SSSSS-Rank: Negative Leveling-Chapter 71: Six Hours

Hour One.

Khorvash’s flames lit up the clearing as the first wave hit, ice stalkers poured through the gaps in Misha’s outer barriers, their frozen bodies shattering against dragon fire, but for every one that fell, two more took its place.

"They’re not stopping," Khorvash shouted, her tail whipping around to catch three stalkers mid-leap, "how many of these things are there?"

Misha stood at the center of her defensive formation, her staff glowing as she manipulated the middle zone, gravity shifted, making the monsters slow down as they entered the affected area, their movements became sluggish, giving Khorvash more time to deal with them.

"The mana spike from Luthra’s ritual is attracting everything in the gate, we just have to hold until he’s done."

Behind them, Luthra sat motionless against the crystal, his body rigid with pain, inside his soul, the two cores were grinding against each other, the negative energy trying to consume the positive, the positive energy trying to explode outward, and Lilith was caught in the middle, trying to guide them into harmony.

[Focus, Luthra, don’t let the pain break your concentration, the cores are beginning to resonate, we’re making progress.]

’Progress, this feels like dying.’

[Death would be faster, this is reconstruction, now push the negative energy inward while pulling the positive energy toward your center, imagine them as two orbits collapsing into a single point.]

He did, and the pain somehow got worse, his physical body convulsed again, blood trickling from his nose.

Khorvash noticed. "He’s bleeding."

"He’s fine, focus on the monsters."

"He doesn’t look fine."

"He’s alive, that means he’s fine, now burn those things before they breach the inner barrier."

The Ice Alpha appeared at the edge of the clearing, its massive form prowling along the perimeter, studying the barriers with intelligent eyes, it didn’t charge like the lesser stalkers, it watched, waiting for a weakness.

"That’s bad," Misha said.

"Yeah, I noticed, can your barriers hold it?"

"For a while, but it’s B-Rank, if it focuses on one point, it’ll get through eventually."

Hour Two.

The stalkers had stopped coming in waves and started coming in a constant stream, Khorvash was breathing hard now, her flames less intense as she burned through her stamina, she’d killed dozens of them but her body was starting to show the strain.

A crystalline construct, something that looked like a spider made of ice with bladed legs, broke through the outer barrier and skittered toward them with horrifying speed.

Misha shifted her sovereign space, creating a zone where the air became thick as water, the spider slowed but didn’t stop, its legs cutting through the altered physics with raw strength.

Khorvash intercepted it, grabbing one of its legs and yanking hard enough to rip it off, the spider screeched, a sound like breaking glass, and stabbed at her with its remaining limbs.

She took a cut across her shoulder, black dragon blood mixing with melting ice, and responded by shoving her hand into the spider’s central mass and releasing a point-blank blast of fire that cooked its insides and shattered its frozen shell.

"Misha, I need a break, I can’t keep this pace for four more hours."

"Take thirty seconds, drink a stamina potion, I’ll hold the line."

The mage’s staff blazed with power as she expanded her sovereign space to cover the entire clearing, gravity increased tenfold, slamming the approaching stalkers into the ground where they cracked under their own weight.

Khorvash downed a potion, the liquid restoring some of her energy, but she could feel the limit approaching, dragon stamina was immense but it wasn’t infinite.

Behind them, Luthra’s body was beginning to glow, black and white energy leaking from his skin in wisps that dissipated into the air around him.

[The cores are starting to merge, maintain the compression, don’t let them separate or the backlash will tear you apart.]

Inside his soul, Luthra could see it happening, the two orbiting spheres were getting closer, the negative void pulling at the positive light, the light resisting but losing ground, inch by inch they spiraled toward each other.

’How much longer?’

[Four hours minimum, possibly five if there are complications, you’re doing well, the merge is proceeding faster than projected.]

’Doesn’t feel like it.’

[Pain is relative, you’re rebuilding your fundamental nature while conscious, most beings would have blacked out from shock by now, your absurd pain tolerance is actually helping.]

Hour Three.

The Ice Alpha made its move.

It didn’t charge the barriers, instead it let out a howling roar that resonated across the frozen landscape, and in response, more Alphas appeared, three of them, surrounding the clearing from different angles.

"Oh, that’s really bad," Misha said, her face pale, "that’s four B-Rank monsters, we can’t handle that."

