SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything-Chapter 6: New Skill

As soon as he said the word the screen changed to a smaller one.

[Adapting - 0%]

[10%]

[20%]

Hide looked at the numbers changing while he made his way back home. The percentage was going up rather slow. Would he need to wait that long in a battle? wouldn’t he be dead by then?

He waled through the city and reached the building his apartment was in. He stood on the elevator and let it carry him to the 4th floor.

The System notification arrived before he had even taken his jacket off.

He was standing in the narrow corridor of his apartment, unit 4M of eastern residential block of Area 17, government-issued to orphaned minors as a standard welfare allocation and never quite designed to feel like anything other than what it was.

He stopped and looked at the screen in disbelief.

--

[Adaptive Override — Adaptation Complete]

Analysis: Complete.

Counter-Skill Generated:

[Dermal Reinforcement — Rank F (Passive)]

– Skin density and surface nerve threshold marginally increased.

– Resistance to negligible-level impact and surface abrasion.

--

’A... A skill? I got a skill?’

’From kai clapping me on the back? This is insane... It really gave me a goddamn skill. ’

It was only an F rank skill, but nonetheless a skill. Actually he wondered if the skills are equal to Talents that normal Exterminators have.

Well for now, he needed to calm down and look at the whole thing carefully without rushing anything.

He closed the screen and stepped inside.

Unit 4F was small and precisely calibrated to the minimum definition of sufficient. A main room that served as living area with an attached kitchen, one bedroom, one bathroom and a balcony barely wide enough to stand on, overlooking the lower residential street.

The furniture had come with the unit. A composite table, two chairs, a sleeping platform with a standard-issue mattress that Hide had never replaced because replacing it cost money he had never quite had enough of.

A shelf with three physical books — actual paper, that had belonged to his mother and were the only things of hers he had managed to keep.

And CASS.

The Compact Automated Support System unit sat in its charging dock in the corner of the main room — a roughly spherical housing about the size of a human head, matte grey composite, with a single ring of soft amber light around its midsection that pulsed once when Hide came through the door.

"Welcome home," CASS said. Its voice was warm... not simulated emotion exactly, but a tone engineered over decades to feel like human. "Current time is 18:47. Exterior temperature is fourteen degrees. The mana density is 156 particles."

"Hello there, CASS," Hide said. "Anything else?"

"The eastern window seal has been cycling open intermittently due to the wind pressure. I’ve compensated, but the gasket needs replacement within the next—"

"I know that." He interjected.

"Your food unit has been in standby for Twelve hours. Shall I activate the heating cycle?"

Hide dropped his bag on the table and pressed the back of his neck with one hand. "Yeah. Activate it."

"Activating." A soft hum from the kitchen unit. "I notice you have a status ring in your hand," CASS added, its amber ring pulsing in what might have been curiosity, if support units were capable of that. "Congratulations on your awakening, Hide."

He looked at the ring on his finger.

"Thanks, CASS."

Hide sat on the edge of the table.

He sat there for a long moment, doing nothing at all.

The food unit hummed. The eastern window seal clicked once against the wind.

He had awakened.

He had a System that could make anything possible for him.

He pressed his thumb against the scar through his shirt and stared at the opposite wall.

’First step,’ he thought. The same thing he had told himself at the entrance to the AAA building that afternoon, which now felt like it belonged to a different Chapter of something. ’First step toward the goal.’

He sat there until the food unit chimed.

He was about to stand up and try to eat, when his communicator buzzed on the table.

He glanced at it.

KAI — INCOMING CALL

He did not reach for it.

Instead he crossed the three steps to the balcony door, and pushed it open. The night air of Area 17 came in around him, carrying its usual blend of recycled wind and distant machinery.

He looked down.

Kai’s car was parked below — a sleek mid-range transit vehicle in dark blue, the kind a trainee with a three-star talent from a well to do family could reasonably afford. Its running lights were on, casting a strip of soft blue across the pavement.

Kai was leaning against the driver’s side door with his arms crossed. Beside him, stood Risa — both hands on the strap of the bag she was carrying, looking upward as well.

When they saw him, Kai unfolded his arms and gestured toward the car.

Risa waved as well, then appeared to regret waving and looked at her shoes.

Hide watched them and a smile found its way on his face, he went back inside and got dressed within a few minutes.

The mirror in the bathroom was the one luxury item he had ever actually purchased for the apartment, It was not large, but well-made and clear. He stood in front of it now in a white shirt and black pants, the simplest combination of clothing he owned that could be described as appropriate for a birthday dinner, and looked at himself with the flat look.

His face was average, not unpleasant or remarkable. Sharp jaw, pale skin that had never seen enough sun. His silver hair fell across his forehead like they always did, and he pushed it back with one hand, and it fell forward again almost immediately.

"Yeah, fuck that."

He had gotten his hair from his mother and they were indeed one of the most pretty thing about him, or so he thought.

His eyes were blue — a very specific shade of blue, clear and slightly cold, like shallow water. His mother had said, every time the subject came up, that he had gotten those from his father.

He looked at his reflection, on the whole, like a person who had not slept properly for some years.

He tried to smile.

The reflection tried to smile back.

It was not — quite — a smile. His face had arranged itself over years of grief and cold anger, into something that did not naturally accommodate that particular expression.

He let it go.

"CASS," he called toward the main room.

"Yes?"

"Turn off the food unit. I’ll be back late."

"Noted. Lock standard or secure?"

"Standard." He picked up his jacket from the chair beside the door. "And fix that window gasket order. Use the maintenance fund."

"Order placed," CASS confirmed. "Have a good evening, Hide."

He stepped out and closed the door behind him, but his finger accidently got placed in between the door.

But to his surprise... he did not feel any pain. The finger must have had gotten purple, if he were a normal human that is, but he was no longer normal.