SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 237: Silent Edge

The jungle whispered. Not with wind, but with heat—dense, pressing, alive.

We moved south.

Staggered formation. No one breaking rank. Camille, Alexis, and Evelyn took the left flank, weaving between fern-thick underbrush and angled roots. Sienna and 3830 anchored the rear, watching for shadows that didn’t belong. I held the center with the lead drone drifting just above the canopy, feeding me elevation maps and heat signatures. It pulsed with soft red alerts when movement shifted.

One flicker—false alarm. A bird.

Second flicker—thermal bloom. Humanoid. Thirty meters west.

I raised a hand. Halt.

A single motion, two fingers curving inward. Camille caught it instantly. She and Evelyn shifted left, disappearing like smoke. Alexis dropped lower into a crouch.

The jungle was too loud to be silent. Cicadas buzzed like live wires. Leaves rustled with nothing in them.

Then—

A click. Not ours.

Camille broke the silence first, throwing her voice—badly.

"Kraaaaak!" she growled.

I winced. So did Evelyn, but it worked. The scout turned, drawn to the crude mimic of whatever jungle predator Camille thought she was emulating.

Wrong move.

Camille swept low and fast, tripping the man into a thornbrush. A muffled cry, then Evelyn was on him, silencing the rest. One down.

Alexis’s turn.

We redirected around a small outcrop, vines thick as rope webbing across the trees. Alexis whispered something under her breath—probably a chemical estimate—and began scraping a patch of bark. Sticky yellow sap clung to her fingers as she smeared it across a vine coil.

Ten minutes later, another scout stepped into the wrong loop.

He never even screamed. Just twitched, slumped, and crumpled like a puppet with cut strings.

Two.

I moved forward with the drone marking our path in soft pings. Every motion I made—hand signals, posture shifts—felt amplified under Command Presence. The others responded as if they knew what I meant before I did.

Sienna had waited for her turn.

When we passed over a shallow ravine, she stayed behind. The next scout entered from the north, rifle scanning tree lines.

Too late.

Sienna dropped from a branch, grabbing a thick vine as anchor. Her legs locked around the man’s chest, and she slammed him to the dirt so hard the breath left his lungs in a dry pop. She finished it with a quick twist of his arm behind the neck.

Three.

We cleaned up two more on the next ridge—one with Camille baiting again, one through 3830 simply emerging from the ferns and snapping a man’s knee before he could scream.

Five. Six.

Each takedown was fast, sharp, clean. Like a knife cutting fabric into pattern. Efficient. Precise.

Just like I needed.

Ninety minutes passed.

We paused near the curve of a crumbled ridge. The sun was lowering, dimmed under thick foliage, bleeding into oranges that barely touched the forest floor.

Camille wiped blood from her sleeve with a dramatic sigh. "Remind me again why you always get to go full commando while we’re stuck playing tag with poison and bad impressions?"

I cracked half a smile. "Because I outrank you."

Alexis crouched near a root system, inspecting her stash of harvested toxins. "Yeah, well, I’m adding ’jungle exorcist’ to my resumé. If we get out of here alive, I’m never touching bark again."

"You’ll miss it," Camille said.

"No, I won’t. I’ll miss pavement and sterile kitchens."

3830 hadn’t spoken. She stared at the drone feed, eyes narrowed. Her expression unreadable—but not calm.

I walked over.

"Something wrong?"

She didn’t look up. "One of the drones just dropped visual."

I froze. "What?"

She tapped the screen. Static shimmered across one quadrant of the map. A red overlay blinked: Signal Feed Obstructed. Source Unknown. Visual Lock Lost.

"They’re jamming?" I asked.

"Or cloaking," 3830 muttered. "In chess terms, we’ve been hitting their pawns. One of the knights just moved."

The air tightened. That kind of quiet. The kind before storms.

"Keep moving," I said. "Camille, Evelyn, sweep back along the route. Don’t engage. Just confirm the loss point."

They nodded and slipped away.

We moved slower now. More deliberate. Every branch became a trap. Every rustle felt like breath on our necks.

The pings from the drone thinned out.

Still no return signal from the lost feed.

I didn’t feel the danger.

Not like a sharp point. More like a question.

Then, cold metal kissed my neck.

Not a press. A whisper. Just enough to feel the intention behind it. A silent promise of what would come next if I moved wrong.

"On your knees," came the voice. Close. Calm. Absolutely in control. "One sound, and I slice your artery."

The words weren’t barked. They were breathed. Precise. Intimate in a way only violence could be.

The air snapped to alert.

My team didn’t move all at once—but I felt them shift like a ripple of static through cloth.

I didn’t move either. Didn’t breathe more than I had to.

I didn’t need to turn my head. I didn’t need to see their faces to know how they’d react.

Sienna’s boots scraped against soil—forward, instinctual, protective.

