Chapter 112: Retracting the wings

They looked, if anything, even more striking mounted on his legs than they had cradled in his palm, the fine golden feathers catching what little light filtered down into the chamber, shifting and rustling faintly as though caught in a soft breeze that touched nothing else in the room.

They moved like they had a life of their own. Every so often, a single feather would twitch or ripple independently of the rest, the whole structure flexing gently as though testing its own range of motion, adjusting itself naturally to the shape of his legs without him needing to do anything at all.

The instant they fully settled into place, Leon felt something shift throughout his entire body, subtle at first, then rapidly overwhelming.

His sense of his own weight seemed to evaporate almost entirely. The dense, familiar heaviness of his own limbs, the kind he’d carried his whole life without ever really noticing it until now, simply wasn’t there anymore.

He lifted one foot experimentally, and the motion came far quicker and easier than he expected. It was as though gravity itself had loosened its grip on him.

His perception shifted right alongside it. The dim chamber around him suddenly felt sharper, more immediate, every small detail standing out with unusual clarity.

He clenched his fists slowly, marveling at how light even that simple motion felt now, his own muscles responding instantly, without the faint delay he’d grown so used to.

"I feel so..." he muttered under his breath, searching for the right word, "free..."

There was no better way to describe it.

He took a slow step forward, testing the sensation properly, and the motion carried him further than he expected, his stride covering nearly twice the distance a normal step should have managed, without him consciously trying to move any faster at all.

A faint grin tugged at the corner of his mouth despite everything. Whatever these boots turned out to be capable of in an actual fight, just standing here, simply existing inside this new, weightless version of his own body, was enough to leave him thoroughly impressed.

Still, impressed as he was, he knew better than to get lost in the sensation without properly understanding what he’d actually gained.

He forced himself to focus, pulling up the item’s detailed skill list, eager now to read through exactly what each ability actually did.

His eyes moved quickly down the list, skimming past the lower ranks at first, his attention pulled instinctively toward the very bottom, toward the SSS-rank ability sitting there, the one that had shocked him so thoroughly the moment he first glimpsed its rank.

Still, he made himself read through each entry properly, starting from the top.

[Skill: Fleeting Step]

[Rank: A]

[Description: Enhance your movement with the divine swiftness of Hermes, allowing you to move at incredible speeds and effortlessly evade incoming attacks. Your movement speed is increased by 100%.]

’A solid foundation,’ he thought, doubling his base movement speed alone would already make him significantly harder to pin down in combat, especially stacked on top of the raw agility boost the boots already provided passively.

[Skill: Hermes’ Dash]

[Rank: S]

[Description: Dash forward with the speed of Hermes, covering great distances in an instant. Your acceleration becomes instantaneous, allowing you to cross up to 1000 meters in a single burst while leaving behind a trail of afterimages.]

His eyebrows rose slightly at that one. A thousand meters in a single burst was nothing to scoff at, especially paired with afterimages that could easily confuse an opponent mid-fight, buying him precious seconds in almost any confrontation.

[Skill: Herald’s Sprint]

[Rank: SS]

[Description: Unleash the full speed of Hermes, transforming your movement into a blur beyond mortal perception. While active, you can run across water, vertical surfaces, and even through the air, becoming nearly impossible for ordinary beings to follow.]

Leon read that one twice, turning the implications over in his mind.

Running across water, scaling sheer vertical surfaces, even moving through open air without actually flying, the sheer versatility alone made this skill valuable well beyond simple combat applications.

Escape, pursuit, traversal through terrain that would stop almost anyone else cold, all of it suddenly within reach.

[Skill: Godspeed Vanish]

[Rank: SS]

[Description: Accelerate beyond the limits of the physical, causing your body to phase out of reality itself. While active, you cease to exist within the material world, becoming completely intangible and unable to be perceived, touched, or affected by physical or magical phenomena.]

His breath caught slightly reading that description. Complete intangibility, untouchable by both physical and magical attacks alike, was the kind of ability that could turn an unwinnable fight into a simple matter of waiting out the danger entirely.

He could already imagine a dozen desperate situations where a skill like that alone might save his life outright.

