SSS Ranked Talent: I Can Upgrade My Skills Infinitely-Chapter 201: The Siege of the Marianas, The Deepest Anchor

Chapter 201: The Siege of the Marianas, The Deepest Anchor

"Silence," Alvian commanded, his voice slicing through the panic like a blade.

The room instantly quieted. Every eye turned to the Godslayer.

"We have less than twelve hours," Alvian announced, walking to the head of the table. "The Syndicate’s gravitational tether is powered by a network of five Beacons. They are linked. If we destroy one, the others will compensate. We cannot take them out sequentially."

"So we hit them all at once," Kincaid grunted from the corner, hefting his massive warhammer. The mercenary warlord looked eager for violence. "I like a good multi-front raid."

"Exactly," Seraphina said, tapping her console. The globe on the table fragmented, zooming in on five distinct red pillars of light. "The command hub in Paris is down. That leaves four active nodes. Siberia. The Sahara Desert. The Amazon Rainforest. And the primary anchor, located in the Marianas Trench."

"We split the forces," Alvian dictated, his eyes moving over the assembled leaders. "We use the Azureus teleportation grid to drop strike teams simultaneously. You will breach the defenses, reach the core of the Beacons, and plant the Genesis Warheads I forged."

He looked at Magnus and Kaelen. "Guardians. You take Siberia. The cold won’t bother the Iron Shell, and the speed will keep you ahead of the automated defenses."

"Consider it done," Magnus rumbled, his stone face set in absolute resolve. Kaelen simply gave a rapid, vibrating salute, already itching to move.

"Kincaid, General Winters," Alvian turned to the mercenary and the human military leader. "You take the Sahara. Use the terrestrial tanks enchanted with the Abyssal Guard’s armor. It will be a heavy siege. Break their lines."

"We’ll turn the desert into glass, Boss," Kincaid grinned, showing his gold teeth.

Alvian finally turned to Valeria. "Commander. You take the Amazon. The Syndicate has heavily mutated the local flora and fauna there. It will be a meat grinder. I need the Vanguard to hold the line."

"I am the anvil," Valeria said firmly, striking her chest plate with a gauntleted fist. "They will break against us."

"And the Primary Anchor?" Lady Ola asked, hovering near the table. "The Marianas Trench is the deepest point on this planet. The pressure there will crush any submarine, and the mana density of the Beacon will fry our teleportation coordinates. We cannot send an army down there."

"I am not sending an army," Alvian said, equipping the [Lance of the Void Winter] to his back. The black ice of the weapon seemed to suck the light out of the room. "I am going alone."

"Alvian, no," Valeria stepped forward, her professional facade slipping. "You can’t solo the Primary Anchor. It’s suicide."

"It is mathematics," Alvian corrected, his tone brokering no argument. "My [Chaos Body] can withstand the atmospheric pressure of the trench. My [Void Step] can bypass the coordinate scramblers. Anyone else who goes down there will die instantly. I am the only viable asset for this node."

Valeria stared at him, her jaw tight. She knew he was right. She hated that he was right.

"Synchronize your chronometers," Alvian ordered the room. "You have exactly two hours to prep your gear and board the drop-pods. We detonate the warheads at exactly zero-hour. Dismissed."

The room cleared out rapidly, leaving only Alvian and Valeria by the glowing table.

She walked up to him, grabbing the lapels of his dark coat. She didn’t yell. She just looked at him with an intensity that made his [Void Monarch] passives stutter.

"Don’t die on me, efficiency expert," Valeria whispered fiercely. "If you get crushed at the bottom of the ocean, I will literally dive down there and kill you myself."

Alvian offered a faint, tired smirk. He raised his bandaged hand, gently cupping the side of her face. "I calculate a ninety-nine percent probability of my return. I still have to inspect your armor."

Valeria let out a watery laugh, leaning into his hand. "Hold the line, Alvian."

"Always," he promised.

—-

The drop from Azureus was a masterclass in calculated violence. Alvian stood at the edge of the deployment bay, the roaring wind of the stratosphere whipping his dark coat around his legs. Far below, the Pacific Ocean churned with unnatural fury, massive whirlpools forming as the moon’s gravity wreaked havoc on the tides.

"Comms check," Alvian said, his voice carrying over the secure channel.

"Siberia in position," Magnus’s heavy rumble echoed. "It’s cold. Kaelen is complaining."

