SSS-Rank Skill Copy: I Can Steal Every Class

Chapter 106: The Drop

The wind at Level 40 of the Celestial Tower was not a breeze; it was a physical force. It howled through the jagged hole Glen had kicked in the obsidian wall, tearing at his clothes and threatening to rip the canvas bag from his shoulder.

Behind him, the vault was bathed in the frantic, strobing red light of the emergency lockdown protocols. The heavy blast doors were groaning as the Imperial Vanguard reinforcements on the other side began cutting through the steel with thermal lances.

Glen didn’t look back. He stepped up to the jagged edge of the hole and looked down.

Four hundred feet below, the pristine, white-tiled streets of the Inner Sector looked like a glowing circuit board. The drop was absolute. There were no ledges, no balconies, no convenient awnings to break his fall. Just a sheer, vertical plunge into the heart of the Mega-Sanctuary.

He had the Ferryman’s toll—the wooden puzzle box—tucked securely into his jacket. He had the Purification Core in his bag.

Now, he just had to survive gravity.

Glen stepped off the ledge.

The sensation of freefall was instantaneous and terrifying. The wind roared in his ears, deafening him as the smooth black stone of the Celestial Tower blurred past his vision. The neon lights of the city below rushed up to meet him at terminal velocity.

He didn’t panic. He didn’t flail. He kept his body rigid, his dark eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching ground.

He couldn’t use Lightning Movement to arrest his fall. The explosive kinetic energy required a solid surface to push off from. If he triggered it in mid-air, the recoil would just spin him out of control and shatter his spine when he hit the pavement.

He had to use the shadows.

At two hundred feet, Glen raised his left hand, his fingers splayed wide against the rushing wind.

Shadow Thread.

He didn’t shoot the threads at the ground. He shot them horizontally, aiming for the sleek, white composite skyscrapers flanking the plaza below. Five razor-sharp lines of black mana shot from his fingertips, stretching across the fifty-yard gap and biting deep into the reinforced glass of a luxury high-rise.

The threads held, anchored by the sheer density of his core.

Glen didn’t pull. He let his downward momentum do the work. As he plummeted past the anchor point, the threads pulled taut, acting like a massive, high-tension pendulum.

The sudden, violent shift in trajectory was agonizing. The G-force slammed into him, threatening to dislocate his left shoulder. His ruined right arm screamed in protest as his body was whipped in a massive, sweeping arc across the plaza, his downward fall converted into horizontal velocity.

He swung across the pristine street, a blur of black and blue energy, soaring over the heads of terrified, elite citizens who looked up just in time to see a shadow tear across the artificial twilight.

At the apex of the swing, Glen released the threads.

He launched through the air, soaring over a glowing mag-lev track and crashing heavily onto the sloped, reinforced roof of a transit station. He hit the composite plating hard, rolling several times to bleed off the kinetic energy before coming to a halt near the edge.

He lay there for a second, his chest heaving, his left arm trembling violently from the strain of holding his entire body weight at terminal velocity.

He had survived the drop.

But the city was already reacting.

Above him, the jagged hole in the Celestial Tower was swarming with glowing patrol drones. Sirens wailed across the Inner Sector, a discordant symphony of corporate panic. The Imperial Vanguard had realized the vault was breached, and they were locking down the entire grid.

Glen forced himself to his feet. He couldn’t stay here. If the Vanguard caught him in the Inner Sectors, he would be fighting an army of A-Ranks.

He limped across the roof of the transit station, keeping low to avoid the sweeping searchlights of the drones. He reached the edge and looked down. The station bordered the massive, reinforced plasteel wall that separated the Inner Sectors from the slums.

He didn’t bother climbing down. He dropped from the roof, landing heavily in the mag-lev trench, and sprinted for the wall.

He used Shadow Thread to scale the barrier, hauling himself up and over the top just as a squad of Astra enforcers poured out of the transit station behind him. He dropped into the acidic rain and the comforting, chaotic grime of the Outer Rings.

He didn’t stop running until he reached the flooded docks of Sector 77.

The rusted trawler was exactly where he had left it. The two guards he had beaten unconscious were gone, likely dragged away by scavengers, leaving the gangplank unguarded.

