SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 743: Forty-Eight Returning

The thirty at the spring left after breakfast the next morning. Harvests went into spatial rings; Bai Heng checked the seals on his three crates before Leon stored them. Loriel’s plants were already safe in the dimensional world. By the time the cooking fire was out, everyone was ready.

The march to the entrance base took three days. Tian Mingxu met them on the last ridge with six of her people.

She had kept her base well. She had a log of every change she’d seen at the entrance since the realm had sealed, written in a neat hand day by day. When Bai Heng’s relay came through, she had set two watchers on the entrance clearing at all hours, and they had a list of what to look for.

”The grass has been lying flat since yesterday,” Tian said, showing him her log. ”No wind. It points toward the marker we left.” She looked up. ”This is the twelfth day. Your calendar gives us tomorrow.”

”Then we’ll watch it from dawn,” Leon said.

The eighteen at the base came out to meet them. When the two groups stood together in the clearing, Tian counted them off name by name, with Leon standing beside her.

Forty-eight.

Leon had known the number before she finished. Hearing every person answer still pleased him. Several had new scars. Most were carrying more than they had ever owned, even after allowing for the Palace’s share. He recognized the same restrained excitement each time someone checked a ring or touched the sealed pouch at their belt.

They had spent weeks earning those things. Now they wanted a chance to enjoy them somewhere safer.

He wanted that too.

Tian distributed the last watch assignments while Bai Heng found space among the base’s cooking stones. That evening the two groups exchanged stories over their food. Leon heard his own name several times, followed by descriptions that had grown in the telling. Ira listened to one account with increasing amusement, then leaned close enough to murmur in his ear.

”Apparently you broke the whole mineral ridge.”

”I left most of it standing,” he said.

She laughed softly and let the speaker continue. He was enjoying himself, and Leon had no desire to turn their last supper in the realm into a correction of everyone’s favorite story.

The gate came back an hour after sunrise.

It came quietly. The flattened grass in the clearing began to tremble. The air above Tian’s old marker stone thickened, then shimmered, then pulled open into a tall pale ring that Leon had last seen from the other side.

He didn’t step toward it yet.

He checked it first. Its position matched the marker stone to within a hand’s width. It matched the shape on the first page of Tian’s entrance log, and the shape in his own memory. And on its far side, if he looked hard, he could see a slope of dark pine and a guard platform with the Palace’s banner on it, hanging limp in still air.

That’s our side.

He felt his shoulders relax for the first time since they had assembled beside the marker.

Behind him, somebody started laughing.

Orrin had left to seek her own expedition’s gateway, using their transit records. Leon could not know from here whether they had reached it. Tobin and his Hall belonged to this realm. This particular opening was the Palace expedition’s route home.

Tian led a small group through first. Once the guards outside confirmed the route, the remaining expedition followed in counted groups, bringing the stored harvests with them. Leon and the four women waited until everyone else was across.

Mei Lan hesitated at the threshold. She had been among the first to pack, yet now she stared at the hillside beyond it without moving.

”Go on,” Leon told her. ”That’s Elder Ruan waiting there.”

She looked at him, nodded, and crossed so quickly that the guard receiving her had to step aside. Leon watched her bow to the elder twice before remembering to give her name.

He glanced back across the clearing. They had gathered what they could, made agreements worth keeping, and found much more than the Palace had expected. There were places he had never seen beyond those ridges. He could leave them unexplored for now.

The threshold admitted them as it had before. Their new cultivation remained within its permitted range; the abnormal strength they had brought into the realm had not changed that condition.

On the other side, the air smelled of pine and rain.

The guard elders had raised the alarm as soon as the opening appeared. Now they checked names against Tian’s entrance record, calling each arrival to the waiting platform. Leon heard forty-six, forty-seven, and finally his own name.

He remained near the platform while the elders verified the count and sent word to the Palace. The message went through an ordinary outside communication plaque. By the time the registers were reconciled and the first reports gathered, nearly an hour had passed.

Ji arrived before the expedition departed the basin.

She crossed the receiving ground in plain gray robes, her attention passing over the returned disciples and stopping on Leon. Conversations quieted as people recognized her.

He came down the slope with Ira on one side and Seraphine on the other, and stopped in front of her.

”Master,” Leon said, bowing.

”You’ve been hurt,” she said.

”Loriel has treated me, Master,” Leon replied. ”There’s some strain left.”

”We’ll discuss what that means later.” She glanced past him at the gate, still pale and open on the hillside. ”Is there anything I need to know right now? Before the elders start asking.”

Leon looked back at the gate.

”The realm has people living in it, Master,” he said. ”Its own people. Born there.” He paused. ”And it had doors to other worlds once. Ours wasn’t the first. We weren’t the only ones inside.”

Ji went very still.

Around them, the Palace went on celebrating.

Ji asked which elders had received his first report, then sent for them. Her questions were brief and specific: which foreign parties had crossed his path, whether any knew the location of this gate, and how certain he was of its open interval. Leon answered what he could and offered the copied records for the rest.

Only when the guards had new instructions did she turn back to him.

”You brought everyone home,” Ji said quietly. ”We can discuss the rest somewhere you can sit down.”

He hadn’t realized how much he wanted to hear that until she said it.

Leon’s courtyard was exactly as he’d left it, which surprised him more than it should have.

The plum tree stood beside the familiar wall. In the private inner grounds, Leon brought out Loriel’s trays, and she carried them toward the garden. The bellshade went where she could see it from her room; the wellheart specimens required more careful beds.

Ira sat on the stone bench and stretched her legs with an unrestrained sigh.

”I’m going to sleep for a week,” Ira announced.

”You’ve been threatening that since he got out of bed,” Vyra said, setting their notes aside.

”And I still haven’t done it,” Ira replied.

Seraphine stood in the gate a while longer, looking out toward the main halls as if counting them, before she came in and shut it behind her.

Leon watched them settle, then checked that the conversion crystal was still in his ring. He had promised Ji a private report that evening. The entrance records would tell her where they had been; he wanted to show her what had made him stay.