SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 575: The Borrowed Hand

Leon ran the sequence for a third time.

Same opening step. Same roll through the shoulder. Same starting angle of the sword, following the line the Sentinel had already learned.

The construct took the bait completely.

Its blade drove in to intercept the attack it expected, committing to the counter before Leon’s cut had fully formed. Leon let the setup remain convincing for one more instant, then abandoned it. His point dropped, his feet shifted off the learned line, and the Sentinel’s sword passed through the place his attack should have occupied.

The pattern had told it what would happen.

The pattern was wrong.

That alone wasn’t enough to end the fight. The construct recovered with frightening speed, dragging its weapon back into guard before Leon could finish it. Still, the exchange had given him what he needed.

From then on, Leon stopped letting it learn anything cleanly.

He kept Leximancy and his largest attacks out of the exchange. The Sentinel was an artificial Tower mechanism with no living will he could confidently bind, while its adaptive shell gathered reinforcement against direct force. More importantly, every visible beginning became information for it. Leon could still escalate if the method failed, but there was no reason to show this guardian his strongest abilities while a cleaner answer remained.

He broke up the timing of his ordinary swordwork, delaying some attacks and releasing others early so no stable rhythm could settle in. Feints became part of nearly every sequence. He would begin something familiar, allow the Sentinel to identify it, then turn the motion into something else before the construct could adjust.

During one exchange, fire gathered along his blade as he started a fire-enhanced cut. The Sentinel saw the flame and moved for the answer it had begun to build. Leon stripped the fire away before the strike landed and came in with bare steel from an angle the flame had helped hide.

Later, he showed the same opening again. The construct prepared for another fire-cut.

Lightning snapped instead.

The sudden change caught the Sentinel shifting its weight in the wrong direction.

Leon gave it movement patterns too. When pressure came toward his left side, he repeatedly slipped away to the right, teaching the guardian that this was his preferred preference. Once the Sentinel began counting on that response, it drove at his left again and committed its blade to cutting off the retreat.

This time Leon didn’t move through space at all.

He stayed where he was, caught the incoming blade physically, and turned it aside while the Sentinel continued trying to intercept an escape that never happened.

The Spatial Tempering Crystal had improved the efficiency of his folds noticeably. On the one careful displacement he allowed himself, he slid half a step through the Sentinel’s guard. The fold stayed tight under the adaptive spatial pressure surrounding the arena and cost less control to maintain.

Leon was grateful for the difference.

He couldn’t keep using space freely. After only a few repetitions, the Sentinel would begin reading that too. Every fold needed to accomplish something before it became another habit the construct could study.

None of the choices came from the System. Leon made them from the fight itself, relying on the sense built over a hundred exchanges. His body knew when the Sentinel had fully committed and when it still had room to change course. He kept working patiently, feeding it false patterns, then punishing the counters those patterns produced.

Bit by bit, the guardian’s ability to read him turned against it.

For the final trap, Leon offered his left side.

He made the opening look deliberate enough to be useful but natural enough to resemble the defensive preference he had taught the Sentinel since the opening exchange. The construct had repeatedly watched him protect that line and retreat to the right.

Now it finally saw the chance it wanted.

The Sentinel thrust straight for the exposed opening with complete commitment, certain it had reached the end of the pattern.

Leon had never intended to leave the target available.

At the last instant, he folded the incoming strike a fraction off course. The tempered displacement held cleanly, carrying the point just past his ribs. While the construct’s blade continued into the space he had abandoned, Leon stepped inside its reach.

The Sentinel tried to correct.

It couldn’t do it quickly enough.

Once it had committed to a learned answer, breaking that motion was the one weakness built into its design.

Holy energy wrapped Leon’s sword as he drove it upward into the exposed core. The blade met real resistance before forcing its way through. Then the core cracked, and the light inside the construct flickered out.

The Sentinel collapsed in on itself and stopped moving.

[Tower Key Acquired]

[Tower Keys Collected: 3/3]

[Route to Central Gate Unsealed]

The third key lifted from the arena floor. Leon claimed it while his breathing settled, unharmed and satisfied.

Three out of three.

At last, Floor Three’s key requirement was finished.

The labyrinth reacted more violently than it had at any earlier point.

Movement spread across the entire floor. Walls traveled over enormous distances. Bronze paths, silver paths, and unmarked corridors all rotated, withdrew, or vanished into the shifting structure. The maze folded in on itself and rebuilt around one purpose.

When the motion ended, almost everything had closed.

A single broad corridor remained, running straight toward the center of Floor Three.

Leon took a moment to breathe and judge his condition.

His body was whole. His conscious armor was intact, and the compact trial had taken only a modest share of a full mana reserve. What remained was mental fatigue from hours of puzzles, hidden mechanisms, and enemies that punished careless habits.

He was ready to fight.

Leon started along the open path.

Nothing interrupted him before he reached the central chamber.

The room beyond was enormous.

At its far end stood the gate, a massive arch built from dark metal and stone. Three keyholes waited in its surface.

Beyond that barrier, Leon could sense the Gatekeeper.

The Tower had already revealed the abilities waiting with it: Spatial Resistance and Technique Mimicry. Those were the costs attached to the two optional treasures he had taken.

The debt had reached the point of collection.

He crossed the chamber with the three keys in hand.

Then the fragments jerked downward.

The pull came harder than ever, a brutal wrench from inside his storage that stopped Leon in the middle of a step. He immediately brought out all three pieces and fitted their broken edges together.

The groove along the reverse locked into the shape of an arrow.

This time it didn’t point toward some uncertain section of the floor or hint at a route somewhere below the labyrinth.

It aimed directly at the base of the central gate.

Straight beneath the arena where Leon stood.

He followed the direction and searched the floor. With his perception sharpened and stabilized by the Spatial Tempering Crystal, he found what the final rearrangement had uncovered.

A circular seam ran through the stone.

It formed a wide ring around the section of floor supporting the gate, a join that hadn’t been visible before the labyrinth shifted. The Tower’s interface still gave no sign that it existed.

By moving the official paths into position for the final trial, the floor had exposed the edge of something hidden beneath its own center.

The uncounted route wasn’t simply somewhere below Floor Three.

It ended here.

Under the final arena.

Under the Gatekeeper’s gate.

The three fragments remained incomplete. They gave Leon no further clue about the whole they belonged to. He still didn’t know how many pieces were missing, what the completed pattern would unlock, or what might be waiting beyond it.

They revealed only the entrance’s location.

The path down lay beneath his feet, at the exact place where the Tower wanted him looking forward.

Leon remained there with the three keys in one hand and the three black fragments pulling toward the floor in the other.

He could place the keys into the gate, open it, and fight the Gatekeeper carrying the power of both treasures he had claimed.

Or he could search the circular seam for a way through and follow the fragments into something the Tower offered no rules, warnings, or system guidance for.

Ahead of him waited the Gatekeeper and the price of his choices.

Below waited whatever the Tower refused to count.