SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 168: The Titan’s Blaze, The Silent Sea

The heat of the Fire Shard was not merely temperature; it was an aggression. The air shimmered with a malice that sought to cook the flesh from bone. Valeria didn’t care. She was the Titan.

She charged up the slopes of the magma mountain, her boots crushing the cooling slag. Seraphina moved in her shadow, a flicker of motion darting between the rocks.

"Incoming!" Seraphina hissed.

From the lava rivers, shapes emerged. [Magma Stalkers]. [Fire Elementals]. Glitched versions of the Red Dragons. They were a horde of burning code.

"Let them come!" Valeria roared.

"[Titan’s Aura]!"

Golden light exploded from her body. It pushed back the heat, creating a bubble of breathable air. The fire monsters screeched, blinded by the radiance.

Valeria didn’t stop. She swung her claymore.

"SMASH!"

The blade, reinforced with the [Golden Carapace] she had integrated into her gear, cleaved through a magma golem. The monster shattered into sparks.

"Left flank!" Valeria shouted.

Seraphina was already there. She leaped over Valeria’s shoulder, throwing a fan of daggers coated in [Null-Void] poison. The daggers hit three Fire Elementals. The poison disrupted their mana cohesion. They dissolved into puddles of lava.

They moved with a rhythm born of desperate survival. Tank and Spank. Valeria drew the aggro, absorbing the hits that would have vaporized Seraphina. Seraphina dealt the critical damage, exploiting the openings Valeria created.

They reached the summit.

It was a crater of boiling white fire. In the center, sitting on a throne of obsidian that flickered in and out of existence, was Echo Yan.

He looked like Governor Ignis, but larger, wilder. His body was pure flame held together by a wireframe of black iron. He held a staff that was literally a glitch—a long bar of "TEXTURE_MISSING" that crackled with red lightning.

[Target: Echo Yan (The Pyromancer King)]

[Level: 60]

[Status: Corrupted / Burning]

"Intruders," Yan’s voice was the sound of a forest fire. "You are not water. Why are you here?"

"We’re here for the rock," Valeria said, pointing to the [Fire Anchor] embedded in the throne.

Yan laughed. He waved his staff. A wall of fire erupted, encircling the summit.

"Burn."

He cast [Meteor Swarm]. The sky above the mountain turned red. Massive boulders of flaming rock rained down.

"Shield!" Seraphina yelled.

Valeria slammed her shield into the ground.

"[Titan’s Fortress]!"

The golden dome sprang up. The meteors crashed against it, the impacts shaking the mountain. Valeria gritted her teeth. Her mana bar drained rapidly. The heat was intensifying. The [Titan] form was strong, but it consumed energy like a furnace.

"I can’t hold this forever!" Valeria shouted. "Seraphina, I need an opening!"

"He’s floating above the magma," Seraphina analyzed, her mechanical eye spinning. "I can’t reach him."

"Then bring him down!"

Valeria dropped the shield. She took a hit from a stray fireball—[-2,000 HP]—but she didn’t falter. She grabbed a massive chunk of rock from the ground.

"Hey! Hothead!"

She threw the rock. It wasn’t a skill. It was 200 Strength applied to a projectile.

"BOOM!"

The rock hit Echo Yan in the chest. The impact knocked him out of the air. He crashed onto the obsidian floor of the crater.

"Now!"

Seraphina moved. She activated [Shadow Step]—a skill she had learned from Alvian’s scroll. She appeared behind the fallen King.

"[Backstab]."

She drove her daggers into the gaps in Yan’s iron frame.

"SCREEEE!"

Yan shrieked. He exploded with fire, an omni-directional blast. Seraphina was thrown back, her cloak singing.

Valeria was there. She caught Seraphina with one arm, raising her shield with the other to block the blast.

"Are you okay?" Valeria asked.

"Crispy," Seraphina coughed. "But I hit his core. He’s leaking mana."

Yan stood up. The fire around him was erratic now, sputtering. He raised his glitch-staff.

"DELETE YOU! DELETE YOU ALL!"

He began to channel a massive spell. The magma in the crater rose, forming a tidal wave of fire.

"He’s going to wipe us," Seraphina said.

Valeria looked at the wave. She looked at the [Mana Crystals] Alvian had given her.

"No," Valeria said. She crushed the crystals. Blue mana flooded her system. She felt her muscles expand. Her armor grew. The [Titan Bloodline] resonated with the influx of pure energy.

"[Titan’s Cataclysm]."

She didn’t block. She jumped. She vaulted over the wave of fire, soaring through the air like a golden missile. She raised her claymore high.

"Gravity... assist," she whispered, echoing Alvian.

She slammed into Echo Yan.

"KRA-KOOM!"

