SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 175: A City Under Siege, Gravity’s Betrayal

Alvian stepped forward, the darkness around him rippling like water. "You treated the Convergence like a bug to be fixed. I treat it like an enemy to be killed. If the file size is too big, I will compress it. If the transfer is corrupt, I will purge the data."

"The System isn’t trying to destroy Earth," Prime warned, his legs beginning to turn into pixels of white light. "It’s trying to save it from something else. Something older. That is why it merges worlds. It needs the mana density to fight the Outer Gods. But the method... the method kills the patient to cure the disease."

Alvian froze. Outer Gods? That was lore that went beyond even his future knowledge. In his first life, humanity had barely survived the initial Convergence. They hadn’t lived long enough to see what came after.

"The Syndicate knows," Prime continued, his torso fading. "That is why they worship the demons. They think submission is the only survival strategy. They are cowards, but they aren’t blind. They see the darkness coming from beyond the stars."

"Let them come," Alvian said, clenching his fist. The space around his hand cracked, spiderwebs of black fissures appearing in the air. "I have infinite mana. I have admin privileges. I will delete them all."

Prime looked at Alvian’s fist, then up to his eyes. "Admin privileges... yes. You have the authority now. But authority requires a connection. You are currently in a closed loop. A local server. To get back... you have to break the firewall."

"I have the key," Alvian said, tapping his chest where the [Tear of the Infinite] now resided alongside his new Void Core.

"No," Prime shook his head, his face beginning to blur. "You need a door. And I... am the doorman."

Prime raised his hand. The last of his energy, the accumulated power of centuries of stagnation, gathered in his palm. It wasn’t an attack. It was a keycode.

"I locked this dimension to keep the world safe from me," Prime said. "Now, I unlock it to unleash you upon the world. Go, Anomaly. Go and break the script."

Prime thrust his hand into his own chest. He ripped out his own core—a jagged, grey shard of code. He threw it at Alvian.

Alvian caught it.

[System Alert: Legacy Data Received.]

[Item: The Warden’s Key (One-Time Use).]

[Effect: Opens a gateway to the Main Server. Bypasses all firewalls.]

Prime’s form shattered. He exploded into a cloud of binary dust, scattering into the infinite blackness of Alvian’s new domain. There was no body to bury. No grave to mark. The previous iteration of Alvian Cross was simply... gone. Deleted to make room for the upgrade.

Alvian stood alone in the dark. He felt a pang of something—not grief, but acknowledgement. A nod from one professional to another.

"Rest," Alvian whispered to the empty air. "I’ll handle the rest." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He looked at the grey shard in his hand. He looked at the endless black void he now controlled. This was his [Realm of the Empty King]. He could stay here forever, a god in his own private universe. He could shape worlds, create life, live in a paradise of his own design.

"Inefficient," Alvian muttered.

He raised the Warden’s Key. He didn’t use a spell. He used his authority.

"System. Target: Main Server. Coordinate: Azureus. Action: Forced Connection."

[Warning! External Server Connection Attempt.]

[Firewall Detected. Level 10 Security.]

[Analyzing Key...]

[Access Granted.]

Alvian slashed the air with the grey shard. It didn’t cut space; it cut the interface. A tear appeared in the darkness, but it wasn’t the jagged rift of a dimension. It was a clean, rectangular window of blue light. Through it, he could smell salt. He could hear the roar of the ocean. And he could hear the screams of war.

"Time to go to work," Alvian said.

He equipped the [Vestments of the Void Monarch], now evolved into a form that seemed to drink the light around him. He summoned the [Lance of the Void Winter]. He checked his stats. They were broken. They were beautiful.

He stepped through the window.

The sensation was not like teleportation. It was like being compressed into a zip file and then violently unpacked on the other side. The universe stretched, screamed, and then snapped back into place.

Alvian fell.

The transition was instantaneous, but the displacement was severe. Alvian emerged from the rift high in the atmosphere, the cold air whipping against his face. The first thing he noticed was the sky. It wasn’t the blue of day or the black of night. It was a bruised, sickly purple, choked with clouds of unnatural smoke and mana storms.

