SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 578: What Fed the King

Chapter 578: What Fed the King

He went for them across several hard exchanges, not all at once.

The elemental anchor exposed itself most, because the King kept drawing on it, and the King drew the same way each time — a gather, a channel, a release.

The third time it loosed a torrent of stored flame at him, Leon caught the attack’s leading edge with a small precise fold and bent its path, redirecting the fire back along the thread that had summoned it, into the artifact that supplied it.

The anchor cracked and went dark, its thread snapping loose. The stored elemental attacks stopped coming.

The chain anchor he reached by letting a chain reach him. When the next length lashed for his legs he angled his armored forearm into its path and let it bind to the bronze-gold plate — then, instead of cutting free, he took the physical line and traced its power straight back to the source, hauling himself along it toward the treasure that fed it.

He felt the ownership-thread trying to sink into him through the contact and broke free of it a breath before it could set, and as the chain’s recoil swung him past its anchor he drove his sword through the artifact.

It shattered. Every chain in the room fell dead.

The regeneration anchor the King guarded above all, placing its body between Leon and the treasure whenever he moved that way.

So Leon didn’t move that way — he faked it. He launched an all-out assault at the regeneration anchor, committing hard, selling it, and the King spun to interpose itself and shield the source that kept it whole.

In protecting the healing anchor it shifted its guard and let the deep steady note of the Sovereign anchor pulse clear, and Leon marked its position exactly. Then he cut the regeneration anchor while the King was still committed to blocking an attack he’d already dropped, and the treasure split. The next wound he opened in the King’s armor stayed open, black edges gaping where the plate no longer knit itself shut.

Three anchors were gone.

The King had landed several real hits during the exchanges, but every wound had already closed and the conscious armor had repaired each split within seconds. Blood marked where the attacks had reached him. Nothing remained underneath it.

The lasting cost was mana and concentration. The vault resisted every spatial working, making each precise fold more expensive than it would have been outside, and the destroyed chain had taken energy to escape. His reserve remained substantial and continued recovering. Both hearts beat steadily.

The Hollow King, stripped of three powers, abandoned the throne.

It came at him directly, and it was still terrible — the skill and strength were its own, and desperation had made it faster.

It called its strongest stolen weapon, a great black glaive humming with the last of its borrowed light, and drove at him with everything left: no chains, no elements, just a hollow king and a master’s weapon and the single anchor holding it together.

It expected him to go for the chest again. He’d gone for the chest and its anchors the whole fight, and it braced to counter that exact attack, ready to spend the Sovereign anchor’s last energy on one decisive trade.

So Leon showed it the setup and withheld the strike. He began a large technique — holy fire gathering along his blade, a spatial fold visibly building, every sign of a committed thrust at the King’s chest. The King saw it, recognized it, and committed to the counter, the glaive sweeping in on the line that would cut him in half as he lunged.

He didn’t lunge.

He let the fire die and the fold collapse unused, stepped off the braced line with an irregular half-beat of timing, and as the glaive swept through the space his thrust should have carried him into, he made one small controlled fold — nudging the great weapon a hair off true.

It missed him by inches. And the King, having spent its counter into a killing blow that killed nothing, stood open.

Leon drove his sword through the Sovereign anchor.

The steady note that had underpinned everything cut out. The black-and-gold armor lurched, the darkness beneath the crown thinning, the whole form beginning to come apart with nothing left to hold its accumulated identity together.

It made one last lunge — not for his throat but past him, grasping for the Obsidian Key hanging by the door, reaching to seize the key or to throw a final binding thread and drag him down as its replacement.

He met it.

He stepped inside the failing lunge and drove his sword through the cracked cavity in its chest, into the hollow where the borrowed power had circulated, and released everything at once — physical force and a concentrated pulse of holy energy poured through the blade into the emptiness at its center.

The Hollow King collapsed. Its armor, its crown, the dark remnant of a body it had never truly owned — all of it crumbled into fine black-gold dust and sifted down across the throne and the ruined hoard.

No Tower message came. Down here, nothing counted the kill.

The treasures did not all vanish, but most were wreckage — drained hollow, cracked, dulled, or sealed shut, the wealth of the vault reduced to nothing worth carrying by the death of the thing that had fed on it. There was no fortune to gather.

The Obsidian Key hung intact by the door where the King had failed to reach it. Leon crossed to it, his breathing already settling, and took it down. Seven fragments made one, cold and complete in his hand.

Behind him the throne split open. He turned, blade half-up, but nothing came out.

The empty seat had cracked down its center, and in the cavity inside it sat a small sealed reliquary — a plain dark box, closed and locked, giving his senses nothing. He reached for the Cosmic System and got the vault’s silence. But an inscription ran across the lid in the same old letters.

ONLY AFTER THE COUNTED ASCENT

MAY THE UNCOUNTED CLAIM

He understood well enough.

The counted ascent — the official trial, the thing the Tower actually measured. Whatever waited inside wouldn’t open until he cleared Floor Three the proper way. The hidden victory earned him the box; only the official one would unlock it.

He took the reliquary from the broken throne, stored it sealed, and kept the Obsidian Key with it. The builders of the vault, the erased names, and the Hollow King’s origin all remained unknown.

The vault began to come apart around him.

With the King dead it lost whatever had held it stable — dust sifting from the lost ceiling, cracks widening in the pillars, a low grinding settling into the stone. The spiral staircase remained open at the vault’s edge, and he made for it as the chamber sagged behind him.

He climbed. Dried blood remained on his already repaired armor, the only visible evidence of wounds that had closed during the fight. Near the top the Tower’s presence returned, reaching down to find him, thickening with each turn until the familiar sense of being watched settled back over him.

He came out into the central chamber, and the Tower woke.

[Tower Keys Collected: 3/3]

[Optional Treasures Claimed: 2]

[Gatekeeper Enhancements: Spatial Resistance, Technique Mimicry]

That was all. Not a word of the fragments, the Obsidian Key, the vault, the King, or the reliquary in his storage. As far as the Tower knew, he’d unlocked the gate and stood exactly where he’d been, and nothing had happened in between. The floor beneath the gate had closed seamless behind him, uncounted again.

His body kept a truer record.

Blood streaked the repaired bronze-gold armor, but his flesh was whole and his channels remained stable. His mana sat below its peak and continued climbing. The King had taxed his reserve and concentration without leaving a lasting injury.

The official gate stood open ahead, and beyond it the Gatekeeper’s presence waited — patient, heavy, carrying the price of the two treasures Leon had claimed and nothing from the King below. Whatever he’d killed in the vault, the thing ahead was exactly as strong as he’d made it and no stronger.

He steadied his grip on his sword and stepped through the gate.