SSS-Rank Skill Copy: I Can Steal Every Class

Chapter 111: The Drop

The ash fell over the ruins of Sector Nine like gray, suffocating snow.

Isla Sinclair stood on the edge of a collapsed overpass, her runic pistols drawn and resting casually against her thighs. The wind howled through the jagged, skeletal remains of the surrounding skyscrapers, carrying the bitter scent of sulfur and pulverized concrete. Below her, the landscape was a jagged, treacherous maze of fused black glass and rubble, the permanent scar left behind by the Wanderer’s apocalyptic anti-mana wave.

She pulled the collar of her heavy tactical jacket up against the biting cold, her green eyes scanning the dark, churning clouds above.

"Are you sure about the coordinates?"

Fraser stepped up beside her, his boots crunching softly on the ash-covered glass. The young Hunter looked exhausted, the makeshift bandage around his forehead stained with dried blood, but his grip on his heavy broadsword was steady. He had been standing watch with Isla for the past three hours, ever since Malachi had confirmed the encrypted burst transmission from Neo-Kyoto.

"Glen said Sector Nine," Isla replied, her voice tight with a mixture of anxiety and desperate hope. "He said he found a smuggler. If the ship made it past the Association’s quarantine blockade, this is the only flat terrain left in the sector stable enough for a low-altitude drop."

"If he made it," Fraser muttered, looking up at the sky. "The airspace over Johannesburg is locked down tight. The Association has automated orbital lasers tracking anything larger than a drone. A smuggler’s ship trying to punch through the ash clouds is basically a flying target."

"Glen wouldn’t have trusted this to someone who couldn’t deliver," Isla said firmly. She had to believe that. She had to believe that the boy who had torn his way through the Eastern Spire hadn’t done it all for nothing.

A low, rhythmic vibration began to tremble through the soles of their boots.

Isla and Fraser both tensed, raising their weapons. The vibration wasn’t coming from the ground; it was coming from the sky. The thick, gray ash clouds directly above them began to swirl and part, displaced by a massive, localized downdraft.

A rusted, heavily modified cargo trawler broke through the cloud cover.

It was a monstrous, ugly ship, its hull covered in glowing green moss and thick layers of barnacles that spoke of years spent hiding in the flooded docks of the Outer Rings. The ship didn’t have standard Association transponders. It flew dark, its massive thrusters burning with a suppressed, blue-white heat that barely made a sound over the howling wind.

"He actually did it," Fraser breathed, lowering his broadsword as the ship descended toward the overpass.

The trawler didn’t land. It hovered fifty feet above the black glass, the downwash kicking up a blinding storm of ash and debris. Isla shielded her eyes with her arm, squinting through the maelstrom.

The heavy cargo bay doors on the underside of the ship hissed open.

A single, heavy object was pushed out of the bay. It plummeted toward the ground, hitting the fused glass with a deafening, metallic clang that cracked the surface beneath it.

The moment the object hit the ground, the cargo doors snapped shut. The trawler’s engines roared, a sudden, deafening explosion of thrust that sent the ship rocketing back up into the stratosphere. In less than ten seconds, the smuggler was gone, swallowed once again by the churning gray clouds.

Isla and Fraser stood in the settling ash, the silence of the ruins rushing back in to fill the void left by the ship’s engines.

They scrambled down the sloped rubble of the overpass, sliding and slipping on the slick glass until they reached the drop zone.

Resting in the center of a small crater was a heavy, lead-lined lockbox. It was scorched from atmospheric entry, the metal still radiating a faint, residual heat. There were no markings on it, no corporate logos or shipping manifests.

Isla dropped to her knees beside the box. Her hands were shaking as she reached out and unlatched the heavy steel clasps.

She threw the lid back.

The dim, gray twilight of the ruined city was instantly banished. A blinding, pristine white light spilled out of the lockbox, casting stark, sharp shadows across the rubble. The light wasn’t just bright; it felt heavy, carrying a stabilizing, resonant warmth that immediately pushed back the oppressive, lingering chill of the Wanderer’s residual anti-mana.

Resting in the center of the lead-lined foam was a perfect, glowing sphere.

"By the gods," Fraser whispered, dropping to his knees beside her. He reached out, his hand hovering inches from the sphere, afraid to touch it. "I’ve never felt mana like this. It’s... it’s completely pure. There’s no elemental alignment, no chaotic fluctuation. It’s perfectly structured."

