SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Seraphine looked at Isabella and felt the familiar pull of someone who couldn’t stand watching unnecessary suffering when she had the means to address it.

The little supreme leader was standing there, visibly bracing for disaster, her hands tight at her sides, the expression of someone waiting for an execution that hadn’t started yet. All because her real appearance was about to be on display in front of thousands of soldiers who’d built their image of her around a carefully maintained illusion.

Seraphine reached through the telepathic link to Leon quietly.

Cast an illusion on her. Make it something that works.

Leon, still positioned above and undetected, obliged without comment. The illusion settled over Isabella seamlessly — the tall, scarred, commanding figure that the soldiers would see, replacing the dropped cloak’s work with something more refined and considerably harder to detect.

Seraphine watched Isabella’s face as the comments started coming in from the soldiers around them. Fierce. Commanding. The seventh supreme leader was revealed at last.

The elation that moved across Isabella’s small features was immediate and genuine — relief mixing with something that looked very much like joy, the specific joy of someone receiving exactly what they’d been afraid they wouldn’t get.

I did the right thing, Seraphine noted with quiet satisfaction.

Isabella composed herself with visible effort and stepped forward, offering her gratitude for the battle. Her words were measured and sincere — she clearly wasn’t certain whether the group had been the promised reinforcements or simply powerful individuals who’d happened to intervene, but she seemed to have worked out that they weren’t affiliated with any local force.

”We saw you were in trouble,” Seraphine replied simply. ”Of course, we helped.”

Isabella heard those words, and something shifted in her expression — a brief, involuntary softness, the look of someone who wanted to feel warmly about the people in front of her and was being actively prevented from doing so by the clear memory of having been thoroughly robbed by them not long ago. The conflict was visible and somewhat charming.

Seraphine moved on before she could dwell on it.

”Tell me what’s happening here. This level of threat — monsters from the upper world attacking in coordinated waves — if this isn’t contained at this stage, the entire Middle Domain falls. And the Lower Domain with it.” She paused. ”But we traveled through several cities and multiple villages to reach this position. Nobody out there seemed to know anything was wrong.”

Isabella straightened, professional composure settling back into place.

The warning had come approximately a week ago, she explained — arriving from both the Church of Light and the Church of Life simultaneously, which was unusual enough that the supreme leaders had taken it seriously from the first moment. The warning included specific details about the nature of the threat and the types of beasts they’d be facing.

After careful consideration among the seven leaders, they’d decided to contain the information. Sharing the full scope of the danger with the broader population would have produced panic without providing any meaningful protective benefit to people who weren’t capable of fighting at the level this situation required. The strategy was a quiet mobilization of capable forces while presenting a normal surface to everyone else, and waiting for the assistance the churches had indicated would be sent.

Seraphine nodded slowly as Isabella finished.

Church of Light and Church of Life, she thought. That means a higher domain. And Loriel left early — her instincts weren’t wrong. This is what she felt coming.

She sent the relevant information to Leon through their connection before she’d consciously decided to — then caught herself, because he’d heard every word of Isabella’s explanation already. His spatial awareness and the range of his perception made relaying information to him largely redundant.

He’d already reached the same conclusion she had, and beyond that, he’d reached one further: if they left now and another wave hit before adequate defense was in place, the Middle Domain would not survive it. The lower domain below it is even less so.

He didn’t have a deep personal attachment to this world. He was honest with himself about that. But he didn’t want it destroyed either, and — more practically — he was capable of preventing that destruction without high cost to himself or his plans. The words alone, with the right backing, would be sufficient.

His clone was already making preparations. Same mind, same conclusion, parallel execution.

Leon descended.

He appeared beside Seraphine and Ira without announcement, the spatial transition clean and silent, and the reaction from the soldiers around them was immediate — weapons drawn, bodies dropping into combat stances, the instinctive response of trained fighters to an unknown presence materializing at close range.

Seraphine raised a hand and spoke before anyone committed to anything they couldn’t take back.

”They’re with me. Stand down.”

The weapons lowered.

Behind Seraphine, a small shape pressed itself closer to her back. Isabella had moved there the moment Leon appeared, operating on what appeared to be pure instinct — the kind that bypassed decision-making entirely and went straight to action. She was peeking around Seraphine’s arm with the expression of someone whose stress response had been thoroughly conditioned by previous experience.

Leon noticed. He didn’t comment. The amusement stayed entirely internal.

He opened the portal.

The silver-white gateway formed in the air in front of the assembled crowd — appearing from nothing, responding to his intent with the immediacy of something that recognized its creator — and people started coming through it.

Red-skinned, wearing human-style clothing, their appearance triggered immediate whispered discussion among the soldiers and the supreme leaders alike. Not panic — the Middle Domain had demi-humans in sufficient numbers that physical differences alone didn’t constitute a crisis. Red skin was unusual, but the framework for understanding unusual physical traits already existed.

Most of them landed on demi-human as their working theory, which was close enough for current purposes.

What actually commanded attention was the portal itself. An unknown white gateway appearing from what seemed like the direct intent of the silver-white-haired young man standing next to the purple-haired woman — and the collective assessment of the crowd was that he was, somehow, more difficult to read than either of the women who’d just spent two hours dismantling a beast horde.

The taller red-skinned woman beside him contributed to the atmosphere in her own right. She said nothing and didn’t need to.

Fifty people came through in total. Not all Pyran — humans mixed in among them, faces the soldiers didn’t recognize.

Faces Leon recognized.

Max and Rudy both moved through the portal with the confidence of people who’d been briefed and knew their assignment. Elowyn and Garret beside them, Garret in full armor with the bearing of someone taking a guard captain role seriously regardless of context. Lisa, whose poison affinity had been developing steadily. Kaela — Seraphine’s personal maid from before, who had apparently decided that staying behind wasn’t what she wanted — and two knights who had served Seraphine previously and had asked to come.

The team’s leadership sat with Ira’s father, surrounded by other Pyrans who’d held equivalent status in the old realm — fighters who operated at genuine levels of capability.

It’s a strong team, Leon assessed, running through the composition quickly. More than capable of holding this position through whatever comes next.

He’d already briefed them fully before sending them through. They knew the situation, they knew what they were defending, and they knew what to do if another wave materialized before he returned.

Isabella was still peeking from behind Seraphine.

Leon glanced at her directly. She went slightly more rigid.

He spoke without ceremony.

”Isabella helped me once,” he said, addressing the broader group but pitched to carry. ”I’m returning the favor.” He looked at her specifically and added, with a wink that she received like a mild electric shock: ”Consider this even between us.”

Isabella’s expression cycled through several things rapidly.

Helped him, she thought, the indignation rising before she could contain it. Helped him. He robbed me out of my treasury, walked out with half of my generational wealth, and he’s calling that me helping him.

She opened her mouth.

Closed it.

The fifty people who’d just come through a portal that appeared from nowhere were standing in organized formation on the battlefield, clearly capable, clearly ready, clearly not something that had come from any local source she could identify. Her soldiers and fellow supreme leaders were looking at them with the particular expression of people who had been on the edge of disaster and had just been handed a meaningful buffer against it.

She closed her mouth fully and said nothing.

She was grateful. She was also sulky. She was capable of holding both simultaneously, and she intended to.