Silas sat down casually on the edge of the mattress.

The springs groaned slightly under his Gold Core weight.

"I’d do that without all of this elaborate acting, you know," Silas told her honestly and Eluned’s head snapped up.

Her glowing green eyes went wide.

"You would?" Eluned asked, her voice breathless.

"Obviously," Silas confirmed, leaning slightly toward her. "You don’t need to pretend to be a sloppy drunk just to get my attention. But more importantly..."

He paused with a small smile crossing his rugged face.

"My specific gift for you still needs to be given."

Eluned’s eyes instantly lit up like literal supernovas.

The excitement completely wiped away her previous embarrassment.

’I thought my Lord had forgotten about me...’ Eluned thought.

She scrambled forward on the mattress, closing the distance between them until she was sitting perfectly on her knees right in front of him.

"I would absolutely love it, my Lord!" Eluned cheered eagerly with her silver-green hair bouncing around her shoulders.

Silas didn’t hesitate. He held his right hand out over the dark bedsheets.

He ignited his core.

A small flash of blue light erupted from his palm as he reached directly into the digital void of his Sovereign Inventory.

The exact second the item breached the threshold of physical reality, Eluned physically flinched.

The pupils of her glowing green eyes shrunk into tiny, terrified awestruck pinpricks.

She could feel it....

The terrifying density of the life magic radiating from his hand hit her divine senses like a physical shockwave...

It bypassed her physical body entirely and resonated directly against her very soul...

’This aura...’ Eluned’s thoughts shrieked in disbelief. ’It is so incredibly familiar! But it’s completely impossible! This is... a...’

The golden light completely faded, pulling back into Silas’s skin.

It appeared directly in his hand.

It was a long dense pulsing branch.

It was roughly the size and shape of a standard combat staff, but it fundamentally wasn’t a crafted weapon.

The wood was a rich and impossibly deep mahogany, completely laced with thick violently glowing emerald-green veins that pulsed exactly like arteries.

The top of the branch aggressively expanded into a jagged crown of dark roots that curled protectively around a massive floating orb of concentrated purely green mana.

It was the Tier 3 Pseudo-World Tree Branch!

It was a literal physical branch snapped directly from the cosmic World Tree, existing entirely in its early growth stages.

Eluned blinked.

She stopped breathing.

She looked entirely from the pulsing god-tier artifact in his hand directly up to his calm composed face.

"This is your specific reward," Silas told her smoothly. "For being the best Goddess that I could have ever asked for."

Eluned’s hands trembled violently.

She reached out with extreme caution, treating the branch like it was made of fragile explosive glass.

Her slender fingers wrapped gently around the mahogany wood.

The exact second her skin made direct physical contact with the bark, the weapon completely reacted.

She actively built a flawless divine connection with the artifact.

The wood instantly thickened as the emerald veins flared with a blinding level of pure nature mana that entirely illuminated the bedroom in a vibrant green hue.

The floating orb at the top spun rapidly, syncing perfectly with the exact frequency of her SSS-Rank heartbeat.

Then, something unexpected happened...

The destructive staff didn’t just sit in her hands. It began to actively sink directly into her flesh.

The wood glowed brilliantly, completely losing its solid physical form, and rapidly retracted into nothingness, completely absorbing directly into the skin of her palms.

"Huh?"

Silas’s eyes widened slightly.

A glowing blue prompt materialized instantly in his retinas.

[The Pseudo-World Tree Branch (Tier 3) has successfully established a Soul-Bound Link with Subject: Eluned.]

"I had to ensure it was completely safe..." Eluned whispered, staring down at her empty, glowing hands. "So I stored it directly inside my divine blood."

Silas raised an eyebrow, genuinely impressed by the broken mechanics of a deity.

"Oh, you can just do that?" Silas asked casually.

Most high-tier warriors needed expensive spatial rings or inventory pouches to store heavy weaponry.

Eluned just casually absorbed a multi-million if not billion credit piece of a cosmic tree directly into her cardiovascular system like a vitamin supplement.

’Divine biology is completely, entirely unfair,’ Silas analyzed pragmatically.

Eluned looked up at him.

Her heart was beating so incredibly hard against her ribs that it genuinely felt like it was going to violently burst entirely out of her chest.

She looked at the terrifying Sovereign sitting casually on the edge of the bed.

He hadn’t just bought her a dress... He had literally pulled a piece of the cosmos from the ether and handed it directly to her just because she held a wall for him.

She loved her Lord overwhelmingly too much!

Eluned didn’t say thank you.

She violently sprung directly onto him.

She moved with blinding physics-defying divine speed as she tackled his broad chest, instantly wrapping both of her flawless incredibly strong legs securely around his waist.

Using her vastly superior SSS-Rank physical strength, she aggressively pushed his massive Gold Core frame backward, completely pinning him directly down onto the heavy dark mattress.

Silas hit the pillows with a heavy thud.

"You’re really feisty tonight..." Silas commented smoothly, unbothered by being violently manhandled by a Goddess.

Eluned didn’t let him speak another word.

She leaned down and began aggressively kissing him.

It wasn’t a soft timid romantic peck like their former ones... it was a messy dominant clash of lips.

’Like my lord taught me...’ Eluned thought.

SMACK!

She pressed her entire body weight flush against his chest with her hands tangling violently into his dark hair, completely trying to consume him.

Silas didn’t hesitate.

He never retreated from a direct frontal assault.

He kissed her back just as aggressively.

SMACK!

He matched her energy perfectly, dominating the exchange.

It was incredibly sexy.

The intoxicating scent of nature magic completely flooded his senses.

