SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 177: The Iron Puppet, The Gravity of a King

He punched.

It was a short, efficient jab.

"SQUELCH."

His fist punched through the Centurion’s chest plate. Through the reinforced ribcage. Through the spine. And out the back.

The shockwave from the impact cleared the stairs. Fifty Syndicate soldiers were blown off their feet by the air pressure alone.

[-900,000! Fatal Kinetic Strike!]

Alvian pulled his hand back. The Centurion collapsed, a puppet with its strings cut.

Silence fell over the battlefield.

Magnus stared at the back of the black-robed figure. He recognized the shape. But the presence... it was wrong. It was too heavy. It felt like standing next to a black hole.

"Alvian?" Magnus whispered, his voice thick with disbelief. "Is that... you?"

Alvian turned.

The [Vestments of the Void Monarch] seemed to drink the light of the burning city. His skin was pale, flawless, glowing with an inner starlight.

"I’m back," Alvian said.

Kaelen zipped over, stopping at a safe distance. He sniffed the air, his gills flaring. "You... you smell like the Void. You smell like the space between spaces. We thought you were dead. The island crashed weeks ago."

"Weeks?" Alvian tilted his head. "Subjective time dilation. Inefficient."

He looked at the army of Syndicate troops frozen at the bottom of the stairs. They were terrified. They had just watched their commander get one-shot by a mage using his bare hands.

"Are these the ones bothering you?" Alvian asked.

"They have us pinned," Magnus grunted, using his shield to pull himself up. "We’ve been holding the palace for three weeks. But we’re running out of mana. We’re running out of blood."

Alvian looked at the army. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"System. Analysis."

[Hostile Count: 3,400.]

[Threat Level: Trivial.]

"Rest, Guardians," Alvian said. He stepped forward to the edge of the stairs. "I will clean the courtyard."

He raised his hand. He didn’t equip his lance. He didn’t cast a blizzard. He simply flexed his fingers.

"[Void Sovereign]: Gravitational Shear."

The air in front of him distorted. A visible ripple of force shot out, expanding horizontally.

"SWOOOSH."

It hit the front line of the Syndicate army.

There was no explosion. The soldiers didn’t fly backward. They were simply... erased. The gravitational shear twisted their coordinates. Armor, flesh, and bone were compressed into a two-dimensional plane and then scattered into dust.

Five hundred elite soldiers vanished in a single heartbeat.

The remaining three thousand didn’t scream. They dropped their weapons. They ran. They scrambled over each other to get away from the monster on the stairs.

Alvian watched them go. He didn’t chase.

"Inefficient to chase refuse," he muttered.

He turned back to his friends.

Magnus and Kaelen were staring at him with a mix of awe and terror. They had known Alvian was strong. They had known he was an Anomaly. But this... this was something else. This was the power of an Admin.

"You..." Kaelen swallowed hard. "What happened to you down there? In the gap?"

Alvian looked at his hand. He clenched it, feeling the universe hum against his skin.

"I updated," Alvian said.

He walked past them, toward the doors of the Palace.

"Come. We have a war to finish."

The War Room of the Void Sanctum had seen better days. The holographic table was flickering, powered by emergency mana crystals. The walls were scorched. The windows, once offering a view of the floating city, now looked out onto the jagged, ruinous landscape of the crater.

Alvian stood at the head of the table. He hadn’t sat down. He didn’t feel the need to sit. Fatigue was a concept he had left behind in the Spire.

Valeria stood to his right. She looked better than she had on the battlefield, but the deep circles under her eyes told the story of the last three weeks. She had held the line. She had kept the Sanctum alive while he was gone.

"Report," Alvian said.

Seraphina stepped forward. She looked wary, keeping a respectful distance from Alvian. Everyone did now.

"The Syndicate has dug in," Seraphina said, manipulating the glitchy hologram. "When the island crashed, the impact shattered the district infrastructure. We held the Palace and the Residential zones. But we lost the Industrial District."

Alvian’s eyes narrowed. "The Iron Shell’s territory."

"Yes," Magnus rumbled from the corner. The old Guardian looked ashamed. "My district. My home. When the crash happened... the walls crumbled. The Syndicate moved in within hours. They secured the Foundry."

"They aren’t just holding it," Seraphina continued. "They’re terraforming it. My scouts report massive excavation equipment. Drills. Mana-siphons. They’re digging deep."

Alvian looked at the map. The Industrial District was highlighted in angry red.

