SSS Awakening : I can Adapt to Everything

Chapter 187: Dark Realm

With a single, exhausted thought, Hide pulled his authority back.

The towering, seven-meter-tall titan that was Zenith dissolved into a heavy cloud of pitch-black smoke. Across the scorched, glass-like crater, Aegis, the Doom Overseer, and finally the colossal Blue Lightning Dragon all lost their physical cohesion, transforming into swirling vortexes of corrupted energy. The massive amounts of dark mana rapidly condensed and rushed back into Hide’s chest, sinking seamlessly into his newly evolved Dark Abyssal Core.

As Drogon vanished, the violent, bruised-purple storm clouds churning high above the Ufrifan desert finally broke apart. The howling winds died down to a gentle, sweltering breeze, and the bright, furious glow of the moon pierced through the parting clouds, illuminating the endless sea of dunes.

Hide stood alone in the silence of the desert. He let out a long, ragged sigh, his shoulders slumping as the adrenaline finally left his system.

He slowly turned and walked toward one of the few remaining sand dunes nearby. His naked feet dragged slightly as he reached the crest of the dune and sat down. The hot sand felt strangely comforting against the biting chill of his own mana.

He looked down at himself. He was a mess. His standard combat pants and his inner shirt had been completely shredded into oblivion during his fight with Julian and the brutal twin-evolution process.

Even his high-tier communicator had been crushed into irrecoverable scrap metal. All that remained covering him was his S-Rank Abyssal Slime, which flawlessly coated his skin like a sleek, pitch-black undersuit, and the durable blue jacket resting over his shoulders.

Hide sat there, silent and entirely lost in his thoughts. The silver-white hair fell over his eyes, casting dark shadows across his face. He felt a profound, undeniable sense of accomplishment settling deep into his bones. He had survived. He had hunted down a B-Rank Calamity Lord, shattered his limits, and reached the B-Rank.

And yet, for some reason, he could not smile.

His face remained an unreadable mask of stoic exhaustion. Too much had been going on lately. The slaughter, the deceit, the legacy clans, the Joker, and the terrifying revelations about the planet Rilth. But as he stared up at the furiously glowing moon, a quiet peace finally touched his chest. Finally, it would all be worth it.

"Class State," Hide whispered into the quiet night.

The familiar blue holographic screen instantly bloomed from his AAA ring, hovering in the air before him.

--

Name - Hide Volter

Class - ∞

Current Class Rank - B Class

Evolution Percentage - 0%

Class Potential - S

Talent 1 - Dark Liege

[You are the watcher in the dark, the song in death and the Ruler in the afterlife. Dark mana can be used to create faceless manifests called Phantom Court. These manifests can be given life by placing an anchor.]

Talent Rank - 5 star

Talent 2 - Court’s Blessing

[The dead beneath your banner are not mere servants, but extensions of your will. A Phantom soldier of your court, that bears your mark may inherit fragments of your power, allowing you to take their skills or pass your skills into their hollow forms and bloom through them as if they were your own hands.]

Talent Rank - 3 star

Talent 3 - Sovereign’s Void-Walk

[The physical realm is but a curtain to the true Ruler. The Sovereign of Darkness may step into the Dark Realm—the primordial abyss that exists between the folds of space and time. You may traverse this boundless void unhindered, turning distance into an illusion to emerge anywhere your will desires.]

Talent Rank - 5 star

Hide stared at the screen, his blue eyes widening slightly as he read the description of his newly awakened talent. Another 5-star talent. He didn’t completely understand the quantum mechanics of it, but the majestic description made the core utility perfectly clear: it was essentially a supreme teleportation skill that allowed him to travel between the physical world and a dimension called the ’Dark Realm’.

He was more than eager to try it. But first, he had a much more important task to complete.

Without wasting another second, Hide minimized his stats and opened the main system screen. He didn’t pay any attention to the dozens of unread combat logs or minor skill upgrades. His fingers moved with practiced, desperate precision as he immediately navigated to the System Shop.

He searched for the item that had been driving his entire existence for the past few months.

[Item: Mana Purification Catalyst]

[Description: An absolute cure capable of completely eradicating Mana Poisoning. Reconstructs and purifies the host’s cellular foundation.]

