SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 171: The Truth of the Statue, The Face in the Mirror

Chapter 171: The Truth of the Statue, The Face in the Mirror

"POP."

The Hydra vanished. The purple swamp drained away. The door to Floor 11 opened.

Alvian landed, panting. The [Genesis Mode] backlash was hitting him harder each time. His bones ached.

"We need to hurry," Alvian said, checking the timer. "The interference is getting stronger. The Warden is waiting."

They climbed. They fought through a room where gravity changed with the beat of a song. They fought a boss that was invisible unless you closed your eyes. They fought a room that was just a giant, falling block of text.

Finally, they reached the top. Floor 20.

There were no more stairs. Just a single, massive door made of white light.

Alvian approached it. He felt a resonance from his [Super Upgrade System]. The talent was vibrating, recognizing something familiar behind the door.

"The Architect," Alvian whispered.

"Who?" Valeria asked, leaning on her sword, exhausted.

"The Warden," Alvian said. "The one who built this trash heap. And the one who blocked our way home."

He pushed the door open.

Inside, there was no monster. No trap. Just a simple office, floating in the void. A desk, a chair, and a figure sitting with its back to them, looking out at a screen that displayed the entire world of Gods Domain.

The figure turned around.

Alvian froze.

It wasn’t a monster. It wasn’t a god.

It was a statue. The same statue he had seen in the graveyard of the first layer. The statue of himself. But this one was alive.

The figure wore the [Vestments of the Void Monarch]. He held a [Lance] that glowed with a light far deeper than Alvian’s. His face was older, weary, covered in scars that Alvian didn’t have yet.

The Warden smiled. It was a sad, tired smile.

"Hello, Alvian," the Warden said. "Or should I say... Version 2.0?"

Alvian gripped his dagger. "Who are you?"

"I am Alvian Prime," the man said. "The one who didn’t die. The one who won. And the one who was exiled here because he became too strong for the game."

He stood up.

"Welcome to the endgame, kid. You’re early."

--

The climb through the Spire of Deleted Dreams had been a gauntlet of broken mechanics and discarded nightmares, but the twentieth floor was different. There were no glitched textures here, no screaming polygons or half-rendered monstrosities. There was only a single, massive door made of white light, standing in stark contrast to the swirling grey void that surrounded the floating platform.

Alvian stood before the door, his chest heaving slightly. His mana regeneration, fueled by the [Tear of the Infinite], was already topping him off, but the mental strain of the ascent was a weight that no potion could lift. Beside him, Valeria leaned heavily on her sword, her golden armor dull and scratched. Seraphina was checking her daggers, her mechanical eye twitching as it tried to process the impossible geometry they had just traversed.

"This is it," Seraphina whispered, her voice sounding thin in the rarefied atmosphere of the Dimensional Gap. "The top of the trash heap. The Landlord’s office."

Alvian didn’t answer immediately. He was focused on a sensation deep within his chest. His SSS-Rank Talent, the [Super Upgrade System], was vibrating. It wasn’t the alert of a nearby upgrade target, nor was it the warning of a system error. It was a resonance. A harmonic hum that he felt in his very marrow. It felt like standing in front of a mirror that reflected not light, but his own soul code.

"Stay close," Alvian ordered, his voice low. "Whatever is behind this door isn’t a mob. It isn’t a boss. It’s something else."

He reached out. His hand passed through the white light of the door without resistance. The heavy, pressurized atmosphere of the Spire vanished, replaced by a sudden, jarring normalcy.

They stepped through.

It wasn’t a throne room. It wasn’t a dungeon chamber. It was an office.

A simple, functional desk made of black material floated in the center of the void. A high-backed chair faced away from them, positioned toward a massive, panoramic screen that floated in the air. On the screen was the world of Gods Domain. Alvian could see Azureus, a tiny blue speck. He could see the continents, the oceans, the storms. It was a god’s eye view of the server they had just fought so hard to save.

The figure in the chair didn’t turn.

