SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 647: The Report That Should Have Been Impossible

The storm moved north, leaving drizzle and a shelf of black stone behind.

Within a quarter of an hour, the pale veins under the stormglass had gone dark. Water no longer climbed from the puddles, and the second basin had vanished so completely that Leon could find no trace of it with his spatial perception.

Vyra was the first to get to work. She collected the three recording plaques, checked their seals, and crouched beneath the camp awning with all of them open across her knees.

”I have it,” she said several minutes later. ”All three plaques recorded the overlap. The northern plaque has the cleanest angle.”

She turned it toward Leon. Nine figures stood in the dry basin, faint but identifiable. Deacon Yu’s face was clear, as were the robes and features of the two Golden Core disciples. The six Foundation Establishment surveyors were harder to distinguish individually, but their number, clothing, and equipment matched the mission records.

The plaque had also captured Ira shouting and Seraphine’s signal flash. None of the nine reacted.

”We can prove what we saw,” Leon said.

”We can prove that the plaques recorded it,” Vyra corrected. ”That isn’t quite the same thing.”

Loriel sat on the edge of the shelf with rainwater dripping from her sleeves.

”None of them appeared injured,” she said. ”No visible wounds, no starvation, no depletion. Their colour was good, and one of the surveyors laughed while we watched. But I cannot sense them now. Once the overlap disappeared, so did every life signature.”

”Make sure that distinction goes into the report,” Leon said.

”It will.”

Seraphine had followed the stormglass discharge from the point where the lightning entered the ridge to the last branching vein.

”The charge travelled where I expected,” she said. ”What matters is how long the shelf retained it. A normal strike would have dispersed almost immediately. This one circulated through the entire shelf for eleven seconds, and the overlap lasted for the same eleven seconds.”

Ira returned from checking the perimeter and abandoned camp.

”Nothing followed the storm beasts back, and nothing new entered the camp. How long until the communication window?”

”Tomorrow at the third mark,” Vyra said.

That gave them the night to prepare evidence instead of theories.

Leon delivered the report the following morning.

”At the eighth mark yesterday, natural lightning struck the ridge above the northeastern stormglass shelf,” he said once the plaque connected. ”The resulting discharge produced a visible overlap lasting approximately eleven seconds.

”The second terrain corresponded to Ashen Rain Basin but was offset by roughly a pace and a half to the northeast. It was dry and daylit while our side remained under heavy rain.

”All nine members of the missing team were visible inside it. Deacon Yu Chengan and both Golden Core disciples were identifiable. The other six matched the mission number and equipment manifest. They appeared alive, mobile, and uninjured, and they were performing ordinary survey work.

”They did not respond to Ira’s voice, Seraphine’s light signal, spiritual perception, or a controlled spatial pulse. The overlap ended when the shelf discharged.

”We detected no immortal-level presence before, during, or after the event.”

Han Suwen’s stylus moved at the other end of the connection.

”Your interpretation?” Ji Liansu asked.

”The evidence supports a spatial layer occupying the same region as the basin. The survey team may be inside it, and their behaviour suggests that they have experienced far less time than we have. Both remain interpretations.”

”Could the figures have been a recording?”

”Yes,” Leon said. ”One interval is not enough to exclude that. Their life tablets remain intact, and the formation boxes and markers visible around them do not exactly match the team’s final recovered record. That argues for continued activity, but it does not prove it. A second synchronization showing their work advancing would be stronger evidence.”

Ji was quiet for a moment.

”Good. Do not become certain merely because the preferable explanation is also the exciting one. Han Suwen?”

”The records are timestamped and sealed,” Han said. ”The images have been checked against the mission manifest. Deacon Yu, Mo Rui, and Xie Lan are identifiable with confidence. The six surveyors are consistent with the listed personnel.”

Paper shifted near the plaque.

”The nearest elder qualified to examine an unknown spatial formation is in the southern archipelago. Even at best speed, she cannot reach the basin for eleven days. A faster team could leave the Palace immediately and arrive in eight, but none of them possesses the relevant specialty.”

”Continue investigating,” Ji said. ”Do not attempt entry until you can present a tested method and a withdrawal plan.”

”Understood.”

Vyra found the next piece three hours later.

She arranged four plaques in a row inside the abandoned camp. Three displayed the operating frequencies used by the missing team’s tracking formations. The fourth showed the pulse recorded when the stormglass overlap appeared.

”I compared them separately first,” she said. ”None matches the boundary pulse. Then I layered the three tracking frequencies together.”

The combined trace settled over the recorded pulse. Three independent patterns interfered with one another and produced a fourth rhythm that none of them contained alone.

It was not a perfect match, but the beginning and end aligned too closely to dismiss.

”The middle section is different,” Vyra said. ”That may be the part supplied by the stormglass, the missing formation, or something we have not discovered. What I can defend is this: the three tracking formations together reproduce most of the answering pattern.”

Seraphine leaned over the trace.

”So the surveyors activated all three around their camp. Something beneath the flat ground recognized the combined rhythm and answered.”

”Probably,” Vyra said. ”That explains why ordinary survey equipment triggered it without anyone intending to open a realm. It does not tell us whether they reproduced an entrance sequence, an identification signal, or only the first half of one.”

”They didn’t make a mistake,” Loriel said.

”No. They did exactly what their work required.”

They tested the theory that evening. Ira fixed the formations at the same relative angles used by the survey team, while Seraphine marked a withdrawal line a hundred paces back. Nobody stood inside the triangle.

Vyra activated all three formations together.

The sky was clear. No lightning had struck the basin for six hours.

A pale pulse travelled through the stormglass buried under the flat ground. It lasted less than half a second.

At the boundary, a pebble Ira had placed on the stone appeared in two positions at once. One rested where she had left it. The other lay a hand’s width to the northeast.

Then the pulse ended, and there was only one pebble again.

Ira stared at it from behind the withdrawal line.

”Well,” she said, ”something definitely answered.”