SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely

Chapter 216 216: A Costly Upgrade, Merging with the Core

Alvian didn't say anything. He just looked down at the floor.

Valeria followed his gaze, staring at the solid metal grating. Then, her eyes widened. "Alvian. No. Tell me you aren't thinking about doing what I think you're thinking about doing."

"The Earth has a molten iron core," Alvian stated, his voice adopting that terrifyingly calm, analytical tone. "It is a spinning dynamo of immense thermal and kinetic energy. It generates a magnetic field that already protects the planet from solar radiation. It is, by all definitions, a massive, unoptimized mana reactor."

"You want to plug the System into the Earth's core?" Valeria rubbed her temples, a headache already forming. "Alvian, that's not a computer part. It's magma. It's thousands of miles beneath us."

"I have the [Tablet of the Earth Core]," Alvian reminded her, tapping his chest. "And I have the [Super Upgrade System]. I just need to get down there."

"You are going to dig a hole to the center of the Earth?"

"Digging is inefficient," Alvian said, stepping past her. "I'm going to swim."

Ten minutes later, Alvian stood at the lowest point of the Azureus dreadnought, staring down through the open deployment bay at the ruined, ash-covered surface of the world.

He didn't bother bringing a strike team. No one else could survive the pressure, the heat, or the sheer density of the planet's inner layers. This was a solo run.

"System. Activate [Tablet of the Earth Core]. Mode: Intangible Descent."

He dropped from the bay. He hit the ground and simply didn't stop. He passed through the ruined crust of the Earth like a ghost walking through a wall. The sensation was profoundly bizarre. He wasn't falling through empty space; he was clipping through solid rock. The visual data was a blinding blur of greys, browns, and eventually, glowing reds.

The temperature spiked to catastrophic levels as he breached the mantle. The [Thermal Nullification] passive of his Void Vestments fought a brutal war against the ambient heat. If he lost focus for a microsecond, he would be instantly incinerated into carbon dust.

"Inefficient planet design," Alvian grumbled to himself as he sank through a layer of highly pressurized silicate rock. "Too much padding. Not enough core."

He finally breached the outer core. The world turned into a swirling, violent ocean of liquid iron and nickel. It was deafening. The magnetic forces tore at his digital interface, throwing up dozens of red error prompts that he mentally swiped away out of pure annoyance.

He pushed deeper, his [Chaos Body] groaning under the sheer gravitational weight of the entire world pressing down on him from all sides. Finally, he reached it. The inner core. A solid sphere of white-hot iron, suspended in the center of the planet.

Alvian landed on it. His boots hissed, the [Void] mana actively fighting to keep him from melting into the surface.

"System," Alvian commanded, his voice vibrating through his own bones. "Target: Planetary Core. Initiate [Super Upgrade]."

[Warning! Target exceeds standard mass parameters by 5.972 × 10^24 kg.]

[Authority Invoked: Administrator.]

[To alter a populated server environment, planetary consensus is required. Administrator must establish a temporary neural link with all active biological entities to force override.]

Alvian froze. A planetary consensus? He had to link his mind with every living thing on Earth?

"Are you joking?" Alvian muttered. "There are eight billion people up there. Plus the monsters. Plus the Sea Races."

The System didn't answer. It just waited for his input.

He sighed. "Efficiency dictates sacrifice. Usually, it's just my sanity."

Alvian placed both of his glowing, void-infused hands flat against the white-hot surface of the inner core. He opened his mind, dropping his mental fortresses and allowing the System to use his brain as a cosmic router.

"Do it."

The connection was instantaneous, and it was absolute hell.

Eight billion voices slammed into his consciousness at once. It wasn't a chorus; it was a catastrophic avalanche of noise. He felt a teenager in Tokyo panicking about a math test amidst the apocalypse. He felt a mother in the ruins of London singing a lullaby to a crying infant. He felt the blind, hungry rage of a mutated draconic thrall wandering the Sahara. He felt a guy in a bunker somewhere profoundly annoyed that the internet was down because he was in the middle of a really good movie.

