’I am entirely immune to this level of degeneracy at this point,’ Silas thought with his face completely deadpan.

He guessed he should at least thank this woman because she was helping him get a resistance to this...

"I am heading outside the walls for a Tier 3 raid," Silas stated, completely ignoring the sexual harassment. "I need the light armor and the Aether-Steel Sword I gave you to work on.."

Thora’s perverted smile vanished, instantly replaced by the sharp intensity of a Master Smith.

"Right on time..." Thora grinned proudly.

She walked over to a heavy, iron-bound locker resting near the cooling barrels.

Thora popped the heavy mechanical latches and pulled out a sleek pristine armor stand and a long cloth-wrapped weapon.

She brought them over and slammed them onto the work table directly in front of him.

"I completely finished them an hour ago..." Thora boasted, crossing her heavily muscled arms.

Silas looked at the armor.

It was breathtaking though it wasn’t forged from the glowing star-iron he had brought her.

"I utilized the Deep-Earth Alloy, combined with a localized variant of Shadow-Steel I extracted from the Gore-Fiend drops," Thora explained the metallurgical physics. "It is incredibly lightweight, but it possesses a high absorption rating."

The armor was a sleek articulated black breastplate layered over dark, enchanted mesh.

It was designed to completely absorb ambient light, making it perfect for stealth in dark places.

She picked up the long, cloth-wrapped weapon and pulled the fabric away.

It was his primary Aether-Steel Sword, but it had been entirely altered.

Thora had taken the raw, leftover mythril shavings from his massive Greatsword and meticulously folded them directly into the steel of the lighter blade.

The edge of the sword glowed with a violent, vibrating, highly lethal blue hum.

"I call the armor The Midnight Carapace..." Thora named them proudly. "And the blade is The Azure Guillotine."

Silas didn’t waste any time.

He quickly stripped off his standard black tactical shirt, standing bare-chested in the heat of the forge.

He seamlessly pulled the Midnight Carapace over his torso, strapping the heavy mythril buckles tight against his ribs.

He slid The Azure Guillotine into the dark leather scabbard at his hip.

The gear felt perfectly balanced but it was only Tier 2.

Silas needed absolute, overwhelming superiority for a Dungeon Boss.

"System..." Silas muttered.

A glowing translucent blue interface instantly flared to life in his retinas.

[Absolute Upgrade System Accessed.]

[Target Items: Midnight Carapace (Tier 2) & Azure Guillotine (Tier 2)]

[Upgrade Cost: 400 UP]

[Proceed? Y / N]

’Yes,’ Silas commanded mentally.

[400 UP Consumed. Initiating Upgrade...]

The physical reaction was instantaneous and violently intense.

A blinding roaring aura of pure condensed golden sovereign mana erupted directly out of Silas’s Gold Core.

The mana flooded straight into the newly forged gear.

Thora gasped, stepping back and covering her eyes against the glare.

The black Midnight Carapace completely changed.

The metal plates aggressively expanded, locking together in a flawless unbreakable carapace.

Deep, glowing golden runes etched themselves directly into the dark steel, actively glowing with a dampening field.

At his hip, The Azure Guillotine vibrated so violently the scabbard shook.

The blue mythril edge darkened, absorbing the golden mana until the blade became a terrifying hybrid of dark cosmic steel and pure sovereign authority.

They were now Tier 3 artifacts.

Silas turned around, rolling his armored shoulders.

The overwhelming power radiating from the upgraded gear made the ambient air in the forge physically warp.

Thora stared at him as her eyes went wide in awe.

"Boss..." Thora breathed out, completely mesmerized by the sheer aesthetic and power.

Suddenly, her eyes glinted with a manic, highly destructive spark.

She sprinted over to her workbench and aggressively hoisted a massive, incredibly heavy canvas duffel bag completely over her shoulder.

The bag clinked and rattled ominously with the sound of volatile glass and compressed iron.

