SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 764: A Country Behind the Door

Leon kept waiting for the walls to appear.

The pale light of entry faded around him, revealing silver grass beneath an enormous sky. Hills rolled toward distant mountains. Rivers flashed between stands of trees, and far to the north a dark forest covered so much ground that he could not see its end.

There was no arena boundary in sight.

[Ascension Tower — Floor Six]

[Private Trial Mode: Active]

[External observation: Blocked]

[Designated Tower administrator exception: Retained]

[Battlefield: The Sundered Expanse]

Leon turned slowly. Floor Five’s ravine could have fitted between two of the hills in front of him.

A longer panel appeared.

[Evaluation requirements]

[C — Survive and depart through an available exit]

[B — Defeat one regional guardian before departing]

[A — Defeat three regional guardians and reach the citadel’s outer wall before departing]

[S — Defeat all four regional guardians, enter the citadel, and overcome its ruler before departing]

[Basic exits are accessible within the outer regions. Further departure points unlock through milestone completion.]

[Evaluation is recorded upon departure.]

Leon read the requirements a second time.

They stopped at S.

His earlier SSS evaluations had taught him that clearing a floor and getting everything worthwhile from it were different matters. This one was not even pretending to list the entire ladder he knew existed.

Possible. He would rather look properly than leave with that assumption and spend the next month wondering what he had missed.

At least a basic exit did not require killing a guardian first. Finding one would be worth doing, even if he intended to continue afterward. The panel had offered him a way to leave, not shown him where it was.

He searched the distance for the citadel.

It stood far to the west, on a mountain of black rock. At first he mistook its towers for narrow peaks. Then clouds shifted across them and exposed straight edges too regular to be natural.

"That’s a long walk," he murmured.

Four regional guardians, a citadel, and its ruler. He would need somewhere defensible to rest, a better understanding of the terrain, and a reason to choose one direction before another.

The first five floors had not prepared him to arrive in a country.

Beside him stood a weathered stone marker, taller than his head. Its lower half was buried in grass. A line of script crossed its face and stopped at an unfinished character. The broken tip of a chisel remained lodged in the last groove.

Leon brushed away a hanging seed head and studied the writing.

He could not read it. Nor did touching the stone produce a convenient explanation from the Tower.

Someone had been working on this when they stopped. That much was plain. Whether the interruption had happened yesterday or centuries ago was another question.

He looked beyond the marker and noticed pale stone showing through the slope in regular intervals. Steps, perhaps, or the remains of a paved approach. The hilltop might once have been a place people arrived deliberately.

He had just reached the first exposed stone when the grass below moved against the wind.

Leon drew his sword.

Two shapes climbed the southern slope. A third moved through the grass on his left, and a fourth emerged beside a low ridge to his right. They had approached from cover instead of charging uphill together.

The nearest creature was larger than a horse, with a long body carried on short, powerful legs. Overlapping iron-colored plates covered its back and shoulders. Red light showed along their joints when it moved.

Its jaws opened far enough to display a second row of teeth.

[Cinderhide Marauder — Level 103]

[Rank: Ethereal Initiate — Late stage]

[Affinities: Fire, Earth]

Leon checked the others. Comparable levels, the same heavy plates, and no apparent interest in letting him inspect them at leisure.

He brought his armor up fully.

Ethereal Initiates were not beyond him. He had survived a far worse fight against the half-step Earth Immortal in the sanctuary, though that victory had demanded nearly everything he could bring to bear.

These four were different. They were already separating to surround him, and they might be nothing more important than creatures roaming the outskirts.

He would think about what that meant after they were dead.

Leon met the nearest Marauder before its companions completed their approach. Wind drove his sword into a cut reinforced with lightning. The strike hit above the shoulder, deep enough to throw sparks and dark blood across the grass.

The overlapping plates clamped down around the wound. Their red seams flared, and the blade stopped short of the depth he had expected.

The Marauder kept coming.

Leon pulled clear of its jaws and turned his sword across the side of its neck. It lowered its head, bringing a fresh armored ridge into the path. The impact knocked it sideways but did not finish it.

The two on the southern slope split apart.

He stepped through space to the open ground beside the marker. The fourth Marauder changed direction as he appeared and rushed toward that position, cutting across the route he would have used to flank the wounded one.

It had not predicted the crossing. It had watched him arrive and filled the gap while its companions turned.

Leon sent a heavy earth ridge into its path. The creature smashed through the raised stone with its shoulder, slowed but still advancing.

The wounded Marauder struck the ground with both forelegs.

A crack raced toward Leon. Red heat welled through it, setting the grass alight. He lifted clear as the stone beneath him heaved, and the creature on his right raised its head.

Fire struck his armor across the chest.

He reinforced it before the breath hit, yet the impact still shoved him backward through the air. Heat reached his skin along one forearm. Leon landed on the far side of the marker with scorched grass skidding beneath his boots.

The stone stood between him and the next breath for a fraction of a second.

He used it to examine the wounded creature.

Its plates had braced where his sword struck. As it raised its head to attack again, a narrow joint beneath the rear edge opened and closed.

Leon tightened his grip.

He could keep battering those plates while the other three burned the hill around him. Or he could make them open the joints he wanted.

The four Marauders advanced through the burning grass.

This time, Leon chose which one would reach him first.