SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything-Chapter 22: Anomaly

Hide looked at the screen in surprise, it was not something that he had expected.

[Adaptive Override — Adaptation Complete]

Analysis: Complete.

[Abyssal Scale Carapace — Level 1 → Level 2]

– Structural density: significantly increased

– Chemical resistance against venom and acid compounds: greatly improved 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

– Vulnerability to dissolving reduced by 80%

– Coverage reformation speed: increased

– Physical Capabilities enhancement, 50% → 100%

Counter-Skill Generated:

[Toxin Resistance — Rank C (Passive)]

– Full immunity to G and F-Rank organic venoms and toxins

– Partial resistance to E-Rank toxins

– Active Neutralization of toxins in bloodstream.

The burning in his forearm stopped mid-stride. The yellow pulling back from the edges and disappearing as he ran, the nausea lifting clean without ceremony.

He closed the screen, satisfied with the new skill and information that the skills can level up to become better.

Now that the Abyssal Scale Carapace has leveled up, it gave him a physical enhancement of 100% rather than 50%.

He remembered that even with 50% enhancement, he was able to rip those F-Rank Calamity beasts with his bare hands. He wondered how much he could do with 100%.

Could he lift a car? Probably. But that didn’t matter right now. The stampede behind them was getting louder with each second, the vibration of it coming up through the root floor in short, irregular pulses.

Toma was running beside him, the bat circling just above the canopy overhead, the purple wings catching none of the sourceless light. His Helper lanyard had flipped over his shoulder again and he was holding it flat against his chest with one hand to stop it catching on branches.

"What’s behind us?" Hide asked.

Toma looked confused and really stressful for some reason. He was sweating really bad and his face looked like he would faint really soon. Then he opened his mouth and let out a foul breath. "A... An E-Rank Calamity Beast."

He paused. "Impossible, it was just a 1 star loop gate, even the gatekeeper must be F-Rank."

"But you just said that the one behind us was an E-Rank?" Hide was now a little confused.

"Well, yes. We were in a E-Rank beast’s hunting grounds. The other smaller beasts are running away from it. But, but... an E-Rank beast should not exist in a 1 star gate. Something is wrong."

They ran in silence for three seconds.

"Wrong how?" Hide asked.

"Gates can advance in rank," Toma said, pushing a low branch out of his path. "It almost never happens mid-cycle, but it happens. If a Loop Gate accumulates enough mana internally between its loops, the interior can destabilize and reclassify upward. Usually there’s a warning by monitoring systems." He looked at Hide with an expression that finished the sentence for him.

"Then how come they didn’t catch this one?" Hide gritted his teeth.

"I am not sure, but they didn’t," Toma nodded. "Which means this gate reclassified right before we entered."

Ahead, the bat dipped sharply — two fast circles in the same spot, tight and urgent.

Toma threw his hand out and stopped Hide with a forearm to the chest.

They both halted.

Toma closed his eyes. The bat held its position ahead, wings barely moving, hovering with a stillness that felt like a warning held in place.

He opened his eyes after a brief moment.

"There is danger straight ahead," he said quietly. "Don’t move."

Hide looked at him and nodded. Then he took a few careful steps forward and through the roots and the low brush and the flat pale light, he could make them out — the ground thirty meters ahead had disappeared.

It was covered by a solid, shifting mass of wet-bark bodies spread wall to wall between the trunks, Quigs in numbers that made the earlier three feel like a greeting.

They weren’t approaching or moving anywhere, they were simply occupying the space, a colony so dense the soil beneath them had become irrelevant.

A hundred. Perhaps more.

"Right," Toma said without wasting anytime.

Hide nodded and turned right behind Toma. As mush as he wanted to kill all those Quigs, because he absolutely could. But he didn’t have much time to spare.

Killing the gatekeeper and getting out of here was what he mainly wanted and also, if he could. He wished to break the record of seven minutes as well.

The new path was immediately worse than the older one, roots were denser, gaps between trunks tighter, the canopy pressing lower until in places it forced them to duck.

Toma went first and Hide followed, the bat descending to fly ahead of them at knee height, navigating the root maze with the quiet efficiency of something that had never needed eyes to do it.

They had covered maybe forty meters when Toma made a sound, like something had hit him hard.

He bent forward at the waist, both hands pressed against his stomach, all the color gone from his face, that of great internal shock.

The kind the body produces when something happens to it that it didn’t choose and can’t explain outward.

He vomited a mouthful of blood onto the root floor.

Hide crouched beside him. "What happened."

Toma straightened slowly. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes were wide and the steadiness he’d worn since putting the ring back on had been replaced by something rawer and harder to cover.

"Eura, my bat," he said. "She went ahead to read the path. Something up there attacked her." He pressed one hand flat against his sternum. "I ended the summoning before she died. If a Shikigami dies in the field the backlash hits the Tamer directly. I am lucky..." A pause. "It’s just internal bruising."

"What attacked her?"

Toma coughed and said through gritted teeth. "There is a pack of ten F-Rank beasts ahead. She only saw them for a second before I pulled her back."

He looked up at the branches overhead, at the thin gaps in the canopy where the flat gate light filtered through. "They are flying type, blood-feeders. They locate prey by body heat and hunt in formation. If they get above you in open space they work until there’s nothing left."

Hide looked up.

Through one of the canopy gaps, a shadow crossed — fast, with membranous wings. Then another.

They already knew something was below them.

"Stay here," Hide said. "Behind the thickest trunk you can find. If something approaches that isn’t me, call out."

Toma opened his mouth, but before he could say anything. Hide was already running out towards open ground.