SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything-Chapter 25: Abyssal Flames

[Adaptive Override — Adaptation Complete]

Analysis: Complete.

Counter Skill Generated

[Abyssal Flame — Rank B (Active)]

– Allows the user to generate and sustain flame from any point of bodily contact

– Generated flame is fully controllable — intensity, direction, spread, and shape respond to user’s will

– Flame does not harm the user while active

Hide read it twice. Trying to get the gist of it. A skill that allows him to generate and control flames. Wasn’t that what a Mage class was capable of? Now that he thought about it, The abyssal scale Carapace was similar to a Warrior class.

He winced as the pain in his abdomen caught up to him, but when he looked down. He realized that it was already healing, his body had never been injured so heavily before, but even this wound. Which might have been fatal to a normal human or even any other F-Rank Exterminator.

Too bad he was not any other F-Rank Exterminator.

He dismissed the system window and ducked left, wincing as the remnant of pain hit his side. A tentacle passed from where his head was, and followed to change trajectories mid motion.

Hide jumped back and as soon he set his foot on the ground he saw another tentacle coming at him from behind. He did not have proper footing right now, and there was no way for him to dodge it. Hide gritted his teeth and embraced for the impact.

THUNK!

The tentacle hit iron. And changed its trajectory... It passed just beside Hide, but didn’t hit him.

Hide looked back and saw Toma, gripping the half broken sword in his hand and smiling foolishly.

"I... I am not much of a fighter," Toma shrugged. "But, I can help you see."

"Thanks..." Hide just said that and turned his attention to the tentacle coming back for him.

He activated the new skill and flame came from his palm first.

A slow rise, curling of orange-blue that started at the center of his palm and spread outward toward the fingers, following the lines of his hand the way water follows a surface, they even burned over the scales and wrapping around every finger until his entire hand was burning.

The flame was silent and produced no smoke. It moved when he moved — tilting with the angle of his wrist, extending forward when he pushed his arm out, contracting when he pulled back.

He imagined the raw flame to form a circle over his hand and as he willed the flame rose and swirled in a circle over his palm.

With a vicious grin, he raised both of his hands.

The flame spread to his left palm, burning as he looked at the Gatekeeper.

It had moved a little from its place while Hide was busy with the tentacles and the new skill.

Toma was shocked and confused beyond words, when he saw Hide produce flames out of nowhere.

He was about to ask him, but before he could speak. He heard Hide laughing.

"Your shell and tentacles are made of wood, right." Hide said.

He was talking to the gatekeeper. But the beast didn’t like to be talked to, so he attacked.

The tentacles converged on Hide. Three from the right, two rising from the left. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Hide didn’t move from his place or try to rip through them. He reached forward with both burning hands and gripped the nearest one.

The effect was immediate and devastating.

Where the flame touched the fibrous wood-flesh of the tentacle, it caught the flames like dry leaves.

The fire ran up the tentacle from his grip point in both directions simultaneously, climbing toward the Gatekeeper’s body and racing toward the tip, and within three seconds the entire length was burning.

The Gatekeeper screamed.

And Hide’s grin widened with pleasure as he heard the beast scream.

The beast ripped the burning tentacle back.

Hide was already reaching for the next one.

He grabbed it with both hands and held on rather than letting go — pulling himself along it toward the Gatekeeper’s body as the flame spread, using the tentacle as a rope.

Another tentacle struck him across the back. He felt the impact through the scales and ignored it. Another wrapped around his left arm and he let the flame run down his arm into the coil and the grip released immediately, the tentacle retracting in a burning spiral.

He reached the base of the shell.

Up close the petrified bark was even more imposing — the surface rising above him like a cliff face, the grooves and knots of it deep and deliberate.

Two tentacles drove at him from directly above, fast and angled to pin him against the shell itself.

He didn’t move away from them.

He moved into the shell’s shadow, pressed his palms flat against the base of it, and pushed the flame outward.

The shell surface caught in a line radiating outward from both palms. The moss burned first and then the bark layer underneath began to go, the outer coating blackening and splitting as the heat drove into the grain of it. It was slower than the tentacles. The shell was denser and harder, but it was still wood and wood still burned.

The Gatekeeper thrashed and screamed again and began to move the enormous body, trying to turn away.

Now, the shell was burning in a wide arc from base to mid-curve.

And the tentacles were mostly gone.

Hide looked at the head of the beast, its neck connecting it to the shell was exposed. He jumped and reached the head, then drove his right fist into the eye socket.

The eye surface gave and then ruptured, the pale luminosity extinguishing as his fist went through and kept going, into the interior of the skull, the flame spreading from his knuckles into the tissue beyond.

He drove his left fist in after it.

Both hands inside the Gatekeeper’s skull, the flame spreading outward through every cavity and hollow of the creature’s head.

It climbed into the neck and from the neck toward the body beneath the shell, burning the Gatekeeper from the inside while the shell burned on the outside.

The screaming stopped and the Gatekeeper’s body shuddered once, a full-body convulsion that shook the ground. Its legs gave away and the burning corpse fell to the ground.

Hide pulled his hands free and stepped back.

[Calamity Beast (Rootshell Gatekeeper) — Eliminated]

Experience points gained: 1200

[Level Up]

Level: 2 → 3

Exp: 960 / 900

Level Up reward has been added to inventory.

[Level Up]

Level: 3 → 4

Exp: 60 / 1100

Level Up reward has been added to inventory.

The system notifications followed. He had leveled up twice just from killing this guy.

The flames on the body of the beast burned through it, leaving only a dark brown looking ball like structure at the center.