The Golden Lord has a perverted SSS-rank summoning system!

Chapter 205: Hell Soldier’s Gate (02)

The 150 selected guards stood before the Hell Soldier’s Gate, nervousness creeping across their faces.

Already fully equipped, they held their weapons and shields firmly, cold palms gripping the leather straps.

Ethan stood before them and began to explain in a calm voice.

"This is a combat simulation device with a tenfold time-distortion effect, created for one purpose alone: to train you and turn you into Goldenveil’s next elite.

All five hundred guards will undergo this training, but you will be the first—understood?"

"Yes, Lord Ethan!" the guards answered in unison, drawing a faint smile from Ethan as he turned his gaze toward Cain.

"Cain, you will lead this first detachment, and Vaelith will be your second-in-command. The other guards may replace you by majority vote if you prove incapable. Understand?"

Cain and Vaelith didn’t hesitate to confirm, their gazes firm and determined.

It was obvious that Ethan didn’t expect to see them replaced. In reality, those words were a warning.

They should give their best and prove themselves capable leaders!

After all, that gate wasn’t just for training martial skills.

"Good. Don’t let us down. When you return, you must be on a completely different level from the rest of the guard." Ethan stepped aside, allowing the guards to enter the gate in formation.

"Is this simulator really not going to cause any mental damage to them?" Doran asked beside Ethan, concern evident in his voice.

Aerick shared the same doubt. Even though he had never seen a simulator like this one, he had heard plenty about its effects.

It wasn’t uncommon for such artifacts to inflict terrible mental damage on the most fragile participants.

"Not with their talent," Ethan replied, watching the guards enter the portal in an orderly fashion.

"And this is a high-level artifact, created by a true master. It won’t cause mental damage to anyone that easily."

Hearing that answer, Doran and Aerick simply nodded in agreement.

They were still worried, but in the end, they could only hope for the best and trust that the training they had given to those young men’s minds—weeding out the weak and the unstable among them—would prove useful.

Inside the Hell Soldier’s portal, Cain was among the first to appear.

The world around him transformed in an instant.

A thick, metallic scent of blood flooded his nostrils, and a shrill scream tore through the air in the distance.

"Captain Cain, you son of a bitch, get your formation in order! If you break ranks, we’re dead!"

In that instant, the one hundred and fifty guards, still confused, finally realized what was happening.

They stood in the middle of a large-scale battle, thousands of soldiers locked in bloody clashes around them.

Cain didn’t know how there could be other humans here, or even if those humans were real.

Even so, it took him only a moment to recover. "Formation! Three lines, shields at the ready!"

The guards moved at once, fifty taking the lead while another hundred formed three lines behind them.

Soon, one of the enemy detachments charged against them—barbarian soldiers wielding massive axes, their bare chests covered in strange tattoos.

The Goldenveil guards defended themselves with everything they had, using the first and second forms of the Golden Dragon Emperor’s sword art.

At first, it worked. More than five barbarians dropped in the blink of an eye, throats opened and limbs severed clean. But that soon changed.

More than three hundred barbarians crashed against the shied wall, the impact reverberating through the line of shields like suffocating thunder.

One of them, the bravest, leaped onto the back of a comrade and launched himself into the air, soaring over Goldenveil’s line of shields.

His plan was clearly to strike them from behind, but with Vaelith in the second line, he didn’t get very far.

An elven saber slit his throat while he was still airborne, blood spurting in a crimson arc before his body crashed to the ground.

"Good!" Cain roared, lunging forward into the enemy vanguard and driving his blade through a barbarian’s throat.

The next instant, however, he had to defend against a blade slashing in from his side.

"Shit..." he growled, barely managing to parry the strike in time to notice.

Their front line... where was it?

In less than a minute, the young Goldenveil soldiers, most with no more than a month of training behind them, had their vanguard broken.

In less than three minutes, their numbers were reduced to a fraction of what they had been.

They weren’t cowards—quite the opposite.

They fought as if their lives depended on it, but in the end, within five minutes, they were completely wiped out.

The moment the eyes of the last among them closed, they opened in a completely different place, defending a fortress all on their own.

That was the gate of the Hell Soldier.

An endless sequence of battles ranging from cavalry charges to drawn-out siege defenses, all with a single goal: to prepare a soldier for every eventuality.

Only once every twenty-four hours could they reach a rest zone, where they remained for another twenty-four hours before returning to the slaughter.

It was a truly terrifying artifact.

***

Outside, shortly after the young guards entered the Hell Soldier’s Gate, Ethan sighed.

Honestly, he wanted to go in and train personally, but his position as Lord simply didn’t allow for that sort of thing.

He couldn’t just abandon everything and disappear for a whole month.

For something like that, he’d need to appoint a regent, establish a functional chain of command, and, of course, have people he could trust—which he already had.

Later, he planned to test the limits of the place’s body-distortion capabilities, but for now, it was time for the guard to train.

"Continue the guards’ normal training and select another hundred and fifty for next month," Ethan ordered. Upon receiving confirmation from Aerick and Doran, he left with a smile on his lips.

He had a lot to do, but the main thing, naturally, was to use up all his accumulated gacha tickets.

He also wanted to start studying his new aura ability, whose description had piqued his curiosity.

This winter would be long, and he would make the most of it.