SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 180: The Expansion, War of the Sovereigns

He grabbed the [Mist Anchor]. He placed it on the anvil.

"System. Initiate City Upgrade. Target: Outer Wards."

He raised the [Lance of the Void Winter]. He didn’t use a hammer. He used the lance as a conduit. He struck the anchor.

"CLANG!"

The sound wasn’t metal on metal. It was the sound of a bell ringing in a dream. The anchor shattered, dissolving into a mist of red and blue light that shot up into the ley lines.

"Modification: Thermal Shock," Alvian commanded. "The wards will no longer just absorb impact. They will cycle extreme temperatures. Any organic matter touching the shield will be flash-frozen and then incinerated."

[Processing... Ward Protocols Updated.]

He grabbed the [Iron-Root Anchor].

"Modification: Regenerative Density. The walls will grow. They will repair themselves using the enemy’s blood as fertilizer."

"CLANG!"

Green and brown light flooded the room. The foundations of the city groaned as roots of iron-wood wove themselves through the coral, making the stone harder than dragon scales.

He grabbed the [Storm-Eater’s Core] and the [Psionic Cortex].

"Modification: Offensive Retaliation. Automated lightning strikes on all hostile aerial targets. Psionic screech emitters to disrupt enemy coordination."

"CLANG! CLANG!"

Blue lightning and purple waves of mental energy surged into the grid.

Finally, he took the [Gold Anchor].

"Modification: Resource Allocation. Maximize efficiency. Every drop of mana used by the defenders is recycled. Every enemy killed is looted automatically and converted into raw energy for the shields."

"CLANG!"

The golden light bound it all together.

[System Alert! City Upgrade Complete.]

[Azureus Status: Impregnable Fortress.]

[New Defensive Rating: Mythical.]

Alvian stepped back. He was sweating, his mana drained, but the [Tear of the Infinite] was already refilling him.

He looked at the holographic map of the city. The blue dome was gone. In its place was a multi-colored, shifting field of aggressive energy. The walls bristled with organic iron spines. The towers crackled with lightning.

It wasn’t a sanctuary anymore. It was a meat grinder waiting for meat.

"Beautiful," Alvian whispered.

He turned to leave, but stopped. There was one last thing. He pulled out his own weapon, the [Lance of the Void Winter]. It was chipped, scarred from the battle in the Gap. It had served him well, but it was a Tier 5 weapon. He was facing Tier 7 threats.

He looked at the anvil. He looked at the [Phantom Dragon Scale] he had saved—the piece of the Draconic Phantom’s horn he had broken off. And he looked at the [Warden’s Key], the grey shard of code Prime had given him.

"One last upgrade," Alvian said.

He placed the Lance on the anvil. He placed the Dragon Scale and the Key on top of it.

"System. Fuse. Override safety limits. I want a weapon that can kill a System Administrator."

[Warning! Success Rate: 0%.]

"I am the anomaly," Alvian said, his eyes bleeding violet light. "Make it work."

He poured his [Void Sovereign] authority into the forge. He didn’t use a hammer. He used his hand. He slammed his fist down onto the materials.

"FORGE!"

A blinding explosion of grey and violet light engulfed the room. The sound of the world cracking echoed through the palace.

When the light faded, Alvian stood alone. In his hand was a new weapon. It wasn’t a lance. It was a tear in space shaped like a spear. It had no color. It had no reflection. It was a jagged line of absolute deletion.

[Item Created: The Edge of Entropy (Divine).]

[Effect: Ignores Defense. Ignores Immunity. Deletes Target Data on Critical Hit.]

Alvian gripped the weapon. It hummed with a hungry, terrifying song.

"Now," Alvian said, walking toward the lift.

[System Announcement: The War of the Sovereigns has begun.]

"Let them come."

——

The intense, blinding light of the Genesis Forge slowly faded from the lowest chambers of the Royal Palace, but the residual heat still clung to Alvian’s skin. In his hand, the newly forged [Edge of Entropy] did not gleam or shine. It was a jagged tear in reality, a colorless void shaped roughly like a spear that seemed to drink the very light from the room. It hummed with a hungry, terrifying song, vibrating with the fundamental power of absolute deletion.

