SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 200: The Lunar Threat, An Impossible Deadline

"I eat hazards for breakfast," Seraphina gritted her teeth, pushing forward into the core of the server.

She found the file. It wasn’t labeled with words, but with a symbol that physically hurt her mechanical eye to render—a fractal of impossible angles that shifted every time she tried to focus on it. This was a piece of the Outer God’s code, the raw cosmic telemetry data the Syndicate had been hoarding.

She reached out and touched the file.

Instantly, her mind was assaulted. It wasn’t a standard cyber-attack. It was a flood of pure, unfiltered cosmic horror. She saw planets cracking like eggs. She saw stars being swallowed by jaws that spanned lightyears. The sheer scale of the nothingness tried to overwrite her sanity, whispering that resistance was a mathematical impossibility.

Seraphina screamed, her digital avatar fracturing.

"No you don’t!" she snarled, activating her [Chrono-Eye].

The mechanical eye whirred into overdrive, engaging a localized temporal filter. It slowed the influx of the memetic hazard, parsing the impossible data into manageable, albeit agonizing, chunks of information. She couldn’t fight the code, but she could survive it just long enough to read it.

And what she read made her blood run cold.

Back in the physical reality of the Azureus War Room, the atmosphere was a quiet, tense lull after the storm.

Alvian sat on the edge of the massive holographic strategy table. His coat was discarded, his black undershirt torn to reveal the pale, flawless skin of his [Chaos Body]. His hands, however, were still raw and heavily bandaged from wrestling with the non-Euclidean geometry of the Herald.

Valeria stood perfectly still between his knees, her golden armor shedding a faint, comforting warmth in the sterile room. She was carefully re-wrapping the gauze on his right hand, her brow furrowed in concentration.

"You need to stop catching things with your bare hands," Valeria scolded softly, her thumbs gently pressing the medical tape into place over his knuckles. "I’m your tank. Let me do the blocking."

"Your shield would have rusted into sand," Alvian pointed out, his voice lacking its usual metallic resonance. He looked down at her, acutely aware of the proximity. He could smell the faint scent of ozone and vanilla in her hair. "You are an essential asset. I couldn’t risk your deletion."

Valeria looked up, her grey eyes locking onto his. A faint flush dusted her cheeks, warming her tired features. "Essential asset, huh? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

Alvian didn’t smile, but the cold, calculating void in his eyes softened. He shifted his uninjured hand, letting his fingers lightly brush against the side of her waist. It was a grounding touch, a tether to his own humanity.

"You are the only variable I refuse to optimize out of the equation," Alvian said quietly.

Valeria’s breath hitched. She leaned in, the space between them shrinking to a fraction of an inch, her gaze dropping to his lips—

"ALVIAN!"

The massive holographic monitor on the far wall exploded in a shower of sparks and shattered glass.

Valeria jumped back, instantly summoning her [Aegis of Terra], her combat instincts overriding the moment. Alvian was on his feet in a microsecond, the [Edge of Entropy] materializing in his hand, his eyes returning to a violent, calculating violet.

From the smoking ruin of the monitor, Seraphina tumbled out.

She hit the floor hard, coughing up a mouthful of static that dissolved into black smoke before it hit the ground. Her physical body was shaking uncontrollably, her mechanical eye sparking and whirring as it tried to cool down from the massive data overload.

"Seraphina!" Valeria dropped her shield, rushing to the rogue’s side and hauling her up. "Are you hit? Did they trace you?"

"Water," Seraphina gasped, clutching her head as if it were about to split open.

Alvian manifested a sphere of pure, icy water from his inventory, floating it to her lips. She drank greedily, the cool liquid grounding her back in physical reality. She looked up at Alvian, her usual snark completely erased, replaced by a profound, trembling terror.

"We were wrong," Seraphina wheezed, grabbing the front of Alvian’s shirt. "The Syndicate... they aren’t trying to merge the worlds to rule them. They’re trying to crash the server."

"Explain," Alvian commanded, his mind already spinning through the possibilities.

"I found the telemetry data," Seraphina said, her voice rising in panic. "The Beacons. They aren’t just calling the Outer Gods. They are gravitational tethers. They are actively terraforming Earth’s gravity well."

