The bruised-purple sky of the Umbral Basin slowly began to lighten, shifting into a sickly, ash-gray dawn as day three had begun truly...

Silas stood by the Ironwood Palisade as he held the unrolled parchment of the Blood-Iron Watchtower blueprint in his hands, staring at the construction requirements.

[100 Units of Ironwood. 50 Units of Refined Stone. 10 Units of Abyssal-Marrow.]

He rolled the heavy parchment back up and stored it in his inventory. Having a high-tier blueprint meant nothing if the materials were locked behind fictional terminology.

He needed elevated line-of-sight... The territory was expanding, his numbers were growing, but without a watchtower, they were fighting blind in the dark.

Footsteps crunched against the stone tiles behind him.

Silas turned to see Tamsin approaching.

The Wilderness Huntress looked a bit exhausted with dark circles resting under her eyes, but her posture remained entirely professional.

Her twin iron daggers were strapped securely to her thighs.

"How is our guest?" Silas asked as he had noticed her enter the Keep to see Eluned.

"Sleeping," Tamsin replied, stopping a few feet away. "Lady Eluned hasn’t left her side since we put her in the Keep. Whatever magic the Goddess is using, it stopped the screaming but the Elf... she is broken, my Lord. It will take time before she can even hold a conversation."

Silas nodded slowly.

"We will give her that time. What about the garrison?"

"Brida has the veterans running maintenance on their gear," Tamsin reported. She glanced over her shoulder toward the Armored Barracks.

The ten new recruits from the early morning pull... Gunnhild, Freya, Sigrun, and the others were huddled together near the dead bonfire pit, looking nervously at the towering wooden gates. "But we have a problem with the fresh blood."

"I can see they’re terrified..." Silas noted.

"They are Level 1," Tamsin corrected. "They haven’t seen the basin yet. If a wave hits us tonight, they will freeze up, and hesitating out here means death. I want to take them out."

Silas raised an eyebrow. "Outside the walls?"

"Just to the edge of the trench and also scout as well," Tamsin clarified. "Lady Eluned’s residual mana is still keeping the massive threats away, but the perimeter is swarming with standard Tier 1 scavengers. Stragglers from yesterday’s dawn wave. It’s the perfect training ground. I’ll lead them. We need the meat, they need the experience, and you..."

She gestured toward his interface. "...need the points."

It was a flawless assessment.

"Do it," Silas agreed. "Take Fenna with you for ranged support. Keep them in formation. If you see anything above Tier 1, you fall back immediately."

"Understood." Tamsin flashed a sharp grin.

She spun on her heel and marched toward the recruits, barking orders that sent them scrambling for their heavy iron shields and wooden bows.

The heavy Ironwood gates groaned open, swallowing Tamsin, Fenna, and the ten rookies into the gray late morning mist. The gates thudded shut, locking into place.

Silas didn’t return to his quarters.

He pulled out his [Beginner Lord’s Manual], flipping through the pages to review basic defensive formations. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

’There are many things one can learn from the Manuals...’ Silas thought. ’I need a Cookhouse too instead of us cooking outside in the open again and though I don’t really need it, I need to pull someone with a Chef Class or a Scout class, also the first time I could take it... the second time too... but the third? Are all of my summons going to be women?’

Silas of course didn’t mind but if that was the case then he would need to take reproduction into his own hands...

With it being hard to get Troop Summoning cards after the daily reward and it being a very valuable thing back in the Regular world, some lords resorted to reproducing with their troops and Heroes having chidren.

’I guess that wouldn’t be so bad.’ He sighed, but that was if the girls wanted him though...? He wasn’t really handsome or anything like that.

Ten minutes passed in quiet concentration then, a small unobtrusive blue tab flickered in the bottom corner of his vision.

[Vassal Gunnhild has slain a Tier 1 Umbral Hound. +1 UP]

Silas stopped reading as a slow smile spread across his face and less than a minute later, another notification popped up.

[Vassal Freya has slain a Tier 1 Scavenger Rat. +1 UP]

[Vassal Sigrun has slain a Tier 1 Umbral Hound. +1 UP]

The tabs began to stack, creating a satisfying stream of blue light in his peripheral vision.

Every time one of his soldiers scored a kill, the system automatically routed the acquired progression directly into his Lord Core.

