Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Chapter 380: Let’s Get To Know Each Other [Bonus Chapter]

She took a slow deliberate step forward, her expensive crimson stilettos clicking like cocked hammers against the stone walkway.

FWOOM!

Seraphina didn’t merely channel her mana... she violently detonated it.

A dense swirling corona of incandescent red flames erupted from the pores of her right hand, crawling up her tailored designer sleeve without scorching the fabric.

The fire wasn’t standard elemental mana... it was the hyper-refined crimson ancestral flame of House Bloom, burning with such suffocating pressurized heat that the moisture in the air between them instantly hissed and turned into shimmering waves of vapor.

’I newly learned this specific spell just for a situation like this.’

Harper didn’t flinch.

In fact, the energetic, purple-haired Lightning Lord grinned... it was a feral smirk that bared her teeth like an apex predator catching the scent of fresh blood.

"Oh, look at you, getting all worked up because someone else touched your imaginary prize," Harper taunted, her violet eyes flaring with jagged arcing fractals of electrical energy. "You think you can flash a little lighter fluid and scare me off, Princess? What you pulled on me during the expedition isn’t going to happen again. I’ve had weeks of high-voltage core refinement since that Secret Realm, and I’ve been dying for a rematch."

CRACK-BZZZT!

Brilliant branching tendrils of violent purple lightning exploded outward from Harper’s shoulders.

The raw backwash caused the hem of Silas’s oversized dark hoodie to violently billow around her thighs.

The concrete beneath Harper’s sneakers began to pit and smoke as millions of micro-volts grounded into the sidewalk, filling the quiet suburban street with the sharp, overwhelming stench of ozone and scorched earth.

"My Lady! Miss Whitmore! Please, exercise diplomatic restraint!"

Reginald, the Bloom family’s veteran butler, finally broke his subservient silence.

The elderly man in the crisp three-piece suit lunged forward, his gloved hands raised in a desperate bid to create a physical barrier between the two converging mana storms.

"Step aside, Reginald!" Seraphina snarled without taking her eyes off Harper’s throat.

"Get out of the splash zone, old man, or your pacemaker is going to detonate!" Harper snapped back, her lightning coiling into a blinding sphere of plasma in her palm.

Both women simultaneously directed their unblinking glares squarely at the butler.

The suffocating pressure of the two women converging on a single point hit Reginald like an atmospheric sledgehammer.

The elderly man choked on his own breath, violently recoiling three full paces until his back slammed against the obsidian fender of the Bloom family limousine.

Panting softly, his heart hammering against his ribs, Reginald slowly turned his gaze away from the impending catastrophe and locked his eyes onto Silas.

Reginald wasn’t just a domestic servant.

Behind the polished manners, the pristine pocket watch, and the silver-cuffed sleeves, Reginald was an unyielding, high-tier enforcer who had served House Bloom for forty-five years.

He was the executioner Lady Etilga Bloom kept in reserve when family matters required untraceable discretion.

Before departing the Bloom estate this morning, Lady Etilga herself had pulled Reginald into her private parlor, her eyes burning with that terrifying psychotic protectiveness that terrorized the high nobility.

’Watch him, Reginald,’ Etilga had whispered, sliding a mana-nullifying stiletto into his coat pocket. ’Seraphina is my only masterpiece... If this commoner from the slums is weak, if he is cowardly, if he attempts to use my daughter’s innocence to crawl out of the mud and leech off our family’s wealth... you will slit his throat and dump his core into the incinerators. She will grieve for a month, and then she will marry who I want her to. Understood?’

Reginald narrowed his eyes, tracking Silas’s every microscopic movement.

This was the test.

A commoner faced with two high-tier awakened women threatening to tear the neighborhood apart would either cower behind the gate, beg for mercy, or flee inside.

If Silas Graves showed even a fraction of hesitation... if he proved himself to be an opportunistic parasite lacking the backbone to command respect, Reginald’s hidden blade would sever his carotid artery before the police wards could even ping the district’s defense grid.

Silas stood in the eye of the brewing storm however he didn’t tremble.

’If these two psychotic women keep this up for another three seconds,’ Silas thought, letting out a bone-weary sigh that practically deflated his lungs, ’they are going to blow a five-meter crater into the front porch. The asphalt will melt, the property value of the Silverleaf complex will plummet, and the agency will literally hunt me down with a frying pan to make me pay for the landscaping.’

Silas did not have the patience for a middle-school catfight on his front lawn so he stepped forward.

His boots made no sound against the pavement as he seamlessly closed the distance, effortlessly stepping directly into the convergence zone between the raging red flames and the crackling purple plasma.

Before either woman could react, Silas shot both of his hands out.

His large calloused right hand clamped firmly around Seraphina’s burning wrist, while his left hand clamped around Harper’s electrified forearm.

FZZZZT!

The power of his Mythic Gold Core foundation acted like an elemental sponge.

The moment his bare skin made contact with their mana, his internal golden pathways flared to life beneath his flesh.

The blazing red fire licking Seraphina’s knuckles sputtered, choked, and extinguished as if smothered by an ocean, while Harper’s violently arcing purple lightning dissipated harmlessly into his palm with a soft, pathetic pop.

Both women gasped, freezing instantly.

"Silas!" Harper squeaked, frantically pulling her mana back into her sternum so she wouldn’t accidentally fry his nervous system.

"Let go, you idiot! You’ll burn your skin off!" Seraphina cried out in genuine panic, desperately extinguishing the last embers around her fingertips to keep from injuring him.

Silas didn’t let go. He held both of their wrists with an unyielding vice-like grip for two long seconds, ensuring the magical radiation had entirely cleared the air, before slowly releasing them and taking a step back.

