SSS-Rank Skill Copy: I Can Steal Every Class

Twenty-four hours. That was the recovery window Arthur’s notes specified. Glen took exactly that — not a minute more, not a minute less. He spent the time in his quarters, eating whatever the mess hall sent over, sleeping in two-hour blocks, and running the stabilization sequence in his mind until the seven steps were as automatic as breathing.

The void refilled slowly. Like a reservoir after a drought. By the eighteenth hour, Glen felt the deep indigo settle back to its normal density. By the twentieth, the ley-line sense was sharp again. By the twenty-fourth, he was ready.

Caleb called at 0400. "Lagos is holding. The reversion hasn’t accelerated. Your stabilization of Johannesburg reduced the signal by enough to slow the cascade."

"How much time did I buy?"

"Eighteen hours. Maybe twenty. The reversion rate dropped fourteen percent after Johannesburg stabilized. But Lagos is still fully reverted. It needs the full sequence."

"I’m leaving in an hour."

"Transport’s on the pad. Vera’s already there."

"Already?"

"She slept in the ready room next to the hangar. I think she’s been there since you landed yesterday."

Glen packed the padded case. Mary met him at the helipad. She looked tired — she’d spent the night cross-referencing Arthur’s tablets with the data from Johannesburg’s stabilization, looking for inefficiencies in the sequence.

"I found a shortcut," she said. "Step three and step four can overlap if the foundation is above eighty percent before you start load balancing. It saves four minutes."

"Show me."

She did. On the helicopter, with the tablets spread across their laps, Mary walked him through the modified sequence. The overlap was elegant — Arthur had noted it as a possibility but never tested it. Mary was finishing his work.

"Arthur would have appreciated the efficiency," she said.

"Arthur would have found it thirty years ago."

"He found it. He just didn’t have anyone to test it on."

Lagos was different from Johannesburg.

The Tower here was larger — a massive pillar of pre-System architecture rising from the coastal plain like a monument. The indigo glow was brighter, more intense. The ley-line convergence beneath it was denser. Six major lines met at this point, compared to Johannesburg’s four.

The energy hit Glen before the helicopter landed. The ley-line sense opened wide and the sheer volume of pre-System energy flowing through this anchor point was staggering. His vision swam for a moment before the void adjusted.

"Big one," Vera said from the copilot seat. She was looking at the Tower through the windshield. Even without ley-line sense, anyone could see it — the air around the structure shimmered with displaced light.

"Six ley-lines converging. Johannesburg had four. This is a primary node."

"Does that make it harder?"

"Longer. The foundation has to cover more ground. The bridge structure has to handle more flow. But the principle is the same."

They landed. Vera took perimeter. Mary set up the tablets. Glen approached the Tower.

The court’s signal was stronger here. He felt it the moment his boots hit the ground — a low, persistent throb beneath the ley-line hum, like a second heartbeat under the first. The sleeping thing was closer to the surface at this anchor point. More aware. More present.

And it was paying attention.

Glen stopped ten meters from the base. The sensation crept up his spine — the feeling of being watched by something that had never needed eyes. The court wasn’t just broadcasting through this node. It was listening through it. The signal that pulsed outward also pulsed inward, and through that inward pulse, something vast and patient was tasting the air around him.

He’d felt the court push at Johannesburg. A blind force, a reflex. This was different. This was a curiosity that had woken up and turned its head.

"Mary," Glen said. "The signal intensity here is double Johannesburg."

Mary checked the tablets. Her face tightened. "Arthur’s notes mention primary nodes. The court uses them as... relay points. The stronger the node, the stronger the court’s connection."

"So stabilizing this Tower doesn’t just cut the signal. It cuts a relay."

"Exactly. But the court will push back harder. The relay is valuable to it."

Glen pressed his palm to the stone. The ring activated. The glyphs lit up. The sequence began.

Step one. Alignment. The Tower recognized the ring — faster this time, the ring’s frequency still resonated from Johannesburg. A memory in the metal.

And something else recognized the ring too.