But 3830’s hand moved like a blade through still air. Not a stop. Not panic. A calculation. Hold. Wait. Observe.

Camille was already half-turned, weight on the balls of her feet. A breath away from leaping, but locked in a frozen decision.

Alexis crouched lower, one hand brushing against the vine-wrapped stone on her belt—preparing, not panicking.

Evelyn didn’t need eyes. The tilt of her body told me she was reading the man’s breath, tone, posture—an entire psychological profile being constructed in silence. Even blindfolded, she could read people better than most with their eyes open.

But none of them made a sound.

Not yet.

I could feel the heat of the blade now, closer than before, still not touching. The man behind me thought he had power.

His breathing gave him away.

Measured. But just a touch too shallow. Just enough to betray the tension hiding beneath the surface. Not a pro. A believer. Someone who thought intimidation was enough.

"You should be more aware of your surroundings," I said, softly.

The blade hesitated.

"Wha—?"

A rush of leaves. A shift in air pressure.

Then a crack of bone.

The man collapsed.

Hard.

I didn’t flinch. Didn’t need to. I knew exactly what came next.

It was Anthony.

He landed behind him in a crouch, one hand still raised from the strike. He didn’t speak at first. He just looked at the twitching heap of flesh on the jungle floor with the kind of mild disinterest reserved for broken tools.

"Took you long enough," I muttered, still facing forward.

Anthony stood, brushing off his sleeve like he’d just finished some gardening. "You try navigating a jungle with half a squadron on your tail and a broken signal relay. I was five minutes out when you started poking fate with a stick."

He stepped forward, eyes scanning the unconscious agent. His fingers went to the man’s collar, flipping it back with a practiced flick.

"Jeffery Thompson," Anthony said. "Elite ghost unit. Specializes in deep-silence infiltration. Trained to make his presence smaller than his shadow. He could’ve stood behind us for five minutes and none of us would’ve known. No wonder your drone missed him."

Camille let out the breath she’d been holding. "You absolute bastard," she snapped at Anthony. "You couldn’t have dropped in ten seconds earlier?"

Anthony smirked without apology. "Where’s the fun in that?"

Sienna stormed past me, fists clenched so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. "You let him get that close," she said, voice low and edged with fury.

I turned toward her. "I didn’t let anything. I calculated what would happen if I waited." freewёbnoνel-com

Her eyes flared. "Calculated?" she hissed. "Someone could’ve died, Reynard. You could’ve died."

3830 knelt beside the body, her hands moving deftly, checking for hidden transmitters. "He wasn’t going to kill Reynard," she said flatly. "He needed leverage. Look at his grip. Too high. Off-balance. He was bluffing."

Alexis crouched beside her. "Pulse is shallow," she murmured. "Neck trauma, fractured clavicle, maybe dislocated shoulder. But alive."

"Pity," Evelyn muttered, rubbing her temple. "So much for smooth progress. We were finally moving in rhythm."

Anthony turned his gaze to 3830. "You’re Subject 3830," he said, more a statement than a question.

She met his eyes. "You’re late."

Anthony gave a half-smile. "And you’re exactly how I imagined. Sharp edges and a worse attitude."

She didn’t blink. "No worse than yours."

I stepped between them. "Enough. Situation, Anthony."

He pulled a foldable datapad from his belt pouch and flipped it open with a snap. A very small 3D projection bloomed above the surface, mapping topography with rippling lines of green and red. It looked more experimental than anything.

"Evac crate is twenty minutes south from here," he said. "Preloaded it myself—medical kits, cloaked sat-com, long-range gear, compressed rations, and smart-cloth thermal blankets. It’s disguised as a downed tree. Heat-dampened. Off-grid."

Sienna crossed her arms, still fuming. "And what about more of those?" she asked, nodding to the unconscious Thompson.

Anthony didn’t blink. "We move fast enough, we won’t need to worry."

Camille raised an eyebrow. "And if we’re not fast enough?"

He looked her in the eye. "Then we kill anything that gets in our way."

The weight of that sentence settled like mist. No bravado. No dramatics. Just fact.

Anthony turned to face the whole group. "We’ve got a short window. Once night sweeps start, we lose visual and drone support. This was their test balloon—if Thompson didn’t report back, they’ll assume compromise. Meaning we’ve got, at best, two hours before they start blanketing the ridge with something nastier."

I looked at the others. They were already tightening straps, rechecking gear, confirming silent signals.

Evelyn stood first, brushing her fingers off on her jacket. "Direction?"

Anthony pointed. "South-southeast. Two ridgelines over."

I nodded. "Then we move."

Anthony gave one last glance at the unconscious man, then back to me.

"Alright," he said, voice shifting—lighter, but no less certain. "Vacation time’s over."

His eyes swept across the group.

"It’s time for all of you to get off this island."

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