"What are they digging for?" Alvian asked.

"The Dragon God," Valeria said softly. "Or pieces of him."

She brought up an image. It was blurry, taken from a long-range scrying orb. It showed a massive pit in the center of the Foundry. And rising from the pit were ribs. Massive, fossilized ribs the size of skyscrapers.

"The island... the foundation of the Academy..." Alvian realized. "It was built on top of a dragon’s corpse. An Ancient One."

"They’re mining the bones," Seraphina said. "They’re harvesting the marrow. It’s pure, crystallized chaos mana. If they feed that to their troops... or to a new Avatar..."

"They will build a god," Alvian finished.

"There’s more," Magnus said, his voice heavy. "They installed a Governor. To oversee the operation. To mock me."

Alvian looked at the data.

[Target Identified: Governor Ferrum]

[Status: Syndicate Construct]

[Location: The Iron Citadel]

"Ferrum," Magnus spat the name. "It’s not a man. It’s a golem. They took the wreckage of my old gatekeeper... the Hermit Crab... and they fused it with their tech. They put a Syndicate AI inside its shell. It sits on my throne. It rules my people."

Alvian felt a flicker of irritation. Not anger. Anger was messy. This was a cold, precise annoyance at the inefficiency of the Syndicate’s cruelty. They didn’t just want to win; they wanted to humiliate.

"They turned your guardian into a puppet," Alvian said.

"They turned my home into a mine," Magnus corrected, his fists clenching. "The people of the Iron Shell... the ones who couldn’t escape to the Sanctum... they are slaves. Digging in the pits. Dying for the Syndicate’s war machine."

Alvian looked at the map. He looked at the red stain of the Industrial District.

"This ends today," Alvian stated.

"We can’t just march in," Valeria warned. "The Foundry is a fortress. They have thermal barriers, automated kill-zones, and thousands of troops. If we assault the main gate, they’ll slaughter the slaves."

"We aren’t assaulting the gate," Alvian said. "That’s inefficient."

He turned to the exit.

"Where are you going?" Seraphina asked.

"To the Foundry," Alvian said.

"Alone?" Valeria stepped forward. "Alvian, we’re a team. We fight together."

Alvian looked at her. He saw the strength in her. The loyalty. But he also calculated the risk. The radiation from the Dragon bones. The crossfire.

"Not this time," Alvian said gently. "This isn’t a battle. It’s a foreclosure."

He looked at Magnus.

"Guardian. Do you want your house back?"

Magnus straightened up, the fire returning to his stone eyes. "More than anything."

"Then get your hammer ready," Alvian said. "We’re going to break some walls."

He turned to Valeria and Seraphina.

"Hold the Sanctum. If the Syndicate tries to reinforce the Foundry from the outside, cut them off. But do not enter the district. The radiation levels will be... problematic."

"Problematic for us," Seraphina noted. "But not for you?"

Alvian equipped the [Vestments of the Void Monarch]. The air in the room grew cold.

"I am the Void," Alvian whispered. "Radiation is just spicy light."

He walked out.

The border of the Industrial District was a wall of heat and noise. The crash had shattered the containment domes, leaving the Foundry exposed to the open air of the crater. Smoke billowed from a thousand smokestacks, turning the sky black.

Alvian stood on a ridge overlooking the district. Beside him, Guardian Magnus looked down at his ruined home. The streets were filled with rubble. The people—Crab-Men, Turtle-Kin—were chained together, hauling massive carts of glowing red ore toward the central pit.

Overseeing them were Syndicate Enforcers. And patrolling the streets were new machines. [Magma-Walkers]. Heavy, bipedal tanks that spewed fire.

"Look at them," Magnus growled. "They treat my people like cattle."

"We’re going to free them," Alvian said.

"How?" Magnus asked. "There are thousands of guards. If we attack, the hostages die."

"We remove the guards," Alvian said. "All of them."

He stepped off the ridge.

He didn’t use stealth. He didn’t use cover. He walked down the main road leading to the district gate.

"Halt!" A Syndicate sniper on a watchtower shouted. "Restricted Zone! Open fire!"

A red laser dot appeared on Alvian’s chest. A high-velocity mana round cracked through the air.

"PING."

The bullet hit Alvian’s forehead. It flattened against his skin and fell to the ground.

[-0 HP]

Alvian didn’t even blink. He kept walking.

"Monster!" the sniper screamed. "All units! Converge! Kill the intruder!"