Chapter 501: Pictures [Bonus - ]

Chapter 501: Pictures [Bonus Chapter]

The cerulean liquid hit Silas’s throat like a stream of molten lead mixed with liquid nitrogen.

The chemical heat of it was terrifying... It was like swallowing a fistful of burning phosphorus.

’I can’t believe there are people who actually drink for fun...’

But deep within his chest, the Gold Core gave an angry violent spin.

VUUUM.

A golden microscopic wave of pure mana swept through his digestive tract like an automated firewall.

The ninety-two percent spiritual solvent was violently neutralized, converted into harmless mountain spring water and expelled through his pores in a barely perceptible wisp of steam that drifted from the collar of his coat.

Silas slammed his empty horn onto the table with a crisp clack.

Beside him, Thor was not quite so lucky.

The God of Thunder had chugged the entire horn in four massive throat-bulging swallows.

"Ah~"

She slammed her vessel down an eighth of a second after Silas with her chest heaving and a victorious grin beginning to form on her lips—

And then, her expression locked.

Her storm-blue eyes widened until they were completely round as the pupils contracted into microscopic dots.

Her pale skin instantly turned an alarming violent shade of neon magenta, spreading from her jawline down to the swell of her chest.

GURGLE!

A strange high-pitched whistling noise like steam escaping an over-pressurized boiler hissed through her clenched teeth.

’Again I can’t understand the people who do this for fun I swear.’

Thor slowly turned her head toward Silas. Her lips moved, trying to form a word... perhaps a curse or perhaps a plea for roasted meat but only a tiny pitiful squeak emerged.

’...Cold...’ Thor’s eyes rolled straight back into her skull, revealing pure whites.

KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!

The towering immortal God of Thunder folded at the waist like a felled oak, her upper body crashing forward onto the pine table.

Her face buried straight into a platter of cold mashed tubers with her massive arms sprawling out across the wood as she was dead to the world.

THUD!

A single snore tore from her throat, rattling the iron platters.

HROOOOO-SNK!

Dead silence gripped the mess hall.

Silas stood tall with his dark coat pristine and his golden ringed blue eyes clear and sharp as diamonds, not a single hair out of place.

He reached up, casually wiping a stray drop of blue liquid from his lower lip with his thumb, completely unaffected.

"DOWN IN ONE!" Thora shrieked, hopping onto the bench and throwing her hands into the rafters! "THE BLONDE GIANT HAS FALLEN! THE LORD STANDS UNBROKEN!"

"YEEEEEEEEEAH!"

The barracks exploded into a frenzy of adoring cheers.

"Lord Silas! Pour some for us!" Brenda squealed, shoving her wooden tankard across the table with flushed cheeks.

"My Lord, over here! Give me a drink from your hands!" Sarah cried out, elbowing her way through the press of bodies.

"Feed us some of that boar meat, my Lord! Please!"

Silas chuckled warmly with the stern mask completely melting away as he leaned over the table, taking up a carved wooden pitcher and filling their cups one by one.

He sliced tender strips of peppered meat with a knife, feeding them directly onto the platters of the eager blushing women who practically squirmed under his attentive gaze.

Looking around at the crowded hall... at Brenda laughing with her mouth full, at Helen grinning with a foam mustache, at the Princess giggling helplessly as she tried to balance a bone on the sleeping Thor’s ear.

A deep protective warmth settled beneath his ribs.

’I’ll make sure to reward you...’ Silas thought, his smile softening with unshakeable affection. ’All of you... Every single woman who bleeds for this banner. You deserve the best this world has to offer.’

Over by the dark recessed archway near the western entrance of the mess hall, partially concealed behind a heavy velvet curtain, Morwenna stood in tense silence.

The Pirate Queen had slipped into the hall unnoticed twenty minutes ago.

She was still dressed in her dry leather trousers and a dark woolen coat with her messy black hair tied back with a strip of frayed hemp rope.

Her eyes were narrowed to slits, and held securely in her calloused hands was the enchanted runic camera.

She had stalked into the barracks with a singular purpose... Revenge.

Eluned had humiliated her.

Eluned had captured her completely naked, dripping with soap suds, and had framed the photograph for the entire Keep to see.

Morwenna’s pirate pride demanded retribution and right now, sitting across the hall, the target was fully ripe for the plucking.

Eluned was magnificently plastered.

The Goddess was currently slumping sideways across the bench, her green robes sliding off one pale shoulder.

