SSS-Rank Skill Copy: I Can Steal Every Class

The apex of the Celestial Tower did not look like a fortress. It looked like a temple suspended in the stars.

Level 100 was a massive, open-air pavilion located above the cloud cover of Neo-Kyoto. The floor was made of seamless, transparent glass, giving the terrifying illusion of standing on nothing but the sky itself. There were no walls, only elegant, sweeping arches of white composite that framed the breathtaking view of the stratosphere. The air here was thin, freezing, and perfectly pure, untainted by the smog and acidic rain of the city below.

At the very center of the pavilion, sitting on a simple, unadorned cushion of white silk, was Empress Ryun.

The SSS-Rank Champion of the Eastern Spire did not wear armor. She wore a flowing, traditional kimono woven from threads of pure, condensed mana that shimmered with a faint, pearlescent light. She looked impossibly young, her features delicate and porcelain-smooth, her long black hair cascading down her back like a waterfall of ink.

But her eyes betrayed her true nature. They were a piercing, crystalline blue, completely devoid of warmth, empathy, or human frailty. They were the eyes of a being who had lived for over a century, a prodigy who had awakened at the age of ten and spent her entire life detached from the suffering of mortals.

She was currently staring at a massive, high-definition holographic projection hovering in the air in front of her.

The projection displayed the real-time security feed from the mid-level transit plaza of the Azure Spire.

Standing in a respectful, terrified semicircle behind the Empress were the senior executives of the Astra Guild, including Regional Director Kaelen. They were sweating profusely, their bespoke suits feeling suddenly very tight as they watched the massacre unfold on the screen.

They watched in absolute, horrified silence as the boy known as the Wraith caught Captain Akira’s nodachi with his bare hand, shattered it, and crushed the Vanguard leader’s core.

The holographic feed flickered and died, the camera lenses finally succumbing to the entropic decay of the boy’s S-Rank aura.

The pavilion fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. The only sound was the howling of the stratospheric wind passing through the white arches.

Director Kaelen swallowed hard, stepping forward and bowing so deeply his forehead nearly touched the glass floor.

"Your Imperial Majesty," Kaelen stammered, his voice trembling violently. "I... I have no words. The loss of Captain Akira and the Vanguard platoon is a tragedy beyond measure. The Astra Guild takes full responsibility for allowing this... this monster to breach the mid-levels. I have already authorized the deployment of our heavy orbital strike drones. We will level the Azure Spire if we have to. We will not let him reach the Tower."

Empress Ryun did not look at him. She continued to stare at the empty space where the hologram had been, her crystalline eyes unblinking.

"You will do no such thing, Director," Ryun said. Her voice was soft, melodic, and carried a strange, hypnotic resonance that made the executives’ teeth ache. "You will recall your drones. You will stand down your remaining security forces. You will open the corporate elevators and grant him unrestricted access to the upper levels."

Kaelen froze, his cybernetic eye whirring frantically as he tried to process the command. "Majesty? I... I don’t understand. He just slaughtered fifty of your elite guards. He is a terrorist. If we let him ascend—"

"He is not a terrorist, Kaelen," Ryun interrupted, her tone remaining perfectly flat, devoid of anger or grief over the loss of her men. "He is a variable. A beautifully, impossibly chaotic variable."

She slowly stood up, the mana-woven silk of her kimono flowing around her like liquid light. She walked over to the edge of the pavilion, looking down through the transparent floor at the sprawling, neon-lit expanse of Neo-Kyoto miles below.

"For eighty years, I have sat on this Tower," Ryun said, her voice carrying over the wind. "I have watched the Astra Guild harvest the mutated remnants of humanity in the Outer Rings. I have watched you build your black-sites, trying to reverse-engineer the rot of the void. You thought you were being clever. You thought you were preparing for the day the shields fall."

Kaelen paled, realizing the Empress had known about Project Purification all along.