Khorvash’s eyes blazed. "Then we improvise, can you collapse all the barriers into just the inner one around Luthra?"

"Yes, but that would leave us exposed."

"Do it, and when I say go, you sprint for the inner barrier and don’t look back."

"What are you planning?"

"Something stupid."

Misha didn’t argue, she began collapsing the outer and middle barriers, drawing all their power into a single reinforced shield around Luthra, the monsters sensed the change and surged forward, hundreds of stalkers and four massive Alphas all charging at once.

Khorvash took a deep breath, and then she stopped holding back her dragon nature.

Her body began to change, scales spread across her skin turning from isolated patches to full coverage, her horns lengthened, her tail thickened, and most dramatically, her size increased, she grew from six feet to nearly nine, her muscles swelling with draconic power.

"Go, now."

Misha ran for the inner barrier as Khorvash stepped forward to meet the entire horde alone.

The first Alpha reached her and she caught its charge with her bare hands, her claws digging into its frozen hide, she lifted it, all several tons of ice and muscle, and used it as a club to sweep aside the lesser stalkers.

The second Alpha tried to flank her, she dropped the first one and backhanded the second with enough force to send it tumbling across the clearing, her tail swept in a wide arc, crushing a dozen stalkers into fragments.

The third and fourth Alphas came together, coordinated pack tactics, one going high while the other went low.

Khorvash roared, and flame erupted from her mouth in a torrent, true dragon fire, hot enough to turn ice directly to steam without passing through water, the high Alpha was caught in the blast and simply evaporated, the low one got through and bit down on her leg.

She felt teeth crack through her scales, felt the cold seeping into her flesh, and responded by grabbing the Alpha’s head and twisting, draconic strength versus frozen construct, something had to give.

The Alpha’s neck shattered, its body going limp.

But there were still two Alphas left, and hundreds of lesser monsters, and Khorvash was bleeding from multiple wounds, her transformation burning through her energy at an unsustainable rate.

’Just need to buy more time, just a little more.’

Hour Four.

Luthra was glowing brighter now, the black and white energies swirling around him in a visible vortex, inside his soul, the cores were almost touching, separated by only the thinnest gap.

[This is the critical moment, when they finally touch, the merger will happen all at once, you need to be ready to channel the combined energy or it’ll burn through your body.]

’How do I channel it?’

[Let it flow through your mana pathways, don’t resist it, don’t try to control it, just let it move.]

Outside, Khorvash was on one knee, her transformation flickering as her stamina hit its limit, the remaining Alphas circled her, sensing weakness, the swarm of lesser monsters pressing from all sides.

Misha’s barrier around Luthra was holding but she was pale, shaking from the effort of maintaining it against the constant assault.

"Khorvash, fall back, you’re going to die out there."

"Can’t, if I retreat they’ll overwhelm the barrier in seconds."

"Better that than you dying."

"No arguments, just keep him safe."

The Alphas charged together, and Khorvash met them head-on, her flames guttering but not extinguished, she was exhausted, wounded, and outnumbered, but she was also a dragon, and dragons don’t yield.

Her fist caught the first Alpha in the skull, caving it in, her tail impaled the second through its center mass, her teeth closed on the nearest stalker and ripped it apart.

Blood, both hers and the monsters’, painted the ice red and black, she was moving on instinct now, too tired to think, just reacting, fighting because stopping meant death.

And then Luthra opened his eyes.

Hour Five.

The cores touched.

Inside Luthra’s soul, the negative void and the positive light collided, and instead of annihilating each other, they began to spiral, black consuming white, white illuminating black, corruption and purification happening

simultaneously.

The positive energy didn’t disappear, it transformed, its fundamental nature changed from creation to destruction, from light to the absence of light, from fire to cold fire, from life to un-life.

And when the transformation completed, Luthra had a single core, a sphere of absolute black shot through with veins of corrupted white light, it pulsed with power that was neither purely negative nor purely positive, but something new, something that had never existed in this world.

[Core conversion successful, hybrid energy stable, new abilities unlocking, congratulations Luthra, you just became unique again.]

He stood up, mana flooding through his body in quantities he’d never felt before, the vortex of energy around him exploded outward in a shockwave that shattered every ice stalker within fifty feet.

