SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 184: Waking Up on a Dying Earth,The Red Rain

"You always were bad at knocking," a soft voice said from the shadows.

Alvian dropped the steel door. It hit the concrete floor with a deafening crash.

Valeria stepped into the moonlight filtering through the broken skylights. She looked entirely different, yet exactly the same. Her frame had restructured to accommodate the [Titan Bloodline]. She was taller, her musculature defined and powerful, her golden hair loose around her shoulders. But her eyes were drawn and exhausted.

Alvian took a step toward her, his boots cracking the concrete. "I miscalculated the mass-to-force ratio of this reality. My output is... uncalibrated."

Valeria closed the distance between them. She didn’t look at the destroyed door or the cracked floor. She looked at his trembling hands. She reached out, her warm, calloused fingers wrapping gently around his pale, impossibly dense fists.

The simple touch grounded him. The frantic, buzzing energy of the [Chaos Body] quieted beneath the steady, stabilizing warmth of her Titan aura.

"Breathe, Alvian," Valeria murmured, stepping closer until he could feel the rise and fall of her chest. "In through the nose. Hold it."

He followed her instructions, his violet eyes locking onto her grey ones.

"You aren’t a monster here," she whispered, her thumb brushing over his knuckles, entirely unafraid of the power that could crush her. "You just need to learn how to hold fragile things again."

"Earth is fragile," Alvian said, his voice dropping to a low, quiet rumble.

"Then we’ll be careful," Valeria smiled, resting her forehead against his chest for a fleeting moment. "Until we don’t have to be."

———

The safe house was supposed to be secure, a relic from Alvian’s past life where the concrete was thick enough to block out the noise of the city. But standing by the shattered, grime-streaked window of the second floor, the noise was impossible to ignore.

Earth was burning.

Alvian and Valeria stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the sprawling metropolis. The sky, which should have been the dull, light-polluted orange of a city night, was a bruised, sickly purple. Dark, swirling clouds blotted out the stars, churning with a heavy, unnatural static.

"It’s accelerating," Valeria said, her shoulder brushing against his. He could see the faint, golden hue of her Titan energy bleeding into her irises, a physical manifestation of the game overwriting reality. "The timeline is broken. The Convergence wasn’t supposed to happen for another six months."

"The Syndicate forced the timeline when they realized they couldn’t hold Azureus," Alvian stated, his eyes tracking the anomalies in the atmosphere. "They opened the extraction portals, and the dimension bled through with them."

He pointed toward the neon-lit skyline of the downtown district.

It was raining. But the drops streaking across the glass weren’t water. They were a thick, viscous crimson. The [Red Rain] from the Abyssal Apocalypse had followed them home.

Below them, on the cracked asphalt of the streets, the true horror of the Convergence was unfolding. The civilians of Earth didn’t have system interfaces yet. They didn’t have mana channels or leveling systems. When the highly concentrated, corrupted draconic mana touched them, they didn’t take damage. They mutated.

Alvian watched with clinical detachment as a stray dog, caught in the downpour, convulsed. Its spine snapped backward, jagged bone spikes erupting through its fur as it grew to the size of a bear. Down the block, a group of late-night warehouse workers shrieked as the rain melted through their clothes. Their skin blistered, turning to grey, hardened scales as their minds were overwritten by the mindless hunger of draconic thralls.

"We have to go out there," Valeria’s voice tightened, her protective instincts warring with her exhaustion. She stepped closer to the window, her hands curling into fists. "We can fight them. We have our stats."

"We can clear a block," Alvian corrected, his tone flat. "Maybe a district. But we cannot fight an environment. Look at the screens."

He gestured toward the massive holographic billboards that adorned the corporate towers in the distance. Instead of their usual advertisements, they were all locked onto a single, looping broadcast.

A man in a pristine white suit, his face obscured by a shifting digital mask, stood before a stylized, glowing logo of the Syndicate.