This was the true terrifying potential of a Sovereign.

Back at the Academy, the instructors had constantly drilled the concept of the ’Snowball Effect’ into their heads.

A Lord wasn’t a lone warrior hacking away at monsters in the mud.

A Lord was an expanding empire. As long as he kept his Vassals alive and equipped, they would systematically harvest the world on his behalf.

He didn’t have to lift a finger, and his wealth was actively growing.

[Vassal Freya has leveled up! (Level 2)]

[Vassal Gunnhild has leveled up! (Level 2)]

[Current Balance: 34 UP]

[Current Balance: 41 UP]

Silas leaned back against the stone wall, watching the numbers climb.

The anxiety of sitting at a ten-point deficit finally began to wash away.

The basin was an unforgiving nightmare, but with the right foundation, it was also an infinite gold mine.

An hour and a half later, three heavy knocks echoed against the Ironwood Palisade.

"Open the gates!" Brida commanded from her position near the Barracks.

The massive doors swung inward.

Tamsin led the hunting party back into the courtyard. T

he ten new recruits looked entirely different from the nervous, shivering girls who had marched out earlier.

Their crude iron armor was splattered with corrosive dark blood, and they were breathing heavily, but their eyes burned with newfound confidence.

They were dragging over two dozen standard monster corpses behind them... mostly mutated hounds and oversized scavengers.

"Get these to the Frost-Sealed Vault!" Gunnhild barked, taking charge of the new Shieldmaidens. "Don’t let the miasma rot the meat!"

Silas stood up, pleased with the haul. His internal balance had settled at exactly [68 UP] which was not a fortune, but a highly respectable safety net.

"Good work, Tamsin..." Silas said as the Huntress walked toward him.

But Tamsin didn’t smile.

Her expression was intensely focused with her brow furrowed in deep concentration.

She wasn’t carrying a standard hound... slung over her shoulders was the sleek, heavily muscled corpse of a beast Silas hadn’t seen before.

Tamsin dropped the carcass heavily onto the stone tiles at his feet.

"I need you to look at this, my Lord," Tamsin said, wiping a streak of sweat from her forehead.

Silas stepped closer, examining the creature. It resembled a massive, predatory panther, but its fur was entirely absent.

Instead, its skin was a smooth leathery midnight-blue, stretched tight over a terrifyingly dense musculature.

Its claws were elongated and jagged, designed for tearing through armor.

"A Shadow-Stalker," Tamsin reported. "I believe it’s a Tier 2 monster. Fenna managed to pin its leg with a mana-arrow, and I finished it before it could cloak itself. But it wasn’t part of the scavenger packs. We found it prowling near a deep cave system about a mile east of the trench."

"It’s a stray," Silas reasoned. "Why the concern?"

"Because of this..." Tamsin said.

She knelt down beside the dead panther, drawing her dagger.

She pressed the tip of the blade into a deep wound on the beast’s flank, right where Fenna’s arrow had struck and then she pulled the blade out, exposing the blood.

Silas frowned. The blood leaking from the wound wasn’t standard crimson... It wasn’t even the corrosive, toxic purple of the Umbral Basin’s mutated beasts...

It was black.

A deep, light-swallowing, void-like black.

"I’ve gutted hundreds of monsters in my time," Tamsin murmured. "I have never seen blood like this. It feels... very strange."

Before Silas could warn her, Tamsin reached out with her bare left hand, pressing her index and middle fingers directly into the black blood pooling on the beast’s flank to test its consistency.

The reaction was immediate and violent.

Tamsin gasped, forcefully jerking her hand back as if she had touched a hot iron stove.

Silas stepped forward with his eyes locking onto her fingers.

The tips of Tamsin’s fingers were completely encased in a thick, jagged layer of dark, freezing frost.

The unnatural ice was actively spreading down to her knuckles, turning her skin a sickly, necrotizing blue.

She gritted her teeth, grabbing her wrist as a jolt of agonizing pain shot up her arm.

"Don’t touch it," Silas ordered sharply.

He focused his mind on the black blood and the strange, mutated panther, triggering the sensory function built into his Lord interface.

A scan of blue light washed over the dead beast.

