SSS-Rank Skill Copy: I Can Steal Every Class

Glen slept six hours. The void recovered to twelve percent. Not enough for a stabilization. Not enough for a reinforcement. But enough to think.

He went to the archives at dawn. Mary met him there — she’d never left. The tablets from the seventh floor were spread across Arthur’s desk, arranged in the order she’d been studying them. Some were face-down. Some were stacked. The pattern of a mind working through a problem.

"The hybrid state," Glen said.

Mary looked up. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying — recently, quietly, and she’d stopped before he arrived. He didn’t mention it.

"I found it," she said. "Arthur’s notes on the hybrid Tower. It’s in the back of the seventh tablet. The last section. He wrote it in a different hand — faster, looser. Like he was chasing an idea."

She turned the tablet over. The glyphs on the back were different from the stabilization sequence — denser, more interconnected. A web rather than a line.

"Arthur theorized that a Tower could function as both bridge and extraction engine simultaneously," Mary said. "Not one replacing the other. Both. Coexisting."

"How?"

"The extraction engine draws mana from the ley-lines and processes it for the System. The bridge carries pre-System energy in both directions. Arthur’s insight was that these aren’t competing functions — they’re complementary. The extraction engine handles System-regulated mana. The bridge handles pre-System energy. They operate on different frequencies. They don’t interfere with each other."

Glen studied the web of glyphs. Two systems drawn over each other, their lines crossing without colliding. The elegance of it struck him — not a compromise, not a half-measure, but a recognition that the Tower had always been capable of more than one thing. The System had built the extraction engine on top of the bridge’s bones. Arthur had seen that the bones were still there, still load-bearing, still ready to carry what they’d always carried.

"Then why did the System kill the bridge?"

"Because the bridge made the extraction engine inefficient. With both running, the Tower draws less mana — the bridge siphons some of the energy flow into the pre-System channel. The System’s output drops. Not by much — maybe ten percent. But the System was built to maximize extraction. Ten percent was unacceptable."

Ten percent. Glen turned that over. A harvesting engine that gave up ten percent of its crop was, to the System, a broken machine. The System didn’t weigh cost against benefit. It measured output, and anything that reduced output was waste to be cut away. The bridge had been alive for millennia before the System came. The System looked at it, saw a ten-percent drag on the harvest, and tore it out. The court — an entire civilization’s worth of communication, signaling, presence — had been sacrificed for a fractional gain in efficiency.

"So the System broke the bridge to increase the harvest."

"Yes. And the court lost its communication network. The bridges were how the court connected to the physical world. Without them, the court went dormant. It couldn’t reach through. It couldn’t signal. It slept."

Glen sat down. Arthur’s desk. Arthur’s chair. The surface was worn where his father’s hands had rested. The idea forming in Glen’s mind was large enough to change everything.

"If I build a hybrid Tower," he said slowly, "the System keeps its extraction engine. The cage stays standing. The System’s infrastructure survives. But the bridge is also active. The court’s channel is open."

"Yes."

"And the court can use the bridge to signal."

"Yes. But — and this is the key — the court’s signal would be structured. Contained. Channeled through the bridge architecture. Not the raw, chaotic flood of a reverted Tower. A controlled flow. The bridge regulates it."

"Like a dam instead of a broken pipe."

"Exactly. The bridge doesn’t cut the court’s signal. It structures it. Limits it. The court can communicate, but at a controlled rate. Not the screaming pulse that’s been shaking the network."

Glen stood. The idea was spinning. If the hybrid state worked — if he could build Towers that were both bridge and extraction engine — then the court’s signal wouldn’t be eliminated. It would be managed. The court could still wake, but slowly. Controllably. Not the violent alarm-clock reversion that was shaking the world apart.

The implications spread outward as he thought. A hybrid Tower wasn’t just a fix for one node. It was a template. If Addis Ababa held, every Tower after it could be built the same way — bridge and engine running in parallel, the cage standing but the door open, the court’s voice reduced from a scream to a whisper that the world could survive hearing. The System’s harvest would continue. The court would breathe. Both could exist in the same structure, on the same stone, separated by frequency the way two radio stations shared the same air.

