SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 741: When He Let Them Help

Leon caught himself against a broken slab and lowered himself to the floor. His ribs hurt too much for a full breath.

He laughed once, painfully, and stopped. The crystal was still in his inner pocket. He touched it through the cloth to be certain.

Mardoc had tried to take it off his corpse. Leon had kept it, and he was still alive to use it.

That was too fucking close.

A faster recovery from the stone jaws, one failed spatial boundary, and he would have been the body on the floor. He stayed still until his hands stopped shaking enough to work.

He withdrew the remaining holy energy and closed its route before widening his native circulation. Only then did he pull himself upright against the slab.

Then, moving slowly, he went to the body.

He recovered his sword and took the old man’s ring. There was a short staff of gray stone lying in the rubble, and a pouch at the belt, and he took those too without examining them. He’d look later, when his hands were steadier.

The body and several nearby stones carried traces of the finishing attack. He kept the concealment in place and lifted the dead man onto a loose slab with a careful spatial movement. He removed the damaged flagstones with it and stored the whole load in his ring for later examination and disposal. No outsider would be handling those remains here.

He checked the exposed ground. Fainter traces remained among the shattered channels, difficult to separate from the sanctuary’s supply. He could not erase them by wishing. Seraphine would keep people out while he recovered enough to inspect the area again.

His leg would not hold him any longer. He sat against the slab, let the visual veil thin along the route from the arcade, and signaled his household. The rest of the damaged court stayed concealed.

Ira reached him first.

She came out of the arcade at a run before the dust had settled and crossed the broken floor in a dozen strides, and she didn’t say anything. She just went down on her knees and put her arms around him, carefully, avoiding the left side as if she already knew where it hurt.

Then she pulled back and looked at his face. Her own face was white.

”You’re an idiot,” she said, and her voice cracked.

”Probably,” Leon managed.

Loriel was a step behind her. She knelt on his other side and put her hand on his ribs, very lightly, and he felt her vitality go into him in a fine thread, looking, not fixing yet.

”Three ribs,” she said quietly. ”One’s pressing on the lung. Your thigh’s torn. Your right hand—” she turned it over, and he saw for the first time that the skin across the palm had split from holding the fold. ”Your channels are strained all down the left side.”

”Can you—” Leon began.

”Yes. Not here. Not all at once,” Loriel said. ”Don’t move until I say.”

Seraphine checked the place where Mardoc had fallen, then looked at the lifted stones and the intact veil. Leon gestured toward the remaining traces. She nodded and stayed between the court and the witnesses.

Vyra came last. She stopped beside Ira and looked down at him.

”Everyone is clear,” Vyra said. ”The injured are stable. Nobody came back.” Her voice softened. ”Can you stand?”

”Not on my own,” Leon admitted.

He disliked admitting it. He disliked the thought of falling on his face in front of them more.

Ira put his good arm over her shoulders. Loriel took the other side, careful of the ribs. Between them, they lifted him to his feet, and he let them.

Behind the closed cell door, Leon accepted Loriel’s insistence on private treatment. Seraphine remained outside to control access while he opened the aperture for the others.

Xyra restored the accelerated zone. Three subjective days would cost a little over four outside minutes. The door was closed, the threshold obscured, and Seraphine could enter once Vyra returned to take her place.

Inside, Xyra took one look at him and made a face.

”You look dreadful,” Xyra said.

”I’m still here,” Leon said.

”I can see that.” Xyra gave Loriel room. ”Try to stay that way.”

Loriel aligned the broken ribs and supported the injured lung before encouraging the bone to knit. She had healed serious injuries before. What surprised her now was how little the second task disturbed the first: she could tend his torn thigh while maintaining delicate support inside his chest.

”The new Core holds the smaller flows much more steadily,” she told him. ”I can adjust one without making the others surge.”

”That sounds familiar,” Leon said.

”Then you’ll understand why I want you to lie still.” Loriel pressed him gently back when he tried to examine his side. ”You can admire the result afterward.”

By the third day, he could breathe deeply, though his ribs still ached. His palm had closed to a pink line. Strained channels needed gentler use for longer, and his reserves remained depleted. He was fit to travel; he had no wish to attempt another fight like that one.

The crystal stood on the table beside his bed. He watched its colors while Loriel changed the dressing on his thigh, remembering the old man’s open hand.

He still would not have given it up. That was harder to say with Ira sitting beside him, asleep at last, one hand curled around his wrist. He hadn’t been the only person required to live with his decision.

When she woke, he moved over to make room for her without waiting to be asked. Loriel checked his side, judged the space sufficient, and tucked the blanket back around them.

During a rest between treatments, the women told him what had happened beyond the wall. Vyra and Seraphine had taken turns at the outside door, so they gathered together only briefly.

”The lower stair nearly went,” Ira said. ”Twenty people were still climbing it. I fused the cracks and kept the heat exactly where it needed to stay.” She smiled despite herself. ”The new Core made that easier. I could change one part without overheating the rest.”

”Orrin’s quartermaster got his hand crushed by a falling block,” said Loriel. ”I had him and the Hall boy and a girl with a cut scalp all at once. None of them will even scar.”

”I moved the curtain twice,” Vyra said. She was quiet a moment. ”I watched the arcade mouth the whole time. When the dust went up after the jaws, I thought—” She stopped and picked up her cup, and didn’t finish.

Seraphine rested her hand against his shoulder. ”I counted nine large pieces coming toward us,” she said. ”Each time, I wondered whether you’d been underneath it.”

”I’m sorry,” Leon said.

”I know why you stayed.” Seraphine’s fingers tightened briefly. ”I still hated waiting.”

He looked at them, remembering how sure he had sounded when he sent them away. None had argued when it mattered. Now he had to listen to what that confidence had cost them.

”Thank you,” he said. ”All of you. I could only fight him because you were holding everything else.”

Ira leaned against his uninjured shoulder. He held her there until Vyra rose to exchange places with Seraphine outside. When his treatment was done, there were still people waiting to learn whether he could walk out of that cell.