Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Twenty minutes later, the sounds of the buildings faded behind them as they navigated the decrepit back-alleys of the lower residential area.

They had even passed by the Sniper that died and his body was still there and rotting though everything had been stolen off him.

The three of them stepped through a door, entering Ryan’s private apartment.

Silas stopped in the doorway, scanning the interior through his Oni mask.

The living conditions were, to put it mildly, a disaster.

It was a single cramped studio apartment smelling strongly of cheap instant noodles and burnt wiring.

Stripped power cables snaked across the bare concrete floor like tangled vines, connecting to improvised surge protectors taped directly to the water pipes.

There wasn’t even a proper bed... just a ratty sleeping bag thrown haphazardly into a corner beside empty nutrient pouches.

Silas took a slow breath, shaking his head slightly.

’It’s a pretty rough living space,’ Silas thought, his mind briefly drifting back to his earlier memories of waking up in the squalor of the lower slums. ’Though I really don’t have room to judge... I crawled out of the exact same gutter when I first dropped into this universe. At least this place has working electricity.’

Ryan completely ignored the state of the room.

The hacker sprinted straight through the clutter, rushing toward the far corner where an enormous multi-tiered workstation was set up.

Six massive custom-built high-performance CPU towers stood humming on iron brackets, connected to an array of eight glowing holographic monitors flickering with endless streams of encrypted code.

THUD!

Ryan dropped violently to his knees onto the bare concrete floor, throwing his arms wide open to embrace the glowing rigs like a man reuniting with his long-lost children.

"My babies!" Ryan wept dramatically, tears welling in the corners of his eyes as he pressed his cheek directly against the warm humming exhaust fan of the main server tower. "Oh, sweet, beautiful silicon gods, you’re safe! Did the bad mafia men hurt your memory caches? Did they touch your overclocked cooling tubes?!"

Mwa! Mwa! Mwa!

Ryan began passionately planting wet kisses all over the metallic chassis of each individual CPU, rubbing his bearded chin against the illuminated acrylic panels.

"Daddy’s home, Betsy!" Ryan cooed, kissing the primary hard-drive bay. "Daddy’s here, sweet little Megan! I swear to God I will never let that decrepit fossil of a father touch your motherboard ever again!"

Silas stood frozen near the door, his left eye twitching erratically behind the metal slit of his Oni mask.

’Is this... is this really the legendary hacker we just fought through an entire colosseum of psycho cyborgs and people to rescue?’ Silas thought, his brain physically struggling to process the degeneracy unfolding before him. ’I almost caught a minigun barrel to the teeth for a guy who gives his graphics cards female names and kisses cooling vents?’

As if possessing a sixth sense for his exact internal crisis, Evelyn slowly turned her head toward Silas, offering a long exhausted look through her Kitsune mask.

"Yes," Evelyn confirmed bluntly, answering his unasked question with absolute resignation. "He is the person. And yes, he is just irreversibly weird like that."

Ryan finally finished his passionate reunion with his hardware.

He wiped a smudge of paste from his nose, turned around, and sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning his back against the server rack.

"Haah... I’m happy to be home..."

He reached into a hidden compartment carved into the underside of the desk and pulled out a thick crumpled cigar.

Flick.

He struck a match against his thumbnail and lit the tip, exhaling a foul cloud of cheap synth-tobacco smoke into the cramped room.

Silas pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his mask, letting out a silent, pained groan.

’Fuck me...’ Silas cursed internally, looking between Evelyn and Ryan. ’Why am I entirely surrounded by heavy smoking addicts? First my manager, now the hacker... My lungs are going to turn into charcoal before I even reach the Sovereign Realm.’

They wouldn’t but he still had a right to complain.

Ryan took a deep drag, pointing the glowing ember of the cigar toward the two masked figures.

"Alright, let’s get formal," Ryan grinned, flashing his yellowed teeth. "You can call me Jax... You can call me Fortune... You can even call me Tech-Wiz if you’re feeling classy."