The court’s attention sharpened. Glen felt it the way you’d feel a searchlight sweep across your face — a sudden, focused weight. The vast patience that had been tasting the air zeroed in. It pressed against the glyph network, against the ring, against the channel Glen was opening. Studying. The court had felt this once before, at Johannesburg. Now it was trying to understand what it had felt.

Step two. Phase synchronization. Glen matched the ring’s output to the Tower’s rhythm. This Tower’s pulse was different from Johannesburg’s — deeper, slower, a bass note beneath bass notes. The void strained to match it. The ring held.

The court probed the synchronization. Glen felt it tracing the ring’s frequency, cataloguing the way the void adjusted, mapping the relationship between his output and the Tower’s rhythm. It was learning. Not fighting — not yet — but learning. Gathering data through the relay the way a blind thing gathers shape through touch.

The sensation made his skin crawl. Something that old, that patient, running fingers over his method.

Step three. Foundation. Glen opened the channel. The pre-System energy flooded through him — more than Johannesburg, much more. The void absorbed the excess. His hands shook. His nose bled. He held.

"Foundation at fifty percent," Mary said. "Sixty. Seventy."

The court pushed.

Not a signal this time. Not a pulse. A presence. Something leaned against the channel Glen had opened and pressed. The weight of it was astronomical. Not physical — psychic. Spatial. Something that existed at a scale the human mind wasn’t built to process was leaning against the door and pushing it shut.

Glen’s vision went white. The void screamed. The ring burned.

But the push wasn’t the worst of it. Beneath the pressure, the court was still watching. Still learning. It pushed and studied simultaneously — testing the channel’s resistance the way you’d test a wall by leaning your shoulder into it, feeling for the give, the joints, the load-bearing points. The court wasn’t trying to break through. It was trying to understand the architecture of the barrier so it could find the way around it.

"Eighty percent," Mary said. Her voice was steady. She’d felt the push too — her face was pale, her hands trembling on the tablets — but her voice didn’t waver. "Foundation set. Overlap to step four. Now."

Glen shifted. Foundation to load balancing simultaneously. Arthur’s shortcut. Mary’s refinement. The energy spread through the Tower’s structure while the foundation continued to set. Two steps becoming one.

The court’s pressure intensified. The ground shook. Vera’s voice cracked over the comm — "Glen, the water’s pulling toward the Tower. The ocean. The tide is changing."

"Hold the perimeter."

"I’m holding. But whatever’s in there knows you’re there."

"I know."

At the perimeter, Vera felt it before she understood it. The air had weight. Not humidity — something denser, something that pressed against her skin like deep water pressure without the water. The ground beneath her boots hummed at a frequency she couldn’t hear but could feel in her teeth. The Atlantic, two hundred meters behind her, was behaving wrong. The surf had reversed. Waves rolled inland instead of out, thin sheets of water crawling up the sand toward the Tower’s base as if the structure were drinking the tide.

She adjusted her stance. Widened it. Checked her sectors. The threat was everywhere and nowhere — the environment turning hostile without a single enemy to point at. Her hand found her weapon’s grip out of habit. The weight of it was familiar, grounding. But a gun was useless against a tide that flowed uphill.

"Vera," Mary’s voice came through the comm, thin and strained. "Your readings — the magnetic field around the Tower is fluctuating. Don’t move closer."

"Wasn’t planning on it." Vera swept her sector again. The grass between the landing pad and the Tower had flattened outward in a perfect circle, pressed down by something radiating from the base. The air inside that circle shimmered — heat-mirage distortion, except the temperature hadn’t changed. Reality itself was bending slightly at the edges.

She’d held perimeters before. War zones. Awakened zones. Combat perimeters where the threat was a thing she could shoot. This was different. The fight was happening inside the Tower, between Glen and something that didn’t have a body, and the collateral was the entire coastline deciding to rearrange itself. She couldn’t point a weapon at that. She could only hold the line and watch for the moment it got bad enough that she’d need to drag Glen out by his collar.

The ground shook again. Harder. Vera braced. The ocean pulled. She held.