It was too much. It was grief, terror, love, hunger, and petty grievances all blended into a psychic sledgehammer. Alvian's mind began to fracture. His flawless, calculating logic was being drowned out by the sheer, messy inefficiency of human emotion. He was forgetting who he was. He was becoming the noise.

You don't need to save them all. Prime's voice echoed mockingly in the back of his fading mind. Delete the variables.

"No," Alvian's fading consciousness whispered.

Through the deafening roar of eight billion souls, a single, clear anchor appeared in his mind. He felt a phantom warmth on his knuckles. He saw grey eyes filled with stubborn, absolute resolve. He heard Valeria's voice, not from the neural link, but from his own memory.

I am the Anvil. They break against me.

Alvian grabbed onto that memory like a drowning man grabbing a life preserver. He used it to center himself, pulling his fragmented consciousness back together around that single point of warmth. He wasn't trying to process the eight billion voices anymore. He just needed to be louder than them.

He poured every ounce of his [Void Sovereign] authority into the network.

"OVERRIDE!" Alvian roared, his voice projecting through the core and into the minds of every living creature on the planet.

The sheer force of his willpower severed the mental link, forcing the System to accept his administrative command.

[Override Accepted.]

[Consuming Daily Charge...]

"Upgrade," Alvian gasped, his body slumping against the core as blinding, golden light erupted from his hands, sinking deep into the heart of the world.

——

The reaction was not immediate. For three long, agonizing seconds after Alvian poured the golden light of the [Super Upgrade System] into the Earth's inner core, nothing happened. The liquid iron ocean around him continued to swirl with violent indifference.

Then, the planet shuddered.

It wasn't a destructive earthquake. It was the deep, resonant thrum of an engine turning over for the first time. The white-hot iron beneath Alvian's hands began to pulse with a new, rhythmic energy. The natural magnetic field of the Earth was violently hijacked, interwoven with the chaotic, highly structured mana of Gods Domain.

High above, on the bruised and battered surface of the planet, the survivors felt it before they saw it.

In the ruins of New York, a group of scavengers huddled around a trash-can fire stopped mid-argument, dropping their weapons as the ground vibrated with a low, musical hum. In the Sahara, General Winters gripped the edge of his command tank as the desert sand began to shift and dance in geometric patterns.

Then came the light.

Massive, brilliant blue ley lines erupted from the earth. They shot up from the Marianas Trench, tore across the plains of Africa, spider-webbed through the concrete ruins of Europe, and pulsed beneath the ice of Antarctica. The planet looked as though it were being wrapped in a glowing, digital nervous system.

"Look up!" a Vanguard knight yelled from the battlements of Azureus, pointing his sword at the sky.

Valeria, standing on the balcony with her heart lodged firmly in her throat, tilted her head back.

The blue ley lines didn't stop at the surface. They shot straight up into the atmosphere, miles into the sky, before suddenly banking and connecting with one another. A massive, hexagonal energy shield—a perfect, shimmering sphere of impenetrable light—locked into place, encasing the entire globe.

It was the [Tidal Barrier], but magnified to a planetary scale, infused with the impenetrable density of the Iron Shell and the violent, reactive force of Alvian's own design.

A moment later, a sharp, crystalline chime echoed in the minds of every single human, merfolk, and surviving creature on the planet. A glowing blue system prompt materialized in their vision.

[System Patch 2.0 Installed.]

[Planetary Defense Grid: Active. Welcome to the Terra-Sphere.]

[Hostile Extraterrestrial Entities will now be subject to environmental friction.]

In a ruined cafe in Rome, a survivor stared at the blue box hovering over his half-eaten, three-day-old ration bar. "Well," he muttered, blinking in disbelief. "That's a hell of an update."

Deep in the Earth's core, Alvian pushed himself off the white-hot surface. His [Chaos Body] was smoking, the edges of his vision swimming with dark spots. The mental strain of linking with eight billion minds had left him feeling like his brain had been put through a meat grinder.

"Phase one complete," Alvian rasped, his throat feeling like sandpaper. "System. Get me out of here."

He activated [Void Step], locking onto the coordinates of the Azureus War Room.

He didn't reappear with a dramatic flourish. He stumbled out of the spatial tear, his boots catching on the polished coral floor, and promptly face-planted into the holographic strategy table.