"I am coming with you," Thora declared loudly, marching back toward him. "I’m going to give those cave-dwelling bastards pure hell."

Silas looked back over his armored shoulder, his eye twitching.

"Thora," Silas sighed deeply. "You are a blacksmith... You are not a frontline combatant."

"I have perfectly valid utility!" Thora argued fiercely, patting the heavy duffel bag. "I have entirely new kinds of highly volatile incendiary scatter-bombs and concussive shrapnel experiments I really want to use in the field! I need to test their damage output on live targets!"

Silas stared at the insane Dwarven enthusiast.

He had an SSS-Rank Goddess, an SSS-Rank Pirate, and a lot of other people on the team...

Adding a mad bomber to the mix was just par for the course at this point.

"Sure," Silas surrendered entirely. "Just don’t blow me up."

...

The freezing monsoon rain was pouring heavily over the muddy courtyard of the Blessed Land.

At the massive reinforced iron front gates of the territory, the Vanguard raid detachment was actively assembling.

Morwenna stood at the front, looking good in some makeshift leather armor she had snagged from the Barracks with the Astral Corsair strapped securely to her hip.

Eluned floated a few inches off the mud, her glowing green eyes scanning the tree line.

Tasmin stood ready, her chained daggers ready to be re-ignited with dark crimson fire.

Brida and the five chosen girls formed a tight disciplined tactical phalanx behind them.

"Where is the Captain?" Morwenna asked, her raspy voice cutting through the rain. "He said ten minutes."

"He is approaching from the Foundry..." Eluned pointed toward the inner courtyard.

Through the thick gray mist and the heavy rain, the towering armored silhouette of their Sovereign slowly came into view.

The girls immediately straightened their postures.

They were expecting a terrifying badass warlord entrance.

They were expecting their golden-eyed Lord to march toward them radiating the crushing gravity of a god of war.

But as Silas walked closer, the gray mist completely cleared.

All ten women in the raid group completely simultaneously froze.

They stared in confused disbelief as they saw something incredibly peculiar.

Silas was indeed wearing the badass and terrifying Tier 3 black Midnight Carapace.

He looked like an unstoppable menace but he wasn’t walking alone.

Thora, the Dwarven blacksmith, was literally, actively sitting directly on his shoulders.

She was sitting completely behind his neck.

Her thick muscled bare Dwarven legs were aggressively wrapped tightly around either side of his head, locking her securely into place on his broad armored shoulders.

She held her massive duffel bag of explosives casually in her lap.

Silas was walking with deadpan dignity, completely ignoring the fact that he was currently being utilized as a bipedal mount by a half-naked Dwarf.

The girls just stared.

Morwenna’s jaw dropped and Eluned’s eye began to violently twitch.

Thora looked down from her high elevated vantage point.

She looked at the shocked jealous faces of the assembled raid team.

A massive smug degenerate smile stretched entirely across her face.

She leaned forward, resting her chin on the top of Silas’s wet hair.

"Don’t look so entirely jealous, ladies!" Thora laughed loudly, her abrasive voice echoing clearly over the pouring rain. "The Boss just absolutely loves it when I wrap my thick thighs completely around his neck! It’s the best seat in the entire territory!"

...

Silas and the girls arrived at the edge of the unmapped grid in the Umbral Basin exactly thirty minutes later.

The heavy monsoon rain was still pouring relentlessly, turning the black soil beneath their boots into a slick treacherous paste.

The towering ironwood trees completely blotted out the gray sky, creating a suffocating oppressive atmosphere.

They stepped into the clearing.

Standing exactly fifty yards ahead of them, carved directly into a massive wall of solid obsidian rock was the cavern entrance.

It was a yawning, pitch-black maw that seemed to actively swallow the ambient light around it.

The unnatural white mist rolled lazily out of the cave mouth, carrying the rotting stench of Corrupted Orcs.

"This is the exact spot, my Lord..." Tasmin reported sharply, pointing her chained dagger toward the darkness.

