long dungeon raids.

"Here," the appraiser said, gesturing to the cavernous empty basin. "Let’s see what you actually dragged back from the dirt."

Silas stepped right up to the edge of the concrete drop-off.

He simply accessed the massive, limitless digital storage of his Sovereign Interface and visualized the specific organized mountain of flesh he had ordered his Vanguard to butcher and separate back in the estate courtyard.

"Clear the splash zone..." Silas warned casually.

The appraiser frowned, taking two quick steps back behind a plexiglass blast shield.

Silas triggered the absolute release.

The air directly above the massive concrete basin violently warped.

A massive twenty-foot tear in the spatial fabric ripped open with the sound of tearing canvas, and the contents of his inventory spilled directly out into reality.

It wasn’t a neat and organized polite drop... It was a suffocating avalanche of high-tier gore.

Ninety-nine heavy, fully armored Tier 2 beasts cascaded violently from the spatial rift like a morbid waterfall.

Massive, jagged Bone-Plate Crawlers and sleek void-black Shadow Stalkers crashed into the concrete floor with sickening bone-rattling thuds.

Corrosive black blood, still fresh from the morning’s absolute slaughter, splattered violently against the reinforced concrete walls.

The combined physical weight of the bodies cracked the floor of the basin, piling up into a jagged, thirty-foot mountain of dark fur, shattered carapace, and severed limbs but the true nightmare came last.

CRASH!

With a deafening sound that literally vibrated the dust off the ceiling fixtures, the colossal headless torso of the Tier 3 Abyssal Gore-Fiend plummeted from the rift.

The twenty-foot, two-ton behemoth landed directly on top of the pile of lesser beasts, violently crushing several of the Tier 2 carcasses completely flat under its immense gray bone-plated bulk.

The severed stump of its massive neck leaked a thick, foul, highly toxic dark sludge that rapidly pooled in the center of the warehouse drain and the spatial tear snapped shut instantly.

Dead silence rushed aggressively back into the underground warehouse, broken only by the wet sound of black monster blood dripping heavily down the concrete drain grates.

The appraiser’s jaw had literally dropped!

His eyes were completely wide, entirely consumed by the reality-breaking shock.

He stared at the mountain of dead, high-tier monsters with his calloused hands trembling so violently he nearly dropped his glowing runic clipboard.

He looked at the severed neck of the colossal Tier 3 beast, then slowly, agonizingly turned his head to stare at the young man standing completely calmly at the edge of the pool.

"That... that is a Tier 3 Calamity Boss. I’m sure of it..." the appraiser whispered.

His voice violently cracked, entirely stripped of its professional detachment.

"That is an Abyssal Gore-Fiend... The bone plating on that thing’s sternum can literally stop a siege cannon blast without scratching the marrow."

"I mean, it couldn’t stop my sword," Silas replied with a shrug as the appraiser’s brain violently crashed.

He rapidly ran the statistical, historical calculations in his head.

A Tier 3 Boss wasn’t a standard mob.

It was a natural disaster.

To bring one down during the initial Novice Trial, a Lord usually needed a Purple Core, a heavily entrenched fortress, and a small, highly paid army of perfectly coordinated veteran mercenaries.

For a solo, newly awakened Blue Core Lord to drag one back, alongside ninety-nine elite Tier 2 beasts, was statistically impossible. It defied every single known metric of the Sovereign Realm!

"You killed this?" the appraiser breathed out, taking a cautious step closer to the massive carcass, his boots splashing in the toxic black blood. "Alone?"

"Appraise the haul," Silas commanded, completely ignoring the terrified question. "I have places to be, and I want my ledger updated."

The man visibly flinched at the heavy tone.

He didn’t ask any more questions.

His primal survival instincts screamed at him not to dig into the secrets of a walking predator capable of casually decapitating a behemoth before breakfast.

The appraiser frantically tapped a sequence of complex runes on his clipboard.

A glowing, wide-beam blue scanning grid projected outward from the artifact, sweeping methodically and rapidly over the mountain of corpses.

The magical AI instantly cataloged the density of the elemental monster cores still lodged in their chests, the structural quality of their bone armor, and the baseline market value of their intact pelts.

The numbers rapidly climbed on the digital screen, spinning like a slot machine.

