Silas looked at the platinum card.

He didn’t need a guild... but blatantly disrespecting a massive corporate entity in the middle of the street was bad logistics.

"I prefer working alone," Silas declined politely.

He reached out and took the heavy platinum card anyway, slipping it into his pocket right next to Elise’s phone number.

"But I will keep the card... The name is Iorno Lelli."

"Lord Lelli," Valerius nodded respectfully. "A pleasure and we will not disturb your evening further."

Valerius grabbed his crying, pathetic younger brother by the collar of his gaudy silk robes and violently dragged him away down the street, ignoring the kid’s muffled protests.

Silas watched them go.

He knew Valerius would immediately run the name "Iorno Lelli" through the central intelligence databases the second he got back to his guildhall.

He would find absolutely nothing, which would only make him more paranoid.

’Perfect... I’ll be back in Blessed Land by then.’ Silas thought.

He turned around and walked toward his idling mag-cab. He reached out, his fingers wrapping around the heavy metal door handle.

He paused.

Silas didn’t open the door yet.

He simply shifted his golden-ringed blue eyes upward, staring directly at the slanted rain-slicked slate roof of the boutique across the street.

There was nothing there.

Just dark shingles and an ornamental stone gargoyle but his Gold Core senses felt the distortion.

The ambient mana in that exact, specific two-foot radius was bending unnaturally, perfectly refracting the neon streetlights to create a flawless illusion.

Someone was standing on the roof, using a highly advanced stealth artifact.

’From where...? The Lord’s Association?’

Well he did bring 100 monsters for them...

Silas simply stared dead-center at the empty space next to the gargoyle for exactly three seconds.

He let the unseen watcher know, with certainty, that their stealth was completely useless.

Silas smirked, pulled the cab door open, and slid into the back seat.

"Driver," Silas commanded, knocking his knuckles against the privacy glass. "Before we hit the final destination, make a detour to the culinary district. I need to buy some high-end kitchen utensils."

"Right away, my Lord..." the driver agreed frantically, pulling the cab away from the curb.

Up on the rain-slicked slate roof of the boutique, the optical illusion fractured. The ambient mana violently destabilized, dropping the stealth field entirely.

Harper materialized next to the stone gargoyle.

The corporate heiress was kneeling on the wet slates with her dark charcoal pantsuit soaked by the wetness of the roof.

Her violet eyes were blown completely wide.

Her perfectly manicured hands were shaking so violently she nearly dropped her glowing runic tracking slate.

Her lips trembled.

"He... he saw right through it?" Harper whispered to the empty air, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

She was wearing a Tier 3 [Void-Walker Pendant].

It completely erased her thermal signature, her mana output, and her optical presence.

It was designed to bypass the security grids of massive corporate fortresses!

And the man hadn’t even squinted... He just stared directly into her eyes through the illusion...

"He didn’t even use a scanning spell," Harper analyzed frantically, pushing her wet, wire-rimmed glasses up her nose. "He just... perceived me. His eyes must have mutated or something."

She looked down at the street where the mag-cab had just vanished into the traffic.

Her father’s arrogant plan to trap him in a fake marriage suddenly felt like trying to put a collar on an active volcano but she would try.

"He’s truly a monster," Harper breathed out with a strange terrifying thrill running straight down her spine.

The mag-cab pulled to a halt outside a massive sprawling industrial kitchen supply warehouse.

Silas stepped out, ignoring the rain that had started falling.

He didn’t view this as a frivolous shopping trip.

Kaelia was a woman in the kitchen so she needed proper gear.

He walked into the warehouse and bypassed the fragile ceramic plates and delicate wine glasses entirely.

He walked directly to the heavy industrial butchery section.

He bought ten massive, solid-steel meat cleavers forged from high-carbon dungeon alloy.

He bought five massive sixty-pound reinforced cast-iron frying pans and he also bought whetstones, heavy-duty aprons, and industrial spice grinders.

