SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 648: How to Build a Door from Thunder

They spent the next two and a half days learning what the buried formation would permit.

The three tracking formations could make it answer, but not open. Vyra activated them at different intervals and strengths, sometimes matching their cycles and sometimes allowing one to lag behind. Every successful synchronization produced the same pale pulse beneath the flat ground. Nothing crossed.

”Recognition is separate from entry,” she said after the ninth attempt. ”We can knock. We still don’t know how to turn the handle.”

Seraphine tried to replace the storm.

She fed controlled lightning into the shelf’s main channel, beginning with the smallest discharge that would illuminate the buried veins. Each attempt brought the two spatial layers closer. Her strongest charge produced a translucent second image of the ground for several seconds, but it never created a passage.

She stopped before her control deteriorated and sat beside the shelf, flexing her fingers.

”The path is correct,” she said. ”The quantity isn’t. Natural lightning delivered more power in one strike than I can safely produce, and the shelf distributed it through every major vein. I can guide the next strike into the right channel, but I cannot substitute for it.”

”Then the storm supplies the power,” Leon said. ”We supply everything else.”

His part took most of the second day.

Vyra drove markers at eleven positions along the boundary while Leon measured how the two layers shifted against one another. The overlap was not a hidden chamber sitting beyond a wall. Both versions of the basin occupied the same region, but their spatial structures did not agree closely enough for matter to pass between them.

Natural lightning forced that agreement for a few seconds.

”I can stabilize a section once the storm brings the layers together,” Leon said. ”Four paces wide, perhaps less. I cannot create the correspondence from nothing, but I can keep it from sliding apart immediately.”

”Only while you’re holding it,” Vyra said.

”At the moment.”

That was not enough. Leon had to be the final person through, and the corridor needed to remain open after he stopped controlling it directly.

Vyra and Seraphine adapted two ordinary formation anchors from their field supplies. Seraphine carved one set of channels to accept and recirculate storm charge. Vyra added the combined recognition rhythm from the three tracking formations. Leon then inscribed the spatial correspondence he sensed during each brief pulse.

The result was a paired mechanism. One anchor would remain outside the entrance. The second would be carried through and planted on the corresponding ground inside. The anchors could not open anything themselves, but once Leon established a corridor, they should preserve his correction by circulating the stormglass charge between both sides.

”Should,” Ira repeated.

”That’s why we use a rock,” Vyra said.

Ira built the test rig with a doubled line, two reinforced posts, and a marked slab tied behind the inner anchor. She checked every knot twice before handing the spool to Loriel.

”If the slab returns in pieces, nobody says we should have used a person.”

”Nobody was going to say that,” Loriel replied.

”Good. I have prevented the mistake.”

A minor front reached the basin that afternoon. It carried enough charge to deepen the overlap without producing a full synchronization.

Vyra activated the tracking formations. Seraphine guided her lightning into the shelf. Leon found the point where the two layers came closest and held four paces of them in agreement.

The strain was greater than he expected, but it remained controlled. He circulated Space and Lightning through the neutral centre of the Formless Myriad Scripture while the Primordial Void Heart absorbed the force returning through the connection.

”Now.”

Ira pushed the inner anchor and slab into the corridor. They disappeared after four paces. The line continued feeding through Loriel’s hands.

Leon felt the second anchor settle against dry stone.

The two formation plates responded to each other. Storm charge began moving in a closed circuit, and the spatial correction stopped slipping.

Leon released his direct hold.

The corridor remained.

”Count,” he said.

Vyra watched the formations. ”Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.”

At twenty, Ira hauled on the line. The slab and inner anchor returned through empty air. The slab was intact, wet on the side that had remained near the corridor and completely dry on the other.

The moment the second anchor crossed back, the corridor closed.

Loriel examined the slab first, then Leon.

”No corruption or residue on the stone,” she said. Her fingers rested over the damaged junction in his lower-left route while he circulated once at ordinary volume and once at full. ”Your channels are clean. No stiffness, no tearing. You’re tired, and you’re finished testing today, but the old injury held.”

”Agreed.”

”That was suspiciously easy.”

”I’m learning.”

”Slowly.”

Leon presented the method to Ji that evening. He explained what they had proved, what they expected, and what remained unknown.

”The paired anchors held the corridor for twenty seconds after I released it,” he said. ”A major natural strike will provide substantially more charge. The three tracking formations can operate without an attendant once Vyra locks their cycle, and the outer anchor will remain beside them. Seraphine will carry the inner anchor through first and plant it on the matching point.”

”You assume the corridor will remain stable after all five of you enter,” Ji said.

”I expect it. I cannot promise it. I also cannot confirm whether the return talismans or communication plaques will function inside.”

”Why should I approve entry before the specialist arrives?”

”Because the next major front is likely within two or three days, and the specialist is eleven days away. Waiting would allow several possible synchronization windows to pass. We have confirmed that the team was alive recently. We cannot confirm that the condition keeping them alive will continue.”

Ji considered that before answering.

”Conditional approval. You will leave duplicate records outside the boundary: every frequency, measurement, test, failure, and proposed crossing sequence. You will transmit your expected entry time before the attempt.”

”Understood.”

”You will repeat the unmanned crossing under the same conditions before sending a person. If Loriel detects stiffness or instability in your cultivation route, the attempt ends immediately. She makes that decision, not you.”

”Agreed.”

”Your attendants choose for themselves. You will not order them into an isolated realm, and you will not enter with an incomplete group because one of them refuses.”

”Understood.”

”Finally, the moment the corridor or either anchor becomes unstable, everyone withdraws to the nearer side. Do not sacrifice a safe retreat for one more measurement.”

”We won’t.”

Ji’s voice softened slightly.

”If the corridor closes with you inside, Jade Moon Palace will come for you. It may take time, but we will come.”

The connection ended.

Vyra was watching the tracking formations when all three needles tightened at once.

She checked her storm record, then looked toward the northern rim. The sky had been grey and unremarkable ten minutes earlier. Now a dark front was building behind the hills.

”That’s early,” she said. ”We may have five hours.”

Thunder rolled beyond the ridge.

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