"Alright... alright," the appraiser muttered, wiping sweat off his forehead with a blood-stained sleeve as he read the data. "Tier 1 baseline is usually a few hundred credits but these are all high-grade Tier 2s. The market is flooded right now, so pelts and cores for the Crawlers and Stalkers... they’re pricing out at around three thousand Spirit Credits a piece."

The appraiser ran the mental math. "Ninety-nine Tier 2s at three grand each. That’s two hundred and ninety-seven thousand SC."

The man swallowed hard with his eyes darting back to the massive headless bulk resting on top of the pile.

"But this... the Gore-Fiend. It’s a completely intact torso. The leviathan bone-plating alone is highly sought after by the corporate weapon-smiths for heavy vanguard shields and the core density is pristine."

The man tapped the final tally button.

The machine chimed, calculating the baseline value and immediately subtracting the Association’s mandatory Lord Tax from the gross total.

"Lord Graves," the appraiser said, his voice carrying a deep, terrifying reverence. "The Gore-Fiend appraises at exactly one million flat. After the standard state tax on the total haul... your final payout is one million, two hundred and ninety-seven thousand Spirit Credits."

The appraiser looked at the number on the screen, then looked back at Silas.

"Sir, for any singular transaction over one million SC, I cannot authorize the wire transfer myself. The system locks it so I have to call the Floor Director down here to manually input the executive override."

"Then call him," Silas stated, crossing his arms.

The appraiser practically sprinted to the heavy iron rotary phone on his desk.

Exactly three minutes later, the reinforced security doors at the top of the ramp hissed open.

A well-dressed, slightly overweight man in a pristine, tailored silk suit hurried down the stairs, flanked by the terrified receptionist from earlier.

The Floor Director was sweating.

He took one look at the massive bleeding mountain of high-tier corpses in the pool, then looked at the young Lord standing calmly by the edge.

The Director’s capitalist brain instantly kicked into high gear.

The Association didn’t just regulate Lords... they profited off them and letting over a million Spirit Credits walk out the front door into the civilian economy was a cardinal sin.

The Director rushed forward, pulling out a glowing executive authorization slate, slapping his hand onto it to approve the massive transfer.

"Lord Graves! An absolute marvel!" the Director praised as his voice oozed with greasy corporate charisma. "An astonishing haul for a Novice Trial! Truly, the rumors of your combat prowess were severely understated."

Silas felt the distinct vibration of his Spirit Phone in his pocket.

He pulled the sleek black device out, looking at the banking notification illuminating the glass screen.

[Deposit Received: 1,297,000 SC. Current Balance: 1,301,950 SC.]

He locked the phone, fully intending to turn around and walk out.

"Wait, Lord Graves, please!" the Director interjected smoothly, stepping in front of Silas’s path with a perfectly welcoming smile. "Before you return to your estate, surely a Lord of your incredible caliber realizes that hunting Tier 3 Calamities requires constant maintenance of one’s arsenal?"

Silas paused with his blue eyes narrowing slightly. "Get to the point."

"The point, my Lord, is that walking around with over a million liquid credits is inefficient," the Director pitched, gesturing broadly to the sprawling underground complex. "The Association houses the absolute finest, highest-grade magical armory in this entire sector. Weapons, defensive artifacts, tactical skill scrolls... items you simply cannot procure on the civilian black market."

The Director leaned in, lowering his voice conspiratorially.

"With the funds you just acquired, you could outfit your entire army in enchanted steel. Why walk out those doors when the tools to secure your next ten million are right down the hall?"

Silas looked at the greasy man. It was a blatant corporate upsell since they wanted the money right back in their own ecosystem but the Director wasn’t wrong.

Silas needed to equip his girls.

Beating them up in the courtyard was one thing, but if they were going to survive the incoming wars, they needed gear that didn’t shatter after three parries and besides he could upgrade them too.

"Fine," Silas agreed, his voice flat. "Where are the weapons?"

The Receptionist, eager to please and clearly operating on the promise of a massive commission bonus, stepped forward instantly with a bright professional smile.

"Right this way, Lord Graves," she said, gesturing toward a heavy set of double doors at the far end of the warehouse. "I’ll show you to the internal magical armory."