Khorvash, barely conscious and still fighting, felt the wave of power wash over her. "About damn time."

Luthra looked at the battlefield, at Khorvash collapsed and bleeding, at Misha struggling to maintain barriers, at the hundreds of monsters still pressing in.

He unwrapped his chain.

"My turn."

The chain moved through the air, but instead of just being heavy metal, it was now coated in black energy threaded with white light, when it struck the nearest Alpha, the monster didn’t just shatter, it dissolved, its very existence consumed and corrupted by the hybrid mana.

Luthra moved through the horde like death incarnate, his chain destroying everything it touched, stalkers evaporated, crystalline constructs crumbled to dust, and when he pushed his mana into the ground, the ice itself began to crack and corrupt, turning from clear blue to diseased black.

A crystalline golem, something the size of a building that had been slowly approaching from deeper in the gate, arrived at the clearing, it was B-Rank easily, maybe A-Rank, a true boss monster.

It raised an arm of solid ice to crush Luthra like an insect.

He caught the descending hand with his bare palm, his hybrid mana pouring into the construct, and the golem’s arm began to rot, ice turning to black slush that dripped from its frame.

The corruption spread, consuming the golem from the point of contact, climbing up its arm to its torso, spreading to its legs, eating through its frozen form like acid through paper.

In less than thirty seconds, the boss monster collapsed into a pool of corrupted melt-water.

Every remaining monster in the clearing stopped, their limited intelligence recognizing something far more dangerous than them, and as one, they turned and fled back into the frozen forest.

Silence fell over the clearing.

Luthra released his mana, the black and white energy dissipating, and nearly collapsed from exhaustion, the conversion had worked, but it had also drained him completely.

Misha dropped her barriers and ran to Khorvash, medical supplies already in hand. "You’re an idiot, you know that, a complete idiot."

Khorvash, back in her normal form and covered in wounds, managed a weak smile. "Worked though, we’re alive, Luthra’s alive, mission success."

Luthra walked over and sat down next to them, his body aching in new and interesting ways. "Thank you, both of you, I wouldn’t have made it without you."

"Obviously," Khorvash coughed, winced at the pain, "next time you need to do experimental soul surgery, maybe do it somewhere that isn’t filled with murder monsters."

"I’ll keep that in mind."

Misha finished applying healing salves to Khorvash’s worst wounds. "So, did it work, do you have your hybrid core?"

Luthra focused inward and felt it, the swirling mass of corrupted positive and pure negative energy, stable and powerful. "Yeah, it worked, I can feel the difference already."

"Good, because we still need to get out of this gate, and I don’t know about you two, but I’m completely exhausted."

She was right, they’d been fighting for five hours straight, they were wounded, tired, and still deep inside a B-Rank gate.

"Can you walk?" Luthra asked Khorvash.

"Can I walk, yes, can I fight, absolutely not, I’m done, if we run into more monsters someone else is going to have to handle them."

"Then we move carefully and avoid combat, Misha, can you still do barriers?"

"Small ones, nothing like what I was maintaining, but enough to hide our mana signatures and maybe provide cover if we need it."

Luthra stood up and offered Khorvash his hand, pulling her to her feet. "Alright, let’s go home."

The journey back to the gate entrance took three hours of careful navigation, avoiding monster patrols and collapsed crystal formations, by the time they emerged back into the normal world, the sun was setting. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

They collapsed on the rocky ground outside the gate, too tired to even celebrate their survival.

"We did it," Misha said, staring at the sky, "we actually did it, I can’t believe we survived that."

"I can," Khorvash said, "we’re too stubborn to die."

Luthra looked at his hands, felt the hybrid mana flowing through them, stable and powerful, he’d gained something unique today, something no other hunter possessed.

But more than that, he’d kept his people alive, he’d led them into danger and brought them back out.

’Leadership, I guess this is what it feels like.’

[You performed admirably, Luthra, your strategic decisions were sound and your risk assessment was accurate, this is a significant victory.]

’Thanks, Lilith, couldn’t have done it without you guiding the conversion.’

[We make a good team.]

They rested for another hour before beginning the long trek back to the settlement, wounded, exhausted, but alive and successful.

And somewhere deep inside Luthra’s soul, the hybrid core pulsed with power, ready to show the world what negative and corrupted positive energy could accomplish together.