He raised his right hand, aggressively rubbing the back of his neck as he glared at them with half-lidded irritated golden-ringed eyes.

"Are you two completely done throwing a tantrum in the middle of the street?" Silas asked, his deep voice cutting through the residual smell. "Look around. This is a residential neighborhood. People are trying to sleep, walk their pets, and live normal lives. You don’t need to fight over here. I really don’t want to have to pay the municipal association for property damages, and frankly, I don’t feel like watching two grown women beat each other to death over a misunderstanding..."

Harper took a step back, crossing her arms over her chest and pouting as she rubbed her wrist.

"She started it. She pulled up waving a legal document like a lunatic."

"You breached his personal residence and answered the door wearing his clothes, you insolent harpy!" Seraphina grumbled, brushing a strand of crimson hair from her flushed face as she adjusted her blazer.

Standing beside the limousine, Reginald stood completely paralyzed, his jaw subtly dropping beneath his manicured mustache.

’He... he grabbed their active conduits with his bare hands?’ Reginald’s mind screamed in total bewilderment. ’Lady Seraphina’s ancestral fire burns at three thousand degrees and Miss Whitmore’s lightning carries enough kinetic voltage to paralyze several men at once according to what I know. If I had stepped between them, my hands would have been reduced to carbonized bone yet he snuffed both spells out without a single scorch mark on his palms?!’

Reginald slowly unclasped his fingers from the concealed stiletto inside his coat pocket.

The terrifying physical resilience the young man had just displayed made the butler’s combat instincts scream a deafening warning: Do not engage... This man is a walking fortress.

Silas completely ignored the sweating butler, turning his full attention squarely toward Seraphina.

"Now, as for you," Silas began, gesturing toward the heavy gold-embossed leather folder resting under her arm. "If you want to get married... with a formal marriage contract, why not?"

Harper’s head snapped toward Silas so fast her neck audibly popped.

"WAIT! WHAT?! Silas, are you out of your goddamn mind?!"

Silas didn’t even look at Harper. He simply shot her a cold, sideways glare... a single chilling look that carried so much silent authority that the energetic Lightning Lord choked on her words and instantly snapped her mouth shut.

Silas turned back to the crimson-haired noblewoman with his expression turning very calm... almost too calm.

"Why don’t we wait a while, Seraphina?" Silas asked smoothly. "Marriage isn’t a business transaction you finalize over the counter at a guild exchange. Marriage is for an entire lifetime. Do you really want to legally bind yourself, your family’s ancient lineage, and your entire future to someone you barely even know?"

Seraphina blinked, her crimson eyes widening slightly as she processed his question.

She raised her chin, falling back on her elite noble upbringing.

"I don’t need to ’wait,’" Seraphina argued, her voice regaining a fraction of its haughty confidence. "I am an elite Lord of House Bloom... I have access to the city’s highest-tier surveillance archives, background investigators, and magical lineage registries. If there is something I need to know about your habits, your history, or your character, I can simply commission a research dossier and memorize it by tomorrow morning."

Silas let out a dry, amused chuckle, crossing his arms over his bare chest.

"A research dossier?" Silas asked, raising an eyebrow. "Alright. Let’s test that theory right now. What’s my favorite food?"

Seraphina opened her mouth to answer immediately and then instantly stopped.

Her lips remained parted as her mind frantically flipped through her mental archives.

She had memorized his birth date from the academy records, his official Blue Core awakening registry, his test scores from Valoria Academy, and his former residential address in the Sector 4 slums.

’What does a commoner eat?!’ Seraphina thought in a sudden rising wave of panic, her eyes darting frantically across the pavement. ’He lived in the lower wards for a decade on a scrap-hauler’s wage! What do slum-born peasants consider a luxury?! Nutrient paste? Boiled cabbage? No, wait... they eat cheap carbohydrates!’

Her crimson eyes lit up with triumphant certainty.

"Bread!" Seraphina declared proudly, puffing out her chest. "Fresh, unrefined wheat bread!"

Silas stared at her for three uninterrupted seconds of soul-crushing silence.

He slowly waved his hand through the air with his face turning blank. "It is not bread. I literally survived on cheap, tasteless bread for ten years, Seraphina. I despise bread. If I never see a loaf of dry bread again for the rest of my life, it will be too soon..."

Seraphina’s triumphant smile instantly vanished.

Her cheeks turned a violently bright shade of red, her mouth snapping shut as she looked down at her stilettos in shame.

"See?" Silas pointed out calmly, letting his words sink in. "You have access to all the government databases in the world, and you don’t even know what I like to put on my plate. This is exactly why actual couples take time to get to know each other. They go on dates. They talk. They learn what makes the other person tick, what annoys them, what their goals are, and whether they can actually stand being in the same room for more than five minutes without trying to murder each other..."

’And more importantly,’ Silas thought to himself with a small smirk hiding beneath his neutral expression, ’there is not a single timeline in the multiverse where I actually want to marry you.’

It wasn’t that Seraphina was ugly or inherently evil.

Objectively speaking, she was breathtaking... gorgeous crimson hair, an incredible figure, high-tier combat skills, and massive political influence.

But Silas was a realist.

In this world, a commoner marrying into a high-ranking noble clan wasn’t a romantic fairytale... it was an undisputed recipe for disaster.

The Bloom family was an ancient powerhouse packed with arrogant aristocrats, cutthroat politicians, and a matriarch who was actively plotting to decapitate anyone who touched her daughter.

If Silas signed that marriage accord, he would be subjected to endless clan audits, political maneuvering, and high-society subservience.

He would be expected to hand over his autonomy, bow to clan elders, and play the role of a trophy consort.

’I don’t want that...’

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!