SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 162: Into the Abyss,The Grave of Timelines

Alvian activated [Flight]. He tried to fly toward them, but the suction was too strong. It wasn’t just pulling matter; it was pulling space. For every meter he flew up, he was dragged two meters down.

"Inefficient," Alvian gritted his teeth. "I need more thrust."

He looked at Apollyon. The Dragon King was struggling as well. His liquid metal armor flared, thrusters forming on his back, trying to fight the pull of the void.

"You lunatic!" Apollyon roared, his voice distorted by the spatial shear. "Do you know what you’ve done? This isn’t a game zone! This is the recycle bin! If we fall in there, our data is corrupted!"

"Then you better start swimming," Alvian said.

He didn’t fight the pull. He used it. He angled his body, diving toward Apollyon.

"System. Maximize [Mass Increase]. [Gravity Assist]."

Alvian turned himself into a kinetic missile. He slammed into the Dragon King.

"BOOM!"

The impact knocked Apollyon out of his stabilized flight path. The two of them tumbled together, locked in a grapple, falling straight into the grey rift.

"GET OFF ME!" Apollyon screamed. He formed a blade of plasma from his hand and stabbed Alvian.

Alvian took the hit. The blade pierced his shoulder, burning through the [Vestments].

[-8,000 HP!]

Alvian didn’t let go. He grabbed Apollyon’s face with his free hand.

"If I go to the bin," Alvian snarled, his eyes glowing with the chaotic light of the rift, "I’m taking the trash with me."

"[Void Vortex]: Point Blank."

He unleashed a singularity between them. The force blasted them apart, sending them spinning in opposite directions into the void.

Alvian spun through the grey mist. The blue light of the ocean above faded into a tiny speck, then vanished. He was alone in the nothingness.

[Warning! Entering Unstable Dimension.]

[Server Connection: Weak.]

[System Functions: Limited.]

He looked for his team. He saw a flash of golden light far in the distance—Valeria’s aura. She was falling, but she was alive.

"Valeria!" Alvian shouted, but there was no sound. The air here was thin, dead.

He tried to use [Void Step] to reach her, but the skill failed.

[Error. No valid spatial coordinates found.]

"Damn it."

He was drifting. The debris from the arena floated around him—rocks, weapons, corpses of dragons that had been crushed by the pressure shift.

Suddenly, a massive shape loomed out of the mist. It was a chunk of the arena floor, the size of a city block. And standing on it was a squad of Draconic Legionnaires who had survived the fall.

They saw Alvian floating helplessly.

"Kill him!" one of them shouted, their voice thin and tinny. "He did this!"

Five dragons took flight, gliding on the strange currents of the void. They breathed fire.

Alvian checked his mana. It was regenerating, but slowly. The [Tear of the Infinite] was struggling to draw power from this empty place.

"You think I’m helpless because the map changed?" Alvian equipped his [Lance]. He kicked off a floating rock, propelling himself toward the dragons.

"Physics Lesson Number Twenty-One," Alvian whispered. "Momentum is conserved."

He met the first dragon mid-air. He didn’t use a skill. He used the lance to parry the dragon’s claw, using the force of the blow to spin himself around and drive the butt of the weapon into the creature’s skull.

"CRACK."

The dragon went limp. Alvian kicked off the corpse, launching himself at the second one.

"Slash."

He cut the wing off the second dragon. Without air resistance, the severed wing didn’t flutter; it just drifted away. The dragon spiraled into the grey deep.

He landed on the floating platform. The remaining legionnaires backed away.

"What... what are you?" a captain stammered.

"I am the one who deleted your King’s playground," Alvian said. "Jump."

The legionnaires looked at the edge of the rock, then at Alvian. They jumped.

Alvian sat down on the floating rock. He was alone. The golden light of Valeria was gone. The red glare of Apollyon was gone. There was only grey.

He checked his interface.

[Location: The Dimensional Gap (Layer 1)]

[Objective: Survive.]

[Objective: Reconnect.]

"Survived the fall," Alvian muttered, pulling a health potion from his inventory. He drank it, watching the red liquid knit the hole in his shoulder. "Now I just need to find the exit."

He looked down into the infinite grey. Somewhere down there was the bottom of the bin.