"But your scientists are fools," Ryun continued, turning her head slightly to look at the terrified executives. "You treat the anti-mana like a disease to be cured, or a weapon to be harnessed in a laboratory. You fail to understand its true nature. It is entropy. It cannot be contained by glass and steel. It can only be mastered by a soul dense enough to withstand the unmaking."

She raised a delicate, pale hand, gesturing toward the city below.

"And now, a boy from the slums of Johannesburg has done what your billions of credits and decades of research could not. He has fused his core with the void. He has achieved S-Rank not through the blessing of the Awakening System, but by devouring the rot itself."

"He is a threat to the entire Mega-Sanctuary, Majesty," Kaelen pleaded, desperation bleeding into his voice. "If he reaches the apex, he will try to kill you."

Ryun smiled. It was a terrifying, chilling expression that held no joy.

"Let him try," she whispered.

She turned fully to face the executives, her crystalline eyes glowing with a sudden, intense light.

"The Administrators built these Towers," Ryun said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "They gave us the System, the Classes, the Ranks. They told us we were the chosen survivors, the Champions of humanity. But it was a gilded cage. They locked us inside these shields to fight an endless war against our own mutated ancestors, while they watch from the heavens like bored gods."

She walked slowly back to her silk cushion, her movements graceful and deliberate.

"I have spent my entire life building a weapon capable of piercing the heavens," Ryun said, sitting down. "A weapon capable of killing a Tower Administrator. But the energy required to breach their domain is astronomical. Standard mana is insufficient. I need a catalyst. I need a force of absolute entropy to tear the sky open."

Kaelen stared at her, the horrifying realization finally dawning on him. "You... you want to use the boy. You want to use the Wraith."

"I want to test him," Ryun corrected softly. "I want to see if his mastery of the void is absolute, or if he is merely a rabid dog lashing out at his betters. If he survives the ascent, if he reaches this pavilion, he will prove himself worthy of being my catalyst."

She waved her hand dismissively.

"Leave me. Open the gates. Let the Apex Sovereign climb."

Kaelen didn’t argue. He knew better than to question the madness of an SSS-Rank Champion. He bowed deeply, gesturing for the other executives to follow, and hurried toward the private elevator that would take them back to the safety of their fortified bunkers.

Empress Ryun sat alone at the top of the world.

She closed her eyes, reaching out with her massive, SSS-Rank senses. She bypassed the physical structure of the Tower, pushing her awareness down through the miles of steel and glass, past the pristine penthouses and the mid-level transit hubs, until she found him.

She felt the localized sphere of absolute, entropic decay moving steadily upward. It was a dark, freezing void in the center of her glowing city.

Ryun smiled again.

*Come to me, little monster,* she thought, her mind projecting the challenge downward through the mana currents of the Tower. *Show me how sharp your teeth really are.*

***

Deep in the Azure Spire, Glen stood in the center of a massive, glass-walled corporate elevator.

He was surrounded by the bodies of the Astra security personnel who had tried to stop him from boarding. He didn’t look at them. He stood perfectly still, his dark eyes fixed on the glowing numbers above the elevator doors as they rapidly ticked upward.

Level 50. Level 60. Level 70.

He felt it.

A sudden, overwhelming pressure descended upon him from above. It wasn’t a physical weight, like Caleb’s gravity magic. It was a spiritual weight. A massive, structured, impossibly dense aura that washed over his Predator Domain, testing its boundaries, probing its weaknesses.

It was the Empress. She was watching him.

Glen didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull his aura back. He pushed the void fragment harder, expanding his domain until the glass walls of the elevator frosted over with black ice.

He raised his head, looking up through the transparent ceiling of the elevator car, his pitch-black eyes piercing the distance.

*I’m coming,* Glen thought, his resolve hardening into an unbreakable, icy core.

The elevator continued its relentless ascent. The final confrontation for the Eastern Spire was approaching, and the heavens themselves were about to bleed. Glen was going to make sure of it.

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