"We will refer to you as Ryan only, thank you very much," Evelyn interrupted instantly, her icy tone leaving zero room for debate.

Ryan’s face instantly twisted into an annoyed scowl.

"Oh, come on, lady! What happened to creative branding?! ’Ryan’ sounds like an accountant who files taxes for a dry-cleaning business! That’s corporate slave talk!"

"We just saved your miserable life from an execution cell and bought your slave contract..." Evelyn countered coldly, crossing her arms over her chest. "The very least you could do is show a basic shred of professional gratitude."

"Hey, I am grateful!" Ryan argued back, waving his arms in the air. "Which is the exact reason why I’m sitting here agreeing to do high-tier federal cybercrime for you completely free of charge. You have no idea what they put me through back in that holding block... It was this pitch-black concrete cube with no Wi-Fi, no stimulants, and two guards who didn’t even know what a proxy node was! It was pure torture!"

Ryan puffed on his cigar, letting out an exasperated sigh before leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

"So," Ryan asked, his eyes sharpening with genuine focused intellect. "What’s the actual job you need done?"

Silas opened his mouth to explain the situation, but before he could speak a single syllable, Ryan let out a loud snort.

"Let me guess," Ryan smirked, pointing his cigar directly at Silas. "You need a completely bulletproof untouchable digital identity forged from scratch for Lord Vespera, right?"

Silas and Evelyn both froze in unison.

Behind their respective masks, both of their eyes widened in genuine momentary shock.

Ryan threw his head back and burst into a loud triumphant cackle at the stunned silence of the two Lords.

"Hah! Look at your faces!" Ryan laughed, slapping his knee. "Come on, it wasn’t that hard to figure out! I’m the best data broker in three sectors, remember? I’ve been tracking Evelyn’s streams from the exact second The Unmovable Wall arrived there."

Ryan tapped the side of his temple with a grin.

"I ran a deep cross-reference through the World Council central registry," Ryan explained. "And what did I find? Nothing... Lord Vespera literally did not exist in any mortal database prior to her stream debut. No birth records, no family registry, no citizen IDs either. That kind of blank slate is a massive red flag... It would have set the World Council auditors into a complete frenzy, convincing them that she was an unregistered anomaly or she was probably in a disguise."

Silas listened intently, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe.

"So, being the generous genius that I am," Ryan continued casually, "I proactively created seven different phantom identities across three regional servers just to keep the World Council’s hounds chasing their own tails in circles. You’re welcome, by the way..."

Ryan then turned his sharp gray eyes directly onto Silas, scanning the broad shoulders and towering height of the dark-coated Warlord.

"And looking at you now..." Ryan mused, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "I assume you’re Vespera in your true physical form, right? So the terrifying female Lord on the screen is actually a dude in real life? Wild."

Ryan shook his head with an appreciative chuckle.

"Gotta admit though, man... you make a surprisingly hot woman when you’re on stream."

Silas stared at him in complete deadpan silence for three long seconds.

’I am going to throw this man off a roof,’ Silas thought with terrifying calmness.

Silas took a slow breath, forcing the violent impulse back down.

"Why did you go out of your way to help cover my tracks before we even met? You didn’t know who I was."

"I knew someone representing Vespera would eventually have to come down to Shogitown to fix the paperwork," Ryan shrugged, tapping the ash from his cigar onto the concrete floor. "It’s basic operational necessity and more importantly... I wanted the rising Lord of the Blessed Land to owe me a massive personal favor. Having a powerhouse in my pocket is better than a million credits."

Silas looked at the scruffy hacker for a moment with the tension in his shoulders easing.

A genuine smile touched the corners of Silas’s lips beneath his Oni mask.

"Fair enough," Silas conceded smoothly, giving a single nod. "I owe you one."