He spent thirty thousand credits outfitting his kitchen exactly as he had outfitted his infantry.

He paid the terrified clerk, sucked the massive pile of culinary weaponry into his digital storage and walked back out to the cab.

"We are done shopping," Silas told the driver, shaking the rainwater from his dark hair. "Take me to the Solstice Cafe."

The evening sky over Valoria City had completely darkened into a deep bruised violet by the time the sleek black mag-cab pulled into the central district.

A steady freezing rain fell over the city, slicking the towering glass spires of the commercial sector and flawlessly reflecting the harsh vibrant neon glare of the floating alchemical billboards.

The cab slowed, pulling to a perfectly smooth halt along the manicured, red-painted curb.

Silas stepped out into the freezing rain.

The Solstice Cafe was not a standard civilian coffee shop. It was a highly exclusive, heavily guarded luxury sanctuary specifically established for the city’s wealthy corporate elites and high-ranking Lords!

The exterior architecture was built entirely from imported, pristine white marble.

The entrance was flanked by massive glowing blue mana-lamps that actively repelled the falling rainwater, creating a perfectly dry glowing dome around the front steps.

Silas walked up the marble steps.

He wasn’t wearing a ridiculous gold-trimmed silk robe like the noble he had slapped.

He wore the minimalist tailored black long-sleeved shirt. Regardless he pushed the heavy, brass-trimmed glass doors open and stepped inside.

The interior of the Solstice Cafe was a sprawling display of generational wealth.

Smooth, complex jazz music drifted from a raised corner stage, played by a live ensemble using acoustically enchanted mahogany instruments.

The air inside the cafe smelled heavily of freshly roasted expensive espresso beans, imported floral perfumes, and rich dark pipe tobacco.

Dozens of wealthy patrons wearing custom alchemical silk suits and glittering, gem-encrusted dresses sat in plush, high-backed crimson velvet booths.

The exact moment Silas stepped past the threshold, the ambient noise in the massive room noticeably dropped.

It started near the front entrance and rippled backward through the tables like a wave.

Conversations violently faltered... Crystal wine glasses paused halfway to open mouths...

The wealthy elite patrons of Valoria City were entirely desensitized to standard physical beauty.

Half the people sitting in this room had literally purchased their perfect, flawless cheekbones and symmetrical jawlines from a high-end alchemical vial but the man walking past their tables felt above that

The wealthy women and arrogant men staring at him didn’t just find him attractive...

They felt an overwhelming urge to lower their heads, avert their eyes, and immediately submit.

Silas entirely ignored the stares.

He kept his expression completely deadpan with his cold eyes sweeping the sprawling velvet booths until he finally found his specific target.

Sitting in a secluded, semi-circular leather booth near the massive, rain-streaked bay windows were three familiar faces.

Elora Verinda, the City Lord’s daughter, sat with flawless posture, sipping silently from a delicate, gold-rimmed porcelain cup.

Across from her sat Maya, the purple-haired girl who had desperately tried to latch onto Silas’s arm on Day One at the academy.

Next to Maya sat Jaxon, the other male student who had awakened a core alongside them during the ceremony.

Silas walked over. He smoothly slid into the empty leather seat directly across from Maya, putting him physically to Elora’s immediate right.

"I’m not late, am I?" Silas asked.

His deep voice easily cut through the quiet jazz music as the three of them completely froze, staring at him.

Jaxon’s jaw hung open slightly.

He remembered Silas Graves clearly and this man currently sitting across from him didn’t look like a slum kid.

He looked like a veteran blood-drenched warlord who could casually snap Jaxon’s cervical spine with two fingers and not lose a wink of sleep!

Maya actually dropped her silver stirring spoon directly onto the table with a loud clink.

Her cheeks instantly, violently flared a brilliant, furious shade of crimson.

