Chapter 418: The Saintess of The Argent Flame

Evelyn’s face instantly burned with a sudden flare of self-conscious embarrassment.

’I actually passed out on him?!’ Evelyn thought in horror, frantically checking the state of her oversized hoodie to make sure she hadn’t drooled everywhere. ’Gods damn it, I told him I was just going to rest for five minutes! Why am I so comfortable around this asshole?!’

Before she could stammer out a defensive insult, Kara tapped the console, summoning the hotel staff to clear the empty cart.

Two waiters quickly arrived, bowed respectfully, cleared the platters, and vanished back into the hallway.

Kara stood up, smoothing down the fabric of her black silk dress and picking up her wide-brimmed sunhat from the armchair.

"Are you ready to head out?" Kara asked, settling the hat over her dark hair. "We’ve got a long checklist waiting for us back in the basin."

Evelyn cleared her throat, shaking off the lingering grogginess as she swung her boots onto the floor.

"Yeah. Let’s get out of here before your ego gets any bigger."

As they stepped toward the private foyer, Kara naturally reached out with her single silk-gloved right hand and took Evelyn’s hand in hers.

Evelyn’s entire body tensed for a second.

Her heart did an erratic uncoordinated flip against her ribs at the sudden, warm contact.

She looked down at their intertwined fingers, feeling another wave of ridiculous adolescent shyness wash over her face.

’Wha...’

She pulled her gray hood lower over her head to hide her cheeks.

"Why are you being so clingy...?" She muttered but she notably didn’t pull her hand away.

They took Express Elevator Seven back down to the ground floor.

When the gilded doors slid open into the bustling grand atrium, Evelyn immediately noticed a bizarre shift in the room’s atmosphere and it even remained there when they returned the Key Card.

As they walked across the pristine obsidian floor tiles toward the exit, nearly every single guest and high-society scion in the lobby turned to stare at them.

People lowered their champagne glasses in mid-sip.

Awakened mercenaries stopped their conversations dead in their tracks with their jaws slacking. Several noble heiresses sitting in the velvet lounge covered their mouths with their silk fans, their eyes wide with poorly suppressed shock.

Evelyn frowned deeply, her grip tightening on Kara’s hand.

’Why the hell is everyone looking at me like I have two heads?!’ Evelyn thought, feeling deeply self-conscious. ’I know my hoodie is a little worn out, but this is a Hotel, not a royal coronation!’

"Kara..." Evelyn whispered out of the side of her mouth, feeling the burning heat of fifty pairs of eyes on her back. "Why is everyone staring at us? Is my hood crooked?"

Kara didn’t miss a beat.

She kept her chin high, walking with the majestic untouchable poise of an empress as she guided Evelyn toward the revolving glass doors.

"Don’t mind their gazes, Ev," Kara replied in a calm comforting tone, suppressing the violent urge to cackle. "They’re just intimidated by your undeniable charisma. You look absolutely striking today."

"You’re full of shit," Evelyn grunted, but the compliment still caused a pleased warmth to bloom in her chest.

They stepped through the revolving doors, leaving the crystal-paned luxury of the Skybli Hotel behind and emerging into the crisp night air of Valoria City.

The streetlights were beginning to flicker to life, casting long golden pools of light across the polished sidewalks.

They walked a block down the bustling sidewalk until they reached a relatively secluded plaza lined with manicured pine trees and stone benches.

Kara stopped, releasing Evelyn’s hand and stepping back with an easy radiant smile.

"Alright, this is where we split up," Kara said, adjusting the brim of her hat. "I need to drop off in a private alley, and you need to head back to your place. I’ll see you next time, Ev."

Evelyn stuffed her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie, nodding with a rare gentle expression on her face.

"Yeah. Don’t take forever."

"See ya, Ev."

With a fluid graceful pivot, Kara turned and jogged lightly down the pedestrian walkway, her black silk dress fluttering in the night breeze before disappearing around a distant corner.

Evelyn stood on the sidewalk, watching the empty corner where he had vanished.

A soft warm sigh escaped her lips.

’He really is... strangely nice,’ Evelyn thought, a tender uncharacteristic softness settling deep within her chest.

Despite all his teasing, his arrogance, and his endless banter, Silas had bought her favorite dessert, listened to her vent about her family without an ounce of judgment, and validated every hard decision she had made.

In a world full of corporate vultures and cutthroat warlords, having someone like him in her corner felt like a miracle.

She reached into her cargo pocket, pulling out a slim cigarette and sticking it between her lips.

She snapped her fingers, igniting a small spark of mana to light the tip.

FWOOSH!

Evelyn took a long, relaxing drag of smoke, feeling entirely at peace with the world.

As she exhaled the thin gray cloud, she happened to glance to her left.

