SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything

Chapter 174: Love

Hide was sitting there with his eyes narrowed, looking over at the sprawling dark sand ahead of him. In the distance, the neon-lit, hyper-modern mega-city of Ufrifa glowed like a brilliant, multi-colored gem against the pitch-black desert night.

The hot, dry wind of the continent brushed against his silver hair, carrying the faint hum of the city’s ceaseless activity.

He remained perfectly still on the edge of the cafeteria building’s secluded rooftop, the warm cup of milk resting loosely in his right hand. Beside him, the ethereal, miniature phantom of the Doom Overseer hovered over the metal table, its majestic ribbon-antlers glowing with a faint, corrupted violet hue.

"Did you check everywhere?" Hide asked slowly, his voice completely devoid of emotion, yet carrying a heavy, underlying tension.

The Doom Overseer bowed its head, the gesture smooth and impossibly respectful for an A-Rank Calamity Beast. "Yes, My Liege," the ancient, telepathic voice vibrated directly into Hide’s mind. "I have checked both Rilth and Earth. I have swept through the dimensional layers and the physical coordinates tied to his biological frequency. But there is absolutely no sign of the man. You can rest assured in my abilities. I never forget a man I have seen, and absolutely not this one. The old man is indeed dead. If you wish, I can tell you exactly how he had died."

Hide did not reply immediately. He slowly brought the cup to his lips, taking a quiet sip as his razor-sharp mind processed the gravity of the information. The old Clan Head of the Sihue clan—the terrifying S-Rank monster who had almost crushed Hide with sheer aura alone—had mysteriously died in Tarita.

Hide remembered the chaotic scene he had witnessed weeks ago in the Sihue estate. The frantic enforcer bursting into the room, the hushed panic. Hide had overheard that someone, or something, had escaped the watchtowers in the Eastern Continent of Tarita.

That was the extent of his knowledge. He had known the situation was volatile, but for an S-Rank patriarch to simply die? It was an apocalyptic shift in the balance of power.

Earlier, Hide didn’t have the means to investigate such high-tier classified events. But now, he possessed the phantom of the Doom Overseer. As an A-Rank Calamity Beast, the Doom Overseer was not a frontline juggernaut like Zenith, nor an impregnable fortress like Aegis. In pure physical combat, it was arguably weak for its rank. But what made it an absolute nightmare was its utility. There was nothing scarier than the skills it possessed.

Through his talent, Hide knew its capabilities intimately. The beast could perfectly locate anything and anyone it had ever seen or possessed a memory of, tracing their essence across dimensions. And its ultimate skill, Overseer’s Vision, was a terrifying surveillance tool. It possessed three distinct stages of activation, and the final part allowed the beast to literally oversee and reconstruct the events of the past and present, playing them back like a flawless, three-dimensional projection.

Hide lowered his cup, his glowing blue eyes staring into the dark abyss of the desert. An S-Rank human was basically a walking demigod. They didn’t just fall over and die.

"How could he die?" Hide slowly muttered to himself, his brow furrowing in deep concentration.

"Who is dead?" A voice from behind him suddenly asked, cutting through the whistling wind.

Hide’s enhanced perception flared, but he instantly recognized the cadence of the voice. It was Sora. In a fraction of a second, Hide mentally commanded his summon. The tiny phantom of the Doom Overseer instantly dissolved into a thick puff of pitch-black smoke, sinking seamlessly back into Hide’s chest before Sora even cleared the rooftop stairwell.

Hide turned around. Sora was closing the distance rapidly. She was out of breath, her chest heaving slightly, and her dark eyes were wide with a frantic, gnawing worry. Judging by the panic on her face, she had clearly heard his muttered question and had already made the worst possible assumption.

"It’s someone you don’t know," Hide replied calmly, keeping his posture entirely relaxed to defuse her panic. "Most people don’t know him anyways."

Hearing his steady, deadpan tone, Sora visibly eased up. A long, shuddering sigh escaped her lips, and the rigid tension bleeding from her shoulders vanished. She walked over to the metal table and slumped down into the chair opposite him, looking utterly exhausted.

"What are you doing here?" Hide asked, picking up his cup of milk again. The corrupted dark mana was safely locked away within his Abyssal Core, leaving no trace of the terrifying phantom that had just been resting on the table.

Sora leaned her elbows on the table, giving him a flat, unimpressed stare. "I should ask you that. What are you doing up here alone in the middle of the night?" she asked back, raising a suspicious eyebrow. "And whom were you talking to? There is no one here."

Hide didn’t flinch. His expression remained a perfect, unreadable mask. "I sometimes talk to myself," Hide replied smoothly, looking back out toward the horizon. "When there are things that are not solving in my mind. It helps me process the variables."

Sora let out a soft snort, though a faint smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She didn’t press the issue. The two of them fell into a comfortable, quiet silence. Sora shifted in her chair, her gaze drifting past the edge of the parapet to the sprawling, neon-drenched city far away. Ufrifa glowed like a brilliant beacon against the desolate wasteland, a stark reminder of the sheer scale of the world they were currently competing in.

Hide finished the last drop of his warm milk. He set the porcelain cup down on the metal table with a soft clink. His blue eyes, ringed with a faint blue hue, shifted toward Sora.