"It’s the Purification Core," Isla said, her voice thick with emotion. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, reflecting the brilliant white light. "He actually found it. He tore through the Astra Guild’s black-sites and he found the cure."

She carefully closed the lid, cutting off the blinding light and plunging them back into the gray gloom of the ruins. She engaged the heavy steel latches, securing the box.

"We need to get this underground," Isla said, standing up and grabbing one of the heavy handles on the side of the box. "Right now. If the Association’s orbital sensors picked up that energy spike, they’ll have a strike team here in twenty minutes."

Fraser grabbed the other handle. Together, they hauled the heavy lead box across the treacherous terrain, moving as fast as they dared over the slick, uneven glass. They navigated the maze of collapsed buildings, finally reaching the concealed, subterranean entrance to Eden’s permanent sanctuary.

The heavy blast doors hissed open, revealing the sterile, cyan-lit corridors of the ghost faction’s bunker.

Malachi and Vane were waiting for them in the primary medical wing.

The medical bay was a stark contrast to the ancient, stone-carved architecture of the rest of the sanctuary. It was packed with salvaged, high-tech medical equipment, glowing monitors, and sterile surgical tables. At the far end of the room, behind a heavy isolation curtain, Mary McDonald lay perfectly still, her breathing shallow and ragged. The black veins of the anti-mana rot had spread past her throat, crawling up her jawline and down her arms.

Vane, the third Pillar of Eden and the faction’s chief medical and technological expert, stepped forward as Isla and Fraser hauled the lockbox onto a reinforced steel table. Vane wore a sleek, silver mask that covered the upper half of his face, his cybernetic eyes whirring softly as they focused on the box.

"Open it," Vane commanded, his voice a synthesized, metallic hum.

Isla unlatched the box and threw the lid back.

The pristine white light flooded the medical bay. The ambient monitors in the room immediately began to spike, the sensors struggling to quantify the sheer density of the energy radiating from the sphere.

Vane didn’t flinch. He leaned over the box, his cybernetic eyes scanning the core with rapid, microscopic precision. He pulled a small, handheld diagnostic scanner from his coat and ran it over the glowing sphere.

The scanner chimed, a rapid sequence of high-pitched tones.

"Fascinating," Vane murmured, his synthesized voice dropping to a whisper. "The structural integrity of this core is beyond anything the Association has ever produced. It is a perfect, inverted frequency of Class-V anti-mana. The Astra Guild must have sacrificed hundreds of high-density cores to synthesize something this stable."

"Can you use it?" Isla asked, her hands gripping the edge of the steel table. "Can it save her?"

"It is not a matter of simply using it, Isla," Vane said, looking up from the scanner. "This is not a healing potion. It is a localized reality-inversion engine. To administer this cure, I must surgically embed the Purification Core directly into Morrigan’s chest cavity, aligning it perfectly with the shattered remnants of her original SS-Rank core. The core will then forcefully flush the anti-mana from her system."

"Will it work?" Fraser asked, looking nervously toward the isolation curtain.

"If the alignment is off by even a millimeter," Vane warned, his tone brutally clinical, "the conflicting energies will detonate. It will vaporize Morrigan, and it will likely level this entire bunker."

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. The stakes had never been higher. Glen had risked his life, his soul, and his humanity to get this core to them. If they failed now, it would all be for nothing.

Malachi stepped forward, his white mask reflecting the brilliant light of the core. He looked at Vane, and then at Isla.

"Morrigan has fought the rot for eighteen years," Malachi said softly. "She has endured agony that would have broken a lesser Hunter in days. She did it to protect her son. And now, her son has crossed the world to protect her."

Malachi turned his gaze to the isolation curtain.

"Begin the procedure, Vane," the leader of Eden commanded. "We will not let the boy’s sacrifice be in vain."

Vane nodded once. He reached into the lockbox with a pair of insulated, mana-resistant tongs, carefully lifting the glowing white sphere from its cradle.

"Prep the patient," Vane ordered, turning toward the surgical bay. "And brace yourselves. When the inversion begins, the rot is not going to go quietly."

Isla drew her runic pistols, her heart hammering against her ribs. She didn’t know what to expect, but she knew one thing for certain. She was going to stand her ground. For Glen.