Rowenna observed her new form in the mirror, reaching down with both hands to gently cup her chest, jiggling her breasts together with a blushing satisfied smile.
"Hehehehe~"
Once she was done admiring her new curves, Rowenna walked over to a dark oak reading table in the center of the library.
Resting on the table was a single glowing violet diagram.
Rowenna leaned over the table, her blue eyes narrowing as she recognized the schematic instantly.
It was the exact same rune she was working on earlier this morning... her [Runic Overwrite] spell.
"Huh?"
But on this table, the schematic wasn’t incomplete or unstable.
The missing geometric lines and mana equations were completely filled in.
Rowenna leaned closer, a brilliant realization-filled smile spreading across her face as she understood what she had been missing all along.
"So that’s how it works..." Rowenna realized happily.
She raised her right hand over the table, channeling her new mana reserves.
CRACKLE... FWOOSH!
The completed [Runic Overwrite] matrix materialized three inches above her palm, stabilizing with perfect clarity.
To test its power, Rowenna instinctively cast a localized gravity well spell toward the far corner of the library, and then immediately triggered her completed overwrite array toward it.
BANG!
The overwrite array negated the gravity spell instantly from a distance... shattering the gravitational field into harmless sparks before it could even take effect.
"AHAHAHA!" Rowenna burst into a victorious joyous laugh. "It worked!"
Suddenly...
RUMBLE!
The towering bookshelves surrounding the library began to vibrate violently.
All the books in the Library seemed to fall from their shelves simultaneously, floating through the air and flying straight toward her.
"Hehehahaha..."
It felt extremely weird, but as the book circled her figure, their glowing pages opened, showing her an infinite array of ancient runes.
So many runes... Fire runes, Ice runes, Lightning runes, Hurricane runes, Earth runes, 20x Gravity runes too?
’Jackpot!’
It was making her go completely crazy with academic bliss...
Rowenna absorbed the flood of ancient knowledge directly into her mind, letting out a wild euphoric laugh.
"Ehehehahaha~!"
Among the infinite floating pages, she even spotted a specialized [Attraction Rune] alongside dozens of other runes.
The ancient books stacked themselves around her figure, climbing up over her arms and shoulders, literally sealing her within a dense cocoon of pure runic knowledge.
"Rowenna... Rowenna, wake up," Silas’s deep voice called out, shaking the woman’s body in his office.
Back inside the Keep’s top-floor office, Silas was leaning over his desk, looking at Rowenna’s unconscious body with a deeply exasperated expression.
This was officially the second time that the person he was upgrading had lost consciousness during the evolution process.
Silas couldn’t help but wonder internally why Aeli and Rowenna had passed out cold, whereas Tasmin and Brida had remained wide awake and active during their upgrades.
Were Tasmin and Brida simply like that due to their physical combat classes, or was the sudden surge of knowledge simply too heavy for a mage’s brain to process in real-time...?
Rowenna woke up, her blue eyes fluttering open as her consciousness returned to the executive office.
The second her mind cleared, she immediately noticed the thick black globs of sulfurous impurities clinging to her perfect newly evolved body.
The foul tar-like sludge coated her arms, her chest, and her robes, emitting a heavy stench.
Rowenna went completely rigid, trembling shyly with mortified embarrassment.
"Congratulations, Rowenna," Silas began, offering a warm smile. "You did—"
"MY LORD!" Rowenna interrupted frantically, her voice reaching a high-pitched squeak.
She violently shifted three steps backward, bowing several times in rapid succession after shifting back.
"I... I URGENTLY NEED TO TAKE A BATH RIGHT NOW! PLEASE EXCUSE ME!" Rowenna yelled in total panicked embarrassment.
STEP... STEP... BANG!
Without offering a single word of explanation, the newly evolved Grand Runemaster turned on her heel, sprinted out of the office door, and ran off toward the Keep’s bathroom at record speed.
"..."
Silas sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he watched her disappear down the hallway.
He leaned back in his leather chair and swiped his hand through the air, pulling up her updated system status sheet to see her newly acquired stats.