He could feel the heat radiating from her divine core pressing directly against his stomach.

Silas shifted his position slightly on the mattress.

His large alloused hands slid smoothly down the curve of her spine.

"Mmmph~"

He didn’t hesitate.

Silas forcefully grabbed two firm handfuls of her soft, completely exposed ass.

He squeezed hard.

Eluned’s violently glowing eyes shot completely wide open.

"Hnnngh~"

A shockwave of panic completely short-circuited her entire divine nervous system.

She violently broke the kiss.

Eluned then scrambled entirely off his chest, pulling forcefully to the side of the massive oak bed.

She aggressively grabbed the heavy dark duvet covers and frantically wrapped them tightly around her entire body like a defensive cocoon, completely hiding her flushed skin from his view.

She was breathing heavily with her face burning with a deep blush.

’Why is my Lord so incredibly feisty today?!’ Eluned thought while glancing back.

She was out of her depth.

Before being brutally betrayed in her native realm by her Pantheon, Eluned had been a pure Goddess.

And she technically still was.

She wasn’t a biological human as she didn’t possess the inherent instinctual mammalian drive to procreate.

Gods were born from the ether, spawned from the collective beliefs of mortals or the sheer density of a concept.

Sex was an entirely strange and a completely alien feeling to her.

No God that she knew had ever actually experienced physical intimacy before.

They viewed mortals like insects.

So, sitting on his bed, feeling the sudden, overwhelming heat pooling heavily in her lower stomach, Eluned was completely terrified.

She couldn’t exactly say she didn’t want to do it... She loved him enough to completely let him destroy her but she wasn’t familiar with the actual mechanics of the whole thing.

’I need to study...’

She was a literal virgin in every conceptual sense of the word.

Silas propped himself up on his elbows on the mattress.

He looked at the terrifying SSS-Rank Goddess currently hiding inside a blanket burrito, shaking like a terrified kitten.

He didn’t push it.

He wasn’t a degenerate villain from a cheap novel who forced himself on women, and he wasn’t a dense anime protagonist who apologized profusely for touching his own girlfriend.

’She’s so incredibly shy,’ Silas though with a smile touching his lips. ’A literal deity of nature, completely terrified of a little physical escalation... I have all the time in the world to break her in.’

He casually shifted across the mattress.

Silas wrapped his heavy arms entirely around her blanket-covered waist.

He didn’t try to pull the covers off.

He just forcefully pulled her entire cocooned body backward, dragging her firmly into his chest for a protective hug.

Silas rested his chin gently on the top of her silver-green hair.

"Let’s sleep..." Silas told her smoothly.

Eluned completely melted.

The panic instantly evaporated, replaced by an overwhelming sense of security.

She completely relaxed her tense muscles against his broad chest, exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster of the night.

She let out a soft contented sound.

"Mmph~"

[The Next Morning].

The heavy relentless monsoon rains of the Umbral Basin had entirely ceased.

The dark, ash-choked sky above the territory was somewhat clear, allowing a smll sickly gray sunlight to finally hit the muddy ground of The Blessed Land.

Every single woman in Blessed Land was currently standing at the exact center of the territory.

They weren’t wearing the cheap canvas tunics they had come in.

They were were standing in perfect, immaculate military rows, fully outfitted in the black reinforced Tier 2 Enchanted Wear Silas had gifted them.

The dark canvas completely absorbed the ambient light.

The identical auto-fitted gear finally made them look like a true professional standing army instead of a regular territory.

They were all standing perfectly at attention, completely focused on the massive toeeitny structure located directly in the center of the muddy courtyard.

The White Archway.

It was a towering pristine construct forged entirely from smooth unblemished white marble, etched with complex dormant summoning runes.

Everybody in the territory knew exactly what this structure was.

It was the undeniable genesis point of their existence in this place.

It was the exact place in which every single one of them had been summoned to the territory by their Sovereign.

Currently, the massive portal was entirely dark and dormant.

Silas stood on the top step of the marble archway, looking down at his assembled army.

He wore his own combat gear with his heavy mythril greatsword strapped securely across his back.

"Similar to exactly how I brought Eluned snd you into this realm," Silas announced loudly with his voice echoing cleanly across the quiet courtyard. "I will formally be summoning another Hero to join us today."

Standing directly next to him on the marble steps, Eluned violently physically flinched.

The Goddess of Nature completely abandoned her stoic divine posture.

She immediately reached out and aggressively clutched his thick bicep with both of her hands.

"Harrumph," Eluned pouted loudly, violently glaring at the dormant white archway.

She was incredibly jealous.

The last thing she wanted was another high-tier insanely powerful woman dragged into the territory to actively compete for her Lord’s extremely limited attention.

She was already constantly fighting off Brida, Tamsin, and Kaelia but despite her intense, burning jealousy, Eluned’s mind was still functional.

She desperately wanted to see exactly what kind of person he pulled...

She knew exactly what kind of hellish apocalyptic monsters lurked deeper in the Sovereign Realm.

If the Lord summoned a competent high-value asset, they could significantly help her protect him.

She just sincerely hoped the new summon was terribly ugly...

’An ugly old woman would be nice...’

Silas completely ignored the pouting Goddess trying to break his arm.

He mentally ran a rapid review of his current army composition.

’I have a flawless heavy infantry tank in Brida to anchor the frontline,’ Silas analyzed perfectly. ’I have lethal high-speed flanking capacity with Tamsin. Fenna provides unparalleled ranged artillery. Rowena offers surgical AoE magic, and Eluned is my nuke with multiple uses.’

It was a flawless defensive lineup but there was a massive glaring hole in his offensive strategy.