[Cost: 500,000 Evolution Points]

Hide looked at his balance. The sheer massacre he had committed inside the gates, compounded by the massive bounty of a Higher Calamity Lord, had pushed his funds well over the threshold.

He tapped the purchase button.

[500,000 Evolution Points deducted.]

[Purchase Successful. Item transferred to Inventory.]

Hide opened his spatial inventory and reached his hand inside. When he pulled it out, he was holding a small, flawless crystalline vial. A brilliant, pure white liquid swirled inside it, radiating a gentle, cleansing warmth that completely defied the corrupted nature of Hide’s own mana.

Hide stared at the small vial, his breath catching in his throat. His vision blurred slightly as the overwhelming relief crashed into him like a physical blow. He had it. He finally had the thing that could help Risa get back up. The thing that would let her breathe on her own, smile without pain, and enjoy her life like a normal girl.

He carefully stored the vial back into his inventory, guarding it like it was the most precious artifact in the universe.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and slowly stood up from the sand dune. It was time to go back.

Hide closed his eyes and activated his new 5-star talent: Sovereign’s Void-Walk.

Instantly, a catastrophic torrent of dark mana violently escaped his core. It didn’t just wrap around him; it entirely consumed his physical body, devouring his flesh, his clothes, and his bones in a swirling vortex of pitch-black energy. In a fraction of a millisecond, Hide simply ceased to exist in the Ufrifan desert, leaving nothing behind.

When Hide opened his eyes, his breath hitched.

He was standing on nothing. There was no ground, no sky, no gravity, and no sound. There was absolutely nothing but an infinite, suffocating expanse of pure darkness beneath him, beside him, and all around him.

He was inside the Dark Realm!

Hide looked down at his hands, only to realize with a shock of pure adrenaline that he didn’t have hands. He didn’t have legs. He didn’t have a coherent physical body at all. He was simply a point of consciousness floating in a boundless void. It was utterly terrifying, an existential dread that made his non-existent heart race.

But as his perception adjusted to the absolute darkness, he noticed something in the distance.

Millions of tiny, glowing specks of light were suspended in the void. They were like stars, scattered infinitely across the horizon. Some burned with a fierce, bright blue, others with a sickly purple, and millions more were simply faint, flickering white embers.

"What... what are those stars?" Hide asked, his thought echoing outward into the empty space.

Immediately, the ancient, resonant voice of the Doom Overseer vibrated within his consciousness. "My Liege, those are the human cores that you can see."

Human cores?

Hide was rendered completely wordless. The staggering realization hit him like a tidal wave. These endless, countless specks of light weren’t stars. They were the souls and mana cores of every single living human being in the physical world, projected into this space between space and time. He was looking at humanity from the perspective of a god.

"Please close your eyes and think of where you want to go, My Liege," the Doom Overseer instructed calmly, sensing the boy’s rising existential panic. "A person, a place, or some object as you wish. Your will shall tether you."

Following the instruction, Hide closed his non-existent eyes. His very first, desperate impulse was to picture Risa. He wanted to instantly appear where she was and give her the cure. But his razor-sharp pragmatism quickly halted the thought. He remembered the heavily armed guards, the defensive wards, and the absolute authority of the Sihue Clan.

More importantly, he remembered the old master assassin. Ren Sihue had given him exactly three months to prove his worth and bring back a cure. Hide had done it, and he was almost at the end of that time period. He was obligated to at least tell her father. It only made sense to meet him first and proceed together, rather than triggering a massive war by magically teleporting into their most secure sanctuary unannounced.

Hide cleared his mind and visualized the towering, ominous main gates of the Sihue Clan’s headquarters back in Area 17.

He opened his eyes. The environment around him in the Dark Realm didn’t feel like it had changed much—it was still just endless darkness. But when he looked up, the alignment of the "stars" was entirely different. He could clearly see several dense, powerful purple and blue cores grouped closely together in strict defensive formations. The guards.

He was there.

With a single thought, Hide canceled the talent.

The dark mist violently erupted in the physical world, tearing a hole in the damp, smog-filled night air of Area 17. The smoke rapidly condensed, knitting his physical body back together in a fraction of a second. Hide stepped fully out of the shadows, his boots hitting the solid, polished cobblestone.