SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything-Chapter 19: The Gate Challenge

Hide turned around and indeed found that his guess was correct.

Fuu stood three tables away, flanked by three other people. Two men and a woman, all in gear worn just enough to look casual about it.

He was broader than Hide remembered from class. he was smiling, showing his crooked front teeth like an idiot. His expression was very simple, one could easily predict what his vicious mind was thinking as he glared at Hide and gritted his teeth.

"Volter," Fuu said, stepping closer. "You’re actually here. At a Gate Training Facility?" He glanced at his party and two of them smirked on cue. "What for? Did you fall asleep outside and wander in by accident?"

Hide looked at him and blinked. "Was that supposed to be funny? You know they don’t let in normal citizens, right?" he replied calmly hoping to not take it too far.

Fuu seemed to be more agitated by his response and gritted his teeth before grinning once again. "Oh wait —" he snapped his fingers. "Is this a new thing? You sleep here now and scream at the gates instead of the classroom?"

He put on a high falsetto. "No, please, STOP—!" Two of his party laughed. A few people at nearby tables looked over, laughing secretly.

"Uh... Please what business do yo -" Toma stood up, and said hesitantly. But a glance from one of the taller and wider man along with Fuu, made him gulp hard.

Hide’s hands were flat on the table.

"So, you actually awakened," Fuu continued, moving closer, his voice dropping to something more personal as he pointed the ring in his finger at the one in Hide’s hand.

Hide’s ring projected a new screen that showed Fuu’s stats and at the same time, Fuu’s ring projected Hide’s stats. It was the common ring connection, any exterminator could see the stats of others, but at the cost of revealing his own stats to the other guy.

"Ohh! you have a Unique class, Infinity symbol." He tilted his head. "That’s cute. No talent though." He looked at Hide the way a person looks at something they find faintly pathetic. "A weird class with zero talent. What’s the plan exactly? Kill Calamity Beasts with your bare hands?"

The party members broke into a laugh, the whole cafeteria was now looking at Hide. Even the helper, Toma. They all had this look of pity in their eyes.

Hide just let out a heavy breath and said nothing.

"This place isn’t for you, Volter. Seriously, go home." He paused deliberately. "Go crawl back between your mother’s legs where you came from — oh wait." His mouth split into a grin around the crooked teeth. "She’s dead, isn’t she? Guess you’ve got nowhere to go."

Hide was standing, before anyone knew.

His fist connected with the left side of Fuu’s face before the grin finished forming.

The impact was sharper than a bare fist should produce. At the exact moment of contact, the back of Hide’s hand darkened. Scales surfaced across his knuckles, pressed into Fuu’s teeth at full force, and vanished just as fast.

Fuu’s head snapped sideways. He hit the adjacent table, knocked it half a foot, and went down onto one knee with his hand clamped against his mouth.

The cafeteria went silent.

Fuu pulled his hand away in horror and pain, two crooked front teeth sat in his palm, both trailing red.

For two full seconds nobody moved, and then Fuu snapped. "YOU FUCKING BASTARD—"

He came up screaming, blood spraying from his lip, and his two male party members surged forward at the same moment. Chairs scraped, tables knocked.

"I’ll kill you — I swear to god I’ll KILL you—" Fuu’s voice cracked somewhere between fury and pain and the guards were already moving from both ends of the room.

They had it contained in under fifteen seconds. Fuu was still bleeding from the mouth, his face pale with fury.

"Both parties," the guard said flatly. "Step back. Now."

The cafeteria had rearranged itself around the incident. Most people were on their feet, some pressed toward the walls. A few still seated and watching with the calm of people familiar with this category of event.

One of the still-seated ones was at a table near the far wall.

A young man in early twenties, with lean, short dark hair. A bowl of something hot in front of him. His coat was folded over the chair beside him.

He watched the guards separate the two groups. Then he set down his spoon.

"You should not fight in public spaces," he said, slowly. "Did your parents not teach you even basic courtesy?"

"Of course, if you fight like that the guards will stop it, management will flag both entries, and at least one of you ends up with a restricted permit." He picked his spoon back up. "There is a way you can settle it properly."

Everyone looked at the guy in confusion. An official way to settle fights. Most only thought of a court trial but were left silent when the person spoke again.

"A Gate completion challenge." He revealed.

"A what?" the girl in Fuu’s crew asked.

