SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 747: Why Attempt It?

Leon read the invitation four times before he answered.

At first, all he felt was hunger. Higher beings, comparing methods for holding unlike energies in a dense structure. Listening to them could save him years. It might spare him a mistake he would otherwise discover only when something cracked inside his body.

Then he reached the part where she wanted him to speak.

He put his elbows on the table and his face in his hands.

A real Paragon could admit that a particular branch of theory fell outside his interests. It would sound modest. If Leon chose the wrong words, it might be the first loose thread in everything he had pretended to be.

Trying to impress a room of experts with nonsense would be worse.

He wrote back.

[Elemental Paragon: I am interested. I would like to know the shape of the discussion before I agree to contribute.]

Her reply came almost at once.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Then let me ask what I actually want to know, before the others arrive. You are developing this method around many affinities while its basic structure is still being established. Most would settle a narrower arrangement first. Why attempt so much at this stage?]

Leon glanced at the empty plate.

She kept returning to that question. Her earlier advice had helped him, but she seemed more interested in why he had chosen the difficulty than in whether he needed rescuing from it. He hoped that was curiosity. With her, he couldn’t be certain.

He started with what was true.

[Elemental Paragon: I want the method to accommodate more than its first arrangement. Integrating another affinity after compression may require changes that would have been easier to allow for at the beginning. I would rather investigate those changes now.]

That was enough. He should have stopped there.

He didn’t.

[Elemental Paragon: A path that closes doors at the start decides what a practitioner will become before he has learned what he is capable of. I prefer to let the structure follow the cultivator.]

He read it back and winced.

Sending an explanation would only draw attention to it. He took his hands off the plate and waited.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: The second part is very pretty. The first interests me more. You would accept a dangerous construction problem now to avoid an uncertain limitation later?]

[Elemental Paragon: If I can make it work.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: There is the qualification. I wondered when it would appear.]

Despite himself, he smiled.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: What, exactly, must remain when your arrangement changes? The branches? Their proportions?]

Leon thought of his practice ground in Xyra’s accelerated zone, of the fire’s narrow route and the broader return he had needed for earth. Changing one had once forced him to stop and adjust everything else.

He knew that problem well enough to answer without pretending.

[Elemental Paragon: The way they join. The rates can change. So can the routes, if necessary. I want an added branch to find a place without forcing me to rebuild every existing connection.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Good. That gives the others something specific to disagree with. Come in.]

The private channel opened in his awareness. Leon remained at his table; no doorway appeared, and nothing drew him out of his body. After the full chat, with its hundreds of members, the quiet felt almost uncomfortable.

There were three others besides the Lord and himself.

[Master of the Ninefold Forge: Is this the one?]

[Lady of Drowned Stars: Be polite, Forge.]

[Old Root: Welcome.]

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: This is the Elemental Paragon. He will listen first. Carry on where you were.]

They did, with so little ceremony that Leon was grateful.

He understood perhaps a third of what followed. They referred to materials he had never heard of and structures whose smallest components would have dwarfed his experiments. Whenever he recognized a principle, he wrote it down in ordinary words. He left space beside the terms he couldn’t untangle.

One passing example made him stop writing. The Lady was describing something she had dismantled after centuries of use. She mentioned its loss with mild annoyance. Leon thought of the trouble he had taken to obtain enough fuel for a few months of research and carefully resumed his notes.

The Forge Master wanted reliable separation under a sustained load. The Lady was concerned with supplies that changed constantly. They kept arriving at different answers because they wanted different things from the structure.

[Master of the Ninefold Forge: Separate chambers. Supported walls. I know which currents I am supplying and what output I require. If one supply turns foul, I shut its chamber and keep the rest running.]

[Lady of Drowned Stars: And interrupt production when you need to change the partition. I cannot ask a moving current to wait while I rebuild its route.]

[Master of the Ninefold Forge: Replaceable sections. You know that.]

[Lady of Drowned Stars: I also know how long replacing them takes.]

Leon rubbed his thumb along the plate’s worn edge. He could imagine Ji listening to this argument without being impressed by either title. She would ask what he intended to put on the plate, then make him demonstrate it.

[Lady of Drowned Stars: I use a shared medium. When one current rises, the exchange changes and the others yield. I preserve the whole by allowing its internal proportions to move.]

[Master of the Ninefold Forge: Your sea requires constant correction.]

[Lady of Drowned Stars: It does. For my purposes, that expense is preferable to your shutdowns.]

[Master of the Ninefold Forge: Expensive soup.]

[Lady of Drowned Stars: And yours is an exceptionally durable cupboard.]

Leon grinned before remembering he might be asked to contribute at any moment.

He looked down at his notes. Walls or a shared sea. His Foundation used distinct routes and holding spaces feeding a common arrangement, but he had tested it under conditions he could already manage. Compression would change the pressure on those spaces and how quickly a disturbance reached the adjoining branches.

He couldn’t simply draw everything smaller and expect the same behavior.

Neither expert seemed foolish. Both had accepted costs that made sense for their own work. Leon wanted room for change, but he also wanted a failed branch to stop being everyone else’s problem. Asking for both was easy. Making them coexist inside a Core was the part that frightened him.

[Old Root: What does our guest intend to preserve under compression? You mentioned his changing arrangement.]

[Master of the Ninefold Forge: Paragon. Walls or a shared sea—which better suits it?]

Leon stared at the message. His thumb stopped against a scorch mark.

For one ridiculous moment he hoped the Lord would redirect the conversation. She had explicitly invited him to speak; of course she wasn’t going to save him from doing it.

[Lord of Illusion and Mystery: Yes. I would like to hear your answer too.]

***