SSS-Tier Extraction: From Outcast to Overgod!-Chapter 42: Victory!

Ryan pressed himself flat against the cold metal of the giant containment unit, his heart trying to beat its way out of his bruised ribs. He held his breath, listening.

The heavy, rhythmic stomp... stomp... stomp of the Vault Guardian Prime had faded as it patrolled the area around the fried light panel.

His trick had worked. A wave of relief washed over him.

He thought he was safe. He thought he had all the time in the world to sneak over to the armory and start collecting Power Cores for the Scramble. He had underestimated his opponent.

He watched as the Guardian finished its inspection of the broken light. It stood perfectly still for a long moment. Then, its single, terrifying red eye began to pulse with a new, intense light.

A low, deep humming sound started to fill the entire Vault, a sound that vibrated right through the floor and into his bones.

What’s it doing now? Ryan thought, his brief moment of relief vanishing.

A thin, red line of light shot out from the Guardian’s eye. It began to sweep across the chamber, methodically scanning every pillar, every console, every shadow.

It wasn’t just looking; it was scanning. For life signs. For energy signatures. For a lone human intruder with a bunch of glowing Precursor artifacts stuffed in his pockets.

Ryan’s heart sank. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

He was hidden, but he wasn’t invisible. The red line swept over his hiding spot. It paused for a fraction of a second. Then, it locked on. A loud, blaring alarm sound, the first real noise the Guardian had made, echoed through the Vault. The Guardian’s head swiveled around, its red eye burning a hole right through his cover.

It had found him. The hunt was back on, and this time, the Guardian wasn’t going to be fooled again.

The Level 8 Vault Guardian Prime, its Temporal Blade shimmering with deadly light, charged. There was no more trickery, no more hiding. This was it.

The Guardian swung its blade, and Ryan’s world went sideways. He dodged, but the energy wave from the blade still washed over him. His skills flickered.

He tried to use a "Short Blink," but his gauntlet just sparked weakly. He tried to activate his cloak’s stealth, but the command got lost somewhere in his brain.

He felt that horrible, dizzying sense of being disconnected from his own body. He was fighting with one hand tied behind his back, and the knot was in his own mind.

He couldn’t rely on his fancy skills. They were too unpredictable now. All he had was his raw power and his own two feet. He relied on his pure, hard-earned stats: his Agility to dodge, his Vitality to absorb the shockwaves of the Guardian’s near misses, and his Strength to keep his footing when the ground shook.

His new Boots of Alacrity became his best friend. Each time he successfully dodged a swing, the boots would give him a burst of speed, letting him reposition just a little faster. It was a frantic, desperate dance of survival.

He wasn’t trying to win anymore. He was just trying to live through the next five seconds. And in those five seconds, he was studying. He watched every move the Guardian made. He saw how it pivoted, how it swung its shield, how it telegraphed its most powerful attacks.

He couldn’t beat it head-on, so he had to find another way. He had to understand its weakness.

The Guardian swung its Temporal Blade in a massive overhead chop. Ryan threw himself to the side, the blade slamming into the floor with a deafening crash.

As the blade’s energy washed past him, he had a crazy idea. It was risky, but he was running out of options. As the shimmering temporal energy passed by, he reached out, not with his hand, but with his SSS-Tier system. He tried to "extract" a tiny, insignificant sample of the energy itself.

For a second, his system felt like it was going to overload, but it held. It snatched a tiny wisp of the blade’s power.

"You have extracted ’Temporal Energy Signature’!" the system reported. A burst of insight flooded his mind, a fleeting understanding of how the energy worked. "Temporal Disruption Resistance: +5%."

It wasn’t much, but the dizzy, disconnected feeling lessened ever so slightly. He felt a little more in control. It was a start.

Now he had a new plan. A terrible, reckless, and probably stupid plan, but it was the only one he had. He needed to lead the Guardian somewhere specific.

He stopped just dodging and started running, leading the giant war machine on a chase through the vast chamber. He headed straight for a section of the Vault he’d seen during his first mad dash: a place where the floor was a messy web of thick, glowing "Chrono-Conduits." These were the power lines for the whole Vault’s time-based systems.

