Down on the floorboards, Gunnhild suddenly realized something in the echoing silence in the hall.

She realized she had screamed the quiet part out loud in front of her entire standing army.

Gunnhild frantically buried her burning face into her forearms, desperately attempting to salvage her shattered military dignity.

"I mean... ow," Gunnhild said in a flat monotone voice that wouldn’t have convinced a toddler. "My ass hurts so terribly much, my Lord. The physical discipline is severe and devastating. I am learning my lesson."

Silas let out a long exhausted sigh.

He didn’t swing a third time as he simply looped the heavy leather belt back around his waist, smoothly threading it through his trousers and snapping the iron buckle shut.

"Get back in formation," Silas ordered, rubbing his temples to stave off an impending migraine.

Gunnhild scrambled up from the stone floor as fast as her legs could push her. She bowed so deeply her chin nearly hit her kneecaps.

"Thank you, my Lord! I swear on my spear I won’t ever break a window again!"

She turned and practically sprinted back to her assigned spot in the front row, dropping instantly back to one knee.

As she lowered her head, she bit her bottom lip hard, her mind racing as she physically felt her internal organs vibrating from the electrifying thrill of his direct physical touch.

Silas ignored the flustered spearwoman.

He turned his broad shoulders and stepped up onto the raised stone dais at the front of the Garrison, overlooking the seventy kneeling women.

He cleared his throat with the low sound instantly commanded absolute silence across the hall.

"I have officially returned from the Land of the Gods," Silas announced loudly with his voice sounding effortlessly over the crackling wall torches. "And during my business excursion in the commercial sector of my home world, I spent a massive amount of liquid capital securing gifts for every single woman currently standing under my banner."

The entire Garrison went dead as they became totally silent.

Seventy two pairs of eyes widened in simultaneous shock as the heavy clatter of armor completely ceased.

Near the front of the formation, Aeliana... the Royal Elven arcanist who served as his primary logistical adjutant blinked rapidly.

She clutched her heavy wooden ledger and ink pen tightly against her chest with her analytical mind completely short-circuiting.

’Did he really just say that?’ Aeliana thought. ’Did my Lord actually spend his own private hard-earned commercial funds to procure a physical gift for every single person in this group?!’

She could guess the brutal economic reality of Valoria City and the Lord Association. Liquid Spirit Credits were the absolute lifeblood of a territory’s growth since her Lord told her.

Most rookie Lords hoarded every single coin they earned to purchase high-tier defensive structures, Summoning tickets or personal alchemical elixirs to boost their own cores.

Spending liquid capital to buy individual civilian items for expendable rank-and-file summoned troops was unheard of.

It was an act of irrational generosity.

In the second row, one of the scout archers tentatively raised her trembling hand into the air, breaking the rigid military protocol.

Silas looked down from the dais and nodded toward her. "Speak."

"Gifts... for all of us, my Lord?" the young archer asked as her voice shook with disbelief. "Even... even the standard rank-and-file? Not just the commanders?"

"Yes," Silas confirmed smoothly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Gifts for all of you. From the heavy infantry captains down to the perimeter scouts."

The effect was instantaneous, explosive, and entirely unexpected.

A chaotic overlapping chorus of sharp gasps, muffled sniffles, and sudden, heavy weeping echoed violently across the stone hall.

Several of the hardened battle-scarred women in the back rows... warriors who had casually tanked the crushing blows of the monsters during the Novice Trial without flinching began openly crying in unison.

Tears streamed down their calloused cheeks as they frantically wiped at their eyes with their metallic gauntlets.

Silas stood on the dais, completely taken aback by the sudden emotional breakdown of his army.

He violently sweatdropped.

"Why are you all crying?" Silas asked, genuinely confused by the waterworks. "It’s just gear."

"We haven’t ever received a gift in our entire lives, my Lord!" one of the heavy shieldmaidens in the third row wept loudly, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

"In the frontier cities we were summoned from, rank-and-file soldiers are just cannon fodder!" another girl sobbed from the middle of the formation. "We expected you only brought presents back for the top commanders you usually talk with in the Keep! We thought only Lady Eluned and Captain Brida were getting anything!"

Silas stood perfectly still on the raised platform, staring down at his weeping armed women.

His Earth-hardened exterior melted away for a brief fleeting moment as a sudden uncharacteristic wave of genuine warmth softened his usually sharp features.

He didn’t scold them for breaking formation nor did he order them to stop crying.

Instead, he tilted his head slightly to the side and offered them a genuine and slightly shy smile that completely transformed his rugged face.

"All of you are important to me," Silas told them gently. "You hold the walls of my territory while I sleep... You bleed in the freezing mud for my standard... You are my soldiers. Why wouldn’t I give you gifts?"

It was a critical direct hit to their collective hearts.

The emotional damage was too much!

The women instantly stopped crying. Their tears dried on their cheeks in a fraction of a second.

Their faces simultaneously flushed a blinding shade of crimson that rivaled a volcanic eruption as their collective heartbeats spiked into dangerous alarming rhythms.

’Why is our Lord so incredibly, unfairly cute?!’ seventy distinct thoughts screamed in perfect harmony. ’He looks like a cold terrifying warlord, but he smiles like a gentle prince! I would die a thousand deaths for this man!’

Silas didn’t give his army time to recover from the psychological critical hit.

He casually raised his right hand, swiping two fingers smoothly through the empty air in front of him.

His digital Lord Inventory flared to life instantly.

A massive, swirling spatial tear... glowing with a brilliant stabilized blue runic light ripped open directly above the center of the Garrison floorboards.

