They descended a wide spiraling stone staircase that led deep into the foundation of the building.

The group of girls stepped through a heavy archway and found themselves in the specialized training hall.

It was a big space, designed purely for the art of violence.

The floor was a mosaic of shifting enchanted stone plates designed to simulate uneven terrain as heavy iron braziers cast a bright, flickering light over rows upon rows of weapon racks.

’I still wonder what kind of magic my Lord uses to perform these miracles.’ Tasmin thought, regardless she didn’t mind... Her Lord could use this magic or his own personal gain but he decided to use it for them. ’It only makes me fall for him even more.’

It was quite childish but Tasmin loved her Lord very much...

Tamsin walked down the central aisle with her eyes wide.

The racks were lined with practice mythril, the metal was a dull unpolished gray, lacking a lethal cutting edge but it retained the exact weight, balance, and density of true combat steel.

"Look at the gear," Gunnhild muttered, pulling a massive, weighted training vest from a heavy oak stand.

She hefted it, groaning under the mass. "This thing has to weigh a hundred pounds. You wear this for an hour and your legs will turn to jelly."

Tamsin didn’t grab a vest. She reached out and pulled a practice shortsword from the rack.

She gave it a test swing.

WHOOSH!

The blade cut through the air with a clean whistle.

The balance was immaculate and the leather grip molded to her palm as if it had been custom-forged for her hand.

At the center of the training hall stood a series of massive constructs. They were training dummies, but they were monstrous.

Carved from dense, dark Ironwood, the faceless statues were built thick and broad, resembling the heavy brutish silhouettes of the beasts they fought in the thickets.

"Let’s see what Master’s spell considers durable..." Tamsin whispered with light dancing in her eyes.

Tasmin didn’t assume a basic stance as she simply exploded forward.

Tamsin channeled her Level 10 agility, her boots crossing the stone floor in a blur of motion.

She closed the distance in a fraction of a second, putting the entire weight of her momentum behind her right shoulder.

She swung the practice mythril blade in a brutal, sweeping horizontal arc, aiming for the thickest part of the dummy’s wooden torso.

BAM!

The impact was deafening.

The heavy unsharpened mythril slammed into the Ironwood.

The raw physical force behind the blow bypassed the need for an edge as the wooden construct snapped.

Thick, jagged splinters of dense wood exploded outward in a shockwave, raining down against the stone floor. The top half of the dummy was completely obliterated, leaving only a ruined stump.

One of the rookies shrieked, throwing her arms over her face to shield herself from the flying shrapnel.

"Captain!" Gunnhild warned, lowering her weighted vest. "You broke it! The Lord just built this place, you can’t just—"

A sharp chime echoed through the hall, cutting Gunnhild off as a glowing blue system notification materialized directly above the ruined construct.

[Durability Reset]

The shattered splinters lying on the floor began to vibrate.

A web of bright blue mana erupted from the ruined stump of the dummy. The magic reached out like invisible strings, catching the broken shards of Ironwood.

Before the girls could even comprehend what they were seeing, the wood launched itself backward.

The splinters flew through the air, slotting perfectly into place with a rapid series of wet clicks.

The edges smoothed over, the fibers knitting together under the force of the Garrison’s enchantments.

In less than three seconds, the massive Ironwood dummy stood whole, completely unblemished and ready for another strike.

The girls that followed her lowered their arms with their jaws dropping in synchronized terror and awe.

"It heals," a rookie whispered, walking forward to run her hand over the smooth unbroken wood of the dummy’s chest. "It just... reversed the damage, even faster than the former one."

Tamsin lowered her practice blade with her breathing shallow. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

She stared at the construct...

"It’s endless," Tamsin murmured.

She turned back to her squad with her grin becoming wide.

"Do you understand what this means? We don’t hold back anymore. We swing until our muscles tear, and the room fixes the targets. It’s a warrior’s paradise."

She pointed the practice sword at the rookies. "Grab your blades. Put on the weighted vests... We don’t leave this hall until the dummies has reset at least a hundred time—"

"Tasmin! Come join us with the other girls as well!"

The woman blushed as her Lord called her name and she kept the blade back on the rack as she jogged over immediately.

"Coming my Lord!"

While Tamsin and the girls ran over, Silas gathered the rest of the Vanguard for the grand tour.

He led Brida, Rowena, Fenna, and the remaining infantry girls up the wide stone staircase toward the logistical wing of the Warlord’s Garrison.

The scale of the upgrade was difficult for the soldiers to process.

They walked down a massive, well-lit corridor lined with thick glass windows that looked out over the rain-swept courtyard.

The air in this wing was climate-controlled, lacking the damp freezing chill of the monsoon outside.

Silas pushed open a set of heavy doors midway down the hall, revealing the primary storage rooms.

The space was immaculate.

Rows of precision-carved stone shelves stretched back into the room, organized to house the territory’s expanding wealth.

Crates of the rations and the weapons were kept cool by faint frost-runes etched into the ceiling.

On the right, massive iron bins were waiting to hold the harvested iron tusks, chitin plates, and cores they had brought back from the raid.

’Right, we have to get the corpses as well...’ Silas thought.

"Logistics win wars..." Silas told them, walking down the central aisle. "A hungry soldier is a dead soldier as this room ensures the moisture of the basin never rots our supplies even if the Culinary Haven is down."

He led them out of the storage room and down into the personal armory.

This room elicited the loudest gasps from the heavy infantry. Lining the walls were individual, personal locker spaces.

Each station featured a heavy, iron-mesh door with pristine, oiled hinges, a sturdy rack for breastplates and greaves, and a deep compartment for personal belongings.

The girls broke formation, wandering down the line.