The Guardian followed relentlessly, its stomps shaking the very foundations of the room. Ryan weaved through the conduits, making himself an easy target.

The Guardian, seeing him cornered, took the bait. It charged forward, right into the nest of glowing blue power lines, raising its Temporal Blade for a final, decisive strike.

Ryan didn’t wait for the swing. He channeled all his strength and power into his legs, jumped high into the air, and came down with a thunderous, two-footed stomp right on the main junction where all the conduits met.

The effect was instantaneous and spectacular.

A massive explosion of raw, uncontrolled energy erupted from the junction box. It wasn’t fire; it was a wave of pure, chaotic time. The lights in the Vault blew out, plunging the room into darkness, lit only by the wild, arcing electricity of the ruptured conduits.

The Guardian was caught right in the center of the blast.

The mighty war machine staggered. Its glowing red eye flickered erratically, like a dying lightbulb. Its movements, once so smooth and precise, became jerky and spasmed. The temporal backlash had overloaded its internal systems. It was stunned.

This was his chance. His one and only chance.

His Temporal Sense, now amplified by his resistance, cut through the chaos and showed him a single, vulnerable point on the Guardian’s chest. A small, circular component that was glowing and sparking wildly. "Primary Chrono-Stabilizer. Critical component. Systems failing. Catastrophically unstable."

That was its heart. Its clockwork heart.

Ryan burst from the darkness. He ignored the arcing electricity and the waves of temporal distortion. He ran straight at the stunned, twelve-foot-tall machine.

He used its massive leg as a ramp, running right up its body. He leaped onto its chest, clinging to its armor plates as it began to thrash and recover.

He raised his knife high. It was a tiny pinprick against the Guardian’s massive frame, but he aimed it at the one spot that mattered. With a final, desperate roar, he plunged the blade deep into the sparking, unstable Chrono-Stabilizer.

For a moment, there was absolute silence. The Guardian froze. Its red eye went completely dark. Then, a low, deep hum started to build, coming from deep within its chest. Cracks of pure, white light spread across its armored body like a spiderweb.

"Oh, this is going to be big," Ryan thought, and he kicked off the Guardian’s chest, throwing himself as far away as he could, scrambling behind a huge, thick pillar.

The Vault Guardian Prime didn’t explode with fire and sound. It imploded with a silent, terrifying flash of white light. A wave of pure, distorted time erupted outwards.

The pillar Ryan was hiding behind aged ten thousand years in a single second, crumbling into a pile of fine grey dust. The very air shimmered and settled.

When the light faded, the great Vault Guardian Prime was gone. A scorch mark on the floor and a heap of smoking, twisted metal were the only signs it had ever existed.

Ryan, covered in ancient dust, slowly pushed himself to his feet. He was bruised, battered, and utterly exhausted. But he was alive. And he had won.

A triumphant chorus of chimes sang in his mind.

"+800 god Points!"

The massive surge of experience pushed him over the threshold. A warm, golden wave of pure power washed over him, knitting his bruised ribs back together and clearing the last of the exhaustion from his body.

"Congratulations! You have reached Level 7! All base stats increased by +5! You have gained +3 Flex Essence Points!"

"For defeating a Legendary Anomaly and absorbing its temporal energies, your ’Temporal Disruption Resistance’ has become a permanent passive trait!"

He was Level 7. The feeling was incredible. He walked over to the wreckage, his system ready. From the smoking heap, he extracted two incredible treasures.

The first was the "Stabilized Temporal Core," a perfect sphere of contained time energy, humming with immense power. The second prize was an orb of pure knowledge that flowed directly into him, awakening a powerful new B-Tier talent: "Chrono-Manipulation."

He could now create small bubbles of "Haste" to speed himself up or "Slow" to hinder his enemies. He could control time itself, just a little bit.

He was thrilled. He had faced a Legendary threat and not only survived, but had taken its power for his own. But he couldn’t celebrate for long.

He remembered the Power Core Scramble. He was wasting precious time. He turned his attention deeper into the now-unguarded Vault. His Neural Map lit up, highlighting a sealed Precursor armory at the far end of the chamber.

And its energy signature told him it was packed to the ceiling with exactly what he needed. The race was still on, and he was ready to collect his winnings.

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