SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 690: Room for What Comes Next

Vyra had a slate waiting when Leon returned from Ji’s peak.

He looked at it, then at the tea cooling beside her elbow.

”You’ve been here a while.”

”Long enough to wonder whether you remembered to ask what happens when something you want exceeds your share.”

”I did.”

”Good. Sit down.”

Seraphine occupied the window seat, with Ira stretched across the other end and Loriel reading at the table. Leon took the empty chair and explained the agreement.

His discovery earned him a personal allocation from the expedition’s distributable gains, with priority selection within that allocation. He could choose resources for his household. Anything exceeding his share required a separate agreement, while the realm’s access mechanisms and structural resources remained with the Palace.

Vyra wrote three short lines.

”That will do.”

”You sound surprised.”

”I prefer hearing the terms before being pleased about them.”

Ira lifted her head. ”Can you be pleased now?”

”A little,” Vyra allowed.

Seraphine had been listening without interrupting. Now she closed the book resting against her knee.

”I’d rather begin looking before the realm opens.”

”For your Core materials?” Leon asked.

She nodded. ”Lightning and light occurring together naturally. The Palace records mention several possibilities. I want to examine them before deciding what suits me.”

”Then find out what’s available. After my next session, we’ll go.”

”All of us?” Ira asked.

”If there’s something worth going for.”

Seraphine was already marking her page. Leon watched her get up, pleased by how quickly a vague future promise had become something she could use.

He had work of his own to begin.

That night, he entered the dimensional world from his sealed cultivation chamber. Xyra prepared the accelerated region around the eastern flat, where his notes and the four remaining condensate reservoirs waited.

”One thousand to one?” she asked.

”Yes.”

”It’s ready.”

She said it while examining the fruit he had brought her. Leon accepted the reminder that something capable of giving him months before morning required less of her attention than choosing what to eat.

He settled beside his books.

The Palace’s Foundation Establishment texts were thorough. They explained how to temper expanded meridians, stabilize the Qi Sea, and begin forming the structure that later cultivation would develop. Their authors had anticipated mistakes Leon would otherwise have made himself.

He had copied several warnings into his notes.

What the manuals could not provide was a foundation designed for affinities its creator did not yet possess.

Most methods committed to a particular path. Their structure supported known demands, and that commitment made them dependable. Even the texts covering several affinities worked toward an arrangement suited to those affinities.

Leon understood the appeal. He could probably finish something tailored to his current nine much sooner.

Then he would spend the next addition regretting it.

I didn’t call it the Formless Myriad Scripture because nine sounded impressive.

He turned back to his own circulation diagram. The neutral centre remained sound. Around it, his branches operated at different rates and accommodated the changes he had tested during Qi Refinement.

Those allowances had limits. He knew them well enough to avoid them, which had begun to feel suspiciously like solving the problem.

The Lord’s advice returned while he was examining a junction he had adjusted dozens of times.

Balance need not mean equal flow.

He had used it to stop forcing unlike affinities through matching schedules. Now he wondered why the schedule needed to remain fixed at all.

During a fight, his demands changed constantly. A foundation intended to accept future affinities would have to tolerate changes greater than those.

He remembered composing an impressive explanation for a woman who could probably have dismantled it with a single question.

Instead, she had given him something useful.

Leon laughed before he could stop himself.

Xyra glanced over from the low wall. ”What?”

”Remembering advice I should have understood sooner.”

”How much sooner?”

He looked at the diagrams covering the ground.

”Don’t ask.”

The first month went into an arrangement he could test without committing it to a permanent foundation.

He used his established circulation to support short experimental cycles, feeding them carefully measured condensate. The native Qi Sea remained under observation throughout. Whenever a trial became unstable, he returned to the reliable pattern he already knew.

His first serious attempt worked while every affinity stayed within its familiar range.

Leon increased Lightning and Space together, reduced Earth and Water, and kept the overall input unchanged.

Pressure gathered at the return junction.

He compensated almost automatically. The pressure eased.

Then he realized what his hands, breathing, and attention had all stopped doing.

I’m holding it together again.

He restored the previous distribution and noted the result. Nothing had torn. There was no need to spend a week recovering from a lesson he could learn by stopping promptly.

The design depended too heavily on the resting branches continuing to accept a particular share of the circulation. Changing two demands unsettled the others.

For eleven days, he tried adding unused capacity to the trial arrangement. Spare routes seemed sensible. Eventually, another affinity would need somewhere to circulate.

The extra routes did nothing to solve the present problem.

Leon stared at the latest result, irritated enough to want to blame the diagram.

There was plenty of room. The energy still arrived where the arrangement could not accommodate it.

He crossed out three pages and kept the fourth, which showed exactly why it had failed.

Through the second month, he began changing where neutral energy waited before entering an affinity branch. Rather than requiring every branch to accept its usual supply, he allowed the intake to respond to demand while keeping the shared reserve unaffiliated.

Lightning could draw more without demanding that Water carry lightning through its own route. Water could ease without leaving a return junction dependent on energy that would no longer arrive.

The adjustments required more than widening passages. Some responded too late; others continued feeding a branch after its demand had fallen. Leon spent days finding tolerances that did not require his constant intervention.

Meals interrupted the work. Sleep helped more than he liked admitting.

Once, he woke with his cheek pressed against a page and discovered that the line he had spent the previous evening studying was a crease in the paper.

He ate properly after that.

Near the end of the second month, he repeated the first test.

Lightning and Space increased. Earth and Water eased.

The reserve supplied the change, and the returning currents settled without pushing the junction beyond its tolerance.

Leon waited.

He reached for his cup. Took a drink. Put it down on the correct page this time.

Eleven minutes passed before he restored the original distribution.

Nothing needed rebuilding.

He wanted to stand up and declare it solved. Instead, he tried a different combination, found a delay in Fire’s return, and spent the afternoon correcting it.

By evening he had completed twelve trials. Two failed, both safely, and both gave him something specific to examine.

He walked over to Xyra with an appetite he had ignored for hours.

”Is there anything left to eat?”

She moved the fruit bowl toward him.

Leon took one and sat on the wall. For once, he let the notes remain where they were. He had a promising result, an explanation for it, and months in which to find out whether he was wrong.

That was enough to enjoy dinner.