[Name]: Rowenna
[Title]: Runic Arcanist → Grand Runemaster
[Rank]: S-Rank
[Level]: 30 (EXP: 0/30000)
[Loyalty]: 100 (Diehard / Love)
[Vitality]: 950
[Mana]: 5200 / 5200
[Active & Passive Skills]:
[Omni-Elemental Runic Array]: Instantly inscribes high-tier multi-elemental runes into empty air or directly onto targets without requiring chant time or a physical staff. (Cost: 120 Mana/cast)
[Runic Gravity Well (20x)]: Inscribes an expanded, deep-purple gravitational array that multiplies downforce up to twentyfold (20x). Instantly crushes heavy iron tanks, grounds flying drakes, and splinters bedrock beneath enemy armies. (Cost: 300 Mana/cast)
[Ultra Runic Disruption]: Passively radiates a 50-meter aura that destabilizes incoming enemy spells, hacks complex barriers, and forces opposing spellcasters into spell-backfire or delayed channeling. (Passive)
[Gravitational Singularity Collapse]: Condenses a 20x gravity well into a microscopic black point, pulling all surrounding enemies, projectiles, and fortifications violently into the center before detonating outward in a force wave. (Cost: 450 Mana/cast)
[Attraction Rune]: Inscribes a specialized gravitational attraction mark on a designated target or surface, pulling all surrounding physical objects, projectiles, or enemies toward the marked point with immense force. (Cost: 150 Mana/cast)
[Runic Barrier Overwrite]: Instantly analyzes, bypasses, and dismantles high-tier enemy defense barriers, sealing arrays, and magical wards. (Cost: 200 Mana/cast)
[More]
Silas stared at the glowing blue status sheet, his golden-ringed eyes widening to the size of saucers as his jaw subtly dropped.
’What the fuck...?’ Silas thought, his mind completely blown by the absurdity of her newly unlocked skills.
She was even more OP than Aeli...
However, as Silas scanned down the translucent interface, he noticed a tiny, glowing golden tab at the bottom of her active skill list labeled
[More...].
It was the first time Silas had ever seen a secondary expansion tab on a unit’s status interface.
Intrigued, he extended his index finger and tapped the floating text.
DING!
The holographic menu instantly expanded downward, unfolding into a secondary and tertiary list of sub-skills, utility runes, passive runes, and so many skills.
Dozens upon dozens of integrated runes cascaded down the screen in neat blue rows including glaciating frost wards, high-voltage lightning traps, atmospheric wind shears, and kinetic deflection circles.
Silas blinked, staring at the endless wall of text.
’Just how many skills does she know now?’ Silas thought, a dry amazed breath escaping his lips.
The volume of magical knowledge pumped directly into Rowenna’s brain during her evolution was simply too much.
Between her primary [Omni-Elemental Runic Array], her brutal [20x Runic Gravity Well], her spatial [Attraction Rune], and this vast library of secondary elemental power, Rowenna had effectively become a walking one-woman magical academy.
’Might as well give her a promotion...’
Silas leaned back in his leather chair, resting his hands on the mahogany desk as he digested the results.
He was genuinely surprised by the jump in power both Rowenna and Aeliana had displayed upon reaching S-Rank.
Taking a step back to analyze the territory’s overall combat roster, Silas realized it was not a far stretch at all to say that Aeli and Rowenna were now, in terms of pure raw destructive output and wide-area battlefield control, significantly stronger than Tasmin and Brida.
’Then again...’ Silas reflected in his thoughts, ’...that was to be expected.’
Tasmin was a specialized Shadow Commander built for single-target assassination, high-speed flank execution, and backline disruption.
Brida was a Titan Bastion designed to be an immovable physical wall, drawing aggro and crushing frontline charges with her massive shield.
Aeli and Rowenna, on the other hand, were pure S-Rank high-tier casters.
Their classes were fundamentally designed to reshape terrain, collapse physical space, and obliterate entire troop formations from miles away.
Comparing a frontline tank to a high level mage was apples and oranges.
Silas let out a long quiet sigh, running a broad hand through his dark hair.
FWOOSH!
He swiped his hand through the air, dismissing both holographic status sheets.
With Aeli and Rowenna having both panicked and sprinted off to the Keep’s bathhouses, the thick sulfurous smell of purged physical impurities that had briefly filled the office completely dissipated, carried out through the open windows by the fresh morning breeze.