"What’s the catch?" he asked.

Mary’s expression tightened. "The hybrid state is unstable. Arthur’s calculations showed a sixty percent chance of structural failure within the first hour. The extraction engine and the bridge operate on different frequencies, but they share the same physical infrastructure. If the frequencies interfere — if they create a resonance cascade — the Tower tears itself apart."

"Sixty percent failure."

"Arthur’s estimate. Based on theoretical models. He never tested it."

"Because he didn’t have a carrier."

"Because he didn’t have you."

Glen looked at the tablet. Arthur’s loose handwriting. The idea chased across stone. A father’s theory, waiting for a son to test it.

"The stabilization method has a thirty-second lock. How long is the hybrid lock?"

Mary checked the tablet. "Sixty seconds. Double the standard lock. You have to hold both frequencies simultaneously — the bridge frequency and the extraction engine frequency — while they find equilibrium."

"Sixty seconds at what void cost?"

"Forty percent. Double the standard."

"I’m at twelve percent."

"I know."

"Then I need to be at forty before I try this."

"Twenty-eight hours of recovery. Minimum."

Glen did the math. Twenty-eight hours. Addis Ababa was the sixth Tower — the final priority Tower. The defector’s timeline said five days. He’d used three. Two left. Twenty-eight hours of recovery left him with roughly twenty-four hours to stabilize the last Tower.

"Can I do the hybrid at Addis Ababa?" he asked. "Instead of the standard stabilization?"

Mary considered. "Addis Ababa is a flickering Tower. The System’s architecture is still partially intact. That actually helps — the extraction engine is still functional. You wouldn’t need to rebuild it. You’d just need to activate the bridge alongside it."

"Less work than a full stabilization?"

"Different work. You’re not replacing the extraction engine. You’re adding the bridge. The foundation step is shorter because the Tower’s structure is already there. But the lock is longer — sixty seconds instead of thirty. And the void cost is higher."

"Forty percent for the lock. Plus the foundation. Plus the bridge structure. Total cost?"

"Sixty percent. Maybe sixty-five."

"At twelve percent, I need to recover to sixty-five. That’s..." He calculated. "Fifty-three percent recovery. At my current rate, that’s forty hours. Not twenty-eight."

Mary’s face fell. "I was counting only the lock. With the full sequence..."

"Forty hours. I don’t have forty hours."

The archive was quiet. The pre-System lighting hummed. Arthur’s desk sat between them, worn and patient. A dead man’s workspace, still holding the shape of his hands.

"There’s another option," Mary said. She didn’t look at Glen when she said it. She looked at the tablet. At Arthur’s handwriting. "The direct method."

"The direct method almost killed me at Khartoum."

"The direct method at Khartoum was running raw energy through your body at seven-times density. Addis Ababa is a flickering Tower. Two-point-five times density. Maybe three. The direct method at three-times density is survivable."

"Survivable isn’t the same as safe."

"No. But the direct method bypasses the void. It draws energy from the ley-lines directly. The void cost is minimal — maybe ten percent instead of sixty-five."

"Ten percent. I have twelve."

"You have enough. Barely."

Glen looked at his hands. The ring sat on his finger — warm, dim, recharging. The void hummed in his chest at twelve percent. The direct method had nearly killed him at Khartoum, but Khartoum had been seven-times density. Three-times was different. Three-times was in the ring’s rated capacity.

"And the hybrid lock? Sixty seconds with raw energy?"

"The ring structures the energy. The lock is the same — you hold both frequencies until they find equilibrium. The difference is the energy source. Instead of the void providing the power, the ley-lines provide it. The ring structures it. Your body carries it."

"Carries raw energy for sixty seconds."

"Yes."

"And if the ring fails?"

"Then the raw energy overwhelms your nervous system. Same risk as Khartoum. But at three-times density instead of seven-times. The ring’s structuring capacity is rated for five. You’d be within margin."

"Within margin." Glen turned the phrase over. Within margin meant the ring could handle it. Within margin didn’t mean his body could.

"The team," he said. "Caleb’s distribution array. Yuki’s barrier. Vera’s perimeter. Can they support the hybrid direct method?"

