SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 176: The Falling Star, The Reunion

"Physics Lesson Number Twenty-Six," Alvian whispered, the wind screaming around him as he broke the sound barrier. "Kinetic Bombardment."

He fell.

The battlefield held its breath. The sky screamed.

Valeria, leaning heavily on her makeshift warhammer, looked up. Her helmet was gone, lost days ago in a skirmish near the river. Her hair was matted with blood and sweat, her eyes rimmed with red from lack of sleep. She saw the black streak tearing through the clouds, trailing a wake of frozen air and violet lightning.

She didn’t know what it was. A new Syndicate weapon? A orbital strike? The end?

"Incoming!" Arin’s voice cracked over the comms, high and terrified. "Mana signature is... it’s off the scale! It’s not a spell! It’s an object!"

"Brace!" Valeria shouted, though she knew it was pointless. If that thing hit, bracing wouldn’t save them.

The black comet didn’t aim for the palace. It aimed for the massive [Magma-Siege Beetle] that had breached the eastern wall. The beast, size of a small house and covered in plates of burning rock, looked up. Its simple, insectoid brain registered a threat, but its biology was too slow to react.

"BOOOOOOM!"

The impact was not a sound; it was a physical erasure of silence.

Alvian landed directly on the beetle’s carapace. He didn’t use a skill. He used the raw mass of his [Chaos Body], amplified by the momentum of a terminal velocity drop from the stratosphere.

The beetle didn’t explode. It was atomized. The kinetic energy transferred instantly through its body and into the ground beneath it. The earth liquefied. A shockwave of dust, rock, and pulverized monster guts exploded outward in a perfect ring, flattening the Syndicate troops pouring through the breach.

The ground rippled like water. Soldiers, both friend and foe, were knocked off their feet by the tremor. The shockwave hit the city walls, shaking the dust from the stones, but the force was directed downward, digging a crater thirty meters deep where the breach had been.

Silence returned to the battlefield, ringing in the ears of the survivors.

In the center of the crater, smoke and steam rose in a thick column. From the haze, a figure stood up.

He was pristine. The [Vestments of the Void Monarch] flowed around him like liquid shadow, untouched by the dust. The [Crown of the Frost Monarch] glinted on his brow, freezing the moisture in the air around him. He held a black lance in one hand, the tip resting casually on the ground.

He walked out of the crater. He didn’t climb; he simply stepped up the air, using [Void Step] to create platforms of solid space beneath his boots.

He stood on the edge of the crater, looking down at the army of Syndicate soldiers and Draconic hybrids who were scrambling to their feet.

"Who... who is that?" a terrified student whispered from behind the barricade.

Valeria stared. Her hammer slipped from her numb fingers, clattering to the stone. Her knees, which had held her up through three weeks of hell, finally gave way. She didn’t fall; she sank, relief washing over her so intensely it felt like physical pain.

"He’s back," she whispered, a sob choking her voice. "The idiot is back."

The Syndicate commander, a man in high-tech power armor standing near the rear of the assault force, recovered his wits.

"Fire!" the commander screamed, pointing at the figure on the ridge. "Kill him! Focus all fire!"

Hundreds of mana rifles, thermal lances, and crossbows turned toward Alvian. A barrage of death illuminated the twilight, a wall of fire and magic rushing toward the lone figure.

Alvian didn’t dodge. He didn’t raise a shield. He raised his left hand. He snapped his fingers.

"[Absolute Nullification]."

It wasn’t a spell he had learned. It was a property of the [Void Sovereign]. He asserted his authority over the space around him.

The projectiles stopped.

The fireballs fizzled into smoke. The lightning bolts grounded themselves into the air. The physical arrows turned to dust. The kinetic energy of the attack was simply deleted from the server log of reality.

The Syndicate soldiers lowered their weapons, their eyes bulging behind their visors. This wasn’t magic. This was admin abuse.

Alvian looked at the commander.

"You are trespassing," Alvian said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was projected directly into the minds of every living being within five miles. It was the voice of the Void. "And you broke my wall."

He pointed his lance at the commander.

"[Void Vortex]: Mass Execution."

He didn’t cast a single singularity. He cast a hundred. Tiny, violet black holes opened inside the chest cavities of the first hundred soldiers in the front line.

"SQUELCH."

