SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 556: Mythical Armor

Leon arrived at the glass field.

The crystalline ground stretched in every direction, flat and empty, catching the dimensional world’s ambient light and scattering it in the particular way that had become familiar over the months of training here. Nobody else came to this location. He’d chosen it originally for exactly that reason and kept returning for the same one.

He didn’t take out the mythical armor yet.

he thought, settling into the open space.

The mythical armor had been sitting in his inventory for months, patient and untouched, waiting for him to reach the point where attempting to equip it wasn’t a gamble with his life. He wasn’t certain he was there yet. But he was considerably stronger than he’d been the last time he’d seriously considered it, and the Cradle Seed had changed the relationship between him and every element he carried in ways he was still discovering.

The instance dungeon he’d plant near the tower — ten or so kilometers from the Pyran and human settlement, close enough to be accessible, far enough that whatever the instance produced wouldn’t interfere with daily life in the settlement.

But first: aura ranks.

He’d felt what level five aura actually meant when he’d broken through in ice and lightning. The difference wasn’t just quantitative — the element stopped being something he wielded and started being something he was. No mana activation required. No reaching for it. Just presence, the affinity existing in him at a depth that made the distinction between him and the element genuinely unclear.

He wanted every affinity he’d developed to that point.

He messaged Xyra through their connection — a simple request, familiar by now — and felt the time field activate around him. The familiar sensation of time thickening, the 1000x ratio settling into place, the outside world slowing to irrelevance.

He sat down, closed his eyes, and began.

The training consumed him completely.

He lost track of time in the way he only did when something was working — when the engagement was deep enough that the monitoring part of his mind went quiet and left only the doing. Wind aura, fire aura, water aura, life aura, light aura, time aura — working through each one in sequence, pushing comprehension downward into the element rather than upward into application, looking for the depth that had produced the breakthrough in ice and lightning.

Some came more easily than others.

Fire responded quickly — the long familiarity with it through combat and through Ira’s fire affinity producing a context that made the deepening feel almost natural. Water took longer but moved steadily. Wind had a particular quality that required a different approach, less direct pressure and more passive listening, the element responding better to attention than to effort.

Life element surprised him. The depth he found there was different from the others — warmer, more complex, carrying a quality that felt less like mastering an element and more like being recognized by one. He sat with it longer than the others and came out of it changed in a way he couldn’t immediately articulate.

Space aura, holy aura, and illusion aura hit a wall.

He pushed at all three repeatedly across what felt like months of internal time and found the same resistance each time — not the resistance of something that needed more effort, but the resistance of something that needed a different kind of development entirely. Real battle. Real stakes. The kind of experience that comprehension alone couldn’t substitute for.

he thought.

He accepted it without frustration. He knew the difference between a wall that required more force and a wall that required a different door.

Dark aura was the unexpected breakthrough.

He hadn’t expected it to be the first of the remaining affinities to reach level five — it was one of his newer acquisitions, developed more recently than most of the others. But when he pressed into the dark element’s comprehension, something responded that hadn’t been there before the Cradle Seed, a depth that the previous rank seven had been sitting above rather than inside.

And then there was the memory of the first tower floor. The being he’d fought who had possessed level five dark aura — the intimate exposure to that level of dark element in real combat, his body and his awareness having been thoroughly acquainted with what that depth felt like from the outside. The experience had done something he hadn’t consciously registered at the time. A blueprint, lodged somewhere below deliberate memory.

CRACK.

The dark aura broke through with a sharp internal sound that he felt more than heard, and the element settled into him at the new level with a completeness that the other breakthroughs had shared. Present. Permanent. Part of him rather than available to him.

he thought, opening his eyes briefly to register the moment.

He felt the control that came with it — a profundity in how he could work with darkness that hadn’t existed at level four. Shadows responded. Concealment deepened. The gap between intent and execution in dark element applications essentially vanished.

He closed his eyes and kept going.

Eventually he stopped.

Not because he’d achieved everything — space, holy, and illusion remained at level four, the wall unchanged. But because the work that could be done here was done, and continuing to push against the same resistance was diminishing returns rather than progress.

He messaged his clone through their shared awareness.

came back immediately.

Three years of training. One day outside.

Leon stood up, stretched, and felt the accumulated development of three years sitting in him — not as fatigue, which the 1000x time had compressed into something his physiology handled without difficulty, but as presence. He was significantly stronger than he’d been when he sat down.

he thought again.

He reached into his soul-connected inventory.

The mythical armor came out in its glass casing, the same protective shell that had incinerated the ancient entity’s hand on contact during their time in the dimensional world. It sat in his palm warm and steady, the armor inside visible through the crystalline exterior — crimson scales edged with molten gold, the dragon emblem on the chest plate, the whole set radiating quiet, absolute authority.

He looked at it for a long moment.

he thought.