SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100

Chapter 434: First Floor of Ascension Tower—3

Leon’s eyes widened slightly reading this.

There’s an option to make it private? This is perfect!

This particular feature was something that only people who possessed great backgrounds and extensive knowledge about the Ascension Tower system were aware of—privileged information passed down through powerful families and organizations.

Yet for normal people and those from lower worlds, this was crucial information they typically came to learn about much later in their journey, often after suffering from unwanted attention.

And those high in power and authority deliberately wouldn’t share this knowledge freely. It served as an excellent method to recruit promising individuals into their factions, and also as a tool to keep careful surveillance on upcoming prodigies and geniuses among the masses.

Many of those powerful people had various forms of direct connection with tower administrators and possessed authority to gain access to this kind of classified operational information.

However, Leon was naturally completely unaware of all these complicated political dynamics and hidden implications as of right now.

The simple presence of this hostile overseer—with whom he’d formed what was essentially a life-and-death grudge—gave him the straightforward idea of hiding his secrets and capabilities from the overseer’s observation. Nothing more complex than that.

He didn’t know that by making this choice, he was potentially escaping from unimaginable future trouble... or perhaps unknowingly avoiding tremendous fortune. Who could say for certain?

Leon, without knowing any of those deeper implications, simply smirked coldly up at the overseer who was staring at him intently and with obvious hostile intent since he’d finished the second layer.

Then he chose decisively to make the trial private without hesitation.

[Private Trial Mode: ACTIVATED]

[All unauthorized observers being removed...]

In the very next moment, the overseer’s figure high in the air was suddenly enveloped completely by brilliant white light.

GLOW!

Velrith understood immediately what was happening the instant the light appeared around him. His fangs bared fully in pure rage.

The INSECT activated private mode! How?! That shouldn’t be available to someone at his level!

His resolve to finish this human completely became even more absolutely solid as diamond.

The very first second the protection period ends, I will personally start the systematic massacre of this entire world. Everyone dies.

He knew he would have to pay a substantial price for it—interfering directly in lower worlds carried serious penalties and costs that were not small even by his wealthy standards.

But for the secrets this human holds, and especially for the profound humiliation I’ve experienced from being called a worm... I will do this without hesitation in the future when the time arrives.

This debt will be paid in blood and screams.

The light intensified, and Velrith’s figure vanished completely from the arena space.

Leon, unaware of the specific murderous thoughts intensifying in the overseer’s mind, simply felt relief seeing the hostile presence disappear.

Finally. Now I can fight properly without holding back.

But alongside that relief, a distinct glint of cold resolve appeared in his eyes. His desire to grow stronger was reaching new heights—burning hotter than ever before.

He had a genuine sense of purpose and imminent crisis now, unlike anything he’d felt previously.

Even facing Archon Vyrra’s world and the upcoming looming threat there doesn’t give me this intense sense of crisis.

That situation had always carried the mental assurance of being able to escape into his own dimensional world if things became truly desperate.

However, he’d understood something critical recently: with his current mastery of space element principles, he now realized that escaping into his own world wasn’t nearly as safe as he’d assumed—especially against someone with high mastery of space element manipulation, or those with overwhelming absolute power and various specialized infiltration methods.

Running isn’t always an option. Especially against truly powerful beings.

However, Leon remained confident that Archon Vyrra, the red dragon guardian, and even the mysterious looming threat that had nearly engulfed Archon Vyrra’s entire world—including the figure who supposedly controlled armies of thousands—couldn’t achieve breaching his Dimensional Hourglass.

My dimensional treasure is not some random common artifact. It’s a genuine Mythical-ranked treasure.

Those beings simply wouldn’t have the specific capability to forcefully penetrate its defenses once he entered, especially now that the Dimensional Hourglass had evolved far beyond its original state.

Leon clearly remembered the previous system messages stating that it had surpassed standard Mythic rank classification and now possessed "potential beyond Divine Rank"—though he didn’t fully understand how impossibly high that actually ranked in the grand scheme of cosmic power hierarchies.

For now, I have absolute confidence in my ability to escape in moments of genuine crisis using the Hourglass.

But... I’m not sure at all that it would work against beings at that overseer’s level or higher. The gap might be too vast.

Shaking his head to clear away those spiraling thoughts, Leon forced himself to refocus on the present moment.

The most important thing right now is becoming stronger. With absolute strength, everything else will naturally fall into place.

Then Leon chose to continue the challenge without taking any rest at all.

The remnants of the previous match had already vanished completely, leaving the arena pristine once again.

He hadn’t used even one-thousandth of his total mana reserves in the previous encounter. With his Rank 7 affinity with ice element combined with extremely efficient energy usage, attacks of that level cost him almost nothing.

I could perform attacks like that essentially indefinitely without stopping, given my terrifying natural recovery speed.

In the next moment, a new message appeared—this time formatted differently:

[WARNING: Third Layer Difficulty Significantly Increased]

[Prepare Yourself]

[Trial Commencing in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...]

It was the first time the tower had issued what seemed like a genuine warning, as if telling him to be seriously alert now.

Then—

FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!

Hundreds upon hundreds of goblins materialized simultaneously across the arena in organized military formations.

But these weren’t the crude creatures from before. Each one wore complete bronze armor that covered their vital areas, and they wielded noticeably high-quality weapons—proper military-grade equipment rather than crude iron tools.

And at the very forefront of this small army stood a truly imposing figure.

A goblin wearing gleaming silver armor that seemed almost ceremonial in its quality. Its height was easily twice the size of the regular goblins—standing nearly as tall as Leon himself.

That’s...