SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 571: The Absence Field

Chapter 571: The Absence Field

The Warden looked nothing like the other guardians on this floor. Black armor covered a tall, empty shape, with no eye slits or other openings in its blank helmet. A narrow spear made from the same light-eating material rested in its practiced grip.

The third fragment waited behind a plate in its chest. That was where Leon needed to strike.

The Warden advanced.

Leon answered with a test rather than a full attack. He shaped a tight burst of fire and sent it straight at the center of the guardian’s body, watching to see how it reacted.

The flame crossed the chamber and reached the thick darkness around the Warden.

Then it ceased.

Nothing knocked it aside. The armor hadn’t blocked it, and the spell hadn’t lost a contest of power. Its core entered the shadow, and the fire simply stopped existing, as though that part of the room rejected the idea that flame belonged there.

Leon noted it and moved.

One long step brought the Warden into range. Its spear thrust forward, and Leon tried to fold space, shifting himself three feet to the side.

The darkness moved faster.

As the displacement formed, the Warden’s shadow stretched across the stone and reached him. The fold lost its structure the instant the darkness touched it. Space came apart around Leon before the movement could finish and dropped him less than a foot from where he’d begun.

He landed wrong, off balance and still inside the spear’s reach.

The point scraped his side.

His conscious armor managed to turn the thrust, but the spearhead dragged over the plate and split it with a crack.

For the instant the shadow covered it, the armor’s consciousness froze and the crack remained. The spear was made from the same uncounted material as the Warden, allowing it to harm protection that ordinary Floor Three weapons could barely mark. As soon as Leon reached clear light, bronze-gold metal flowed over the split and closed it within seconds.

Leon retreated quickly. By the time he put distance between them, he understood what the shadow was doing.

Anything supernatural failed inside the continuous darkness connected to the Warden. Fire went out, folds collapsed, spatial awareness blurred, and the conscious part of his armor became lifeless. Mana did not weaken inside the field; its flow simply ceased until the shadow passed.

Outside that absence, his abilities worked. Inside it, he had his physical body, sword, and armor.

Power was not the answer. The field had not overpowered his small flame or consumed his fold through greater energy. It had removed both without a contest. A full Elemental Surge would cease at the same boundary and waste far more of his reserves.

His physical strength and integrated combat experience stayed with him. Ordinary objects were not erased, and his armor still protected him even when it could no longer move or heal.

Leon tested one other option while the Warden crossed a strip of pale light.

"Stop."

Leximancy struck the armor and found no living mind, soul, or identity inside the hollow shell for the command to seize. The Warden did not slow.

Unfortunately, the Warden knew how to fight, and the absence field gave it control of the room.

Its spearwork had the discipline of a veteran. Each thrust kept Leon near the edge of the weapon’s ideal reach, punishing every attempt to close the distance. The guardian also used its position to steer him into the shadow, forcing him to fight for every safe patch of stone.

Leon stayed light on his feet and wasted as little movement as possible. He tracked the changing edge of the shadow while keeping himself on illuminated ground.

The Warden’s Ethereal Lord-class force made that difficult even with Leon’s restored body.

Twice, the spear came too fast for a complete parry. The bronze-gold plates endured in the light, but a hit delivered inside the absence field cut another shallow line before he escaped and the damage repaired.

The third attack began high.

Halfway through the thrust, the spearhead dropped toward the seam it had targeted before.

Leon caught it against the flat of his sword. Rather than trying to stop the blow, he turned with it and redirected the force.

Even then, the impact drove him sideways for three steps.

His last foot came down on the edge of the shadow.

The armor locked around him at once, warning him just before the field cut off his mana. Leon threw himself back into the light, and the spear punched through the place his throat had occupied a moment earlier.

The Warden overreached on the next thrust.

A small opening appeared.

Leon slipped past the spearpoint and entered its reach. His sword crossed the black plate covering the fragment.

The strike left a pale line on the armor.

Then the spearshaft slammed into him and forced him away.

It wasn’t much, but the Warden now had a damaged point of its own.

Leon couldn’t win by trading physical blows.

The guardian had greater reach, no sign of tiring, and a field that made half the chamber unusable. Trading at its preferred distance would accomplish nothing.

He needed to attack the field itself.

The shadow was continuous.

So he had to divide it.

Leon began creating light sources.

He didn’t aim them at the Warden. A compact fire orb went near one wall. Holy light anchored itself beside a cracked pillar. Across the room, he suspended a tight knot of lightning.

Every source remained outside the current shadow.

His channels were healthy, and maintaining several small lights cost little. The danger came whenever the field reached a source and erased every bit of energy invested in it. Enough losses could outpace his passive recovery.

The first fire orb was placed too near.

When the Warden shifted, its shadow passed over the orb’s core and erased the spell immediately.

That failure gave Leon the detail he needed. A source died inside the field, but light created beyond it still traveled across the floor.

His next placements were wider.

He set them beyond the shadow’s reach and spread them around the Warden, covering angles the pale overhead light couldn’t touch.

He kept each source compact. Making one brighter would not overpower a conceptual absence. Only placing light at several angles could divide the darkness carrying it.

Multiple lights struck the guardian from different directions.

Its single shadow shortened, split, and broke apart into smaller patches. Narrow strips of lit stone appeared between them.

Leon tested one.

He folded space across the gap.

This time, the displacement held.

He used it immediately.

Leon appeared beside the Warden with his sword already cutting toward the damaged chest plate.

The guardian turned before the blade arrived. Its spearshaft swept toward Leon’s sword arm.

He abandoned the attack and withdrew through the same illuminated route.

The paths were usable.

They were also thin and temporary.

The Warden understood what he was doing.

One thrust of its spear shattered a fire orb. Without that light, the nearest patch of darkness expanded. The guardian shifted its position and used its own body to connect two smaller shadows into one larger pool.

Then it continued forcing Leon towards the darkest side of the chamber, striking repeatedly at the same armor seam whenever the absence field froze it.

Leon replaced the lost flame with a lightning source anchored farther back.

The new angle divided the restored shadow again.

Holding it in place added another steady pull on his reserve.

The Warden attacked before the technique had settled.

Leon ducked beneath the spear, crossed a strip of light, and struck the same pale mark across its chest.

The impact rang through the buried chamber.

Before he could escape cleanly, the return sweep hit his side and threw him into one of the faceless statues.

Stone broke behind him.

One of the statue’s arms fell away.

From then on, Leon had to manage two fights at the same time.

His body handled the spear through instinct and training while his attention replaced destroyed lights and adjusted the positions of the others.

Whenever another path opened through the darkness, he crossed it and attacked the black plate over the fragment.

His second clean strike widened the pale mark into a thin crack.

Each attempt cost another light. The Warden’s spear opened shallow cracks whenever the field froze Leon’s armor, but the bronze-gold plates repaired in the light and his regeneration erased the bruising beneath them. Only the mana lost with each destroyed source accumulated.

Across the chamber, the pale crack across the Warden’s chest continued to grow.

Once the guardian understood the rhythm of his attacks, Leon changed the pattern.

He let the Warden push him toward the room’s darkest corner.

The guardian increased the pressure, driving him beyond the reach of the lights scattered around the chamber. As Leon retreated, its separated shadows began joining again.

Soon, one broad pool of darkness covered the floor.

The absence field swallowed his abilities.

Behind him, the black wall left nowhere else to go.