The impact shattered the obsidian floor. The wave of fire collapsed. Yan’s iron frame buckled, then shattered. The fire within him was snuffed out by the sheer kinetic pressure of the blow.

[Target Neutralized.]

Valeria stood in the center of the crater, breathing hard. The golden light faded. She reached into the remains of the throne and pulled out a jagged, red crystal.

[Item: Fire Anchor.]

"Got it," she whispered into the comms. "Alvian... your turn."

The inside of the Water Shard was a world of crushing darkness. There was no surface, no bottom. Just an infinite expanse of cold, high-pressure water.

Alvian floated in the void. His [Vestments] glowed with a faint, violet light, the only illumination in the abyss. The pressure here was immense, easily double that of the Abyssal Trench in Azureus, but Alvian felt... comfortable.

The [Soul of the Tide] he had absorbed from Kenshin hummed in his veins. The water didn’t fight him. It welcomed him.

"System. Scan."

[Target Located: Echo Shui.]

[Distance: 2 kilometers.]

[Depth: Center of the Sphere.]

He moved. He didn’t swim. He used [Void Step], blinking through the water in kilometer-long jumps.

He reached the center. Floating there was a palace made not of coral, but of frozen tears. And in the center, sitting on a throne of ice, was Echo Shui.

She looked like the Governor, but ancient. Her form was unstable, constantly shifting between water and ice. She held a trident made of black glass.

[Target: Echo Shui (The Abyssal Queen)]

[Level: 60]

[Status: Glitched / Sorrow]

"You carry the fire," Shui whispered. Her voice traveled through the water instantly, bypassing Alvian’s ears. "I can smell the ash on you. You killed the Garden. You seek to kill the Sea."

"I seek the Anchor," Alvian replied, his voice amplified by the water.

"Take it," Shui said, gesturing to the blue crystal floating above her head. "If you can survive the cold."

She raised her trident.

"[Abyssal Prison]."

The water around Alvian solidified. It didn’t freeze; it simply stopped moving. The molecules locked in place, creating a cage of pressure that was harder than diamond.

[Status: Stasis.]

Alvian couldn’t move. He couldn’t blink.

"The ocean is heavy," Shui murmured, drifting closer. "It crushes all things. Even Anomalies."

Alvian watched her approach. He analyzed the cage. It was a high-tier hydro-lock. Physical strength couldn’t break it.

"Inefficient," Alvian thought. "You try to crush water with water."

He didn’t fight the pressure. He accepted it. He tapped into the [Frost Heart].

"System. Override environmental temperature."

[Warning! Mana expenditure will be critical.]

"I have infinite mana. Do it."

"[Frost Descent +2]: Absolute Zero Domain."

He didn’t cast the spell outward. He cast it inward. He froze himself.

"CRACK."

The stasis cage shattered. Not because Alvian broke it, but because the water composing it froze so rapidly it expanded and fractured. Alvian stepped out of the broken shards, his body coated in a layer of black ice armor.

Shui’s eyes widened. "You... you froze the prison?"

"Ice is just water that learned to stand still," Alvian said. He equipped the [Lance of the Void Winter].

"Now. My turn."

He pointed the lance.

"[Glacial Void Pierce]: Railgun Mode."

He fired a beam of black ice. Shui raised a wall of water to block it.

"BOOM!"

The beam hit the wall. The water wall froze instantly. The beam punched through the ice, striking Shui in the shoulder.

[-12,000! Void Damage!]

Shui shrieked. The water around her boiled with rage.

"I AM THE TIDE! YOU CANNOT FREEZE THE TIDE!"

She spun her trident. A massive whirlpool formed, sucking Alvian in. It was the same technique Megalos had used, but on a scale that dwarfed the Whale Shark King. This was a world-ending vortex.

Alvian felt the pull.

"Gravity," Alvian muttered. "Again."

He didn’t fight the pull. He used [Void Step] to teleport into the center of the whirlpool, right next to Shui.

"Hello."

Shui lashed out with her trident. Alvian parried with his lance.

"CLANG!"

The impact sent a shockwave through the vortex.

"You rely on flow," Alvian said, locking weapons with the Queen. "But flow requires liquid."

He activated [Genesis Mode].

[Stats Doubled.]

[Mana: Infinite.]

"System. Dump everything. Every drop of mana. Freeze the world."

"[Glacial Age]: Eternity."

He released the mana. A pulse of white cold exploded from his body. It expanded outward at the speed of thought. It hit the whirlpool. It hit the palace. It hit the boundaries of the water sphere.

"SNAP."

The sound was singular. The entire Water Shard froze. The whirlpool stopped mid-spin, turning into a spiral staircase of ice. The palace turned into a glacier.