SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 234: A Second Faction

The red dot pulsed once more—then vanished.

I didn’t wait for confirmation.

"Down!" I yelled, grabbing Camille by the shoulder and yanking her to the dirt. My other arm locked around Evelyn, pulling her down as I twisted to cover her with my body.

Then the jungle cracked open.

A burst tore through the clearing—sound and pressure colliding like a thunderclap wrapped in broken metal. Heat washed over us, not fire, but concussive force. Leaves shredded in the air. Shrapnel peppered the edges of the overhang. A vine next to me exploded into pulp.

It was shot meant to handicap individuals, but without a doubt it had more than enough power to kill someone.

Smoke bled through the vines like ink in water. My ears rang. Evelyn’s breath caught in her throat beneath me. Camille gritted her teeth and hissed through the pain.

Above the ringing, a voice cut in—amplified, mechanical, commanding:

"MOVE. NOW."

"Flush tactic," 3830 shouted over the chaos. "They want us scrambling!"

And that’s exactly what we were about to do.

I pushed off the dirt, my System whirring at full tilt—hazard mapping, wind direction, proximity scan. All of it blurred together into one conclusion:

Scatter. Or burn.

"Split formation!" I barked. "Draw them out—three vectors! Don’t stop moving!"

"Alone?" Camille asked, voice tight.

I didn’t answer. Not because she was wrong—but because she was right.

Sienna grabbed Alexis and vanished to the left. 3830 didn’t wait. She sprinted straight into the brush, already weaving, already drawing fire. The telltale click of a drone discharge pulsed in the distance. She wanted them to follow her.

Good.

That left me with Camille and Evelyn.

"Up," I said, hauling Evelyn back into my arms. Camille was pale, stumbling, but nodded. "I’m with you."

We bolted.

The jungle was starting to thin—but not in a way that brought relief. The underbrush gave way to dips and sudden gullies, the kind of terrain that made ankles roll and balance vanish. Dry veins of cracked earth wove through the trees like forgotten scars, and every step felt like it wanted to mislead us. The roots grew sharper, more exposed, snatching at our boots like skeletal hands. They caught fabric, tripped balance, tore at nerves already fraying.

The ground sloped downward in subtle, uneven pulses, tugging us closer to the lower basin I remembered from earlier scouting—the dried streambed. If my memory held, it curved under a collapsed ridge farther east. Concealed, narrow, perfect for slipping a body past air surveillance.

But if I was wrong?

We’d be boxed in like prey waiting for the kill.

Branches scraped across our arms as we pushed through a net of limbs and leaves. Something hissed in the canopy above—high and quick. A whirring sound, almost too faint to register. Drone? Bird? I didn’t have time to guess. I ducked and kept moving.

Behind me, Camille’s breathing had turned to jagged glass. Each inhale sounded like it was cutting her throat. She wasn’t faltering yet, but her steps were dragging, her body starting to betray the sheer effort it took just to keep going. Evelyn was still in my arms—light, yes, but my muscles were burning. Not from weight, but from constant tension. The kind that eats through endurance inch by inch.

"Left!" I barked as we reached a shallow fork, veering toward a side channel flanked by walls of fern and vine.

Camille pivoted with me, barely keeping her balance. I could hear her boots scrape on stone, her breath hitch as she forced her pace faster than her body could handle.

We ducked beneath a fallen tree that had cracked in half and grown mossy with age. Its bark peeled like sunburnt skin, slick and clinging. Thorns scraped at our arms, and tangled roots forced us into an awkward crouch. We emerged into a tight corridor where the air tasted like wet copper.

That’s when Evelyn tapped my shoulder—once, firm.

"I hear movement," she whispered.

Her voice was quiet, but it sliced straight through the chaos.

She didn’t need eyes to know what was coming.

I stopped just long enough to flick on every sense I had. System burst to life.

Observation. Instinct. Advanced Hazard Assessment. Thermal Perception.

Two heat signatures detected.

They came in bright and brief. Left and right—opposite flanks. Cold center. They were moving slowly, deliberately. Trained. Armed. They weren’t hunting wildly. They were pushing in with formation. Professional.

And we were in the middle.

My mind surged—half a dozen options screaming in parallel. Fight, flank, drop smoke. Too open. Too close. Evelyn couldn’t move fast enough on her own. Camille was already past her limit. If we turned around, we’d be exposed. If we kept forward, we’d need cover.

Then I saw it.

Up ahead, just past a splintered log, where vines coiled tight like ropes around stone—a narrow cleft. Barely a meter wide. Sandwiched between two moss-covered boulders like a crack in the earth itself.

Not much room to breathe.

Just enough to get through.

A sliver of escape.