Parked along the curb was a pristine polished black luxury sedan, its dark-tinted passenger window acting as a flawless, high-definition mirror.

Evelyn casually looked at her reflection to fix a stray lock of hair beneath her hood.

She froze.

The cigarette fell completely out of her mouth, tumbling onto the concrete pavement.

Staring back at her from the tinted glass was her own pale face... prominently adorned with a pitch-black impeccably drawn handlebar mustache and a sharp French goatee, framing her lips in cartoonish perfection.

The silence lasted for three full agonizing seconds.

And then, an apocalyptic wave of crimson fury erupted across Evelyn’s entire face, burning so hot it practically threatened to ignite her hair.

The realization hit her like an orbital strike.

The receptionist in the lobby... The elevator mirrors... The guests staring and whispering... Silas holding her hand and telling her she looked ’striking’...

"She drew on my face while I was asleep..." Evelyn whispered in horrified, trembling disbelief.

She clutched her head with both hands, took a massive chest-heaving breath of the night air, and let out a blood-curdling shriek of rage that echoed across the entire commercial district.

"KARAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—!!!"

...

HUM!

A brilliant column of golden spatial displacement mana flashed within the bedroom of Evelyn’s suite in the Living Quarters of the Blessed Land.

Silas materialized in the center of the room.

He was no longer clad in alchemical silk, designer sunhats, or black heels.

He had completely shed the Kara White persona in a secluded alleyway three blocks from the hotel, returning to his true, tall broad-shouldered form, dressed in his comfortable black combat robes and heavy leather boots.

He rolled his shoulders, taking a deep, satisfying breath of the territory’s crisp, mana-dense air.

’Man...’ Silas thought, stretching his arms over his head until his joints popped. ’It’s really exhausting wearing a dress. My respect for women just increased tenfold.’

He glanced around the bedroom.

Evelyn hadn’t returned to the Sovereign Realm yet... she was probably still in the human world desperately scrubbing her upper lip with alchemical soap and swearing vengeance upon his entire bloodline.

Chuckling to himself, Silas pushed open the heavy wooden door of the suite, descended the polished stone stairs, and walked out into the sunlit courtyard of the Blessed Land.

The evening sky was painted in deep purples and oranges, casting long shadows across the stone tiles.

The territory was thriving.

Over by the main gates, The Shieldmaidens were running phalanx drills against the reinforced walls, their steel shields clashing with thunderous, rhythmic precision.

Silas turned toward the eastern industrial district of his domain, his boots crunching against the stone tiles as he approached a colossal smoke-belching stone structure.

The Warlord Foundry.

He pushed open the heavy reinforced iron-banded doors.

A blistering wave of intense dry heat immediately slammed into his face, carrying the metallic scent of molten steel, crushed coals, and glowing embers.

Inside, the foundry was a whirlwind of violent activity.

Standing in the center of the massive room, surrounded by six glowing blast furnaces, was Thora as usual but the dwarven blacksmith wasn’t working alone anymore.

Scattered across the various anvils and quenching troughs were nearly a dozen female dwarven artisans... all transferred recruits from Evelyn’s old Unmovable Wall garrison who possessed metallurgical traits.

They were swinging heavy iron sledges in perfect synchronization, shaping glowing ingots of tempered steel with astonishing inhuman speed.

"Keep the bellows pumping, you lazy whelps!" Thora roared, her voice booming over the sound of clashing metal as she brought her massive war-hammer down on an anvil. "That mythril alloy needs to reach fifteen hundred degrees before we quench it in drake oil!"

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

As Silas stepped into the light of the main forge, Thora paused mid-swing.

She wiped a thick streak of black soot from her brow with the back of her leather gauntlet, her sharp dwarven eyes lighting up with delight the moment she saw him.

"Well, well! Look who finally decided to grace the working class with his presence!" Thora grinned broadly, setting her heavy hammer onto the anvil and rolling her thick, muscular shoulders. "What brings you down to the hot zone, Lord Graves? Did you come down here to finally sweep me off my feet and knock me up, or are you just inspecting the armory?"

The surrounding dwarven smiths paused their hammering, letting out a chorus of boisterous crude chuckles that echoed off the stone rafters.

Silas shook his head with a warm, dry laugh, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Not today, Thora," Silas replied smoothly. "Though I appreciate the offer. I came here because I brought you a little something from the human world."

Thora’s bushy eyebrows shot straight up. "A gift? For me?"

Silas focused his intent, opening his Lord Inventory with a mental command.

He swiped his hand through the air, and a massive glowing blue spatial rift tore open directly above the center of the foundry floor.

BOOM!

A colossal, eight-ton reinforced titanium industrial container dropped heavily from the ether, slamming into the stone floor with a bone-jarring impact that sent a shockwave of dust and sparks rippling across the room.

The solid stone foundation groaned beneath the staggering weight of the delivery.