Mary thought. "Caleb’s array would need recalibration. The distribution has to handle two frequencies simultaneously — the bridge frequency and the extraction engine frequency. He’d need to split the modulation circuit."

"Can he do that?"

"He built the array in two days. He can modify it in one."

"And Yuki’s barrier?"

"The barrier would need to filter two frequencies. Pre-System and System-regulated. Yuki can adjust the barrier’s resonance — she’s done it before. But holding two frequencies simultaneously is harder than holding one."

"Ask her."

"I will."

Glen picked up the tablet. Arthur’s loose handwriting. The hybrid state. A theory waiting for a test. A father’s idea, built for a son who hadn’t been born when the theory was written.

"Tomorrow," Glen said. "Addis Ababa. The hybrid direct method. The team."

"Tomorrow."

"And if it works?"

Mary looked at him. The expression that was becoming familiar — pride, fear, and something older. "If it works, you’ve found a third option. Not the cage. Not the collapse. A hybrid. The System survives. The bridge stays open. The court’s signal is managed, not eliminated. The cage becomes... a room. With a door."

"A door we control."

"A door you control."

Glen placed the tablet back on the desk. Arthur’s desk. Arthur’s idea. Arthur’s son.

"Get Caleb," he said. "Get Yuki. Get Vera. We have twenty-four hours to prepare for something that’s never been done before."

The team assembled in the operations center at noon. Caleb brought the distribution array and a toolkit. Vera came from the ready room. Yuki arrived from the east wing. Mary brought the tablets.

Glen explained the hybrid state. The dual-frequency Tower. The bridge and the extraction engine coexisting. The sixty-second lock. The direct method. The risks.

The room was quiet when he finished.

"Sixty percent structural failure," Caleb said.

"Arthur’s estimate. Based on theoretical models."

"Arthur didn’t have a carrier. Arthur didn’t have the ring. Arthur didn’t have the Tower’s classification of Beyond." Caleb was running the numbers behind his glasses. "The failure probability is a function of frequency interference. If the ring can hold both frequencies simultaneously without resonance cascade, the failure probability drops. The question is whether the ring’s structuring capacity can handle dual-frequency output."

"Can it?" Glen asked Mary.

Mary looked at the tablet. "Arthur’s notes say the ring was designed for single-frequency structuring. Dual-frequency would require... modification."

"Modification how?"

"A second channel. The ring currently structures pre-System energy. To simultaneously structure System-regulated mana, it would need a second modulation pathway. Parallel to the first."

"Can you build that?"

Mary was quiet for a moment. "I built the ring. I know its architecture. A second channel is possible. But it requires pre-System materials. The same kind of stone the tablets are made from. And it requires time."

"How much time?"

"Eight hours. If I have the materials."

"The tablets."

Mary looked at the seventh tablet — the one with Arthur’s hybrid notes. The one she’d been studying all night. "I’d need to reshape one of the tablets. Incorporate its stone into the ring’s structure. The glyph patterns on the tablet would become the second channel’s architecture."

"You’d be using Arthur’s notes to modify the ring."

"I’d be using Arthur’s notes to finish what the ring was always meant to do. Arthur designed the hybrid theory. I built the ring. The ring was always supposed to be a dual-frequency tool. I just didn’t know it when I built it."

Glen looked at the ring on his finger. The ring Mary had made. The ring Arthur had designed the theory for. Two parents’ work, converging on their son’s hand.

"Do it," he said. "Eight hours. Caleb, recalibrate the array for dual-frequency distribution. Yuki, practice holding two frequencies in the barrier. Vera, we leave at dawn."

The team dispersed. Mary took the tablets to a workbench. Caleb took the array to his workshop. Yuki went to the training bay. Vera went to the ready room — to sleep, Glen hoped, but probably to clean her bracers and wait.

Mary worked through the afternoon. The workbench lamp threw a hard circle of light across the stone. She set the seventh tablet on a cloth and studied it one more time — the glyphs Arthur had chased across the surface, the loose handwriting, the idea he’d been running toward when he wrote it. Then she began.

