SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

When Leon arrived back in front of Luna, Crystalline, and the others, he told them everything they needed to know.

The crack wasn’t closing anytime soon — that was the honest reality, and he gave it to them plainly without softening it. But at the current rate of growth, with the corrupted beast population destroyed and nothing left to feed its expansion, it would take decades minimum before it became a serious threat again.

Possibly a century. He had a plan for dealing with it permanently, but that required resources and capability he was still building toward. For now, the immediate crisis was over.

Luna received this with the composure of someone who had just survived months of desperate defense and could absorb difficult news without breaking. The timeline he’d given her was a gift compared to what she’d been looking at yesterday.

Crystalline listened with her arms crossed, asked two sharp, precise questions about the crack’s current growth rate, got her answers, and nodded once with the efficiency of someone updating a strategic calculation in real time.

He told them about the eye. About what he’d felt through the crack. About the fact that something was on the other side of it, and that whatever it was had retreated after he’d hit it, but retreating wasn’t the same as gone.

That part landed with more weight than the timeline. Luna and Crystalline exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation neither of them said aloud.

He didn’t have more to give them on it right now. He’d told them what he knew.

After that he opened the portal.

Loriel had been hovering nearby during the whole exchange, and when Leon turned to go she spoke up immediately — she wanted to come too. No hesitation in it, stated simply, like it was a natural extension of the day.

Leon let her come.

Seraphine and Ira didn’t know about world ranks or the specific mechanics of what Xyra had been doing with the World Fragment merger. But he’d told them something was coming — that when they returned to his world there would be noticeable changes, and they should be ready for it.

They stepped through together, all five of them — Leon, Seraphine, Ira, Vyra, and Loriel — the portal closing behind them as the battlefield and its aftermath disappeared.

The difference was immediate.

Every single one of them felt it the moment they came through, before anyone had taken a full breath of the new air. The mana density had changed in a way that went beyond measurement into something physical — thick, present, pressing gently against every surface of their awareness like the world had learned to breathe properly for the first time. And underneath that density, something more specific: a pull toward their own natural element, a resonance that made each of them feel simultaneously that training right now would be the most productive thing they’d ever done.

They stood on the familiar mountain plateau, the house behind them, and none of them moved for a moment.

Vyra spoke first.

”I’m going,” she said, and the words came out hurried, already turning, already orienting toward a different peak in the cluster. ”I need to train.”

She was gone before anyone could respond, moving fast toward the adjacent mountain with the focused energy of someone who had just been handed optimal conditions and wasn’t going to waste them.

Ira lasted approximately four additional seconds.

”Same,” she said, and took a completely different direction from her aunt, already pulling her spear from storage as she moved, the fire affinity responding visibly to the enriched atmosphere even as she walked.

Seraphine watched Ira go.

Then she looked at Leon, and the look contained something genuine and a little reluctant — the specific internal conflict of someone weighing two things they actually wanted against each other. She had him here, the house behind them, the mountain to themselves now that the other two had scattered.

Five days had been thorough, and she was genuinely satisfied in a way that felt different from hungry. She could still want more of him and also understand that falling behind wasn’t something she was willing to allow. Not with Ira closing gaps, not with Vyra’s centuries of experience pushing her ceiling higher every week, not with the mana density outside right now feeling like the best training opportunity she’d ever stood inside.

She gave Leon a look that communicated all of this with remarkable efficiency.

Then she left too, taking the third mountain in the cluster, and Leon watched her go with the small, private satisfaction of someone who appreciated that the people around him took their own growth seriously.

Only him and Loriel remained.

Loriel was standing in front of him, not showing any of the urgency the other three had displayed. No movement toward a training position, no reaching for her cane, no visible pull toward the element she worked with. Just present, watching him with an expression that was quiet and comfortable in a way it hadn’t been the first time he’d met her.

He thought about where he was going — to find Xyra, to learn the specifics of what the world had become, to understand the dungeons and secret realms and whatever else the upgrade had produced.

He could leave her here. Bring her to where the humans and Pyrans were settled, make sure she had people around her, continue on alone.

He looked at her.

She wasn’t lonely in the way that needed managing. She was just here, choosing to be here, and the choice was obvious in how she was standing.

”Should I bring you down to the settlement?” he asked.

”No.”

Immediate. Flat. No ambiguity in it.

”You want to train?” He already suspected the answer.

”Absolutely not.” Her expression carried mild offense at the suggestion. ”Those three are fighting maniacs. I have other priorities.”

Leon paused.

This was fairly blatant. She was standing in the most mana-dense environment she’d ever experienced, with every reason to push her cultivation hard, and she was actively declining to do it in favor of accompanying him to wherever he was going. She wasn’t being subtle about any of it.

The forehead incident had done something to whatever careful distance she’d been keeping between them. She was bolder now. Not dramatically — but the difference between the Loriel who had stumbled over her own words in his presence weeks ago and the Loriel standing in front of him right now was measurable.

She wanted to spend time with him. She was saying so directly.

Leon looked at her for a moment and found he didn’t want to say no. Not because he couldn’t, but because there was something genuinely uncomplicated about her company — she didn’t require managing the way complex situations required managing, she was simply herself, honest about what she wanted without making it complicated.

He gave her a nod.

Her smile arrived fast and real, the kind that didn’t get edited before it landed.

And then they were gone — both of them vanishing from the mountain plateau simultaneously, Leon’s spatial awareness carrying them both with a single quiet thought, the dimensional world spreading out around them as they arrived at their next destination.