SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything-Chapter 13: Penalty

Hide stood there, alone in a place that didn’t have proper up or down, and swallowed against a throat that had gone suddenly tight.

A sound like static building in an old speaker prickled at his back.

He turned and instinctively jumped back. Behind him... which could supposedly be called the center of this room.

Pixels were coalescing out of the air.

That was the only way his brain could frame it—tiny squares of light popping into existence and snapping together, wireframe skeletons forming first, then filling with color and depth. In the span of three heartbeats, something the size of a small building was standing there.

It had to hunch to fit into whatever counted as the "space" here.

The beast was, Hide suspected, at least ten meters tall.

Its body was vaguely humanoid in layout, having a torso, two arms and two legs. Everything stretched upward, limbs too long, hands terminating in slabs of claw.

Its skin, if that was the word, was a smooth, dark grey without features, like wet stone carved into the idea of a monster.

Where its head should have been, there was only a featureless oval with a vertical slit of red light running down the center.

Hide’s mouth went dry.

’What in the name of monster is this thing?’ He was surprised by the sudden view of such a hideous thing. But the appearance only confirmed that it was, maybe a calamity beast.

The giant tilted its head to look at Hide and the red slit flared, as if something on the other side had opened its eyes.

The hand, or whatever it was... came down like a hammer.

Hide’s eyes didn’t even see it move.

One moment the thing was standing. The next, one of its limb was a blur, filling his vision. The "floor" rose to meet him and then there was only impact.

For the briefest fraction of a second he felt every detail: bones crumpling, organs turning to slurry, skull compressing like a cheap container under a boot.

Then—

He was standing, once again.

Exactly where he had been before. And in that exactly same place and the room in the infinity.

His mind was fuzzy and the memory hit a second later.

The sensation of his body folding like paper under that hand dumped itself back into his mind all at once, as a perfect recollection of pain. His stomach lurched violently.

He dropped to his knees and vomited onto a surface that didn’t seem to acknowledge liquid. The mess just... sat there, beading in suspension instead of spreading.

His hands shook.

"I died," he gasped. "I— I died."

A shadow fell over him, and he looked up. Gritting his teeth... and as he expected, the hand was already coming again.

This time, he moved.

He threw himself to the side on pure instinct, tumbling across the unreadable surface. The hand slammed down where he’d been, making no sound but sending a ripple through the space that made his teeth ache.

He rolled to his feet and drove a punch at the nearest part of the giant he could reach... that was the side of its knee.

He also thought about using the skill called Abyssal Scale Carapace, but nothing happened. All his skills were suppressed as well.

His fist connected to the body and suddenly a sharp, bright lance of pain shot up his arm.

The giant did not react. Its "skin" was harder than concrete. His knuckles folded and hide felt something in his hand crack.

He had just enough time to register that before the other hand swatted him casually from the side.

Respawn.

He came back standing. The lobby was the same and the beast was already mid-motion, like it had never stopped.

This time he didn’t vomit, but his throat spasmed as the memory of that second death slammed into him with the ugly, helpless terror of seeing that red slit right before everything went out.

"Again?" he choked.

The System did not appear or offer anything to help him. This was the worst kind of punishment he could have thought about. He checked the time and found that it had only been 2 minutes.

There was nothing else to see, hear or even feel in this closed space in infinity.

Just the giant and its hands.

The third time, Hide attacked the giant by making more concrete strategy but upon seeing no visible effects he tried to run away.

The lobby had no edges, but his legs pumped anyway, muscles burning with effort that went nowhere.

Distance was a strange concept here... no matter how hard he drove his feet, the dark expanse in front of him never seemed to change, while the heavy footfalls behind him closed in much too fast.

He didn’t see the swing or the moment it touched him. It just happened in an instant.

He was standing once again, and again and again.

His mind was getting dizzy, having experienced too much pain and his stamina was at the end too having ran too much, to see no results, what so ever.

He lost track after the seventh.

Die... return and remember how it felt.

Each time, the fear changed shape.

At first it was simple panic. Then it curdled into a constant dread in his gut, bracing before the hand came because he knew, now, exactly what was going to happen.

He tried everything his panicking brain could reach for.

Rolling.

Feigning death.

Leaping onto the hand as it came down, trying to climb the arm.

It didn’t matter.

With his stats locked at base, with no skills, armor or anything, he was a bug under a palm.

He saw it coming in slow motion.... as the great grey shape blotted out anything, his own hands came up in front of his face on reflex, knowing they would do nothing—and some detached part of him thought:

’Is this what Mom felt?’

Knowing that you could not do anything, but accepting the inevitable. That was a thought to not have at a time like this... but he couldn’t help it.

By the, who knows which turn, something in him had gone quiet.

His body still reacted... his heart still raced with fear, lungs dragging air in fast and shallow. But a part of his mind had started to watch from a slight remove, cataloguing.

The monster had the same fucking movement every time and no variation with its attacks.

He had started to fight back, but it didn’t make difference and only now he realized that how weak his body was. It was a miracle that he killed 12 of those beast when the gate opened... it was because of the system.

He was a weak and insignificant human without it, he acknowledged the fact.

At some point, the glowing text finally returned.

It floated in front of him casually between one death and the next.

[Penalty Session Complete]

Total Penalty Time: 30 minutes

Total Deaths: 19

He was back in the hospital bed, when he blinked.

Same white ceiling, thin sheet and the dead weightlessness below his waist.

His body was exactly where it had been—a little hunched, hand still half-raised toward a screen that was no longer there. The sound in the room had not changed.

Footsteps were still approaching down the corridor.

Maybe two seconds had passed.

"Haa—" The breath tore out of him, sharp and ragged. He clamped his teeth shut before the sound could turn into something else.

His whole body felt as if it was not his own and he was dreaming. It was fine, on the surface but the memory of breaking sat in his muscles and mind.

He... would very much not like to experience that again. He opened the system window and saw that he had no more penalty holds...

But the pressing matter at hand was not that.

The door slid open with a hiss like a panel and two figures stepped in.