They reached out, running their scarred, mud-stained hands over the polished stone benches and the perfect rust-free iron of the lockers.

"I don’t believe it," Gunnhild whispered, opening and closing a locker door just to hear the satisfying smooth click of the latch. "A week ago, I was sleeping on a rotting cot in a dungeon cell... I kept my boots under my pillow so the rats wouldn’t chew the leather..."

Brida leaned against one of the pillars, shaking her head.

"I’ve seen guardhouses in the capital that look like pigsties compared to this. We’re living better than some of the spoiled nobles in the inner ring hehe~"

Fenna, the Bow-Splitter, ran her fingers over the curve of a custom bow-rack.

"The Lord provides... He takes the nightmare of the basin and turns it into a fortress."

So why didn’t he take care of her and turn her into a Mother already?

’Or am I unappealing to the eye...’ Fenna looked down, she wasn’t or maybe it was her face. She wasn’t exactly what one would call beautiful.

The banter flowed naturally with the girls trading jokes and comparing the immaculate facility to the squalor they had survived.

The camaraderie was real, forged in blood and solidified by the luxury their Sovereign had bestowed upon them.

Silas let them explore for a few minutes before calling them back to the hall.

"There is one last room," Silas said, leading them to the very end of the massive corridor.

They stopped in front of a set of massive, heavy double doors.

The wood was a pale polished oak, reinforced with gleaming brass bands. It looked out of place in a military garrison, resembling the entrance to a highborn estate.

Silas gripped the heavy brass rings and pushed.

The doors gave way, swinging open silently on perfect hinges. A thick rolling cloud of fragrant, warm steam spilled out into the hallway, washing over the girls.

The women stepped inside and the chatter died instantly.

They were standing in a wide opulent bathhouse.

The ceiling vaulted high above them, carved from pristine white marble that glowed under the light of ambient floating mana-crystals.

The floor was lined with smooth, heated river stones that felt incredible beneath their boots.

The air was heavy, smelling of crushed minerals, clean water, and a floral sweetness that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.

"A bathhouse?" Brida muttered, her jaw slack.

Rowena didn’t just stare. The Arcanist broke away from the group, completely geeking out over the architecture.

She blitzed past Silas, her eyes tracking the glowing blue conduits etched into the marble walls.

"The plumbing architecture is flawless," Rowena gasped, rushing over to a row of pristine brass showers lining the side wall.

She reached out and grabbed a heavy brass knob, twisting it.

A perfect, steady stream of scalding hot water poured from the showerhead, hitting the drain below with a rhythmic splash.

Rowena let out a noise that was half-laugh and half-sob.

She shoved her hands under the water, letting the heat wash over her pale mud-stained fingers.

"It’s running off geothermal pressure, combined with arcane filtration runes!" Rowena babbled, turning back to look at Silas as if he had just pulled down the sun. "You didn’t just build a tub, my Lord, you engineered a self-sustaining hydrothermal loop! The pressure is perfect. The temperature is regulated too... You’re simply amazing."

Silas offered a small, amused smile, gesturing for the rest of the girls to step further inside.

He pointed to a thick wall of etched frosted glass that divided the massive chamber into two distinct sections.

"It’s a co-ed facility by design from what I can see..." Silas explained, laying out the rules.

He pointed to the smaller utilitarian section where Rowena was currently playing with the taps. "This side is for the men... It has the showers and a small soaking tub."

He then pointed to the other side of the glass partition.

Through the wide archway, the girls could see a massive, sunken hot spring that looked large enough to swim in.

The water bubbled gently as it was clear and inviting.

"That side is the women’s spring," Silas told them. "The heat will draw the lactic acid from your muscles, and the minerals will clear the toxins from the basin out of your skin... so Take off your armor and wash off the grime. You all have earned a moment of peace."

The girls didn’t need to be told twice. Gunnhild and Fenna practically sprinted toward the women’s side, already unbuckling their heavy iron belts.

Silas turned, stepping toward the entrance of the men’s side.

He heard the soft rustle of silk behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder. Eluned was following closely on his heels, her pale hands clutching the front of her dress.

Her cheeks were flushed a brilliant shade of pink with the heat of the room bringing a healthy glow to her immortal skin.

She tried to step past him into the men’s side.

Silas paused, blocking the doorway with his broad frame. He looked down at the Goddess, arching an eyebrow.

"I am your Hero," Eluned argued with her voice dropping into a soft defensive pout.

She looked up at him stubbornly.

"The world binds me to your safety. What if something happens in the steam? What if a monster appears while you are bathing? I need to guard you."

Silas stared at her.

A small blush touched his own cheeks at the blatant excuse.

She was an SSS-Rank deity of nature, capable of leveling forests, and she was trying to sneak into his bath under the guise of an assassination threat.

A low, deep chuckle rumbled in his chest.

"The perimeter is secure, Eluned," Silas said.

He reached out, gently tapping her on the nose. "Join the girls. They need to see that their Goddess knows how to rest, too."

Eluned opened her mouth to argue further, taking a step forward.

Silas didn’t give her the chance. He stepped backward into the thick steam of the men’s side and swiftly pulled the heavy oak door shut.

The lock clicked into place right in her face.

Eluned stood in the hallway, staring at the closed door with her pout deepening into a genuine scowl before she finally huffed and turned toward the women’s spring.

’Whatever... I’ll make him cuddle me more.’ Eluned thought.

She was certainly very close with her Lord however Eluned wanted to be much closer, Humans and gods could do the deed... She wanted to secure her position in his heart.

It didn’t matter how many women he brought along, if her first was him and he was her first, Eluned would always remain Number one in his heart.