There was no explosion. Just the wet sound of implosion. A hundred bodies folded in on themselves, crunched into dense spheres of meat and armor, and then dropped to the ground.

The rest of the army broke. They didn’t retreat; they routed. Weapons were dropped. Monsters turned and fled, trampling their handlers. The fear was absolute. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Alvian watched them run. He didn’t chase. He turned his back on the fleeing enemy and looked toward the palace. He saw Valeria. He saw Korg. He saw the students peering over the ramparts.

He walked toward them, the crowd parting like the Red Sea. He stopped in front of Valeria.

She looked up at him, tears cutting tracks through the soot on her face.

"You’re late," she choked out, trying to sound stern but failing miserably.

Alvian reached out. He wiped a smudge of blood from her cheek with his thumb. His touch was cool, calming.

"Traffic was terrible," Alvian replied, a faint smile touching his lips. "But I brought souvenirs."

He looked up at the sky, where the Draconic Legion’s main ships were hovering, hesitating.

"The vacation is over," Alvian announced, his voice turning hard as diamond. "I am back. And rent is due."

The dust from the obliterated Magma-Siege Beetle hung in the air like a shroud. Alvian stood in the center of the crater, the [Vestments of the Void Monarch] rippling not from the wind, but from the sheer density of the mana radiating off his body.

He looked up toward the Royal Palace. The heart of the Void Sanctum.

It was burning.

The Syndicate’s assault hadn’t stopped with the breach of the wall. While Alvian had been trapped in the Dimensional Gap, the enemy had pushed forward. They had pushed hard.

"System. Scan Palace perimeter."

[Scanning...]

[Hostile Density: Extreme.]

[Friendly Life Signs: Critical.]

[Target Identified: Guardian Magnus. Target Identified: Guardian Kaelen.]

"They’re still alive," Alvian whispered. His voice was different now. It carried a metallic, hollow resonance, like an echo from a deep cave. "Good. I hate replacing staff."

He didn’t run. He didn’t fly. He simply stepped.

"[Void Step]."

The world warped. Distance became a suggestion.

At the main gates of the Royal Palace, the line was breaking.

Master Magnus, the Iron Shell, was on one knee. His massive tower shield, once a gleaming wall of invincible steel, was rent and torn. Molten slag dripped from his shoulder pauldron where a thermal lance had punched through.

Beside him, Master Kaelen was a blur of motion, but a slowing one. The Speedster Guardian was exhausted. His movements, usually faster than the eye could track, were sluggish. He was bleeding from a dozen cuts, his blue scales dull and grey.

They were facing a tide.

Thousands of Syndicate shock troops, supported by Draconic Hybrids, surged up the stairs. And leading them was a monstrosity.

[Target: Siege-Breaker Centurion]

[Level: 55]

[Status: Elite / Augmented]

It was a giant, four-armed cyborg dragon-kin, wielding hammers that sparked with red lightning.

"Give up, old man!" the Centurion roared, slamming a hammer into Magnus’s shield.

"BOOM!"

Magnus slid back, his boots carving deep furrows in the stone. He coughed blood.

"The Iron Shell... does not... crack," Magnus wheezed, though his arms were trembling.

"Then it shatters!" the Centurion raised both hammers for a killing blow.

Kaelen tried to intervene, but a volley of sniper fire forced him to dodge. "Magnus! Move!"

Magnus couldn’t move. He looked up at the descending hammers. He braced himself for the end.

The hammers came down.

"CLANG!"

The sound wasn’t the crunch of armor. It was the ringing of absolute, immovable metal.

Magnus opened his eyes.

Standing in front of him, holding the massive hammers with one bare hand, was a figure in black robes.

The Centurion stared, confused. He pulled, trying to retract his weapons. They didn’t budge. It was as if he had struck the core of the planet.

Alvian looked up. His eyes were no longer violet. They were galaxies. Swirling, infinite, and cold.

"You are noisy," Alvian said.

"Who—" the Centurion started.

Alvian squeezed.

"CRUNCH."

The solid adamantine heads of the hammers crumpled like tin foil. The metal groaned and twisted under Alvian’s grip.

"And you are in my way."

Alvian didn’t use a skill. He didn’t use mana. He used the raw, physical stats of the [Limit Breaker] physique.

[Strength: 900]