Dozens of heavy, individually wrapped packages, thick canvas bundles, and sleek black leather garment bags began streaming out of the void, piling up onto the stone floor in a massive expensive mountain of textiles.

"Eluned," Silas called out over his shoulder toward the entrance of the Garrison. "Get over here and help me distribute these to the—"

He stopped mid-sentence.

He looked past the kneeling rows toward the heavy iron double doors of the hall.

Eluned, the SSS-Rank Goddess of Nature was still slouched heavily against the stone doorframe.

She was completely compromised by Kaelia’s ninety-proof bootleg moonshine, clutching an empty bottle to her chest while blubbering incoherently to herself about how shiny his greatsword was.

The overarching nuke of his territory was currently logistically useless.

Before Silas could let out an annoyed sigh, a young shieldmaiden kneeling in the fourth row eagerly leaped to her feet and stepped forward from the ranks.

"I will gladly assist with the distribution, my Lord!" the girl volunteered brightly, bowing her head with intense enthusiasm. "It is completely alright if you do not know all of our individual names or designations! I can read the shipping tags and manually distribute them to the squads!"

Silas looked down at the young volunteer. His expression remained calm and composed.

"Be at ease," Silas said smoothly with his voice radiating effortless competence. "I know every single one of your names and faces."

He didn’t rely on a manual distributor, and he certainly didn’t need to read tags.

Keeping his Mythic Gold Core actively ignited, Silas tapped into his control of the things that were exiting his Inventory channeling his mental authority directly through the glowing blue spatial interface floating above the room.

With a subtle calculated flick of his wrist, he commanded the massive pile of packages.

The heavy bundles instantly levitated into the air.

Controlled by his razor-sharp spatial awareness and computer-like memory, seventy individual packages shot smoothly across the Garrison in dozens of different trajectories.

Not a single bundle collided and not a single package was dropped.

With terrifying precision, every single canvas-wrapped gift landed gently and accurately directly into the open waiting palms of its exact, designated owner across the kneeling formation.

The young shieldmaiden who had volunteered to help felt a heavy package drop smoothly into her hands.

She looked down.

Written clearly across the attached parchment tag, inked in her Lord’s own clean, assertive handwriting, was her exact name: Maren.

Maren’s breath caught in her throat.

Her eyes glittered with bright unshed tears of pure joy as she looked up at her towering ruggedly handsome Sovereign standing effortlessly on the dais.

’My Lord... my Lord actually knows my exact name?!’ Maren thought with her chest swelling with a wave of fanatical devotion so intense it felt like her ribs would crack. ’Out of more than Seventy women here, he knows who I am! I am not just cannon fodder to him!’

Once the final package settled into waiting hands and the glowing blue spatial rift snapped shut, Silas clapped his hands once to draw their collective attention back to the dais.

"The bundles you just received contain standard Tier 3 Enchanted Wear," Silas explained to the hall, stepping to the edge of the platform. "I explicitly purchased heavy canvas tunics, reinforced combat trousers, and winter trench coats tailored for this environment. They possess passive auto-fitting runes and internal climate-control matrices to keep you warm in the monsoon rains and prevent kinetic friction burns during combat."

He paused, his golden-ringed gaze sweeping over the front row of his veteran fighters.

A knowing motivating smirk touched his lips.

"However," Silas continued with a nod of his head, these kind of stuff would certainly make the girls try harder, wouldn’t they? "I also acquired special expensive additional gifts exclusively for the commanders and rank-and-file girls who have put in extraordinary work defending this territory so far."

He tapped his own chest with a heavy fist.

"If any of you want special high-tier gifts in the future," Silas challenged them openly. "Then you have to put in the work on the battlefield to earn them. Show me your value in the dirt, and I will reward you like royalty."

A massive deafening cheer erupted simultaneously from seventy throats, rattling the iron torches on the walls.

The woman’s morale skyrocketed through the stone roof of the Garrison as their warrior spirits burned with fierce bloodthirsty ambition.

In the center of the front row, Brida... his towering infantry commander eagerly ripped the paper string off her heavy package first.

The thick reinforced canvas and sleek black leather garments spilled out into her massive calloused hands.

She blinked rapidly, her drunken eyes widening as her fingers brushed against the fabric.

Brida felt the heavy, unyielding tensile strength of the woven fibers. She felt the subtle hum of the defensive runes embedded directly into the seams.

"My Lord..." Brida gasped out, looking up at the dais in sheer awe. "You got us high-tier clothes?"

The shock of holding multi-thousand-credit magical armor completely bypassed her system.

The lingering buzz of Kaelia’s ninety-proof moonshine was instantly wiped from her brain as her drunkenness evaporated on the spot, replaced entirely by razor-sharp martial focus.

Silas smiled down at his heavy infantry commander, pleased by her quick recognition of the quality.

"Yes," Silas said warmly. "I specifically picked out clothes that would fit your heavy build perfectly, with widened shoulders and gussets so your shield mobility won’t be—"

Brida didn’t let him finish the technical specifications.

"Thank you, my Lord!" Brida roared gratefully, her voice booming across the hall.

The towering tall juggernaut stood straight up from the stone floor. Her battle-hardened face was set with fanatical determination.

"I must test their durability and combat mobility immediately!" Brida declared loudly.

Before Silas could offer a word of warning or before anyone could suggest stepping into a private changing screen, Brida took immediate direct action.

She grabbed the collar of her standard stained Vanguard tunic with both of her massive calloused hands.

With a single, explosive heave of her thick arms, she pulled violently outward.

RIP!