SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Leon went to Loriel first.

She was standing slightly apart from the others, close to the portal but not facing it directly, as though looking at it head-on required more composure than she currently had available. Her hands were at her sides. One of them was trembling — not dramatically, just a fine continuous vibration that she probably didn’t know was visible.

Leon put his arms around her.

She went still for a moment, then leaned into it with the specific quality of someone who had been holding tension in their body for a long time and had just been given permission to set some of it down.

He kept his voice low, just for her.

”If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. A higher-ranked class isn’t worth more than your life. Stay out here — there’s no shame in it, and I mean that completely.”

He felt her breathing change as his words landed. The trembling in her hand slowed, then stopped. Her shoulders dropped slightly, the held tension releasing in stages.

He ended the hug and looked at her face.

She looked back at him for one moment with an expression he couldn’t fully read — something that had moved through several things quickly and arrived somewhere resolved.

Then she said, clearly and without hesitation: ”I’m going in.”

And stepped through the portal before anyone could respond.

Leon stood where he was for a second, looking at the space she’d just occupied.

What made her so resolute, he thought, genuinely surprised. This girl can’t handle a paper cut.

He didn’t have an answer. He respected the decision and let it be what it was. He’d done everything he could to prepare her — the Sanctuary Veil, the cane, the instruction, the foundation work. Whatever happened inside, she was going in with more support than most people entering a Class Reawakening Dungeon had ever had.

Come back, he thought. Please just come back.

”Leon.”

He turned. Ira was standing in front of him with her arms spread wide, the Blazing Fang spear held in one hand, her expression carrying the particular brightness she had when she was nervous and choosing not to show it.

He stepped forward and hugged her. She wrapped her free arm around him hard.

”Be careful,” he said. ”Do your best in there.”

”Obviously,” she said into his shoulder.

She held on for another second — long enough that he understood it wasn’t casual — and then pulled back and looked at him with something in her eyes that was more serious than her usual register.

Then she turned and dashed straight through the portal without slowing.

That’s Ira, he thought, watching the portal swallow her. Full commitment, no hesitation, second thoughts prohibited.

He turned to Vyra.

She was already looking at him, and the moment his gaze met hers, something shifted in her expression — a memory arriving without warning, visibly, the kind that rearranged your face before you could manage it. Her eyes moved away briefly. Color rose on her skin, deep over the red that was already there; her cheeks genuinely flushed in a way he’d only seen a handful of times.

The hug, he realized. She’s thinking about the mountain.

He kept his expression completely neutral. This was not the moment.

She gathered herself with the speed of someone who had centuries of practice at gathering herself, straightened, and looked at him directly again with the composure she’d rebuilt in approximately two seconds.

”I’ll do my best,” she said, her voice steady.

”I know you will,” he said simply.

She nodded once — sharp, definitive — and walked through the portal with her back perfectly straight and her face still carrying the faintest trace of color that she was clearly pretending didn’t exist.

Leon shook his head slightly.

Then Seraphine was in front of him.

He pulled her in without preamble, arms around her waist, and she came without resistance, her hands finding their familiar position against his back. He held her properly rather than briefly, the way the moment deserved.

”Be careful,” he said. ”Watch your positioning when you don’t have your stats. Your instincts are good — trust them more than the system information.”

”I know,” she said.

”I know you know. I’m saying it anyway.”

He felt her smile against his shoulder.

He let her go, and she stepped back and looked at him with the amethyst eyes that had learned a long time ago not to say everything they were thinking. She was excited — he could feel it underneath the composure, the real anticipation of someone who had been working toward this moment for a long time and was finally standing in front of it.

She stepped through the portal without looking back, which was exactly how Seraphine entered things she’d already decided about.

Leon stood in the empty ice field.

The portal pulsed steadily behind him, blue and patient, with all four of them now somewhere inside it. The crowd was gone — he’d already sent everyone back to the settlement with a single directed thought, the teleportation so automatic now it barely registered as an action. The ice field was quiet. The snow kept falling.

He thanked Xyra briefly, meaning it genuinely, and braced slightly for whatever she might decide to do with the gratitude.

She took it with a smug expression and disappeared. No additional requests. No spatial fluctuations were carrying him somewhere he hadn’t agreed to go.

Progress, he thought, with genuine relief.

He stood alone in the ice field for one more moment.

The tower, he decided. Floors to climb, aura ranks to push, and that armor still sitting in inventory that he hadn’t been strong enough to test properly. And the instance reward from floor two — the Legendary Instance Seed, still in his pocket, waiting to be planted in his world.

He had work to do and time to do it in.

He disappeared from the ice field, the snow continuing to fall into the empty space where he’d been standing.