SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 735: A Year Before Morning

”I’m claiming the crystal,” Leon said. ”Tell me what you want in exchange.”

Tobin considered him before answering. ”Your observations from the terraces, and your support while the Hall copies the annex. Three days without another party driving us away.” He glanced at the crystal. ”I know what we’re conceding.”

”You can have what I observed,” Leon said. ”Not the method I used to perceive it.”

Tobin looked toward his companions, then nodded. ”The observations, then.”

Orrin claimed priority over the eastern sand and metal pools. Leon agreed to defend that arrangement against later arrivals while he remained here. She would handle her own harvest and guards during his seclusion. Their bargain gave both expeditions something worth keeping; neither mistook the crystal for a curiosity useful only to him.

”The other parties coming down will want their own share,” Orrin said. ”You understand that I mean those pools, not whatever is left after they’ve helped themselves?”

”I understand,” Leon replied.

She studied his face, then offered her hand. He took it with the crystal still in his other palm. The exchange was uneven, and all three of them knew it. Tobin wanted time and access his Hall could use for years. Orrin had people to supply and a harvest she could carry home. Neither wanted to fight Leon for a stone he had already decided to keep.

He wasn’t inclined to persuade them otherwise.

Before leaving the cradle, Leon checked its connections. The source fed around the empty socket without faltering; removing the crystal had not interrupted a single pool. They filled sealed jars and stored saturated mineral beds from the western terraces. Then he chose an old cultivation cell with a heavy stone door.

He told Tobin and Orrin the household would be studying and cultivating inside for a while, and asked not to be disturbed until the next morning.

When the door had shut, he put his hand flat on its inner face.

Leon laid a small illusion over the door’s cracks and threshold, obscuring the seams through which someone might peer. Months of private practice had brought his Illusion to Rank 1 Aura. He settled the effect against the existing stone rather than presenting an elaborate false room, then checked it from both sides.

Loriel looked at the inside of the door, then at him. ”That’s new.”

”That’s private,” said Leon, and she smiled.

The crystal went into his ring with the gathered supplies. A knock interrupted him before he opened the aperture.

It was Tobin’s voice, low through the door. ”Leon. Sorry. One more thing.” A pause. ”One of my people came down from the old court. A runner from Asterbank reached our camp an hour ago. Mardoc Hollin was seen on the north road yesterday morning. He’s coming here.”

”Who’s Mardoc Hollin?” asked Leon.

”Mardoc’s from the Graywater hills,” Tobin said. ”Half-step Earth Immortal. A runner saw him on the north road yesterday. He’d reach us tomorrow night on foot, but he can travel much faster. I wouldn’t count on the road giving you that long.”

Leon looked toward the women. There was no need to explain why the crystal might interest such a man.

Nine outside hours. If we get them, that’s a year.

”Thank you,” Leon told Tobin. ”Send word if he arrives.”

”We’ll check outside as we work,” Leon told the women. ”I want the whole Foundation section finished, but I won’t sit blind to what’s happening here.”

Once the door was secured and the passage clear, he opened the aperture. Xyra met them on the grass inside his dimensional world.

”You’ve brought rather a lot,” Xyra said, studying the jars and mineral beds coming out of his ring. Her attention lingered on the crystal. ”Do you want the accelerated zone?”

”A thousand to one,” Leon said. ”Enough time for a year of work.”

”Easily.” Xyra walked across the grass and marked the edge of a localized zone. ”You can use this area. The rest of the world will carry on at its usual pace.”

”And I’ll check the outside room between sessions,” Leon said.

Xyra nodded and stepped aside for them.

It was evening in the sanctuary. Nine outside hours would take them into the following morning, the fifth day since leaving the spring. Mardoc might arrive sooner; their pauses to check the cell and messages would count against that margin.

He crossed the line, and the four women came after him.

Leon set out twelve sanctuary jars and saturated stones beside their earlier harvest. Ira put her two selected Hearthseal specimens aside before the ordinary material was sorted for fuel. They had twenty-three boxes of Hearthseal, the comparison mixture Bai Heng had prepared, fresh supplies from several currents, and a way to convert them.

The crystal could draw from this world or the resources in front of him. It could not reach back through a closed aperture to the sanctuary. He divided the supply accordingly.

The first subjective month went into the common structure beneath his branches.

At the sanctuary, the pools had received different quantities at different rates. Their shared source did not have to absorb every fluctuation immediately. In his own Foundation, changes still reached the common center too abruptly.

His adjustments on the terraces had kept mild variations from interrupting circulation. Larger changes needed room to settle before the returns met. He began reshaping the areas around those junctions, testing each alteration at low volume.

For the first few days, having enough fuel made him careless. He increased two supplies together, pleased that neither ran short, and spent the rest of the session chasing disturbances through the Water return. By evening his notes described four possible causes. He could not tell which had started it.

He set the page aside without tearing it up. Ji would have asked why he had changed both at once, and he disliked how easily he could imagine her expression.

The next morning he measured one change at a time.

He let the crystal turn a lump of mixed ore into fire and run it into his fire branch, steadily, and watched what happened to the rest.

The fire came in hot and quick, the way fire liked to come. Water, beside it, slowed in sympathy. Earth, further away, barely noticed.

Let it settle before it reaches the others.

He spent six days forming a small holding space between one return and the shared center. Earth needed more room than fire. Lightning passed through quickly. He measured what happened instead of assuming matching shapes would produce matching behavior.

The first arrangement still wobbled. He widened the Earth holding space and tried again. Three days of clean circulation followed, including deliberate changes in supply. Water no longer slowed each time fire surged.

He checked it again while eating, with one hand around a bowl and his attention on Ira’s account of her latest trial. The return stayed steady when he stopped watching it. That small success pleased him almost as much as the previous three days.

Before beginning the next arrangement, he left the accelerated zone and opened a narrow aperture inside the locked cell. The sanctuary was quiet. He listened at the stone door, checked the passage, and returned to the others. Barely half an outside hour had passed; his first pile of discarded diagrams was already thick enough to slide off the table.

Leon set a fresh sheet beside the successful diagram. Keeping the first nine branches steady was only the beginning. The next drawing needed room for a route he had never built into that arrangement.

He left the center running and began.