Chapter 5 Chapter 5: SSS-Rank Equipment, Special Effects Unlocked

The white light faded.

Ethan blinked, and the gray void of the selection space was gone.

He was standing in an enormous plaza, stone-paved, open to a sky the color of deep amber, stretching in every direction as far as he could see. At its center, a column of gold light rose straight up into the clouds like a second sun: the portal to the Cataclysmic Front, the Zone 12 beginner dungeon.

All around him, beams of white light were still raining down by the hundreds. Players materializing mid-step, stumbling, laughing, spinning around to take in the scenery with expressions he recognized, the look of someone experiencing the Shadow Realm for the very first time.

The noise was immediate.

"This is insane, it feels completely real! The air, the ground, everything"

"It's 2140. Nobody still calls this a game, right? This is a real world."

"I heard the SSS-clear reward is ten million dollars this year"

"Ten million? Forget it. Nobody normal clears at SSS. I'm just hoping for an A so I can afford a new phone."

Ethan let the chatter wash past him without interest.

He already knew the reward structure. The Global Defense Initiative had established the beginner dungeon bonus program decades ago to drive participation rates, clear ratings ran from D to SSS, with payouts scaling accordingly:

D-clear: $1,000. C: $2,000. B: $5,000. A: $10,000. S: $100,000. SS: $1,000,000. SSS: $10,000,000.

In the entire history of the Shadow Realm, only fifteen players worldwide had ever cleared a beginner dungeon at SSS rank. Eight of them had done it riding SSS-rank abilities from the start. The other seven had managed it on raw talent alone, no special abilities, just skill and instinct sharp enough to cut through the hardest content the dungeon could produce.

All fifteen had gone on to become dominant forces in their servers within the first year.

Ethan intended to make it sixteen.

He was pulled from his thoughts by a voice directly to his left.

"Oh wow"

He turned. Two girls a mage in blue starter robes and a priest in white, had materialized nearby and were now looking at him with the kind of open appreciation that most people try harder to conceal.

The mage recovered first. "You look incredible in that outfit. Seriously. A guy who looks like that has to be good, right? Want to team up for the dungeon?"

Several male players in earshot turned to look at Ethan with expressions ranging from confusion to mild resentment.

Ethan smiled, brief, genuine, apologetic. "I appreciate it. But the dungeon doesn't allow party play, and I work better alone anyway."

He turned and walked toward the golden portal before they could respond.

Behind him, he heard one of them say, almost reverently, "He even turns you down like that..."

He didn't look back.

---

Before entering the dungeon, he had things to do.

He opened his spatial inventory and pulled out the Zone 12 starter pack the system had issued during class selection.

"DING~ Congratulations! You have received: 100 Copper Coins, 10 Level-1 HP Potions, and 1 White Skill Book, [Flame Slash]."

He pulled out the skill book. A slim white volume, barely substantial, more light than paper. He tapped it once.

The book dissolved into a stream of luminescent particles that flowed into him like warm water.

"DING~ New Battle Mage skill acquired [Flame Slash]."

He pulled up the skill data.

[FLAME SLASH]

Quality: White

Description: Infuse the magic sword with mana runes, causing the next basic attack to deal 125% fire slash damage.

Special Effects: None (activates at Blue quality or higher)

Cost: 1 Mana, 1 Level-1 White Rune

Cast Time: 0.8 seconds

Cooldown: 6 seconds

Even at White quality, the lowest tier, the damage coefficient was already higher than comparable skills from any other class. A White-quality Fireball, the Elemental Mage's signature single-target skill, topped out at 120%. A White Flame Slash already beat it by five percent.

The catch, of course, was the cast time.

0.8 seconds. Nearly double what most equivalent White skills from other classes required. And that gap only widened at higher tiers, Blue, Purple, Orange, where Battle Mage cast times could balloon to two or three times the duration of comparable skills, even while the damage scaled higher.

For most players, that trade-off was the class's death sentence.

Ethan opened the bracelet interface and entered the second Genesis Code from memory.

N — D — G — F — 1 — 1 — 5 — 6

"DING~ Genesis Code confirmed. Permanent buff applied: All skills cast instantly. No cast time."

The plaza noise continued around him. Nobody noticed. Nobody looked up.

Ethan closed the interface with the quiet satisfaction of a man placing the final piece of a puzzle he'd been assembling for a century.

Instant cast. Permanent. Every skill, every tier, forever.

That was the second code's gift and the real reason he had chosen Battle Mage.

The class's damage ceiling was the highest in the game. Its versatility was unmatched. Its only fatal weakness had been the cast time, the one vulnerability that kept it permanently out of serious players' discussions.

He had just erased that weakness entirely.

A Battle Mage with no cast time wasn't a niche pick. It wasn't a curiosity. It was something that had never existed before in the Shadow Realm's history, a class firing at its full theoretical ceiling with none of its inherent handicaps.

He looked at the golden portal.

Later.

First equipment.

He pulled up the system store interface.

The beginner shop was straightforward, standard starter gear for all classes, clearly priced, nothing remarkable. A few items stood out:

Beginner Warrior Blade, Level 1, D-rank +2 Attack, 10 copper coins.

Beginner Priest Robe Level 1, D-rank +12 HP, 8 copper coins.

Beginner Ranger Boots Level 1, D-rank +1.1 Speed, 9 copper coins.

Battle Mage White Rune Level 1, usable by 1-Star Warriors applies to all White skills, adds 5 bonus damage, 1 copper coin each.

The standard approach was obvious, buy a full set of D-rank starter gear across all seven equipment slots, cover your bases, enter the dungeon with some padding. Most players would do exactly that with their 100 copper coins.

Ethan didn't.

He bought two items.

Two Beginner Rune Greatswords. Ten copper coins each. Twenty total.

He held one in each hand for a moment, feeling the weight — identical, both glowing with the faint silver of starter-grade enchanting. Then he called up his SSS-rank ability.

[Infinite Fusion].

The description was spare to the point of being cryptic, In the Shadow Realm, any two identical items can be upgraded through infinite fusion, but Ethan had a working hypothesis about what that meant in practice. He just needed to test it.

He focused the ability on both swords.

"DING~ Fusion complete. [Beginner Rune Greatsword] upgraded from D-rank to C-rank!"

The sword in his left hand dissolved into white light and poured itself into the one in his right. The resulting weapon glowed slightly brighter, subtly different, more present, like something that had decided it was real.

Ethan looked at it for a moment.

There it is.

He understood the system immediately. Identical items, fused together, quality increases by one tier. Simple. Clean. Almost absurdly powerful if you had the resources to run it upward.

In the Shadow Realm, equipment quality ran seven tiers, D through SSS and the difference between them wasn't cosmetic. Under the same level, taking D-rank as the baseline:

C-rank added 10% more attribute value. B-rank: 20%. A-rank: 30%. S-rank: 50%. SS-rank: 70%. SSS-rank: 100%, exactly double the attributes of the equivalent D-rank item.

And SSS-rank equipment didn't just hit harder. It activated exclusive special effects, unique properties that D through SS-rank items simply didn't possess.

He spent the remaining 50 copper coins on five more D-rank Rune Greatswords and lined them up mentally.

Fuse one into the C-rank. C becomes B.

Fuse one into the B-rank. B becomes A.

Fuse one into the A-rank. A becomes S.

Fuse one into the S-rank. S becomes SS.

Fus

e one into the SS-rank. SS becomes

"DING~ Congratulations! [Beginner Rune Greatsword] upgraded to SSS-rank! Equipment special effect has been activated!"