Her wide eyes darted frantically from the heavy muscle visibly straining against the fabric of Silas’s black shirt up to the piercing golden-ringed gaze pinning her to her seat.

Her breath completely hitched in her throat. Her mind entirely blanked out the carefully rehearsed, flirty greeting she had prepared all week.

Elora was the absolute only one at the table who maintained her aristocratic composure, though her icy blue eyes immediately narrowed into sharp slits.

She could literally feel the suffocating density of the raw mana bleeding passively off his skin... even passively.

"You are right on time, Graves," Elora said smoothly, carefully setting her delicate teacup down onto its saucer.

She looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on his broad shoulders.

"The Novice Trial seems to have agreed with you as you look entirely unharmed."

"I managed," Silas replied simply, resting his forearms on the table.

A waiter dressed in a crisp white vest and black tie hurried over to the table. He looked incredibly nervous as he approached Silas with his hands shaking slightly as he held his notepad.

"C-can I get you anything, sir?" the waiter stammered.

"Black coffee," Silas ordered flatly. "Leave the entire pot."

’I haven’t had Coffee before, it can’t be that bad can it?

The waiter nodded frantically, turned on his heel, and practically sprinted away toward the barista station.

Silas leaned back against the plush velvet cushioning, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He looked closely at the other three Lords sitting at the table.

Jaxon looked completely destroyed.

The young man had a nasty inflamed scar running straight down the right side of his neck that the Association’s expensive healers hadn’t fully managed to close.

His eyes were deeply bloodshot, carrying the traumatized thousand-yard stare of a broken infantry soldier who had seen the abyss.

Maya looked thoroughly exhausted.

Her posture was completely slumped, and her hands shook slightly every single time a loud noise echoed from the rain-slicked street outside the window.

Even Elora, with all her massive aristocratic funding and corporate backing, looked drained.

The untouchable aura she usually projected was visibly fractured. She looked like a CEO who had just survived a hostile takeover.

"So," Silas broke the heavy silence, keeping his tone perfectly neutral. "How was the Sovereign Realm?"

The simple question acted exactly like a sledgehammer hitting a cracked dam.

"It was a complete nightmare," Jaxon blurted out instantly, dragging a shaking hand down his pale tired face.

He leaned forward, his voice completely stripped of any aristocratic pride.

"The academy completely under-prepared us. They lied to our faces. They told us Tier 1 Spirit Beasts were manageable if you drafted a basic local militia! It was a complete lie. My anchor point dropped my territory near a frozen ravine."

Jaxon shivered violently, staring down into his half-empty water glass as if he could see the monsters swimming in it.

"On the third night, a massive pack of mutated dire-wolves breached my wooden palisade walls," Jaxon continued, his voice cracking horribly. "I had 33 soldiers and the wolves tore six of them apart in three minutes."

Jaxon gripped the edge of the table with his knuckles turning white.

"I spent the entire night huddled in the exact center of my Keep, holding an iron spear against the heavy oak door, listening to my own men scream as they were eaten alive in the mud. I barely scraped by with a passing survival rating. I ranked about 200th... but I’m alive at the very least."

Maya nodded in desperate agreement, incredibly eager to validate her own horrific trauma.

"I was dropped directly into a toxic swampland," Maya chimed in with her purple hair falling messily over her bloodshot eyes. "The ambient humidity rusted our basic iron weapons to useless scrap by the second day. We were constantly, relentlessly attacked by highly acidic toxic slimes."

She pulled her sleeve back slightly, revealing a patch of angry, chemically burned skin on her forearm.

"I managed to pull a C-Rank Hero on day one," Maya explained with her voice shaking. "An elemental archer but he lost his entire left arm to acid protecting our primary supply shed. I ended up placing one hundred and ninety-ninth, but the medical and repair costs are going to bleed my entire weekly Association stipend completely dry."

Maya looked at Silas with her eyes pleading for a shared sense of misery.

"It was hell, Silas... Pure hell."