Alvian didn’t know how long he fell. Time in the Dimensional Gap was subjective. It could have been minutes; it could have been days. He spent the time meditating, forcing the [Tear of the Infinite] to acclimate to the thin, dead mana of the void.

Eventually, the grey mist thinned. A ground appeared below him. It wasn’t a natural landscape. It was a junkyard of reality.

Massive, broken structures jutted out of a sea of grey dust. He saw buildings that looked like they belonged in a futuristic city, twisted together with ancient castles. He saw the remains of monsters that didn’t exist in the current game patch. He saw weapons that were glitched, flickering in and out of existence.

This was where deleted data went to die.

Alvian landed. The dust puffed up around his boots, settling slowly in the low gravity. It was silent. A silence so profound it pressed against his eardrums.

"System. Scan."

[System Error. Database corrupted.]

[Local Map: Unavailable.]

"Blind," Alvian muttered. "Inefficient."

He started walking. He picked a direction based on a faint energy signature his [Tablet of the Earth Core] picked up—a resonance that felt vaguely like stable ground.

The landscape was disturbing. He passed a tree made of crystal that was weeping blood. He passed a river of static that flowed uphill.

Then, he saw it.

In the center of a crater formed by a collapsed skyscraper, there was a clearing. And in the middle of the clearing stood a statue.

Alvian approached it cautiously, his hand on [Voidpiercer].

The statue was made of a grey stone that seemed impervious to the erosion of the void. It depicted a man. He was wearing armor that looked like a primitive version of the [Vestments of the Void Monarch]. He held a sword in one hand and a broken shield in the other. His face was turned toward the sky, frozen in a scream of defiance.

Alvian stopped. The face.

It was his face.

It wasn’t Alvian as he looked now. It was older. Scarred. One eye was missing. But the features were undeniable. It was him.

He walked up to the base of the statue. There was an inscription carved into the stone, the letters glowing with a faint, dying light.

"Here lies the Anomaly who hesitated."

Alvian read the words. A cold chill, colder than the [Frost Heart], settled in his chest.

"A previous iteration," Alvian whispered. "A failed run."

He touched the stone. A jolt of memory, not his own, but familiar, sparked in his mind. He saw fire. He saw a city burning—not Azureus, but the Imperial Capital. He saw himself, older, broken, standing over the corpse of a woman with golden hair. Valeria.

"I should have killed him," the memory-voice whispered. "I should have killed the King when I had the chance. I tried to save them all. I tried to be a hero."

The memory faded.

Alvian pulled his hand back. He looked at the statue’s eyes. They were filled with regret.

"You tried to play the game," Alvian said to the stone image of his dead self. "You tried to follow the rules. You tried to be the good guy."

He clenched his fist. The air around him popped.

"Inefficient."

He turned away from the statue.

"I won’t hesitate," Alvian said to the empty air. "I won’t save everyone. I will save the ones who matter. And I will kill everything that stands in my way."

As if responding to his resolve, a sound broke the silence of the graveyard.

"Skree-onk."

It sounded like metal tearing. Alvian looked up.

Perched on top of the ruined skyscraper was a monster. It looked like a wolf, but its body was made of wireframe lines, like an unfinished sketch. Its eyes were blocks of white pixels.

[Target: Glitch Stalker]

[Level: ??]

[Status: Corrupted Data]

"A bug," Alvian noted, equipping his [Lance]. "Let’s debug."

The Glitch Stalker howled, a sound of static and distorted audio, and leaped. It moved jerkily, lagging through the air, disappearing and reappearing in random frames.

Alvian activated [Void Step].

"You lag," Alvian said, appearing above the glitch. "I don’t."

He drove the lance down.

"DELETE."

The blade hit the wireframe. The monster didn’t bleed. It shattered into pixels.

[Target Deleted.]

[Experience Gained: Error.]

Alvian landed. He looked out at the grey horizon. This world was a prison for failures. A trash bin for the things the System didn’t want.

"But I’m not trash," Alvian said. "I’m the one who empties the bin."

He started walking again. He had to find a way out. He had to find Valeria. And he had a Dragon King to kill.

[System Notification: Hidden Achievement Unlocked.]

[Achievement: The First Witness.]

[You have seen the grave of your past. Will you repeat it?]

"No," Alvian answered the system. "I’m going to rewrite it."