Glen walked up the ramp, his boots heavy on the wooden deck. He was exhausted. The void fragment in his chest was pulsing with a dull, satisfied rhythm, having gorged itself on the ambient mana of the Celestial Tower, but his physical body was reaching its absolute limit.

He kicked open the door to the bridge.

The Ferryman was still sitting in the captain’s chair, though he had traded his crystal glass for a sleek, high-tech datapad. He looked up as Glen entered, his mirrored shades reflecting the boy’s battered, soaked appearance.

"You’re late," the Ferryman said, his smooth voice betraying a hint of genuine surprise. "The corporate chatter says someone blew a hole in the side of the Celestial Tower and jumped. I assumed you were a smear on the pavement."

Glen didn’t speak. He walked over to the navigation console, reached into his jacket, and pulled out the wooden puzzle box. He slammed it down on the metal console with a heavy thud.

The Ferryman stared at the box for a long moment. He slowly took off his mirrored shades, revealing eyes that were entirely cybernetic, glowing with a faint, calculating blue light.

"I’ll be damned," the smuggler whispered, reaching out to trace the intricate geometric carvings on the wood. "You actually did it. You robbed Empress Ryun."

"I paid the toll," Glen said, his voice a dry rasp. He unslung the canvas bag from his shoulder and set it gently on the floor. He reached inside, his fingers carefully bypassing the freezing aura of the Abyssal Prism, and pulled out the glowing white sphere of the Purification Core.

The moment the core was exposed, the dim, grimy bridge of the trawler was bathed in a pristine, stabilizing light. The Ferryman took a step back, his cybernetic eyes widening as his internal sensors tried to process the sheer density of the inverted mana.

"What in the hell is that?" the Ferryman asked, his usual cultured composure slipping.

"It’s the cure," Glen said. He found a heavy, lead-lined lockbox sitting on a nearby shelf, dumped out a handful of spare thermal clips, and placed the Purification Core inside. He sealed the box, cutting off the blinding light.

He pushed the lockbox across the console toward the smuggler.

"Sector Nine. Johannesburg," Glen said, his dark eyes locking onto the Ferryman’s face. "You drop this exactly where I tell you. You don’t open it. You don’t sell it. If this doesn’t reach Eden, I will find you, and I will rot you from the inside out."

The Ferryman looked at the lockbox, and then at the boy standing in front of him. He had dealt with warlords, corporate assassins, and rogue S-Ranks. But looking into Glen’s eyes, he saw something entirely different. He saw a predator that had completely detached itself from the rules of the Awakening System.

"I’m a professional, Wraith," the Ferryman said, his voice steadying as he slipped his shades back on. "You paid the toll. The package will be delivered."

"When?" Glen demanded.

"I’m prepping the launch sequence now," the Ferryman said, turning back to his console. "The lockdown in the Inner Sectors is pulling all the patrol drones toward the Tower. The airspace over the Outer Rings is wide open. I’ll be in the stratosphere in ten minutes, and over Johannesburg in three hours."

Glen nodded slowly. The tension that had been keeping him upright for the past six hours finally began to bleed away, leaving behind a bone-deep, crushing exhaustion.

He had done it. The cure was on its way. His mother was going to live.

"What about you, kid?" the Ferryman asked, glancing over his shoulder as the ship’s massive engines began to roar to life, vibrating the deck plates. "You can’t stay in Neo-Kyoto. You just robbed the Empress and blew up an Astra black-site. By tomorrow morning, your face is going to be on every bounty board in Asia. You want a ride out of here?"

Glen looked at the heavy canvas bag resting on the floor. The Abyssal Prism was still inside, waiting.

"No," Glen said softly.

He picked up the bag and slung it over his good shoulder. He turned and walked toward the door of the bridge.

"I’m not done here," Glen said, pausing in the doorway. He looked out at the neon-lit, rain-slicked slums of the Outer Rings, and the towering black monolith of the Celestial Tower piercing the clouds in the distance.

"I still have to find a door," Glen whispered. "And then, I have to break it down."

He stepped out into the rain, leaving the smuggler’s ship behind.

The Wraith of Neo-Kyoto disappeared into the shadows, ready to begin the long, brutal descent into the deepest dungeons of the Eastern Spire. He was going to reach S-Rank. He was going to find Caleb. And heaven help anyone who stood in his way.