Her lips were parted in a loose undignified pout, her tongue poking slightly out the corner of her mouth as she attempted to feed a roasted carrot to an empty wooden flagon.

It was an expression of divine stupidity.

’This is it,’ Morwenna thought, her fingers trembling with vicious anticipation as she slowly raised the camera to her eye. ’If I capture this shot... if I print her looking like a drooling tavern wench and pin it over the main gatehouse... she will never look me in the eye again. The weed will finally bend the knee.’

She lined up the lens through the heavy smoke as her finger hovered over the glowing shutter rune.

And then... her gaze drifted three inches to the left. Silas was standing right beside the slumped spirit.

He was leaning over the table, his dark hair falling across his forehead, laughing warmly at something Brenda had just shouted.

The orange firelight from the hearth washed over his sharp handsome features, softening the look that usually hardened his eyes.

’Captain looks warm...’

Morwenna’s breath caught in her throat.

Her finger froze over the rune as a sudden jolt of heat struck her chest, blooming outward until her cheeks burned with a deep furious blush.

Her hands trembled against the brass casing.

’I...’

She looked at the drooling green-haired spirit which was a guaranteed victory in their petty war then she looked back at Silas’s smile.

’It’s a no-brainer,’ Morwenna thought, her heart slamming against her ribs with an intensity that terrified her.

She shifted her boots, adjusting her stance in the shadows as she smoothly pivoted the lens away from Eluned, centering the frame dead on Silas.

CLICK-FLASH!

A brilliant pulse of white light flared through the smoke, catching Silas mid-laugh as he turned toward the western wall.

WHIRRRR-ZIP!

From the slot of the enchanted apparatus, a thick square of glossy photographic paper slid out smoothly.

Morwenna snatched the paper from the air, waving it frantically to accelerate the chemical development.

The image cleared in real-time.

It was stunning.

Silas was captured in razor-sharp clarity, the firelight dancing in his blue eyes, his smile natural and devastatingly handsome, framed by the bustling warmth of his soldiers behind him.

"It’s wonderful..." Morwenna whispered under her breath, a soft smitten smile curling the edges of her lips as she traced the edge of the paper with her thumb. "It really is a wonderful pictu—"

GRIP!

Two large hands suddenly slid around her waist from behind.

"EEP!"

Morwenna’s entire body went rigid as iron as her instincts flared with her right hand instinctively snapping down toward Tidebringer at her hip, her muscles coiling to execute a violent spinning elbow check...

"Find what you were looking for, Morwenna?"

The deep voice murmured directly against the shell of her ear, sending an agonizingly sweet shiver cascading straight down her spine.

Morwenna instantly deflated with the murderous tension evaporating into a puddle of flustered panic as she recognized the voice.

"C-captain!" Morwenna stammered, frantically trying to twist around in his grip, but his hands remained firmly anchored to the narrow curves of her hips.

Silas leaned his chin over her shoulder with his blue eyes glancing down at the fresh photograph clutched in her trembling fingers.

A teasing smirk spread across his face.

"Well, look at that," Silas whispered, his warm breath tickling her earlobe. "You took one of me? Lurking behind curtains in the dark... what a shameless little stalker you are, Morwenna."

An apocalyptic shade of purple-red detonated across Morwenna’s face.

She frantically tried to shove the photograph into her coat pocket with her boots stomping against the stone floor in mortification.

"I AM NOT STALKING YOU!" Morwenna hissed, her voice cracking into an undignified squeak as she struggled against his hold. "The lighting was optimal! And I wanted to take a picture! I’m not a stalker!"

"Right. You’re not a stalker," Silas chuckled, not believing a single syllable, his fingers giving her waist an affectionate squeeze that made her squeak again.

"What’s that? Are we taking pictures?!"

A melodic slurred voice chimed from the side.

Eluned stumbled out of the shadows, swaying like a willow tree in a gale with her green hair completely disheveled as she practically threw her upper body onto Silas’s chest, pushing herself between him and the blushing pirate.

"Come on! Let’s take one together!" Eluned whined, her arms winding around Silas’s neck as she glared blearily at Morwenna. "Give me that camera, you salt-crusted barnacle! We need a proper portrait!"

"Get your sticky weed-hands off my lens!" Morwenna snapped defensively, holding the camera high overhead.

"I can take it!"

The Princess suddenly trotted over from the long table, her cheeks bright red and a heavy wooden tankard dangling from one hand while she reached eagerly for the brass device.

"I know how to operate cameras!" the Princess declared proudly, hiccuping softly. "Let me take the picture!"

