’This is perfect...’ Silas thought, dismissing the glowing blue holographic screen with a casual flick of his wrist.

He had just dissected the new addition to his army, and his gamer-wired brain was practically doing a victory lap.

’Tidal-Blade Arts alone is exactly what I need to train the girls...’ Silas thought while stroking his beardless chin. ’Right now, my girls just swing heavy metal with technique but I need them to individually be able to pull off cool moves... Morwenna is a pure melee powerhouse with elite crowd control. She can redirect momentum, manipulate battlefield positioning with that spectral anchor, and completely lock down an entire grid with localized atmospheric pressure.’

She was the ultimate frontline disruptor... A maestro of violence like he wanted.

He looked back at his new Hero and Morwenna was currently shivering.

She had just spent the last five centuries entirely submerged in freezing high-pressure saltwater at the absolute bottom of an abyssal trench.

Her dark faded leather armor was completely water-logged, clinging tightly to her pale skin like a second layer of freezing ice.

The environment wasn’t helping.

The relentless freezing monsoon rain of the Umbral Basin was actively pouring down on her shoulders, completely failing to help her regulate her violently dropping body temperature.

She looked up at him, wrapping her arms around her chest in a desperate attempt to conserve body heat.

"Captain," Morwenna asked, her teeth chattering slightly.

The grinding sound of her voice was strained against the freezing wind. "Do you have any better clothes on this ship? These are a bit... damp."

Silas stared at her for a second.

His tactical mind hit a sudden embarrassing brick wall.

’Right. Clothes...’ Silas realized, mentally kicking himself.

He hadn’t bought any clothes for her during his massive shopping spree back on Earth.

How was he supposed to know her measurements?

He had purchased custom-tailored wear for Brida, Rowena, Tamsin, and the rest of the existing Vanguard but he simply hadn’t known what the hell he was going to summon from the Summoning card, let alone her exact physical measurements.

’Well it doesn’t matter now... besides I can’t tell the girls to just give their Gifts out, can I?’

Under the Dread Queen’s expectant gaze, Silas turned to the Goddess currently clinging to his side like a highly territorial barnacle.

"Eluned," Silas requested calmly, maintaining his deadpan warlord persona. "Use your nature magic to weave her a new shirt at the very least... Something dry."

Eluned didn’t just refuse.

She made a massive dramatic spectacle of it.

The SSS-Rank Goddess immediately scoffed, aggressively turning her delicate nose up toward the gray ash-choked sky.

She hugged Silas’s arm tighter, glaring at the shivering pirate from the corner of her eye.

"Absolutely not..." Eluned refused stubbornly, her voice dripping with sheer, unadulterated petty spite. "I am not wasting my pristine refined divine mana to clothe a godist pirate who explicitly threatened to smite me thirty seconds ago. Let her freeze."

Silas didn’t argue.

He had survived on Earth long enough to know exactly when a battle wasn’t worth fighting.

Arguing with a jealous, high-tier deity over a piece of clothing was a massive waste of his operational stamina.

He simply reached up to his own collar.

"Alright then..."

Silas unbuckled his rig with a sharp clack, sliding the straps off his shoulders.

He pulled his heavy dark canvas winter coat off and draped it over his forearm and he didn’t stop there.

He reached down, grabbed the hem of his black, highly reinforced tactical shirt, and smoothly pulled it entirely over his head.

Silas stood there bare-chested in the middle of the freezing monsoon rain.

He handed the warm, perfectly dry tactical shirt and the heavy winter coat directly to Morwenna.

"Remove your wet coat and put these on..." Silas instructed smoothly with his voice completely unbothered by the sudden drop in temperature against his own skin.

Morwenna’s stormy gray eyes went completely wide.

She stared directly at his broad, heavily muscled chest.

The carved flawless eight-pack of his Mythic Gold Core physique was fully exposed to the harsh elements, rainwater already sliding down the dense ridges of his abs.

A massive blush violently rushed to her pale water-logged cheeks.