"You’re early," a voice said. It wasn’t the robotic drone of the tower’s AI. It was a human voice. Tired. Gravelly. And terrifyingly familiar.

Alvian walked forward, his boots making a sharp clicking sound on the invisible floor. "I don’t like waiting in queues. Who are you?"

The chair slowly rotated.

Valeria gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Seraphina froze, her daggers nearly slipping from her grip.

The man sitting in the chair was Alvian.

But it wasn’t the Alvian they knew. This man was older, his face lined with the deep grooves of a century of war. A jagged, white scar ran from his forehead down to his jaw, cutting through an empty eye socket that glowed with a soft, blue light—a magical prosthetic far more advanced than anything Seraphina possessed. He wore armor that looked like an evolved version of Alvian’s own [Vestments of the Void Monarch], but where Alvian’s armor was made of fluid shadow, this man’s armor seemed to be woven from the fabric of space itself, solid and absolute.

He held a weapon in his lap—a spear that looked like the final evolution of the [Lance of the Void Winter], but it didn’t just hum with cold; it radiated the silence of the grave.

"I am the Warden," the man said, his remaining eye—a violet supernova—locking onto Alvian. "And I am the warning you ignored."

Alvian stared at the figure. He remembered the statue he had seen in the graveyard on the first layer of the Gap. Here lies the Anomaly who hesitated. The features were identical. This wasn’t a clone. This wasn’t a shapeshifter.

"Alvian Prime," Alvian whispered, the name tasting like ash.

"Prime. Version 1.0. The Beta Tester. Call me what you want," the older man said, standing up. He moved with a heavy, deliberate grace that spoke of infinite power held in check. "I am the one who played the game before you. I am the one who won."

"If you won," Alvian asked, his eyes narrowing, "why are you in the trash bin?"

The Warden laughed, a dry, humorless sound. He walked over to the screen, looking down at the world of Gods Domain.

"Because winning is a violation of the terms of service," the Warden said. "The System doesn’t want a winner, kid. It wants a struggle. It wants data. I became too efficient. I broke the level cap. I optimized the fun out of their apocalypse. So, they patched me out."

He turned back to face them. The pressure radiating from him was suffocating. It wasn’t mana pressure; it was existence pressure. He felt more real than the world around him.

"I was exiled," the Warden continued. "Quarantined in the Dimensional Gap to prevent my code from destabilizing the main server. I built this tower. I collected the rejects. And I watched. I watched the timelines reset. I watched versions of myself die in the mud, die in the fire, die saving people who didn’t matter."

He pointed a finger at Alvian.

"And then came you. Version 2.0. The Anomaly who thinks he can cheat the house."

[System Analysis: Target Identified.]

[Name: Alvian Prime.]

[Class: Void Sovereign (Completed).]

[Level: ??? (Transcendence Achieved).]

[Status: Administrator of the Gap.]

"I don’t cheat," Alvian said, gripping his dagger. "I calculate."

"Calculation is just hope with better math," Prime scoffed. He looked at Valeria and Seraphina. His gaze lingered on Valeria, a flicker of pain crossing his scarred face before he suppressed it with cold logic.

"You brought pets," Prime said. "Inefficient. Attachments are vulnerabilities. You should have discarded them floors ago."

Valeria stepped forward, her shield raised, though it felt heavy in the presence of this titan. "We aren’t pets. We are his team."

"Team," Prime repeated the word with distaste. "A team implies you contribute. In the endgame, you are just hitboxes waiting to be deleted. I learned that the hard way."

Alvian stepped between Prime and his team. The resonance between his [Super Upgrade System] and Prime’s presence was deafening in his mind. They were two singularities in the same room.

"You are a failure," Alvian stated coldly. "You hesitated. That’s what the statue said. You are the timeline that didn’t save them."

Prime’s eye narrowed. The air in the room grew heavy.

"I didn’t fail because I hesitated," Prime said, his voice dropping to a whisper that shook the room. "I failed because I tried to save everything. I saved the city. I saved the girl. I saved the world. And in return, the System decided I was a bug and deleted me. And when I was gone... the world burned anyway."