The second thing he noticed was the smell. It was the stench of burning ozone, rotting flesh, and the metallic tang of dragon blood.

"System. Chronometer check."

[Server Time: Year 214, Month 9, Day 14.]

Alvian’s eyes narrowed. "Three weeks."

Time flowed differently in the Dimensional Gap. What had felt like hours of fighting and climbing in the tower had been nearly a month in the real world. Three weeks of absence. Three weeks for the Syndicate to regroup. Three weeks for the Draconic Legion to wake up.

He looked down.

The landscape below was unrecognizable. The crater where the Academy had crashed was no longer just a crater; it was a war zone. The hasty fortifications Alvian had ordered built were gone, replaced by a complex network of trenches, magical barriers, and desperate bunkers. The lush forests of the Silverwood region had been burned away, replaced by fields of jagged black crystal and pools of magma.

And in the center of it all was the Void Sanctum.

It was besieged.

A sea of red scales surrounded the human fortress. The Draconic Legion had arrived in force. Not thousands, but tens of thousands. Siege engines made of dragon bone and dark steel pounded against the shimmering blue dome that protected the central campus buildings. Wyverns darkened the sky like a plague of locusts, diving and strafing the defenders on the walls.

Alvian activated [Vision Enhancement]. His new stats allowed him to zoom in with the clarity of a spy satellite.

He saw the walls. They were manned by a ragged coalition of students, merfolk, and mercenaries. Their armor was battered, their faces gaunt with exhaustion. He saw the flag of the Void Sanctum—a black field with a violet circle—tattered but still flying.

He scanned for his team.

At the North Gate, where the fighting was fiercest, he saw a flash of gold.

It was Valeria. But she wasn’t the shining knight he had left behind. Her golden armor was dull, covered in dents and scorch marks. She wasn’t using her shield; it lay shattered nearby. She was fighting with a massive, two-handed warhammer made of scrap metal and monster parts. She looked thinner, her movements slightly sluggish, but she swung the hammer with a desperation that crushed dragon skulls like eggs.

Next to her was Korg. The massive shark-man was missing an arm, the stump cauterized and wrapped in bandages. He fought with a single-handed axe, roaring defiance at the incoming tide of drakes.

On the rooftops of the central keep, Alvian spotted flashes of light. Arin. The mage was directing a battery of mana cannons, his staff glowing white-hot as he coordinated volley after volley of defensive fire. He looked older, his face lined with stress, shouting orders into a comms crystal.

"They held," Alvian whispered, a flicker of something warm touching his cold heart. "Three weeks against an apocalypse. And they held."

But they were breaking.

The blue barrier flickered. A massive section of the eastern wall crumbled under the assault of a [Magma-Siege Beetle]. Syndicate troops, clad in advanced void-armor, poured through the breach, their weapons glowing with mana-dampening energy.

The defenders were being overrun.

Alvian saw a group of freshmen, no older than sixteen, huddled behind a barricade of desks and rubble. A squad of Draconic Hybrids—hulking lizard-men with four arms—was advancing on them, saliva dripping from their jaws.

"Inefficient," Alvian said, his voice low and terrible. "The enemy has overextended."

He checked his status.

[Mana: 100,000 / 100,000]

[Regeneration: Infinite]

[Cooldowns: Reset]

He didn’t cast a buff. He didn’t summon a minion. He simply let his aura go.

The [Void Monarch’s Presence] expanded. It wasn’t just a debuff anymore. It was an atmospheric change. The air pressure dropped. The temperature plummeted. The sky above the battlefield darkened, the purple clouds swirling into a massive, rotating eye of the storm directly above the city.

Below, the battle paused. Monsters and humans alike looked up, sensing the sudden shift in the world’s weight. The dragons stopped roaring. The cannons stopped firing. A primal instinct, deeper than loyalty or hunger, screamed at every living thing in the valley.

The predator has returned.

Alvian let gravity take him. He didn’t slow his descent. He accelerated. He equipped the [Lance of the Void Winter], but he also activated the [Draconic Storm Bracers] and the [Vestments]. He became a comet of black ice, violet void, and blue lightning.

He aimed for the breach in the eastern wall.