"Wait, I want in!" Brenda’s voice rang out from across the hall.

"Me too! Move over, rookies!" Helen shouted.

Within thirty seconds, the quiet place was completely swarmed.

All of the women present, which was almost every woman in Blessed Land crowded together in an enormous chaotic semicircle, hell even Kaelia was here.

Silas was shoved dead-center into the middle of the mass... Eluned clinging tightly to his left arm with a dopey affectionate grin, Morwenna standing stiffly at his right with her arms crossed and her face still burning red, and the Princess happily balancing on her tiptoes just behind his shoulder.

The dwarven smiths shoved their way to the front, kneeling on the floorboards with their tankards held high, while the other girls piled onto benches behind them, flashing peace signs, flexing their biceps, and sticking their tongues out in drunken joy.

Silas looked at the sea of smiling, flushed faces surrounding him, let out a soft laugh, and threw his arms around the shoulders of the women closest to him, offering the camera a wide grin.

Across the room, the unconscious Thor suddenly gave a massive snort.

SNK-ROOOOM!

The God of Thunder’s eyes snapped open. Sensing a moment of glory, she launched herself off the table.

She snatched the enchanted camera from the woman’s hands, set the mechanical timer rune with a heavy flick of her thumb, and mounted it atop a stack of empty ale kegs twelve paces back.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

The runic shutter began to pulse with rapid blue light but Thor didn’t run back to the group with the Princess... she teleported there.

KRA-FLASH!

In an imperceptible fraction of a microsecond, a streak of blue lightning detonated across the floor.

Before the timer could hit zero, Thor materialized directly beside Silas, ducking her frame down and locking her thick muscular hand firmly around his right fingers with an enormous boar-grease-covered grin.

FLASH!

The camera illuminated the entire hall in an explosion of pure white radiance.

ZOOOOOM!

Thor’s hand blurred again.

With the terrifying god-like reflexes of an apex warrior, she shot across the room like a bullet, snatching the camera out of the air right as the vibration of the shutter shook it loose from the kegs.

She caught it cleanly against her chest, skidding across the stones on her knees with a boisterous roar.

"GWAHAHAHAHA! PERFECT TIMING!"

The girls cheered wildly, crowding around the kneeling thunder god as the enchanted photographic paper slowly slid out of the lower tray.

Thor held it up to the torchlight.

It was an incredible shot...

The garrison of Blessed Land was captured in vibrant breathtaking detail.

The blazing hearths, the smoke drifting through the rafters, the tankards raised in triumph, and the women smiling with genuine unshakeable happiness around their black-haired Lord, whose presence anchored the entire hall.

Silas looked down at the paper, a deep, quiet pride swelling within his chest.

’It’s a very good picture...’

...

The following morning broke with a cold unforgiving stillness.

The heavy blizzards that had picked up throughout the previous night had finally dissipated, leaving behind an iron-gray overcast sky that hung low and suffocating over the jagged peaks of the Umbral Basin.

Fine powdery flakes of white snow drifted lazily through the sub-zero air, dusting the black slate battlements and settling across the broad gravel yard of the Keep.

’I really hate this snow...’

Sitting tall and motionless atop the reinforced leather saddle of Valkyrie in the center of the snowy courtyard was Silas.

The Lord was fully clad in his heavy winter combat ensemble... dark fitted void-iron lamellar armor layered over thick insulated wool, his coat cinched tight by a wide leather weapon harness.

Across his lap rested the radiant golden mythril blade with its sheath cold to the touch.

’Still this is my Tier 3 Mythril Longsword... my first weapon heh, been a while...’

His Gold Core hummed with steady power as a thin barrier of warmth radiated off his skin to melt the falling snowflakes before they could touch his hair.

Standing beside Valkyrie’s muscular flank was Kaelia.

The head of the Keep’s Culinary Haven looked like an anxious fretting wife.

Her dark hair was neatly pinned beneath a warm woolen cap with her breath rising in trembling plumes of white mist as she hoisted three massive lacquer-sealed transport containers into the air.

"My Lord, please take these," Kaelia urged, her eyes pooling with genuine fretful worry as she looked up at him. "I stayed up through the night preparing them... There are thirty-six individual meal rations inside. Roasted mountain venison sealed in clarified tallow, steamed winter tubers seasoned with spirit-salt, dense honey-seed traveler’s bread, and six vacuum-sealed jars of concentrated bone broth. It will keep for weeks without freezing!"