"Through there!" I shouted, jerking my chin toward the gap. "Go—now!"

Camille didn’t argue. She couldn’t afford to. She ducked into the gap without breaking stride, her limbs jolting from root to stone like a puppet straining its strings.

I followed right behind her, my shoulder scraping against the slick edge of rock, Evelyn’s arm braced tight around my neck. I could feel her heartbeat against my chest—steady, fast, but not panicked.

The space swallowed us.

For one sharp second, the world narrowed into that sliver of stone and damp moss. I twisted, turned, pushed through the claustrophobic channel—

—and then we were out.

The jungle dropped away behind us.

And before us, like the ribcage of a buried giant, the streambed opened. Hollowed out, dark and quiet. A trench carved by old water and abandonment. Deep enough to crawl, but wide enough to breathe.

Safe?

Maybe.

But definitely better than what was behind us.

It was quieter here.

Not silent, but dampened. Like the jungle was holding its breath.

Camille collapsed beside the streambed wall, one hand gripping her thigh.

"They’re still closing in," she panted.

I activated Thermal Perception.

Small heat blooms flared—birds, rodents, foliage. But at the edge of range, flickers. Human shape. Patterned movement.

"They’re adjusting formation," I murmured.

"Flanking?" Camille asked.

"Eventually."

Evelyn spoke, calm and precise. "The government’s extraction protocol comes in three stages. First—recruit. Second—dissuade. Third—neutralize."

She turned her head, blindfold catching what little light remained.

"They’re not offering stage one."

"Or two," I muttered.

My Strategist skill struggled—too many variables. The jungle shifted too fast. Drones, agents, sensor flares—patterns overlapped and broke before they settled.

Camille wiped blood from her cheek with the back of her hand.

"What now?"

"East," I said. "We follow the streambed."

It curled deeper into the jungle, half-submerged beneath vines and broken stone. Low ceiling. Single path.

Trap or tunnel.

We didn’t have a choice.

We moved.

The light dimmed.

The jungle canopy above thinned just enough for dusk to reclaim its grip, casting the streambed in a dim, green-gray haze. Shadows deepened. Our breaths echoed louder than they should’ve in the narrow hollow, like the earth itself was trying to remind us we didn’t belong here.

The dried streambed wound sharply around a half-buried slab of collapsed concrete—cracked and scorched at the edges. Remnants of something old. A forgotten road or maybe the skeleton of a bunker long since claimed by vines. Moss covered half its surface in uneven sheets. The other half was split wide, jagged like a snapped femur. Nature didn’t reclaim everything cleanly.

We didn’t stop to study it. We slipped into the narrow breach, crouching low beneath broken steel rebars that jutted out like rusted needles. The concrete walls pressed in tighter here, forcing us single file.

Then I heard it.

A faint whine—too clean, too steady to be natural. High-pitched and sharp. It drilled into the silence, a needle threading through the low jungle hum.

Sensor ping.

Not distant.

Close.

Far too close.

Then—

A voice.

Filtered through a broken mesh of static, no louder than a breath inside a storm.

"Converge at the hollow. Northeast point. You’ll only get one window."

It was her.

3830.

I don’t know when she’d done it—probably in the chaos after we regrouped, maybe when I was interrogating the scout or when we all were gearing up for the fight—but she’d planted an earpiece. Seamless. Hidden. Herself, encoded in sound.

And if she gave one to us, she probably gave one to Sienna and Alexis too.

We had a rendezvous.

A single shot to converge.

A single escape line, if any.

I didn’t hesitate. I adjusted Evelyn in my arms, angled my stance, and pressed harder into the path ahead. The streambed dipped again, the walls thick with ferns, the floor cluttered with dry twigs and stone.

I picked up the pace.

Time was about to run out.

We crawled out of the trench fifteen minutes later.

The hollow was sunken, ringed by thick trees and fractured roots. It was barely more than a dent in the jungle, but the overgrowth made it look like something buried had tried to surface and failed.

Alexis and Sienna were already there—bruised, scraped, but breathing. Alexis’s sleeve was gone. Sienna’s leg was wrapped in a strip of torn fabric. Neither of them spoke right away.

Then 3830 arrived.

She didn’t say anything.

She just pointed upward.

I followed her gaze.

There—threaded through the highest branches. A shape. Mechanical. Watching.

A drone.

But not the same model.

Not military standard. Not another government’s make. Sleeker. Circular base. Red lens blinking slow.

This was our government’s.

"That’s not theirs," 3830 muttered.

A hum followed—not electrical.

Low.

Pulsing.

Beneath the trees, something shifted.

New footprints.

Not from us.

Not from them.

Another party had entered the jungle.

Another flag.

Our country.

My System sparked.

Strategist finally had an idea that I could use.

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