"Is your right leg injured?" Hide asked abruptly.

Sora flinched, her dark eyes snapping back to him. A sudden rush of color dusted her cheeks, completely flustered that he had noticed. She quickly tried to tuck her right leg further beneath the chair. "How... how did you know?" she stammered, entirely caught off guard.

"I just saw you were limping when you walked over here," Hide replied matter-of-factly.

He didn’t wait for her permission. Hide smoothly stood up from his spot on the parapet and walked around the small metal table. He dropped down onto one knee directly in front of her. Without a word of warning, his hands reached out, gently but firmly grasping her right ankle.

Sora’s breath hitched in her throat. Her entire body stiffened, and a vibrant shade of crimson violently flushed across her face. Hide was usually so distant, so coldly analytical and detached from everything around him.

Seeing him kneel before her, his silver hair catching the ambient light of the distant city, sent her heart into an absolute frenzy. She could feel the gentle, unexpected warmth of his fingers through the fabric of her trousers. She began to tremble, entirely unable to control the sudden spike in her own nervous system.

"Hold still," Hide murmured softly. A brilliant, soothing emerald light instantly flared from his palms. His S-Rank Abyssal Healing skill activated, effortlessly penetrating her skin to knit the strained muscle fibers and micro-fractures in her thigh back together.

Desperate to distract herself from the overwhelming proximity and the furious hammering in her chest, Sora blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. "Do... do you know anything about my Grand Uncle?" she asked, her voice wavering slightly. "Maddox... he hasn’t contacted us at all."

"No," Hide replied flatly, keeping his glowing blue eyes focused entirely on the healing process. "I haven’t heard a word from the old man. But he is an S-Ranker. You don’t need to worry about him."

"Then... where did you go?" Sora pressed, her hands gripping the edges of her seat tightly. "When you went missing before the tournament began... no one was able to track you. Claire was losing her mind. Where were you, Hide?"

Hide’s thumbs gently massaged the residual tension out of her calf as the green light began to fade. He smoothly dodged the interrogation, weaving a half-truth without missing a beat. "I just went for a walk to clear my head," Hide lied effortlessly. "The atmospheric pressure of the tournament was getting irritating. I needed to isolate myself and recalibrate my internal mana flow before the first round."

It was a perfectly calculated excuse, delivered with deadpan sincerity. Sora looked down at his face, her dark eyes softening. She knew he was probably hiding something—he always was—but right now, looking at the gentle care he was taking with her injury, she couldn’t bring herself to care about his secrets.

"There," Hide said, the emerald glow completely vanishing from his hands. He released her ankle and slowly stood up, dusting off the knee of his trousers. "The internal bruising is completely purged. You should be back to one hundred percent capacity."

Sora tentatively flexed her leg. The agonizing throb that had been plaguing her since her brutal match earlier in the day was entirely gone, replaced by a soothing, residual warmth. She looked up at Hide.

For the first time since she had met him, Hide didn’t look like a terrifying monster, a ruthless operator, or an unapproachable prodigy. Standing there in the quiet desert wind, he just looked like a normal, caring boy.

Hide looked down at her, and the rigid, icy mask he always wore finally cracked. He offered her a genuine, soft smile—a rare, fleeting expression that completely transformed his face, making him look breathtakingly human.

"Get some rest, Sora," Hide said quietly, his voice gentle. "Day after tomorrow is going to be rough. We need everyone at their best."

He turned on his heel, preparing to walk back toward the stairwell to return to his quarters.

But before he could take a single step, Sora’s hand shot out. She forcefully grabbed his wrist, her grip surprisingly desperate.

Hide stopped instantly. He turned his head, his blue eyes widening in slight confusion. "Yes?"

Sora was staring down at her own lap, her silver mana unconsciously sparking at her fingertips. Hide’s enhanced perception picked up the frantic, erratic rhythm of her heartbeat—it was hammering against her ribs like a war drum. She slowly stood up, refusing to let go of his hand. The hot wind whipped her dark hair across her face.

She took a step closer, completely erasing the distance between them. She finally tilted her head up, meeting his glowing blue eyes with a look of pure, unadulterated vulnerability. Her voice was barely a whisper, yet it rang louder in Hide’s ears than the roaring crowds of the arena.

"Hide..." she stammered, her voice cracking with the weight of the emotion she had been burying since some time. "I... I love you."

Hide froze. His razor-sharp mind, capable of analyzing Calamity Beasts and calculating spatial trajectories in a fraction of a millisecond, completely short-circuited.

Before Hide could even process the words, Sora stepped up onto the tips of her toes. She reached her free hand up, gently cupping the side of his face, and pressed her lips firmly against his.

The world around them seemed to instantly vanish. The distant, chaotic lights of Ufrifa, the suffocating pressure of the World Tournament, the terrifying truth of the gates—it all faded into absolute nothingness.

The kiss was incredibly soft, hesitant at first, but filled with a profound, desperate warmth that completely melted the icy barricades around Hide’s heart. For a boy who had spent his entire life surrounded by death, betrayal, and the cold isolation and only two friends, the sudden, overwhelming sensation was staggering.

Hide’s eyes slowly fluttered shut. His tense posture finally relaxed, and he allowed himself to sink into the warmth of the moment, the gentle desert wind wrapping around them under the endless, starry night.