SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 178: The Message, Rent is Due

The alarm klaxons wailed. From the bunkers and the barracks, the Syndicate garrison poured out. Five hundred soldiers. Ten Magma-Walkers. They formed a wall of steel and fire between Alvian and the city.

[Target: Syndicate Battalion]

[Strength: 500 Units]

[Threat: Moderate]

Magnus raised his shield, preparing to charge. "I’ll take the left!"

"No," Alvian said, holding out a hand. "Stay back, Magnus. Watch."

Alvian stopped fifty meters from the army. The soldiers raised their rifles. The Walkers charged their cannons.

"FIRE!"

The air exploded. A wall of plasma, bullets, and magic rushed toward Alvian.

Alvian didn’t block. He didn’t dodge.

"System. [Void Sovereign]: Spatial Compression."

He raised his hand. He didn’t aim at the soldiers. He aimed at the space between the soldiers.

"Gravity... is a suggestion."

He clenched his fist.

"CRUNCH."

It wasn’t a sound of impact. It was the sound of space folding.

The air in the center of the enemy formation turned black. A singularity formed. A point of infinite density.

"VWOOOM!"

The soldiers screamed. They weren’t hit by a spell. They were dragged. The gravity well sucked them in. The Magma-Walkers, weighing fifty tons each, skidded across the ground, their metal feet sparking as they were pulled inexorably toward the center.

"No! No! Help!"

Five hundred men. Ten tanks. They collided in the center of the singularity.

"SMASH! GRIND! SNAP!"

It was a meat grinder. The armor crushed the bodies. The tanks crushed the armor. The gravity crushed the tanks.

In three seconds, the entire battalion was gone.

Hovering in the air, ten feet off the ground, was a sphere. It was a ball of compressed metal, flesh, and fire, perfectly round, the size of a large boulder.

A marble made of an army.

Alvian lowered his hand. The singularity stabilized. The marble dropped to the ground with a heavy, wet thud.

[Targets Eliminated: 510.]

[Experience Gained: Negligible.]

Silence fell over the district. The slaves stopped working. The Enforcers in the distance froze.

Magnus stared at the sphere of compressed death. His jaw hung open.

"By the Founders..." Magnus whispered. "That... that isn’t magic. That’s... what are you?"

Alvian turned to the Guardian. His eyes were burning with cold, violet fire.

"I am the High Marshall," Alvian said. "And I am done with inefficiencies."

He pointed to the Iron Citadel in the distance, where the Puppet Governor Ferrum sat.

"That was the greeting," Alvian said. "Now, let’s go deliver the eviction notice."

He walked past the sphere of crushed enemies without giving it a second glance. The road was clear. The war was no longer a struggle. It was a harvest. And Alvian was the reaper.

The sphere of compressed flesh and steel sat heavy on the cracked pavement of the Industrial District, a grotesque monument to the futility of resistance. Alvian walked past it without breaking stride. His boots clicked rhythmically against the metal grating of the road leading to the Iron Citadel.

Behind him, Guardian Magnus stood amidst the wreckage of the Syndicate battalion. The massive Iron Shell, usually a bastion of stoic strength, looked pale. He stared at the marble-sized sphere that contained five hundred men and ten tanks, then looked at Alvian’s back. The aura radiating from the High Marshall wasn’t just mana anymore; it was the weight of a collapsing star.

"He didn’t cast a spell," Magnus whispered to the empty air. "He just... asserted his will."

Alvian approached the Iron Citadel. It was a brutalist structure, a fortress of black iron and reinforced concrete that dominated the skyline of the district. At the top, in the Governor’s spire, sat Ferrum, the Syndicate’s puppet.

The automated defenses of the Citadel activated.

"WARNING. RESTRICTED AREA. LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED."

The voice was synthetic, cold, and loud. From the battlements, heavy thermal turrets swiveled down. They hummed with the red light of unstable magma mana, charging for a saturation bombardment.

"Inefficient," Alvian muttered.

He didn’t stop walking. He didn’t raise a shield. He didn’t dodge.

"FIRE."

Fifty streams of superheated plasma erupted from the turrets. The air in the district instantly flash-boiled, the temperature spiking to levels that would melt lead. The barrage converged on Alvian, a waterfall of liquid fire meant to vaporize anything in its path.

Alvian raised his right hand. He didn’t use mana to block. He used authority.

"[Void Sovereign]: Energy Nullification."

The violet light in his eyes flared. A ripple of distortion expanded from his palm. It wasn’t a barrier; it was a command to the laws of physics. The plasma streams hit the ripple and simply ceased to exist. They didn’t explode. They didn’t dissipate. They were deleted. The heat vanished. The light died.