The tablet’s stone was pre-System. Dense, faintly luminescent, the color of deep water. She scored a line across it with a carbide stylus and tapped until a clean fracture split the stone along the grain. The break exposed the interior — a lattice of fine channels that the glyphs had been running along, the same architecture that let pre-System energy flow through the tablet in the first place. That lattice was what she needed. The second channel would be built from it.

She worked the shard down to a thin plate, then thinner, grinding the edges against a honing stone until the piece was narrow enough to wrap. Her hands were steady. They hadn’t been steady an hour ago, when she’d first said the words reshape the tablet. But the work had settled her. The hands knew what to do even when the rest of her didn’t.

The ring sat in a clamp on the bench. She’d built it from scratch nine months ago — melted the pre-System alloy, poured it into the mold she’d carved from a wax blank, filed the band to width, set the channel. She knew every millimeter of it. The interior groove where the structuring glyphs ran. The contact points that matched the carrier’s mana signature. The resonance node at the crown of the band, where the frequency locked.

She laid the thin plate against the band and began to fit it. The plate had to sit flush against the existing channel — parallel, not overlapping, separated by a gap thinner than a hair. Two pathways. Two frequencies. The same band, the same ring, the same hand that would wear it.

The grafting was the slow part. She traced the glyph patterns from Arthur’s notes onto the plate with a fine-tipped engraving tool, copying the web she’d studied all night. Each line had to match the tablet’s original geometry — the angles, the intersections, the way the channels branched and rejoined. Arthur’s architecture, transferred by hand onto a shard of his own stone, fitted onto a ring his wife had built. She thought about that as she worked. She thought about it and kept working.

Four hours in, the second channel was taking shape. The plate sat against the band, held by a setting of micro-fused alloy, the engraved glyphs catching the lamplight. She tested the resonance with a pulse of pre-System energy — the ring hummed, both channels vibrating, the frequencies distinct. Separate. Not interfering. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

The remaining hours were calibration. Fine adjustments to the resonance node so it could hold two locks instead of one. Widening the contact points so the carrier’s signature could feed both channels. Testing, re-testing, the lamp burning steady above the bench while the stone dust settled on the cloth and the tools cooled in their rack.

When she finished, the ring looked almost unchanged. A second channel, invisible to the eye, running parallel to the first inside the band. Arthur’s stone grafted onto Mary’s work. A theory and a craft, married on a single band of alloy.

She held it under the lamp and turned it. The light caught the glyphs on the new channel — faint, precise, written in a dead man’s hand and copied by a living woman’s fingers. She set the ring down and pressed her palms flat against the bench. The work was done. The grief was not. She let it sit where it was and went to find Glen.

Caleb recalibrated through the same hours. His workshop smelled of solder and hot insulation. The array lay open on the bench, its modulation circuit exposed — a grid of tuning crystals set in a ceramic frame, each one calibrated to the pre-System frequency he’d designed the array around. Single-frequency. One channel. One signal.

He needed two.

He started by mapping the circuit. Every crystal, every junction, every path the energy took from the input buffer to the distribution output. He drew it on the whiteboard beside the bench — a schematic in blue marker, clean lines, the architecture he’d built in forty-eight hours now needing to become something it was never designed to be. The bridge frequency ran through the center of the grid. The extraction-engine frequency would have to run parallel, on a second set of crystals, sharing the distribution output without colliding.

He didn’t have spare crystals. He had the ones in the array. So he split them. Half the grid would carry the bridge frequency. Half would carry the extraction-engine frequency. The distribution output would merge the two signals at the far end, feeding them to Glen’s ring as a single structured pulse.

The math was brutal. Each crystal had to be re-tuned — the bridge set to the pre-System frequency Arthur’s notes specified, the extraction set to the System-regulated frequency the archives documented. He tuned them one at a time, a micro-screwdriver and an oscilloscope, watching the waveform settle on each crystal before moving to the next. Twelve crystals. Six hours. His eyes ached behind his glasses and his back ached from the bench stool and he didn’t stop.