"Damn right you do," Ryan chuckled, pushing himself up off the floor and dusting the grime from his trousers. "Well then! If we’re doing this, we need to forge a high-tier administrative identity. We need verified Council lineage, forged ancestral land deeds, and a clean banking lineage... It’s going to be exceptionally complicated, but for a genius like me, it’s just another Tuesday."

Ryan grabbed the squeaking leather swivel chair, spun it around, and reached for the main power switch on his central terminal to boot up the system.

"Don’t bother powering it on," Evelyn’s voice cut in smoothly from the doorway.

Ryan paused with his hand hovering over the switch.

Both Ryan and Silas turned their heads in confusion, looking at the masked woman.

"What do you mean ’don’t bother’?" Ryan asked, raising an eyebrow. "I can’t forge World Council registry keys on a piece of paper, lady."

HONK-HONK!

A vehicle horn echoed from the narrow alleyway directly outside the apartment window.

Click!

The apartment door swung open smoothly.

Stepping across the threshold was a striking impeccably composed woman in her late twenties and she possessed sharp elegant features with her auburn hair pulled neatly back into a professional bun.

She was dressed in an immaculate high-end maid uniform... a crisp white apron layered over a tailored black dress, paired with polished leather low-heels and white cotton gloves.

’Who is she?’ Silas thought.

She stopped just inside the room, placing her hands neatly over her waist, and offered a perfectly practiced forty-five-degree bow toward Evelyn.

"Master Evelyn," the woman spoke, her voice sounding melodious and very respectful. "I have arrived with the transport as instructed."

Silas’s pale-blue eyes sharpened instantly behind his mask, his combat perception locking onto the newcomer.

’A maid?’ Silas thought with his senses picking up the subtle hum of energy radiating beneath her skin. ’And she just called Evelyn "Master." Does that mean Evelyn has a slave too?’

Evelyn stepped forward, gesturing toward the open doorway.

"We are leaving this disgusting slum behind right now," Evelyn announced, looking between Silas and the confused hacker. "I already prepared full accommodations in advance."

As both men stared at her, Evelyn smiled beneath her Kitsune mask.

’I already fully intended to secure him today one way or another,’ Evelyn thought to herself, satisfied with her foresight. ’However the tournament came up and I’m glad... it was just the most cost-effective method to clean his record.’

The maid stepped forward into the room, inclining her head politely toward Silas and Ryan.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the maid said smoothly. "My name is Claire. Master Evelyn has already procured a secure fully furnished luxury penthouse for you in the upper district of Valoria City. You will be operating under Master Evelyn’s direct corporate umbrella on a permanent basis."

Ryan blinked in wide-eyed astonishment and a massive opportunistic grin spread across his face as he looked at Evelyn.

"A penthouse in the main city?!" Ryan gasped, clapping his hands together. "Full corporate sponsorship?! Oh, thank you, Master! You’re the greatest Master in the entire universe!"

Evelyn visibly flinched, a sharp shudder of pure disgust rippling down her spine.

"Do not call me that either, you weirdo," Evelyn snapped, crossing her arms defensively. "Call me Manager, or I will personally adjust your Slave Rune to shock you every time you breathe."

Ryan burst out laughing, unfazed by the threat.

"Whatever you say, Boss!"

Claire stepped toward the massive workstation in the corner. "Mr. Ryan, please step back. I will secure your hardware."

"Whoa, whoa, hold on, sweetheart!" Ryan warned frantically, raising his hands. "Those server racks are hyper-sensitive! If you drop one of those cooling tubes, three months of uncompressed data is going to—"

Snap!

Claire raised her gloved right hand and cleanly snapped her fingers.

VZZZZZZT!

A vibrant blinding dome of deep-purple energy flared into existence, enveloping the entire workstation.

The heavy steel desks, the eight holographic monitors, the six massive server towers, and every single tangled power cable smoothly, weightlessly detached from the floor and walls, rising four feet into the air in a state of frictionless levitation.

Claire swiped her hand through the air, and the entire multi-ton workstation drifted toward the door like a collection of balloons.

Silas watched the purple light with sharp interest.

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