[Abyssal Marrow (Unrefined)]

[Tier]: 2 Material (Rare)

[Description]: A highly volatile, incredibly dense magical resource found exclusively within the bone structure of deep-trench Umbral predators. Emits localized freezing radiation that can cause immediate frostbite upon direct contact.

[Upgrade System: Would you like to upgrade Tier 2 Abyssal Marrow (Unrefined) to Tier 3 Refined Void-Marrow?]

[Cost: 5 UP]

Silas’s breath caught in his throat.

’Abyssal Marrow.’

It wasn’t a fictional metal... It wasn’t a mythical plant... It was the literal bone marrow of a specific, mutated breed of predator hiding right outside his walls.

It was the exact, missing link he needed to construct the Blood-Iron Watchtower.

"My Lord..." Tamsin hissed, her breath pluming in the air as the unnatural frost crept past her knuckles. "I can’t feel my fingers. The cold is burning through my nerves."

Silas snapped out of his realization and he didn’t hesitate.

He stepped directly into Tamsin’s personal space, reaching out and grabbing her freezing left hand with both of his own.

Tamsin flinched at the sudden movement with her eyes going wide.

Silas closed his eyes, tapping directly into the roaring furnace of his Mythic Gold Core.

He didn’t use the energy to boost his strength or speed. He channeled the blazing, sovereign warmth straight down his arms, forcing the refined, brilliant golden mana to flood his palms.

The moment his skin firmly encased hers, the dark frost shrieked.

The violent clash between the abyssal cold and the Gold Core’s warmth created a sudden hiss of steam.

Silas held his grip tight with his thumbs pressing firmly against the back of her hand, completely smothering the dark magic with his own overwhelming vitality.

Within seconds, the dark ice cracked and melted away, leaving her skin flushed and rapidly returning to a healthy, normal color.

Tamsin stared at their joined hands. A furious, burning red blush instantly exploded across her cheeks, spreading all the way to the tips of her ears.

The pain in her hand was completely gone, replaced by a deep, incredibly soothing heat that made her heart hammer wildly against her ribs.

No Lord ever healed a Vassal like this in the rumors.

A Lord would have ordered her to visit a cleric or simply told her to walk it off... even though they didn’t have a Cleric but Silas was standing there with his hands firmly wrapped around hers, entirely focused on ensuring she was unharmed.

"Is the feeling back?" Silas asked.

He opened his eyes, looking down at her.

Tamsin swallowed hard, completely flustered by his proximity.

She couldn’t meet his gaze, staring stubbornly at his chest instead. "Y-yes, my Lord. The pain is completely gone. Thank you."

Silas finally released her hand. He took a step back, his attention shifting from the Huntress back to the dead, midnight-blue panther lying on the stone tiles.

The relief of curing Tamsin’s frostbite quickly faded...

He needed ten units of Abyssal Marrow for the Watchtower blueprint. One dead panther wasn’t going to provide nearly enough refined material.

"You said you found this prowling near a deep cave system?" Silas asked, his tone dropping an octave.

Tamsin nodded, quickly trying to regain her professional composure as she rubbed her warmed fingers.

"Yes. About a mile east... The terrain gets incredibly rocky, filled with deep fissures and sinkholes. Fenna spotted the entrance to a massive cavern just before this thing jumped us."

Silas slowly drew his Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade. The dark, purple veins in the metal pulsed softly as he rested the tip of the sword against the stone tiles.

His blue eyes slowly began to glow with a terrifying, predatory golden light.

"Tamsin," Silas ordered. "Go to the Barracks. Gather Brida, Rowena, and every veteran Shieldmaiden we have. Tell them to equip their heaviest armor and pack the Vault’s preservation crates."

Tamsin blinked with her survival instincts immediately recognizing the shift in his demeanor. "We are going back out? To the cave?"

"That beast has exactly what I need to upgrade this territory," Silas said with a fierce uncompromising smile spreading across his face.

He looked toward the heavy Ironwood gates, his gaze piercing through the wood, directly toward the east. "Shadow-Stalkers don’t build massive caverns for a single cat... I believe it is a nest."

Tamsin gripped her daggers, the adrenaline of the hunt surging back into her veins. "You want us to scout the nest, my Lord?"

"No," Silas replied with the golden light in his eyes flaring. "I want to kill them all."