"Sahara team locked and loaded, Boss," Kincaid shouted over the roar of tank engines. "Ready to bring the heat."

"Amazon vanguard holding," Valeria’s voice came through, steady and clear, sending a brief wave of calm through Alvian’s chest. "We are at the breach point."

"Sync timers," Alvian commanded, stepping off the edge of the dreadnought. "Execute."

He plummeted toward the ocean like a falling star. He didn’t bother with a grav-chute or a flight spell. He angled his body, maximizing his aerodynamic profile. As he approached the surface of the water, he activated the [Greaves of the Tide-Runner] and maximized his [Chaos Body] density.

He didn’t splash into the Pacific. He punched a hole through it.

The impact sent a shockwave for miles, but Alvian was already sinking. The descent was a sensory deprivation nightmare. The light faded from deep blue to bruised purple, and finally to an absolute, suffocating black. The temperature dropped to near freezing, and the pressure spiked astronomically.

Any normal human, or even a high-level player without specific deep-sea gear, would have been crushed into paste within seconds. But Alvian’s body simply adapted. The [Tablet of the Earth Core] fused to his bones hummed, pushing back against the crushing weight of the water.

He fell for miles. Past the midnight zone. Past the abyssal zone. Down into the hadalpelagic zone—the Marianas Trench.

As he neared the bottom, his enhanced vision finally picked up light. It wasn’t the bioluminescence of deep-sea fish. It was a sickly, pulsating yellow glow that made the water taste of rot and corrupted data.

Alvian engaged his repulsors, slowing his descent to a gentle halt just above the silt-covered floor of the trench.

He looked ahead. The Primary Beacon was a horrific monument to Syndicate engineering. It was a towering spire of black metal, completely overgrown with massive, fleshy tentacles that pumped a visible distortion field directly into the bedrock of the planet. It was the anchor pulling the moon down.

But it wasn’t unguarded.

The water in front of the Beacon shifted. It didn’t move with the natural flow of the current; it was displaced by a massive, unnatural presence.

"System. Scan," Alvian whispered.

[Target Identified: Corrupted Sovereign - Oceanus]

[Level: 70]

[Status: Resurrected / Syndicate Puppet]

Alvian’s grip on his lance tightened. The entity floating before him bore the face of Lord Oceanus, the ancient City Lord of Azureus who had sacrificed himself to save the city. But the nobility was gone.

His blue skin was now a sickly, translucent grey, revealing the rusted, corrupted cybernetics beneath. His eyes were empty, glowing with the same yellow light as the Beacon. He held a twisted, jagged version of his coral scepter, dripping with toxic ink.

The Syndicate hadn’t just killed him. They had scraped his deleted data from the server, recompiled it with cosmic horror code, and turned him into a guard dog.

"High... Marshall..." Oceanus’s voice bubbled through the water, a distorted, agonizing gurgle of a soul trapped in a broken machine. "You... should not... have come..."

Alvian felt a rare flare of genuine, hot anger in his chest. He respected Oceanus. The City Lord had been a variable that chose duty over survival. This resurrection was a gross inefficiency. It was a desecration.

"They broke your code," Alvian said softly, his violet eyes locking onto the tragic figure of the former king. He raised the [Edge of Entropy], the colorless blade humming with the promise of absolute erasure. "I am going to fix it. I will grant you a proper deletion, my friend."

Oceanus shrieked, the sound tearing through the water like a physical blow, and raised his corrupted scepter. The water around them turned black with ink and malice.

Alvian didn’t hesitate. He charged into the dark.

—-

The descent into the Marianas Trench was less like swimming and more like being slowly digested by a giant, freezing snake.

Alvian plummeted through the hadalpelagic zone, the deepest, darkest, and most hostile environment on Earth. The light from the surface had vanished miles ago, replaced by an absolute, suffocating blackness that seemed to press against his very eyeballs. The temperature hovered just a fraction of a degree above freezing, and the pressure was so immense it would have crumpled a standard nuclear submarine into a metallic spitball within seconds.

For Alvian, it was mostly just annoying.

His [Chaos Body] adapted, the [Tablet of the Earth Core] fused to his bones humming a low, steady rhythm that perfectly counteracted the crushing weight of the ocean. He didn’t need to breathe—the [Vestments of the Void Monarch] synthesized a localized life-support field—but the sheer density of the water made every movement feel like he was swimming through wet concrete.