And then, finally, his eyes reached the very last entry on the list, the one he’d been anticipating since the moment he first spotted its rank.

[Skill: Godly Traverse]

[Rank: SSS]

[Description: Transcend the boundaries of space and distance through the divine authority of Hermes. The wearer can traverse the void between universes, crossing from one universe to another through sheer movement alone, regardless of the distance between them.]

Leon went completely still.

He read the description again, slower this time, making absolutely sure he wasn’t misunderstanding the words in front of him.

Crossing from one universe to another. Not simply teleportation across a single world, not some enhanced version of the dash ability listed just above it, but movement transcending entire universes altogether, ignoring distance as a concept entirely.

He hadn’t even known what other universes were there apart from the one he was in, but the skill’s description alone sounded extremely overpowered!

He blinked hard, half convinced the words might shift or correct themselves the moment he looked away and back again.

They didn’t. The description remained exactly the same, sitting there plainly in front of him, utterly unchanged.

He read it a third time, then a fourth, his mind struggling to fully process the sheer scale of what he was looking at.

Skills like Fleeting Step or Hermes’ Dash, impressive as they were, still made a kind of practical sense to him, enhanced versions of abilities he could roughly picture in his head.

Even Godspeed Vanish, as absurd as intangibility sounded, still operated within some framework he could vaguely wrap his mind around.

But this. Crossing between universes through movement alone.

’Is this even real?’ he thought, staring at the notification as though it might vanish entirely if he looked at it too skeptically.

He reached out and tapped the description lightly with one finger, an instinctive, almost childish gesture, half expecting the words to react somehow, to confirm their own legitimacy in some tangible way.

Nothing happened, of course. The text remained exactly where it was, calm and unmoving, exactly as absurd on the fifth read as it had been on the first.

He thought back briefly to Excalibur’s own hidden SSS-rank skill, still locked away behind a question mark, still waiting for him to somehow earn the sword’s full trust before its true power would ever be revealed to him.

Whatever that ability turned out to be, he found himself now wondering, with more than a little unease, whether it might rival something like this.

For now, though, this skill belonged entirely to him, fully unlocked, with no conditions attached, no acknowledgment left to earn.

Whatever Hermes actually represented, whatever history sat behind that unfamiliar name, one thing had already become abundantly clear standing here in this quiet, dungeon chamber.

He was holding something far, far more significant than a simple pair of boots.

He let out a slow, unsteady breath, glancing down at the golden wings growing out of his ankles, moving gently as though nothing at all unusual had just happened.

He knew he couldn’t step out with the golden wings like that, since they were surely catch attention because of how unusual they looked.

The moment he thought about hiding the golden wings, the shrunk into his ankles and vanished.

’Ohh... so I can just revert them whenever I feel like... that’s good.’ he thought, nodding in satisfaction.

’Godly Traverse...’ he thought, the name settling heavily into his mind. ’Crossing between universes...’

Whatever limits he thought he understood about his own strength, about the shape of the world and everything beyond it, suddenly felt a great deal less certain than they had only minutes ago.

’Status window,’ Leon thought, curious to see how his status window looked like now with the new item he got.

[STATUS WINDOW]

[Name: Leon Allistar]

[Race: Human]

[Talent: Legendary Draw (SSS)]

[Class: Swordsman]

[Title: None]

[Level: 16]

[EXP: 15500/20000]

[H/P: 66490 <Vitality X 10>]

[M/P: 51570 <Mana X 10>]

[Magic Damage: 5157 <Mana X 1>]

[Physical Damage: 2357 <Strength X 1>]

[Magic Resistance: 5157 <Mana X 1>]

[Physical Resistance: 8154 <Endurance X 1>]

[Attributes]

[STR: 157 (+2200)]

[AGL: 156 (+12700)]

[VIT: 149 (+6500)]

[MANA: 157 (+5000)]

[END: 154 (+8000)]

[Skills: Red Charge (C-rank)]

[Attribute points: 202]

Leon’s eyes moved slowly down the panel, scanning each line carefully, taking in exactly how much had shifted since the last time he’d bothered to check.