SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 749: What Held

The first three-branch model came apart in eleven breaths.

Leon had begun with fire and water, keeping their routes separate until he could hold a small compressed bead steadily above Ji’s plate. Adding wind had taken three attempts. Once all three branches ran evenly, he stopped the fire supply.

For four breaths, nothing visibly changed. Then water slid toward the place fire had occupied. Wind followed a heartbeat later. The bead stretched, wobbled, and unwound in a puff of warm air, leaving a faint scorch ring beside Ji’s old ones.

Leon sat back and wrote down what he had felt before it failed.

Water moves first. Wind follows. Four breaths before I can see it, but it starts sooner.

He built it again.

The next model failed the same way. Reducing the fire gradually produced a different result: water began shifting before the fire was fully gone. Simply slowing his hand wasn’t enough.

He tried a tight sleeve around the fire route. That kept water out, but when he restored the supply, fire pressed against the sleeve instead of returning to its place. The bead survived in a crooked arrangement that he had to hold together himself.

I’ve made a wall. An ugly little wall, but Forge would recognize it.

Leon released the model and rubbed his eyes. Then he went back to Old Root’s drawing.

He used the crystal’s calibrated fire output for the next attempts, feeding it a measured supply and marking each adjustment in his notes. It gave him a steadier source to compare across trials. Water and wind remained under his control.

The sleeve needed to respond to the fire branch instead of waiting for him to tighten it. He threaded a tiny return from that branch through the surrounding qi and adjusted how strongly it supported the opening. As the return weakened, the sleeve drew inward.

Making it happen was easy compared with making it happen at the right rate.

Too late, and water crowded into the gap. Too early, and the sleeve strangled a fire branch that still had energy to deliver. Twice the opening pulsed between the two states, exactly as the Lady had warned.

Leon changed one proportion at a time. The papers beside him filled with crossed-out numbers and small drawings whose differences would have been invisible to anyone who hadn’t spent the night making them.

Past midnight, one adjustment lasted long enough to make him straighten.

He lowered the fire supply in stages. The sleeve narrowed with it. Water shifted slightly, then settled against the changed boundary instead of pushing through.

He cut the fire completely.

The bead continued turning.

Leon counted thirty breaths, then sixty. His hand remained poised over the plate, but he didn’t have to use it to keep the empty branch shut.

He restored the fire.

The sleeve loosened, the current returned, and the bead shivered so hard that he nearly released the whole thing. He eased water back a fraction. The shiver diminished. All three branches settled into motion again.

Leon let out a breath and discovered how stiffly he had been sitting.

It needed his correction on the return. He had tested only three branches, at one small pressure, with supplies he controlled. Nothing here proved that he could safely reproduce it in a Core.

But the bead was still there.

He leaned closer, smiling at the thing like an idiot.

I made that work.

The light was on in Vyra’s room across the courtyard. He let the model disperse, left his notes open, and went to her door before deciding he ought to wait until morning.

Vyra looked up from a desk scattered with notes and hearthseal stones.

”Come and look at something,” Leon said.

She glanced at his face, then set down the stone she was examining. ”What have you done?”

”Something that stayed together. Mostly.”

That earned him a raised eyebrow, but she followed.

Leon rebuilt the bead while she watched. He interrupted the fire, waited sixty breaths, and restored it. This time he recognized the approaching shiver earlier and corrected water before the whole shape lurched.

Vyra leaned over the plate, holding her hair back from its edge.

”The return controls the opening?” she asked.

”Part of it. Too much influence and it keeps tightening and releasing.” Leon pointed to a crossed-out drawing. ”That one did it until the bead fell apart.”

”Crownfire changes sharply when I draw on it. I’d need to know whether the sleeve follows a brief fluctuation or waits for a real loss of supply.” She studied the active branch. ”Can you delay it without letting the others intrude?”

”I don’t know yet. I’ve only got one arrangement that works this well.”

Vyra looked up at him. ”Then keep these numbers. This is good, Leon.”

Her hand rested beside his on the table. He noticed the small gap between them and, for a moment, wanted to close it. Before he decided whether to move, she reached for his notes.

”Show me where you changed the return,” Vyra said.

Loriel appeared in the doorway carrying tea and two cups. She paused when she saw Vyra, then looked down at the tray.

”I thought you were still working alone.”

”There’s another cup on the shelf,” Leon said. He shifted his chair and pulled a stool beside him. ”Come and see.”

Loriel collected the cup, set down the tray, and took the stool. Her shoulder brushed his arm. She glanced at him, cheeks coloring, but stayed where she was.

Leon shifted to give her room to pour. Once she set the pot down, she moved close again, deliberately this time. He caught her eye and smiled. Loriel held his gaze for a moment before turning to the plate. He left his arm where it was.

”What did I miss?” she asked.

”He interrupted one branch and brought it back without losing the model,” Vyra said. ”The return still needs help.”

Loriel watched the bead turn. ”Can you show me?”

Leon could, and wanted to badly enough that he nearly forgot the tea.

They stayed over the plate until the courtyard outside began to lighten. Loriel watched the repeated trials; Vyra questioned the changes between them. Having to explain each adjustment made Leon notice where his notes were incomplete.

Then a message stirred in his awareness.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: I assume you went straight to work. I would like to see what you made. An actual working model, if you have one. Include the failures; I am interested in what broke.]

Leon looked down at the bead. He had been imagining Ji’s expression when he brought her this first result. He hadn’t considered showing it to someone who knew him as the Elemental Paragon.

[Elemental Paragon: I can send a drawing and the trial records. Not the model itself.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: That will do for now. Keep the untidy parts. I want to see how you reached it.]

He set his hand on the open notebook. The first page was full of mistakes, impatient corrections, and a drawing he had labeled stupid wall.

Ji would understand exactly what she was looking at.

The Lord might understand rather more than he wanted.

Before he answered either of them, he needed to decide how much of himself those pages could show.