Alvian did not linger in the forge. The countdown in his head, a byproduct of his hyper-optimized processing speed, told him the enemy was already at the gates.

He took the primary lift up to the highest balcony of the palace. The wind howling through the spires no longer tasted of ash and ozone; it tasted of static and anticipation. Valeria was already there, standing at the edge of the parapet. Her golden armor, freshly repaired and reinforced, caught the ambient light of the city. As Alvian stepped out into the biting gale, the world around them suddenly lurched.

It wasn’t an earthquake. It was a fundamental shift in the server’s architecture.

A massive holographic prompt expanded across the bruised, purple sky, visible to every surviving player and NPC on the planet.

[System Announcement: The War of the Sovereigns has begun.]

[Phase Shift: Environmental Boundaries Dissolved.]

[The Ocean, The Land, and The Sky are now a single contested zone.]

The very air shimmered as the physical laws of the map rewrote themselves. The crushing pressure of the deep ocean faded into a breathable, gravity-neutral atmosphere, while the sky above them lost its watery ceiling, revealing a swirling expanse of cosmic clouds.

As the world shook from the boundaries dissolving, Valeria took a half-step backward, her shoulder pressing firmly against his. Alvian didn’t move away, letting her solid, warm presence ground him amidst the chaotic shifting of the server’s code. She was his anchor to reality, a quiet reassurance that despite the godhood creeping into his veins, he was still human.

"They’re here," Valeria said, pointing her gauntlet toward the horizon.

The Draconic Legion did not hide. Fifty thousand True Dragons, clad in magma and black bone, surged forward like a tidal wave of blood and fire. They eclipsed the horizon, a sea of red scales and burning eyes. They moved with absolute certainty, expecting to crash against the fragile, blue hydro-domes that had protected Azureus for a millennium. They expected a siege of attrition, a slow grinding down of the city’s defenders until nothing remained but ash.

They expected the old Azureus.

"Let them come," Alvian whispered, his violet eyes locking onto the vanguard of the horde. "Efficiency dictates we let the trap spring itself."

The first wave of dragons, a massive wedge of Inferno Drakes and Siege Behemoths, slammed into the city’s perimeter. But they did not hit a blue dome.

They hit Alvian’s masterpiece.

The moment the leading drakes touched the boundary line, the newly integrated [Mist Anchor] and [Iron-Root Anchor] protocols triggered simultaneously. A multi-colored, hexagonal grid flared to life, expanding outward with aggressive intent. It wasn’t a barrier designed to block; it was a barrier designed to kill.

The automated slaughter commenced in a fraction of a second. The front line of dragons experienced a catastrophic thermal shock. The wards cycled from the superheated fury of the [Molten Star] to the absolute zero of the [Glacial Void] in an instant. The adamantine scales of the drakes, capable of withstanding direct artillery fire, grew brittle and cracked under the impossible temperature shift.

Then, the kinetic reflection kicked in.

The sheer momentum of the dragons’ own charge was multiplied and fired back into their frozen bodies. The resulting sound was like a glacier collapsing. Thousands of massive, unstoppable monsters simply shattered into clouds of frozen red mist.

But the city wasn’t done. The [Gold Anchor] protocol activated, glowing with a hungry, avaricious light. The localized gravity around the shattered dragons inverted, vacuuming the frozen gore, the scattered scales, and the raw chaotic mana of the fallen beasts directly into the city’s central reserves.

Alvian stood on the balcony, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the massacre with the detached satisfaction of an architect observing a perfectly functioning machine. His interface scrolled with a blinding cascade of numbers.

[Defensive Grid Mana Reserves: 110%... 150%... 300%...]

[Resource Conversion Optimal.]

It wasn’t a battle. It was an industrial harvesting operation.

The second wave of the Legion, unable to halt their momentum, crashed into the newly fortified iron-wood spines that erupted from the city’s foundation. Psionic screech emitters, powered by the [Psionic Cortex], blasted into the minds of the draconic commanders, scrambling their coordination and sending them spiraling into the automated lightning turrets.

In less than three minutes, twenty thousand elite dragons had been reduced to fertilizer for the coral foundations of Azureus. The city was literally eating the invading army, converting their immense health pools into passive income for the Void Sanctum’s shields.