SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 573: Tempered Before the Trial

Leon paused at the four-way intersection, giving the decision one final round of thought before committing.

The two unmarked corridors on either side lay dark and silent, yet the black fragments inside his storage ignored both of them. Their pull angled toward the stone beneath his feet. Those passages might enter other buried sections, but neither pointed toward the destination the three pieces had revealed.

Searching every hidden corridor would waste too much time. The Tower’s official objective made more sense. Each time someone claimed a key, the floor shifted around the central gate. If the buried path ended anywhere, the middle of the floor was where it was most likely to connect.

That reasoning ruled out the silver route as well.

He had already traded Spatial Resistance and Technique Mimicry to the Gatekeeper. Whatever reward waited beyond the silver route, the true cost would still come due inside the Gatekeeper’s chamber.

Under ordinary circumstances, Leon might have inspected every valuable path simply because he could. These circumstances were not ordinary. The uncounted route had already produced a mystery rarer than another Epic treasure, and its fragments directed him toward the central gate. Outside the Tower, the Class Reawakening Dungeon remained active, with no guarantee that time passed at the same rate in both places. He could not wander through every side chamber merely to prove he was capable of clearing it.

This was not retreating from the harder challenge.

It was choosing the one the Tower refused to acknowledge.

So Leon stepped beneath the bronze arch marked by its cleanly carved key.

The passage beyond was almost suspiciously straightforward. No traps waited for him. No twisting loops. None of the maze’s usual attempts to wear him down. It ended after only a short walk at a small antechamber before another trial door.

He stopped there and extended his perception.

Nothing stirred beyond the sealed entrance. The trial had not begun. For the moment, the antechamber offered a rare stretch of quiet.

He still carried two Epic treasures he hadn’t absorbed. Ever since claiming them, he’d been waiting for a place calm enough to use them properly. His body was whole, his spatial channels were clear, and the quiet passage had allowed his mana reserve to recover almost completely.

Even so, bringing those treasures into the Gatekeeper’s chamber untouched would be the worse choice.

Settling onto the floor, he took out the Spatial Tempering Crystal and began.

Energy rushed from the crystal the instant the absorption started.

Just as he’d expected, it sought out his spatial channels first.

The dense tempering force pressed into structures already shaped by Transcendent Void Dominion. It did not repair damage; there was none. Instead, it forced those pathways to endure hostile distortion from within, creating controlled pain as it tested and reinforced them.

His muscles wanted to recoil.

He refused.

Instead of resisting the energy, Leon seized control of its movement. Rather than allowing the crystal to flood his channels, he guided it through each fold-path little by little.

The process was painfully slow.

Whenever the ache sharpened, he eased the flow and allowed that section to adapt before moving on. Gradually, the pathways became more resistant to outside pressure and distortion.

He tested one of his shorter folds at the edge of his awareness.

It came together as cleanly as before, but required slightly less effort to maintain.

When the final surge settled, Leon created another short fold and deliberately pressed conflicting spatial pressure against it from multiple directions.

It held.

The structure remained intact. His channels had become tougher, his control more efficient, and the folds themselves were more resistant to disruption.

The crystal hadn’t granted him new abilities. It had simply reinforced the ones he already possessed.

The Tower’s authority over space was still beyond him, but breaking his techniques through hostile spatial interference would now be considerably harder.

He continued the absorption until every trace of the crystal disappeared into his channels. When the last of it settled, the sharp pain faded. His regeneration cleared the physical aftereffects while he rested before taking out the second treasure.

Leon exhaled, gathered himself, and reached for the second treasure.

The Mirrorheart Tempering Shard behaved completely differently.

Its power ignored his channels.

Instead, silver-black energy spread across his awareness.

For a long, stretched instant, Leon watched himself.

They weren’t memories.

They weren’t visions.

They were reflections, flawed echoes of his own movements replaying again and again at the edge of his mind.

He watched himself begin a sword exchange. He saw the same subtle leading step repeated across one reflection after another until the habit became impossible to ignore. A familiar opening performed twice became an opening an opponent would expect the third time.

Another comparison appeared.

One technique was executed with real intent.

The other copied every movement perfectly.

The difference was obvious.

The imitation preserved the form but lacked the judgment behind it. It carried the outline of the technique while leaving the decision that gave it meaning completely hollow.

Watching it wasn’t pleasant.

Every comfortable habit, every preferred angle, every repeated pattern was displayed with uncomfortable honesty.

Still, Leon understood the purpose behind the tempering.

He let it continue.

When the shard’s power finally settled, those habits stood out with unsettling clarity. Familiar motions now carried a faint warning whenever repetition crept in, and the underlying framework of a technique became easier to notice than the visible movement itself.

The last silver-black trace dissolved into his awareness, leaving no physical shard behind.

The shard hadn’t handed him solutions.

It had simply made recurring questions much harder to overlook.

Against a Gatekeeper that could reproduce whatever Leon revealed, that awareness could easily matter more than gaining another offensive technique.

He drew his sword to test it.

The first draw felt normal.

On the second, he immediately caught the familiar shift of his leading foot and the slight twist in his wrist before the blade cleared the sheath.

By the third attempt, he altered both while keeping the same speed.

The draw wasn’t any stronger than before.

But anyone preparing for the angle shown by the first two attempts would now be wrong.

By the time both absorptions were finished, Leon felt the honest mental fatigue of prolonged concentration, but his body had already recovered from the tempering. His mana reserve had returned to full during the quiet interval, and both arms moved without pain or delay.

He retrieved the three black fragments for another look.

Nothing changed.

Neither crystal drew any response from them. They showed no interest in the power he’d just absorbed.

They continued to lean toward the stone floor with the same quiet insistence as before, pointing downward exactly as they had since the buried hall.

Whatever those fragments sought, it wasn’t Epic treasure.

Leon stored them again, rose to his feet, and pushed open the bronze door.

[Mandatory Key Trial: Measure of Worth]