SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything-Chapter 35: The Ice Cold Iron Door

Hide was falling one moment with his hands in front of his face and the next moment he knew he was standing straight once again.

That was what Hide noticed first. Not where he was or what had changed around him.

Then he looked up and for a second his heart forgot to pump blood and his lungs forgot how to breathe.

The door was enormous.

Not the exaggerated enormity of something described as large — actually, physically enormous.

It was black, or something close to black, the color of metal that had been dark for a very long time, adorned with rust and creeping weeds.

The frame was set into walls that went straight to either side as far as the eye could see, if the eyes could see beyond a few meters that is.

He looked at the door with dread creeping in his stomach, it was, at least eight times his height. Perhaps ten. The door itself was a single slab of the same dark iron, featureless except for five recessed symbols arranged vertically at eye-level, each one a different form, angular and precise, catching the dim ambient light.

Hide looked at it for a long moment.

Then he looked at what the door was standing on.

A stone road, ancient and unknown, the surface worn smooth and dark. This road was continuous, extending behind him into a distance that kept going past the point where his eyes could resolve detail into dark. There was no end or origin visible.

Just the road, stretching away in both directions — behind him into darkness, ahead of him terminating at this door.

And on both sides of the road there was nothing, but a pitch black fall that, it seemed, never ended. Hide looked at the edge for one second and then deliberately did not look at it again.

He was standing at the edge of something that had no floor.

Hide took one step toward the door. Then another. He stopped when he was close enough to reach it and raised one hand, hesitating for a half-second, and then pressed his palm flat against the surface.

It was cold, as cold as Ice.

He held it there for a moment, feeling the surface material. But suddenly something tried to enter his head and a weird pull forced upon his whole body. Hide pushed himself away from the goddamned door, breathing heavily.

’What the hell was that?’

He stepped back, away from the door. He would take the road to the other side and see where it goes.

Suddenly, something screamed above him and behind him, his foot found the edge of the road without him meaning to and his body corrected instantly, weight shifting forward, one arm out for balance, the abyss on his left suddenly very present.

A shiver ran through his body and he stepped away, to the center of the road. Away from the edges as much as he could.

Fuu arrived from the same transition Hide had arrived through, from the same gate that had swallowed them both. He came through at an angle and hit the road surface with his shoulder rather than his feet, rolled once, came up on hands and knees facing the wrong direction, looked at what was on both sides of the road, and made a sound in his throat.

Hide grabbed him by the collar before he finished deciding whether to scramble sideways.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Fuu looked up at him. His expression was that of a person who is terrified. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

Hide tightened the collar. "Answer me."

"I—" Fuu swallowed. "I followed you." The words came out in the rough voice. "I saw you leave and I thought you would be doing something fun alone. And then that clown — he kicked me off the edge."

"You followed me," Hide said flatly.

"I... I followed you. Yes. I’m sorry."

Hide looked at him for a moment, gritted his teeth and let go of the collar "Fucking dumbass."

He was angry, but it was not a situation where he should be. Fuu being here was not a bad thing at all... At least it was better than being alone. But then again, him being alone was much better. He had already showed his skills to Toma.

He breathed out through his nose. It didn’t matter now and he could not change it. So better make use of it. "Stand up," he said.

Fuu stood up, unsteadily, and took one careful step away from the road’s edge.

"Look at this." Hide turned back to the door. "We’re inside a gate. A gate that was forming as we fell. So, what kind of gate is this? This is not a loop gate I believe."

Hide was not finished speaking when he heard, Fuu’s terrified voice stammering. "We... we are... in a Dungeon gate."

Hide went silent. Then he cursed inwardly a few times. ’We are inside a Dungeon gate, and we don’t know its rank. That clown bastard, he obviously knew something.’

Hide’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it. ’He arranged the meeting and timed the whole fucking conversation, including his time to strike me in accordance with the formation of this gate. He knew the exact spot the gate would form at, and the exact time... that was not a coincidence.’

Hide’s pupil shrank. ’He was trying to show me that gates don’t necessarily open naturally and randomly. They can be controlled !!’

He gritted his teeth so hard, the veins in his neck rose. gates could be opened artificially, that, for all he knew was a hint related to his mother’s murder.

Fuu was walking around, and looking at and near the door for something. His body had already done more work than he should be doing, and he was exhausted.

Breathing heavily, he rested one of his arms on the door to use it as a solid spot to rest his body.

Hide looked at him and saw that his palm was resting flat on it.

The symbol was recessed into the door in a way that was not decorative — it was a depression, a socket, designed to receive exactly this kind of contact.

"Don’t— get away from there," Hide yelped, but it was too late.

The symbol sank.

A mechanical sound came from somewhere inside the door. Heavy and deliberate, the sound of something large and old being asked to move for the first time in a long time.

And then Fuu was gone.

The symbol he was resting his palm against had stopped inside the gate and Fuu was nowhere to be seen.

Hide looked at where Fuu had been and then at the remaining four symbols.

He stood there for a moment with uncertainty filling his heart to the brim. He closed his eyes once and pressed his hand against the symbol directly to the left of where Fuu had pressed.

It sank.

The same sound, the same as before... vast and slow and old, the machinery of something that had been sealed working through its sequence.

Then the road was gone, the door was gone, the endless dark was gone—