SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 651: The Sentinel Beneath the Glass

The Nascent Soul sentinel crossed twenty paces in a single step.

Leon shifted half a pace aside and folded the space through its chest. The construct’s upper body separated from its legs before its fist completed the strike. Both halves crashed across the black stone.

The four Golden Core constructs lasted no longer.

Seraphine’s sword passed through the first two in a line of violet-white light, leaving their bodies divided into clean sections. Ira met the third with one direct thrust and shattered everything between its chest and spine. Vyra closed her hand, and the flames surrounding the fourth compressed until the stormglass softened, collapsed inward, and poured across the ground in a glowing heap.

Loriel did not need to intervene.

Five bodies lay broken within three breaths.

”That was disappointing,” Ira said.

Pale light raced through the veins beneath their feet.

The pieces of the sentinel moved first. Broken stormglass liquefied, ran toward the nearest junction, and rose into a new pair of legs. Its torso rebuilt above them. The four smaller bodies followed, drawing replacement material directly out of the ground.

In less time than it had taken to destroy them, all five constructs stood again without a mark.

”That is less disappointing,” Ira said.

They attacked a second time.

Seraphine removed the two Golden Core constructs from her path before they reached sword range. Ira smashed hers into fragments. Vyra burned the fourth down again, this time keeping the molten stormglass suspended so it could not immediately return to the ground.

The sentinel ignored Leon and appeared beside Loriel when the distance between them changed without warning.

Loriel turned and caught its descending wrist in one hand.

The stone beneath her feet cracked. She did not move.

Green light travelled from her palm into the sentinel’s arm. The construct had no life of its own, but its formation core imitated circulation closely enough for Loriel to seize the false rhythm. She drove a pulse through it in the wrong direction.

The sentinel’s chest burst outward. Its arm came away in Loriel’s hand, and the rest of it collapsed at her feet.

”There is a core behind the lower chest,” she said. ”Destroying it stops the body. It does not stop the formation from making another one.”

The ground confirmed her conclusion. New columns of stormglass were already rising at five different points.

The formation briefly abandoned the smaller bodies and poured their charge into the sentinel. It rebuilt beside Seraphine with both arms raised. She met it head-on. Lightning accelerated one clean sword stroke through its neck, chest, and false core before its hands descended.

The next sentinel rose in front of Ira. She planted her rear foot and drove her lance through it with enough force to carry the entire body into the shelf behind it. The core shattered on impact. Neither woman had needed help or given up ground.

Five new columns began forming immediately afterward. The defense was not finding opponents strong enough to defeat them. It was replacing disposable bodies faster than ordinary cultivators could have destroyed them.

Leon watched the energy move beneath them. The constructs were not dangerous because of their cultivation ranks. Even the sentinel could not threaten anyone in the group by itself. The problem was the amount of stormglass available to rebuild them and a formation capable of changing where the next bodies appeared.

If they kept destroying each wave, the defense could continue until the corridor failed or the entire basin ran out of material.

”Stop attacking the bodies,” Leon said. ”We need the network beneath them.”

Seraphine drove the point of her sword into the stone and released a controlled lightning pulse. Pale veins answered across fifty paces, briefly exposing five separate routes feeding the new constructs.

Vyra spread her fire over the revealed paths. The flames did not merely burn. They followed the external energy, marking every turn and junction as the current shifted underground.

”It’s the same forty-one-second cycle as the roads,” she said. ”The power moves between five junctions. When we sever one, the current diverts through the other four and rebuilds the damaged route from behind.”

”Can you stop the diversion?” Leon asked.

”For a moment. Not while the current is spread through all five.”

”Then make it choose one.”

The next wave finished forming.

Seraphine and Ira moved first. Seraphine cut through two Golden Core bodies and struck the ground connections beneath them in the same motion. Ira destroyed the third and drove her lance through its junction deep enough to split the vein below the surface.

The formation redirected everything toward Vyra’s side.

She allowed it.

Her fire contracted around the fourth construct and the branching network beneath it. Every displaced current entered the space she controlled. Crownfire closed over the junction in concentric layers, suppressing the stormglass charge without consuming it.

”Now,” she said.

For the first time, the full underground network had nowhere to send its power.

The sentinel formed beside Leon with every pale vein burning at once. It carried the combined charge of all five bodies, enough to distort the ground around it and bend the apparent distance to the others.

Leon met its first strike with his bare hand.

The impact stopped against his palm.

He had faced Mid Void Immortal power in Jade Moon Palace’s arena. A Nascent Soul formation construct, even one overfilled with borrowed energy, was not an opponent he needed to avoid.

He tightened his grip and tore the sentinel’s arm free. His spatial perception followed the power spilling from the wound, down through its false core and into the junction beneath its feet.

”Loriel.”

”Low behind the chest,” she said. ”The false pulse turns just before the cycle resets.”

Seraphine’s lightning illuminated the buried route. Vyra held every diverted branch inside her Crownfire. Ira stood over the three broken junctions and shattered each attempt to reopen them.

Leon waited for the false pulse to turn.

Then he folded the four inches between the sentinel and the ground.

The connection did not merely break. It led back into itself, trapping the charge in a path that no longer reached any of the five junctions.

Loriel placed her palm against the sentinel’s chest and released a second reversed pulse.

The formation core ruptured.

This time, no replacement body rose.

The four Golden Core constructs collapsed with it. Vyra released her fire gradually, watching for any current attempting to escape into a new channel. The trapped charge dispersed through inactive stormglass instead of returning to the defense.

Ordinary distance settled across the basin.

Leon took two steps toward the others. Both covered exactly two steps.

”Everyone intact?” he asked.

”Entirely,” Seraphine said.

Ira rested her lance against one shoulder. ”Can the next defenders be stronger?”

”No,” Loriel and Vyra answered together.

A human voice carried across the quiet basin. Someone was discussing the angle of a marker line.

Two hundred paces away, beside the mineral pool, a man in a deacon’s grey robe turned toward the sound of collapsing stormglass.

For the first time since the disappearance, Deacon Yu looked directly at them.

Deacon Yu’s hand went to his sword before he called a warning.

The two Golden Core disciples moved in front of the six surveyors, who withdrew behind a shelf with their formation tools. Surprise lasted only a moment before training took over.

”Stop there,” Yu called. ”Identify yourselves.”

Leon halted forty paces away and raised his authority token.

”Leon. Direct disciple of the Palace Mistress. Peak Golden Core. These four are members of my household, and Jade Moon Palace sent us to find your team.”

Yu approached far enough to examine the token without placing his people within easy striking range. His attention moved from the Palace mark to the four Peak Foundation Establishment women, none of whom looked as though they had just fought above their recorded realms, and finally to the remains of the constructs behind them.

”The token is genuine,” he said. ”Since when does the Palace Mistress have a direct disciple?”