Step five. Bridge structure. The critical step. Glen built the bridge — the connection between Tower and ley-line network. The circuit. The loop. The flow that would replace the extraction engine.

The court’s signal spiked. Not pushing now — pulling. Trying to drag the bridge structure into its own architecture. Trying to consume the bridge before it could lock.

Glen felt the pull. A gravity well opening beneath the bridge he was building. The void resisted. The ring structured. But the pull was strong. Stronger than Johannesburg.

And the court was still learning. Even as it pulled, Glen felt it tracing the bridge’s structure — the lattice, the load points, the way the ring distributed energy across the connection. It was reading the blueprint in real time. Next time, it would know the design. Next time, it would push at the joints instead of the wall.

"Step six," Mary said. "Coherence lock. Thirty seconds."

Glen gathered everything. The void. The ring. The ley-lines. He compressed it into the sustained hold and pushed.

One second. Five. Ten.

The court pulled harder. The bridge structure groaned. Glen felt it flex — not breaking, but bending. The lattice Arthur had designed was elastic. It could absorb pressure. But the court was testing its limits.

The cost climbed. Glen’s nose bled freely now — a steady trickle down his lip, copper on his tongue. His vision had narrowed to a pinpoint, then narrower, then gone. The void wasn’t filtering anymore. It was drowning. The pre-System energy poured through the channel faster than the void could purify it, and the excess flooded back into his body — raw, unprocessed, burning through his nervous system like current through a wire rated for half the load. His hands had gone numb. His arms. The numbness crept toward his chest.

The ring had burned through its reserve and was drawing on something deeper. The metal had gone dark — not dormant, not recharging, but actively consuming. Glen felt it pulling heat from his finger, from his hand, from the blood in his veins. The ring ate what it needed and left the rest cold. His fingertip had gone gray beneath the band.

"Fourteen seconds," Mary counted. "Fifteen."

Glen’s body was failing. The energy volume was too high. His muscles locked. His vision tunneled. The void was at its limit — absorbing, filtering, purifying, but the input was overwhelming the system. He was a pipe with too much water.

"Twenty."

The bridge bent. The court pulled. Glen held.

"Twenty-five."

Five seconds. His vision was gone. He was blind. He felt the Tower through his hands, the ring through his finger, the void through his chest. Everything else was noise.

The void flickered. For a half-second — a heartbeat’s width — the deep indigo guttered like a candle in wind. The purification stopped. The raw energy surged. Glen felt it hit his chest like a fist. Then the void caught again, stabilized, burned back to full. But the flicker had happened. The void had hit its ceiling and blinked.

That had never happened before.

"Twenty-eight."

"Twenty-nine."

"Thirty."

The lock clicked. The bridge structure solidified. The court’s pull broke against it like a wave against a seawall. The signal didn’t stop — but it couldn’t reach through. The bridge was live. The relay was cut. The court’s connection to this anchor point was severed.

Glen pulled his hand away. He fell to one knee. His palm was raw. The ring was dark — it had burned through its energy reserve. It would need time to recharge.

Blood dripped from his nose onto the stone. He wiped it with the back of his hand and the smear was dark, almost black. The void had purified most of it, but what came out was the excess — the energy his body couldn’t process, expelled through the only channels it had. Nose. Eyes. The capillaries in his fingers had burst beneath the ring.

"Step seven," he said. His voice was a rasp.

"Give me a minute," Mary said. She was shaking. She knelt beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder. "You need to rest before—"

"Step seven. I need to verify the hold."

He placed his hand on the stone. Lightly. Listening.

The bridge hummed. Steady. Self-sustaining. The energy flowed through the structure without his input. The Tower regulated itself. Lagos stood as a bridge — not an extraction engine, not a court relay. A bridge.

"It’s holding."

Mary exhaled. A long, shuddering breath. She sat on the ground beside him and didn’t say anything for a while.

Vera walked over from the perimeter. She looked at Glen on his knee, Mary on the ground, the Tower glowing steady indigo behind them.