Thora’s jaw dropped.

She scrambled over the anvils, rushing to the front of the massive container.

PSHHHHHHH!

Thora popped the heavy pneumatic latches with a sharp hiss of venting air and heaved the thick metal lid open.

The moment the interior was exposed, the entire foundry was illuminated by a mesmerizing, deep-purple and silver luminescence.

Resting inside the container were dozens of massive, raw ingots of Astral Void-Titanium Alloy... the eight-ton shipment harvested from a fallen meteor in the Deep Wastes that Silas had secured at the Obsidian Sanhedrin auction for seventy million credits.

Thora leaned deep into the container, her eyes wide as dinner plates.

She reached out with her bare hand, running her calloused fingers along the cold rippling surface of the meteor metal, before leaning in and taking a deep sniff of the raw alloy.

"By the ancient forge-fathers..." Thora breathed out, her voice trembling with genuine sacred reverence. "Kendra! Bring me my primary etching chisels and the diamond-tipped tester! Now!"

One of her dwarven assistants hurriedly ran over, handing Thora a set of runic diagnostic tools.

Thora aggressively struck the diamond chisel against the edge of an ingot, channeling her innate dwarven mana to read the metal’s internal crystal matrix.

PING!

The metal rang with a clear, bell-like resonance that vibrated through the teeth of every person in the room.

"It’s pure..." Thora gasped, looking up at Silas with awe shining in her eyes. "There isn’t a single fracture in the crystalline weave. This is high-density Void-Titanium from a deep-space impact! With this much alloy, I can forge full suits of void-plate for the entire frontline, reinforce the gate ballistae mechanisms, and line the Keep’s inner sanctum with kinetic absorption plating! It’s perfection, my Lord!"

Silas walked over, reaching down and giving the sturdy dwarven blacksmith an affectionate, reassuring pat on the top of her braided head.

"I’m glad you like it," Silas smiled warmly. "Put it to good use. We’re expanding the perimeter soon, and I need our gear to be indestructible."

"Aye, aye, Captain!" Thora beamed, leaning happily into the headpat like a proud hound. "I’ll have the first batch of void-shields forged before the next sunrise!"

Silas nodded, turning on his heel to head back toward the foundry doors. "Keep up the good work, Thora. I’ll let you get back to the forge."

"Wait! Lord Graves, hold on a second!"

Thora dropped her tools, scrambling past the massive container and sprinting toward a heavy wooden bookshelf bolted to the back wall of the foundry office.

She stood on her tiptoes, frantically rummaging through a stack of leather-bound tomes and dusty historical archives she had recovered from the Blessed Land’s library quarters.

With a triumphant shout, she pulled out a massive gold-embossed grimoire bound in weathered dragon-hide.

Thora jogged back over to Silas, cradling the heavy book in her thick arms.

"Before you go," Thora said, her tone suddenly turning remarkably serious and earnest, "you need to look at this."

Silas paused, his blue eyes narrowing slightly in curiosity. "What is it?"

Thora flipped the heavy parchment pages with practiced familiarity until she reached a specific illuminated Chapter near the end of the tome.

She held the book up, pointing her thick calloused index finger directly at a magnificent full-page hand-painted illustration.

Silas leaned forward, his gaze locking onto the artwork.

Depicted on the aged parchment was a breathtaking ethereal woman.

She possessed long shimmering platinum-blonde hair that cascaded around her shoulders like spun silver, and piercing golden-amber eyes but it wasn’t her striking beauty that commanded attention... it was her tragic heart-wrenching expression.

Tears of pure liquid blood were painted streaking down her pale porcelain cheeks.

Her slender hands were tightly clasped together against her chest in a desperate eternal posture of prayer, her body wrapped in heavy, glowing silver chains of radiant divine fire.

Above the illustration, ancient golden calligraphy spelled out her full title:

[Aurelia El Mimonte: The Saintess of the Argent Flame]

Thora tapped the illustration firmly with her knuckle, looking up into Silas’s eyes with conviction.

"I found her record buried in the deep archives," Thora explained, her voice dropping into a reverent whisper. "She was the supreme high-priestess of the Argent Sanctum before she was betrayed. She wields the pure flame of absolute purification... she can cleanse any curse, burn through abyssal miasma, and mend broken cores."

Thora looked at her Lord, a pleading hopeful smile touching her soot-stained lips.

"My Lord... when you step up to the Summoning Portal for your next Hero invocation... why don’t you call upon her? Bring the Saintess home to the Blessed Land."

[Author’s Note:]

These days, we’re maintaining a steady pace.... How about we do a Mass release?

😔 All I need is motivation which could perhaps mean a castle or two.

That aside, Thanks for reading so far and I’m actually surprised we went so long without summoning another person... Morwenna was summoned in Chapter 79 I think, damn. New Hero incoming!