The person took a sip and answered. "Its held in a gate. The two parties select a loop gate for themselves and enter them at the same time. Whoever defeats the gate keeper first wins. I am pretty sure, the facility has an official challenge contract at the front desk. It can be reprinted with whatever terms you agree to hold."

The whole cafeteria was silent. Most of them were fairly new Exterminators and had never heard of such a thing.

Fuu wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. Looked at the seated man. Then at Hide.

"Fine," he said, thickly. "That sounds a fun way to show the loser his place. The terms are, If I win — you are my slave. For life. You do what I say with no exceptions and no limits."

He looked at Hide with his bloody mouth and waited.

"Agreed," Hide said. "You and your entire party will be my slaves for life if I win."

Fuu’s female party member grabbed his arm and said something urgent near his ear. Fuu shook her off without looking at her and said angrily.

"Agreed."

The contract took four minutes at the front desk. With the final signing of the two persons in charge.

The young man from the far table had drifted over and witnessed it without being asked, which suggested he’d done this kind of thing before.

The clerk entered both entries without comment, even she had forgotten such a thing existed.

After everything was said and done. Hide was showed his way to the 1 star gate he had chosen. He looked at top and found a screen displaying some kind of rankings.

Hide looked at it for a moment.

Toma appeared at his shoulder, he was very nervous and pale. "Mr. Volter. I am not someone experienced, but you shouldn’t have done that, the other guy has a party of four people and you are alone. Its impossible."

He clutched his head and shook it. He glanced at Hide after some time and asked, almost crying. "You’re still going in without a weapon?!"

"Yes."

Across the floor, Fuu and his party were already at Zone Four’s entry platform, his teammates checking gear in low voices around him. He hadn’t looked back once since signing.

Hide pointed at the display and asked what it was. Toma looked at it and started explaining. "That is the record display, it shows the time someone takes to clear the gate. The record of fastest completion is 7 min and 3 seconds. It was done by the famous prodigy, James Collar. No one has -"

"How big is the interior?" Hide interrupted, knowing full well how talkative Toma was.

Toma cleared his throat. "Roughly equivalent to two city blocks in real space. Most first-timers take one to two hours."

Hide looked at the gate.

Up close, through Zone Two’s thick glass, the Loop Gate looked different than it had from the cafeteria window. Less like energy and more like a vertical tear in the air, roughly two meters tall, its edges curling slowly inward as if the opening was constantly trying to close itself and couldn’t quite manage it.

The entry platform hummed under his feet and the gate opened letting him and Toma enter.

They both stopped in front of the gate and Toma straightened. "Come back in one piece."

"I will."

"And maybe with a better time than that guy."

Toma leaned slightly toward the gate, trying to read the interior monitoring display mounted on the frame beside the threshold.

He leaned a little further, squinting at the screen.

Hide stepped inside the gate and his body vanished. Behind him Toma’s leg hit an irregular surface.

He had approximately half a second to say "Oh no—" before the gate’s entry current caught him by the front of his uniform and pulled him through directly behind Hide.

On the other side hit Hide with everything at once.

The air was heavier, carrying the thick green smell of something between forest and rot, damp wood. The light was dim and source less, falling evenly from no direction in particular. Overhead, the canopy was dense with dark branches twisted into each other.

The ground was uneven. Roots everywhere, some exposed and thick as his forearm, others half-buried and just wide enough to catch a foot wrong.

Behind him, the gate rippled shut to his side. The exit back would reappear once the Gatekeeper was dead.

He stood still for three seconds and listened.

Then he heard it.

"—nononono oh god oh no—"

Toma hit the ground directly behind him, face-first into the root-covered soil, clipboard-less and wide-eyed, his Helper lanyard flipped over his shoulder. He lay still for one second with his cheek against the dirt.

Then he lifted his head and looked at the canopy, Hide was standing above him.

"I’m inside the gate," he said quietly, in the voice of someone confirming a fact they very much wished wasn’t a fact.

Hide looked at him and blinked. "..."

"I’m inside the gate with no weapon."

"Yes."

"This is — I’m going to be in so much trouble." He sat up, leaves in his hair. "I’m going to lose my Helper license. I’ve been a Helper for only eleven days."

Something moved in the undergrowth to the left.

Toma heard it. His voice dropped to a whisper instantly. "What is that."

"Get behind me and stay there."