’Ah, they’re so small and cute... but besides the point, My Lord seems to be a very nice person.’ Morwenna thought with a smile.

’I guess I’m doing the shirtless warlord trope now...’ Silas thought while ignoring the cold.

His Vitality stat was high enough that the freezing rain felt like a mild inconvenience at best. ’If I have to flex to keep my new SSS-Rank summon from catching hypothermia, so be it.’

Morwenna didn’t hesitate or act coy.

She quickly stripped off her freezing water-logged leather jacket, tossing the heavy garment carelessly onto the marble stone tiles of the archway.

She eagerly grabbed his black tactical shirt, pulled it over her wet hair, and quickly slipped her arms into his heavy winter coat.

The clothes were comically oversized on her frame. The sleeves of the coat hung past her knuckles, and the hem of the shirt reached halfway down her thighs.

She didn’t care in the slightest as they were incredibly warm.

More importantly, they smelled exactly like him.

’My Lord sure smells nice... and I’ve smelled a lot of men, I wonder why that is?’ Morwenna thought.

Morwenna didn’t try to hide her degeneracy.

She actively buried her nose deep into the thick, fleece-lined collar of his winter coat as she took a deep breath.

The sharp scent of masculine musk completely flooded her heightened senses. It was a massive sensory overload compared to the rotting brine of the ocean floor.

"Thank you for the kindness, Captain..." Morwenna said softly.

A genuine affectionate smile touched her cracked lips.

Silas nodded, casually rolling his bare shoulders.

He turned his attention toward the women that were here in the courtyard.

They were watching the entire interaction with wide suspicious and jealous eyes.

Their Sovereign had just stripped half-naked in the rain for a random woman who crawled out of a puddle.

They were not happy at all...

"Listen up," Silas announced with his deep baritone booming effortlessly over the sound of the pouring rain.

He gestured firmly to the Dread Queen standing beside him in his oversized coat.

"This is Morwenna," Silas stated, establishing the new chain of command. "She is officially your new swordsmanship instructor."

The girls went completely silent.

"She is going to teach all of you how to actually work with your weapons," Silas finished his brutal, pragmatic assessment of their skills. "Instead of just relying on your Phalanx formations."

Morwenna smirked.

She crossed her arms over her chest with the fabric of the coat bunching up. She liked the absolute sound of that.

She was back in her element as she was a captain commanding a crew.

’I better start identifying the weak point here before we get another Lyra situation...’

The girls, however, instantly had a massive insurmountable problem with this administrative update.

"Instructor?!" Brida barked, her deep voice cutting through the rain.

The towering infantry commander stepped aggressively out of the Garrison threshold.

She rested the massive, violently pulsing Tier 3 weapon directly on her heavily muscled shoulder.

"With all absolute due respect, my Lord!" Brida yelled, pointing a massive finger at the pirate. "She just got here! We’ve been actively bleeding in the mud for this territory! We survived the Tide! If she wants to waltz in here and boss us around, she has to actually prove herself!"

"Yeah!" Fenna agreed loudly from the back of the formation, stringing an arrow into her bow. "She looks like a washed-up, drowned rat!"

Morwenna didn’t get offended and she didn’t scowl or yell back. The predatory gleam instantly returned to her stormy gray eyes.

"I don’t mind a little mutiny," Morwenna laughed out loud.

She stepped completely away from Silas.

She reached down and began slowly drawing her rusted iron anchor chain through her hands with the heavy metal clinking menacingly in the rain as she threw it aside immediately.

"I love a good spar to get the blood flowing," Morwenna taunted the massive woman. "Pick your absolute strongest, girls... I’m down for it."

Silas frowned.

He didn’t want a spar... He wanted to sleep!

’Are you all not seeing all of this rain?! A cool morning means good sleep!’

He stepped forward, raising a hand to shut the impending violence down.

"Let’s not do this right now," Silas tried to intervene purely for the sake of his own army’s physical safety. "Brida, Morwenna has a lot of vitality as she is a very powerful entity. She will literally break your bones into powder."