Silas sat alone in his chair, his golden-ringed eyes fixing onto his remaining UP balance displayed in the corner of his vision.
[Current UP Balance: 540 UP]
’We need more UP,’ Silas concluded firmly in his mind.
540 UP was a solid safety cushion, but it wasn’t nearly enough for the ambitious territorial overhaul Silas was planning.
Today was supposed to be dedicated entirely to civic renovations and structural expansions... like erecting the Tier 2 Multi-Floor Living Quarters, which required 300 units of Obsidian-Slate Stone.
Furthermore, once the structural foundations were set, Silas wanted to look into upgrading Fenna.
Elevating her archery to a full S-Rank master-class would give his army an elite long-range physical sniper to complement Aeli and Rowenna’s magical bombardment.
And after Fenna, Silas intended to elevate the baseline ranks of all seventy-two Vanguard recruits... raising them from basic C-Rank and D-Rank combatants to a solid reliable B-Rank foundation.
That way, none of the women in his territory would ever feel left behind or defenseless during large-scale raids.
’To pull all of that off...’ Silas calculated mentally, ’...I’m going to need thousands of UP.’
The most logical way to farm UP was simple: send his entire army out into the Umbral Basin to clear monster nests, raid high-tier elite caverns, and wipe out regional bosses.
...However, a major dilemma held Silas back.
Silas stood up from his desk, walking over to the glass window and looking out toward the distant perimeter of the Blessed Land.
Out past the treeline, situated a few miles away in the neutral buffer zone, was Lord Sky’s rolling mobile fortress... The Unmovable Wall.
If Silas mobilized his entire force... sending Eluned, Morwenna, Talira, Tasmin, Brida, Aeli, Rowenna, and all the girls out into the open fields simultaneously... Lord Sky’s high-tier optical arrays, long-range scouting drakes, and stream surveillance feeds would immediately pick them up.
Sky would be able to watch them fight from the comfort of his mobile command bridge, meticulously cataloging their abilities, measuring their mana outputs, and analyzing their movement patterns.
Silas was more than willing to show a bit of his hand to maintain a dominant presence, but he had zero intention of handing his rival a complete crystal-clear view of his entire military roster six days before the official Lord War.
’I already assume Sky has figured out a way to deal with Tasmin,’ Silas analyzed coolly with his golden eyes narrowing.
During their initial skirmish near the border, Tasmin had been the primary unit Sky had witnessed in action.
An experienced veteran Classic Lord like Sky had undoubtedly spent the last two days analyzing her shadow-drift mechanics, preparing disruption wards or light-elemental traps to neutralize her routes.
...But Sky hadn’t seen Brida’s S-Rank Titan Bastion defense yet.
He hadn’t seen Aeli’s new [Space Compression] or Rowenna’s [20x Gravity Well].
Silas still held the element of surprise.
Keeping those key assets hidden in the dark until the war officially commenced was a massive strategic advantage that Silas refused to surrender.
’The most fearful thing about a Mobile Territory Lord is how much access to modern technology they have...’ Silas reflected.
Lords like Sky didn’t just rely on ancient magic or summoned units.
Their mobile rigs were equipped with high-grade industrial machinery, automated siege cannons, long-range mana artillery, drone reconnaissance networks, and modern tactical comms.
Silas couldn’t blame Sky for utilizing those tools, nor was it illegal under the Sovereign Realm’s war codes.
At the end of the day, a Lord War was a brutal uncompromising conflict.
If a Lord had access to modern military hardware and chose not to exploit it, they were simply an idiot.
This was especially true for someone like Sky, who was live-streaming his entire campaign to millions of viewers on the network.
If Sky didn’t exploit every single technical edge available to him, his streaming audience would abandon him, and rival Lords would pick his territory apart like vultures.
So, while Silas possessed unshakeable confidence in his ability to utterly crush Sky when the battle started, that confidence didn’t mean he was going to be stupid.
He wasn’t about to give his enemy a free all-access press pass to analyze his top-tier commanders.
’I need a controlled way to farm UP without revealing my main backline...’ Silas thought, resting his hand against the window frame.
CREAK!
The heavy oak door to his office suddenly swung open. Silas paused his thoughts, turning his head around to see who was entering.
Standing in the doorway was Morwenna.