"Two down," she said.

"Four to go," Glen said.

"You can barely stand."

"I don’t need to stand. I need to stabilize. I can do that from my knees."

Vera looked at him. The same assessment as before — structural integrity, readiness, the margin between functional and collapsed. This time the margin was thinner.

"Twenty-four hours," she said. "No less."

"Twenty-four hours. Then Khartoum."

She helped him up. The helicopter was waiting. Mary gathered the tablets. The ring sat dark on Glen’s finger, slowly recharging, the metal warming by degrees.

Two Towers stabilized. Two relays cut. The court’s signal was weakening. But the clock was still running. Eight days. Four Towers. And the court was awake enough now to fight back.

Back at base, Caleb had the updated map ready. The signal reduction from two stabilizations was visible — the indigo glow at Johannesburg and Lagos had dimmed. The court’s heartbeat was slower. Quieter.

But the other Towers were still reverting. Fourteen now. The acceleration had slowed but not stopped. And the court — the thing behind the signal — was adapting. It was pushing energy through the remaining relays, compensating for the two Glen had cut.

"It’s rerouting," Caleb said. "Like a network losing nodes. The traffic finds new paths. The court is using the remaining reverted Towers to maintain its signal strength."

"So I haven’t slowed it down. I’ve just changed which Towers it uses."

"You’ve slowed the acceleration. You haven’t stopped the signal. The court is still waking. But it’s waking slower. You’ve bought time."

"How much?"

"Before Johannesburg, the projection was ten days to full wakefulness. After two stabilizations... twelve. Maybe thirteen."

"I bought three days."

"You bought three days. And the court spent those three days learning how to reroute. The next stabilizations won’t buy as much. The court will adapt faster each time."

Caleb pulled up the trend line on the map. He’d been running the numbers since Glen left for Lagos, and the numbers had gotten worse while he was gone. Each stabilization reduced the court’s signal strength. That part was linear, predictable, clean. But the court’s adaptation wasn’t linear. It was accelerating. Johannesburg had forced the court to reroute through two alternate nodes. Lagos had forced it through four. The next Tower would force it through more, and each reroute took less time than the last. The court was getting faster at finding new paths.

The curve on Caleb’s screen bent downward. Signal reduction on one axis. Time gained on the other. The early stabilizations had bought eighteen, twenty hours each. The projection for Khartoum was twelve. Accra, nine. Addis Ababa, six. The returns were shrinking. The court was learning to absorb the losses.

"There’s another problem," Caleb said. He tapped the screen, pulling up a second graph. "Your recovery time. Johannesburg took twenty-four hours to recover from. Lagos took twenty-four, but you started from a lower baseline. Your void density at the start of Lagos was fourteen percent below your pre-Johannesburg level."

"The void refilled."

"It refilled to a lower ceiling. Each stabilization costs you more energy, and your recovery asymptotes a little lower each time. You’re not recovering to full. You’re recovering to slightly less than full. And that gap is going to widen."

Glen looked at the graph. The line stepped downward — a staircase descending. Each step was a Tower. Each step landed a little lower than the last.

"Khartoum tomorrow," he said. "Then Accra. Then Addis Ababa. Then the sixth."

"And the court?"

"The court can adapt all it wants. I’m cutting its relays one by one. By the time I’m done, it’ll have nowhere to signal through."

"Or it’ll wake up before you finish."

"Then I stabilize faster."

Caleb looked at him. The analytical mind processing the bravado, weighing it against the data. Glen’s body was degrading. Each stabilization cost more. The void recovered slower each time. The ring needed longer to recharge. The math was clear: Glen was spending more than he was earning.

But the math didn’t account for what Glen was. The Tower had classified him Beyond. The System couldn’t measure him. Caleb’s data couldn’t either.

"Khartoum," Caleb said. "I’ll have the route plotted by morning."

Glen nodded. He picked up the padded case. His hands were steady. They wouldn’t be tomorrow, but they’d be steady enough. They always were.

Four to go. Eight days. The court waking. The race continuing.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!