She pushed herself to her feet, stumbling toward the central table. She slammed her hand onto the console, projecting the data she had stolen. The globe of Earth appeared, but the orbital mechanics were entirely skewed.

"Look at the moon’s trajectory," Seraphina pointed a shaking finger at the holographic projection. "The five Beacons are creating a localized gravity well. They are dragging the moon out of its orbit. They’re trying to pull it directly into the planet."

Valeria stared at the screen, her face draining of color. "They want to destroy Earth? Why?"

"To hide," Alvian realized, the terrifying logic clicking into place in his mind. "The Convergence is a distress beacon that the Outer Gods can see. The Syndicate realized they can’t fight them. So they want to smash the moon into the planet, creating an extinction-level event massive enough to mathematically cloak the server’s mana signature. They’re turning off the lights by burning the house down."

"Did you try telling them to turn the moon off and on again?" Seraphina offered a weak, hysterical laugh. "Because if they don’t stop, we are all going to be a very flat smear in the cosmos."

Alvian looked at the holographic moon, rapidly expanding on the screen as its orbit decayed.

"How long?" Alvian asked, his voice absolute zero.

"Less than twelve hours," Seraphina swallowed hard. "Before it crosses the Roche limit and the gravitational shear tears the planet apart."

—-

Alvian walked out of the War Room and onto the grand balcony of Azureus. The wind howling across the floating dreadnought was cold, but it was nothing compared to the chill settling in his chest. He looked up.

The sky was no longer just a bruised, sickly purple. It was dominated by a terrifyingly massive sphere. The moon, usually a distant, comforting silver coin, now loomed over the horizon like a giant, pockmarked eye. It was so close he could see the individual ridges of its craters without system enhancement.

The gravitational consequences were already tearing the planet apart below them. Through the cloud breaks, Alvian could see the oceans of Earth swelling into monstrous, unnatural tides. Tsunamis the size of mountain ranges were crashing against the coastlines, swallowing entire cities in a single gulp. Azureus itself, despite its Mythical-tier anti-gravity repulsors, was groaning under the strain. The deep, mechanical thrum of the city’s engines sounded like a dying beast struggling to breathe.

"It’s getting bigger," a soft voice said from behind him.

Valeria stepped onto the balcony. She didn’t have her helmet on, and the wind whipped her golden hair around her face. She walked up to the railing, her shoulder brushing firmly against his. She didn’t look at the devastation below; she kept her eyes fixed on the looming celestial body above.

"The Roche limit," Alvian stated, his mind automatically processing the terrible physics of the situation. "When a celestial body gets too close to a planet, the tidal forces exceed the moon’s gravitational self-attraction. In approximately eleven hours and forty-two minutes, the moon won’t just hit us. It will shatter in orbit, raining billions of tons of rock down on Earth. Total systemic wipe."

Valeria let out a slow, shaky breath. She reached out, her hand finding his on the cold marble railing. She slipped her fingers between his, her grip tight and warm.

"I preferred it when we were just fighting giant crabs," Valeria muttered, a dry, humorless chuckle escaping her lips. "At least you could punch a crab."

"I can punch the moon," Alvian noted seriously, looking at his bandaged hand. "But the resulting kinetic blowback would likely vaporize the atmosphere. It is an inefficient solution."

Valeria squeezed his hand, resting her head against his shoulder. "You’re an idiot, Alvian. A terrifying, brilliant idiot."

He leaned his cheek against the top of her head, letting the quiet intimacy of the moment wash over him. The world was ending, the sky was literally falling, but here, anchored by her presence, his chaotic mana felt perfectly stable. He allowed himself three seconds of peace. Three seconds to just be a man holding the woman he cared about.

"Time is up," Alvian whispered softly. He gave her hand one last, firm squeeze before pulling away, his posture straightening back into the rigid authority of the High Marshall. "We have a world to save."

They turned and walked back into the War Room. The atmosphere inside was suffocating. The human generals were pacing frantically, arguing with the remnants of the Council of Tides. Master Magnus and Master Kaelen stood silently by the holographic table, their faces grim as they stared at the projected countdown timer.