"Citizens of Earth," the broadcast echoed, the audio filtering through the broken window. "The phenomenon you are experiencing is an evolutionary leap. The atmosphere is shifting. The weak will succumb to the sickness of the red sky. But you do not have to perish."

The masked man held up a tiny, silver microchip. It pulsed with a faint, blue mana signature.

"The Syndicate offers Salvation. Our bio-chips will regulate your biology, shielding you from the mutations. Report to your nearest government quarantine zone. Accept the Salvation Chip. Secure your future in the new world."

Valeria scoffed, a sound of pure disgust. "Salvation Chips? They’re enslavement protocols. They’ll turn the entire human race into mind-controlled batteries for their war machine."

"It is a brilliant, terrifyingly efficient ploy," Alvian analyzed. "They introduce the plague, then sell the cure. They already control the major terrestrial governments. By morning, half the planet will have willingly submitted to the Syndicate just to survive the rain."

He turned away from the window, the violet light in his eyes flaring as his mind ran through millions of combat scenarios. Guerrilla warfare was useless against a global corporation that owned the very air people breathed. Striking their bases one by one would take years.

"We can’t save the world from an apartment," Alvian said, walking toward the center of the room. "The scale is too large. We don’t need a safe house, Valeria. We need a kingdom."

Valeria turned, crossing her arms. The golden light in her eyes sharpened. "We have a kingdom. It’s just currently sitting at the bottom of a server."

Alvian’s lips curved into a cold, predatory smile. He reached into his coat, his hand resting over the spot where the [Heart of Azureus] hummed within his inventory space.

"Then we bring it to the surface," Alvian declared. "The Syndicate wants to merge the worlds? Fine. We will show them what a real Convergence looks like. We are going to bring the dreadnought to Earth."

—

The synchronization process was never kind, but it was particularly cruel to those whose earthly vessels lacked the foundational reinforcements of a frontline fighter.

Alvian stood by the grimy window of the Sector 4 safe house, his eyes tracking the bruised, violet clouds that choked the Earth’s sky. The Red Rain lashed against the cracked glass, a steady, rhythmic drumming that sounded like a countdown. Behind him, the air in the room suddenly distorted. A violent hum of displaced energy preceded the shattering of a nearby lightbulb, showering the concrete floor in sparks.

Seraphina materialized on the floor, gasping for air as if she had been drowning.

She didn’t rise with the stoic grace she possessed in the game. She convulsed, her hands clawing at her own throat. Her earthly body, a lithe but entirely ordinary human frame, was violently attempting to reconcile with the high-level agility and lethal reflexes she had cultivated in Gods Domain.

Valeria was at her side in an instant. She dropped to her knees, her hands glowing with a faint, residual golden light that she pressed against Seraphina’s chest.

"Breathe," Valeria instructed, her voice steady and commanding, yet laced with an undeniable warmth. "Your lungs aren’t used to processing the ambient mana yet. Force it down. Don’t fight the current."

Alvian watched them. He noted the slight tremble in Valeria’s shoulders—the lingering exhaustion of her own synchronization—yet she prioritized their rogue without hesitation. The damp chill of the ruined apartment was biting, seeping through the cracked walls. Without a word, Alvian unclasped his heavy, void-weaved trench coat. He stepped over to Valeria and draped it over her shoulders.

Valeria paused, looking up at him. Her fingers brushed against his as he adjusted the collar around her neck. The physical contact was fleeting, but the shared warmth grounded the chaotic energy buzzing in the room. She offered him a small, grateful nod before returning her attention to the gasping girl on the floor.

Seraphina finally drew in a ragged, stabilizing breath. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, her dark hair clinging to her sweat-drenched forehead. She looked at her hands, turning them over, her eyes wide with a sudden, dawning terror.

"I feel... thin," Seraphina whispered, her voice trembling. "In Azureus, I could fall from a tower and roll it out. Here? My bones feel like glass. I don’t have your Titan density, Valeria. I don’t have an Admin body, Alvian. A stray bullet out there..." She swallowed hard, looking toward the window where the Red Rain fell. "A bullet will just kill me."