The five Vanguard elites... Fenna, Maren, Hilda, Gunnhild, and a junior scout named Elara approached the clearing with extreme disciplined caution.

Their hands hovered securely over their weapons with their eyes scanning the perimeter.

They didn’t exactly look eager.

"Tasmin almost completely died in there... huh... " Fenna complained nervously, stringing a mana arrow to her recurve bow. "The ambient mana pressure in this grid is entirely suffocating."

"The acoustics in that tunnel are terrible," Maren added, adjusting the heavy straps of her kite shield. "If we get surrounded in a bottleneck, we won’t have room to maneuver our heavy weapons."

Silas didn’t ignore their concerns.

"We aren’t fighting them in a bottleneck," Silas shrugged off the complaints smoothly, entirely unfazed by the oppressive environment. "We are going to forcefully draw them out into this clearing, establish a perimeter, and butcher them in the open mud so we have to use the terrain to our advantage."

The girls exchanged quick relieved glances and nodded in unison.

That was a plan they could actually work with.

"And remember to target the joints," Morwenna chimed in, leaning casually against herAstral Corsair sword. "Don’t just swing at their breastplates like drunken lumberjacks... Edge alignment, girls."

Thora, who had finally climbed down from Silas’s shoulders after thirty minutes of continuous degenerate commentary, ruined the professional military briefing.

The half-naked Dwarven blacksmith adjusted the heavy duffel bag of explosives over her shoulder and offered a massive perverted grin.

"Don’t worry, ladies!" Thora cackled loudly. "If any of those ugly bastards manage to grab you, just squeeze your thighs together really hard! That’s exactly how I subdue the Boss in bed!"

Morwenna didn’t sigh. She didn’t roll her eyes.

The Dread Queen moved with blinding agility. She raised her left hand and delivered a fast and precise karate chop directly to the top of Thora’s iron helmet.

CLANG!

The sharp sound echoed cleanly across the clearing.

"Ow!" Thora yelped, rubbing the top of her helmet and glaring up at the pirate. "What the hell was that for?!"

Morwenna didn’t raise her voice.

She simply looked down at the Dwarf with her stormy gray eyes completely dead.

She offered a dark serene smile, slowly closing her eyes.

"It is okay if you are an unrepentant pervert in the privacy of your own forge, Smith," Morwenna whispered as her voice suddenly gained a tone that carried the crushing weight of the ocean floor. "But if you continually disrespect the Captain with that filthy mouth..."

Morwenna opened her eyes. The storm inside her irises was entirely visible.

"I will personally behead you," Morwenna promised smoothly. "And I will use your skull as a anchor point for my ship."

Thora completely paled.

The fearless boisterous degenerate violently gulped as the terrifying killing intent radiating from the pirate making her muscled knees physically buckle.

"S-sorry," Thora apologized frantically, raising her hands in absolute surrender. "Just a joke! Just a bit of Dwarven humor!"

Silas completely ignored the disciplinary action.

He was focused on the tactical objective ahead.

He stood directly in front of the massive cavern entrance, staring into the pitch-black abyss.

He could physically feel the heavy mana signature of the Boss lurking deep within the lower tunnels.

It was a dense territorial aura.

The volume of hostile targets packed into the space was staggering.

’It would be so incredibly easy to just wipe the grid...’ Silas thought, resting his hand on the hilt of The Azure Guillotine.

He glanced over at the Goddess floating beside him.

"Eluned," Silas muttered, feeling deeply, highly tempted by the pragmatic option. "Could you just cast an explosive root system and completely blow this entire cavern to hell?"

It would be flawless.

Eluned didn’t agree.

The Goddess actually looked at him like he had just completely lost his mind.

"Are you entirely serious right now, my Lord?" Eluned scoffed politely, crossing her arms beneath her chest. "If I detonate the bedrock, we will completely vaporize the millions of lord money worth of raw mythril and mana crystals currently attached to the walls... We have to keep the structural integrity of the cave completely intact."

"Oh... I forgot about that."