At the five-hour mark he ran a test pulse through the split circuit. The oscilloscope showed two distinct frequencies — clean, separated, the bridge signal and the engine signal running parallel through the array. At the merge point, they combined without interference. He watched the screen for a full minute, looking for phase drift, looking for harmonic bleed, looking for the resonance cascade that would tear a Tower apart. The lines held steady.

He leaned back. The array was ready. He wasn’t sure Glen was.

Yuki trained in the bay. The barrier spell was one she knew — she’d held it for six Towers, felt its shape in her hands until it was as familiar as breathing. One frequency. One wall. The mana moved through her and she shaped it and the wall stood.

Two frequencies was a different animal.

She started with the barrier at its standard setting — the pre-System frequency, the wall she knew. Then she began threading the second signal in. The extraction-engine frequency, borrowed from a resonance crystal Mary had prepared, humming at a pitch that fought the first. Her hands shook. The wall flickered. She let the second signal drop and caught the first before it collapsed, steadied the barrier, breathed.

Again. The second signal threaded in alongside the first. The wall flickered, held, flickered. The two frequencies pushed against each other inside the structure of the barrier, each one wanting the wall to resonate its way. She held them both. The wall steadied. She held it for ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. At forty, the second signal slipped and the wall collapsed inward, the energy snapping back into her palms like a released spring. She gasped. The burn was sharp, immediate, familiar.

She shook out her hands and started again.

Through the afternoon and into the evening, she built the hold. Ten seconds became thirty. Thirty became a minute. The shaking in her hands came and went and came back. She held the dual-frequency wall for ninety seconds, then two minutes, then two and a half. The barrier spell had never asked this of her. Every Tower before this had been single-frequency — one signal, one wall, one purpose. The hybrid asked her to hold two purposes in the same structure and keep them from tearing each other apart.

By the time the light in the bay had shifted to evening, she could hold the wall for three minutes. The ring’s lock was sixty seconds. She had margin. She sat on the training mat, let her hands fall open, and waited for the tremor to pass.

Vera prepared the way Vera always prepared. She stripped her bracers, oiled the joints, checked the edge on every blade she carried. She ran through the perimeter protocols in her head — the approach, the hold, the fallback. The work was the same as every Tower. The stakes were different, and she knew it, and she didn’t let it change the work.

Glen stayed in the operations center. Alone. The map on the wall showed the network — six stabilized Towers, two fallen, twelve still reverted. The court’s signal pulsed through the remaining relays. The clock was running.

Tomorrow, he’d try something that had never been done. A hybrid Tower. A dual-frequency bridge. A cage with a door. Arthur’s theory. Mary’s ring. Glen’s body. The team’s coordination.

If it worked, the world changed. If it didn’t, Glen changed — into a corpse, or worse, into something the raw energy left behind.

He looked at the map one more time. Then he went to find Isla.

She was in the east corridor. The same window. The same view. The pre-System lighting had dimmed to its evening setting, and the glow fell soft across the stone floor, catching the edges of the arched ceiling. She stood where the corridor widened toward the window, the light pooling at her back, her silhouette held still against the glass. The view beyond was the compound’s eastern wall and the dark line of the hills beyond it. She’d been standing there long enough that the stone beneath her feet had taken her weight without comment.

She turned when she heard his footsteps. The sound carried in the corridor — the empty stone, the arched ceiling, the way the air sat still in a passage built for movement that had stopped. His steps were the only motion in the hall. She tracked them before she turned, her head tilting slightly, reading the gait.

"You’re going tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow."

"The hybrid thing. The thing that’s never been done."

"The thing that’s never been done."

Isla looked at him. The composure was there — the aristocratic precision, the controlled expression. But behind it, something moved. The same thing that had moved in the corridor when he’d said I need you to be the thing I come back to.

The distance between them was ten paces of empty stone. The light lay flat across it. Neither of them closed it. The corridor held them where they stood, the architecture of the space doing the work that words wouldn’t.

"Come back," she said. Again. The same words. The same weight.

"I will." Again. The same answer. The same promise.

He turned. He walked away. The corridor stretched behind him. She watched him go. He knew because he always knew.

Tomorrow, the sixth Tower. The hybrid. The turning point.

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