Morwenna reached out.

She placed her hand on Silas’s bare arm and gently, firmly pushed his hand down.

"You can’t force respect, Captain," Morwenna interrupted smoothly, never taking her feral eyes off Brida. "A crew only follows strength... I need to prove myself to them. Let me show them exactly why you summoned me."

Silas looked back and forth between the two women.

He saw the eager bloodthirsty smiles plastered on both of their faces.

They were frontier warriors so they communicated exclusively through blunt force trauma.

If he stopped the fight now, the girls would never respect her authority, and Morwenna would feel undermined.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Fine," Silas relented, completely washing his hands of the liability. "Just try not to kill anyone...."

Exactly ten minutes later, the entire standing army had completely relocated.

They were standing in the massive muddy field located directly behind the Warlord Barracks.

The space was wide open, completely cleared of any defensive debris, and perfectly fit for high-impact destructive sparring.

The heavy monsoon rain had started falling harder, churning the dirt and turning the ground into a slick treacherous environmental hazard.

The girls had quickly convened a frantic meeting and they had chosen their four strongest combatants to test the arrogant new instructor.

Brida, Tamsin, Rowena, and Aeliana stood at one end of the muddy field. They were the undisputed heavy hitters of the territory.

Silas stood on the sidelines with the rest of the sixty-eight girls.

He was still entirely shirtless with the freezing rain washing aggressively over his bare skin and dark combat trousers.

He casually crossed his heavy arms over his chest, his Gold Core generating an invisible thermal layer that kept his internal temperature perfectly regulated.

At the dead center of the muddy field, Morwenna was casually warming up.

She hadn’t drawn her massive, heavy-bladed mythril cutlass. She had left her iron boarding anchor resting in the mud.

Instead, she had borrowed a standard and completely unremarkable iron longsword from one of the rookie recruits.

She swung the cheap blade lazily through the air, rolling her wrists and testing the physical weight of the steel.

"The structural balance on this is absolutely mediocre..." Morwenna judged aloud, tossing the sword casually from her right hand to her left. "The hilt is too light, and the edge is dull but it’ll do for a basic training bout."

Inwardly, her calculating mind was entirely focused on the shirtless man standing on the sidelines.

’This is standard pirate logic that should apply to everything,’ Morwenna thought with an opportunistic grin touching her lips. ’If I impress Lord Graves right now with a flawless overwhelming victory... he’ll give me a massive promotion in the ranks. He might even buy me a shiny new personal weapon. It’s time to show off for the Captain.’

At the opposite end of the field, Brida stepped forward.

She rested the heavy, violently pulsing Tier 3 axe directly on her shoulder.

The dark heavily condensed gravity runes etched into the mythic battleaxe cast a deep ominous purple glow over the falling rain and the mud beneath her boots.

"Don’t start crying when I shatter your little toy sword into pieces, pirate!" Brida teased loudly, dangerously confident in the power of her new mythic gear.

Gunnhild, acting as the designated referee for the bout, stepped up to the edge of the sparring ring. She raised her gauntleted hand high into the rainy air.

"Combatants ready!" Gunnhild shouted, her voice echoing over the storm.

She brought her hand down in a sharp chopping motion.

"Go!"

Brida didn’t hesitate for a microscopic fraction of a second.

The towering woman threw all rational caution directly to the freezing wind as she exploded forward off her back foot.

Her heavy, iron-plated combat boots tore massive deep gouges into the wet mud, kicking up a spray of dirt behind her.

The heavy gravity runes of the Titan’s Cleaver actively flared to life.

They completely negated the weapon’s massive physical weight, rendering the multi-ton axe functionally weightless in her grip and allowing her to move forward with terrifying, unhindered kinetic velocity.

She crossed the thirty-yard distance separating them in the blink of an eye.

With a ferocious blood-curdling roar, Brida leaped entirely into the air.

She brought the massive double-bitted mythic battleaxe down with all of her raw might.

She aimed the apocalyptic strike directly for the center of Morwenna’s guard.