The turrets clicked, their firing mechanisms cycling in confusion, trying to process where the energy had gone.

"My turn," Alvian said.

He clenched his fist.

"[Void Sovereign]: Structural Deconstruction."

The black iron walls of the Citadel groaned. The rivets holding the massive blast doors together popped with the sound of gunshots. The metal didn’t melt; it aged. Rust spread across the surface like a fast-forwarded plague. The molecular bonds holding the alloy together unraveled.

"CRASH!"

The massive gates, which had withstood the pressure of the deep ocean for centuries, crumbled into a pile of red dust. The turrets fell from the dissolving battlements, smashing into the courtyard below.

Alvian stepped through the dust cloud.

Inside the Citadel courtyard, the remaining Syndicate guards—elite cyborgs fused with crustacean DNA—backed away. Their weapons shook in their hands. They had seen the battalion vanish. They had seen the plasma disappear. They looked at Alvian not as an enemy, but as a glitch in their reality.

"Stand aside," Alvian ordered. His voice wasn’t loud, yet it resonated in their skulls, bypassing their auditory nerves. "Or be archived."

The guards dropped their weapons. They fell to their knees, their survival instincts overriding their programming.

Alvian walked past them, entering the main lift. He rode it to the top spire, the doors sliding open to reveal the Governor’s office.

Governor Ferrum sat behind a massive desk made of polished obsidian. He wasn’t a man. He was a construct—the hollowed-out shell of the former Hermit Crab Guardian, stuffed with Syndicate processors and mana cores. His eyes were glowing red sensors. Wires trailed from his back into the city’s grid.

"Analysis," Ferrum’s voice was a grinding of gears. "Threat Level: Exceeds Parameters. Option: Negotiate."

"Negotiation is for peers," Alvian said, walking toward the desk. "You are a terminal."

Ferrum stood up, his massive crab claw clicking. "I control the thermal vents. If you destroy me, the failsafe triggers. The district detonates."

"I already froze the core," Alvian replied, unimpressed. "Your leverage is gone."

Ferrum roared, a sound of static and rage. He lunged across the desk, his hydraulic claw snapping forward with enough force to crush a tank.

Alvian didn’t use [Void Step]. He caught the claw.

[Strength: 900]

He held the massive mechanical limb in one hand. The servos in Ferrum’s arm whined and sparked, trying to push against Alvian’s grip, but Alvian stood immovable.

"You stole a Guardian’s shell," Alvian said, his voice dropping to absolute zero. "You defiled a protector to make a puppet. That is inefficient."

Alvian squeezed.

"CRUNCH."

The adamantite claw crumpled like tin foil. Ferrum shrieked, a high-pitched feedback loop. Alvian twisted his wrist, ripping the arm from its socket. Oil and mana fluid sprayed across the room.

Alvian kicked Ferrum in the chest. The construct flew backward, smashing into the panoramic window that overlooked the city. The glass shattered. Ferrum hung teetering on the edge.

"Any last words?" Alvian asked.

"The... Dragon... King... comes..." Ferrum glitched.

"Let him come," Alvian said.

He shoved Ferrum. The puppet governor tumbled out of the spire, falling hundreds of feet to the streets below.

[Target Neutralized: Governor Ferrum.]

[Industrial District Secured.]

Alvian didn’t watch him fall. He turned to the desk. He placed his hand on the communication console. It was linked to the city-wide broadcast system, usually reserved for emergency alerts or propaganda.

"System. Hijack frequency. Global Broadcast."

[Accessing... Override Complete.]

[Broadcasting to: All Sectors.]

Above the city of Azureus, the massive holographic screens that usually displayed advertisements or news flickered. The static cleared, revealing Alvian standing in the ruined office of the Iron Citadel. Behind him, the smoke of the conquered district rose into the dark water.

His face was projected into every home, every barracks, every Syndicate hideout, and every trench where the Draconic Legion waited.

Alvian looked into the camera. His violet eyes burned with the cold light of the Void.

"Citizens of Azureus," Alvian began. "Soldiers of the Syndicate. Beasts of the Legion."

He paused, letting the weight of his presence settle over the city.

"For three weeks, you have thought this city was prey. You thought you could siege us, starve us, and bleed us dry. You thought the Void Sanctum was hiding."

He leaned forward.

"We were not hiding. We were preparing."

In the Deep District, the slaves looked up from their chains. In the Palace, Valeria and Seraphina watched the screen, a fierce pride burning in their eyes. In the trenches, the Dragon Knights hissed at the image.

"I have cleared the Warlords," Alvian continued. "I have dismantled the factories. I have erased your battalions. The Industrial District is mine. The Deep District is mine. The city is mine."