SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 203: Sync

The couch groaned quietly under my weight as I sat in the living room, the room dim with the setting sun casting gold through the blinds. The air was thick with the sort of silence that followed aftershock. It had been only a day since the broadcast. Since the truth. Since I had shown the world who I was and what we were up against.

Outside, everything was still on fire. Politically, socially, culturally. But in here, in this apartment, we had fallen into a strange stillness. The kind that settles when there’s nothing immediate to fight. All four girls were home, none of them had gone back to their respective jobs. It wasn’t like they could. Not after the Masked Syndicate’s identity was revealed. Not after my identity was revealed.

Not that money was a concern. Between my passive income from old jobs, Camille’s impressive investments and influence, and our fallback option of government funding—if we ever really decided to use it—we were far from desperate. What did worry me was the time. The hours stretching forward, empty, quiet, dangerous in their own way.

In the background, I heard Camille’s teasing voice filter through the hallway, followed by an audible squeak from Alexis.

"So, when exactly were you going to tell us you kissed him, Doctor Alexis?" Camille teased.

"I didn’t plan for it to happen," Alexis snapped back defensively.

"I imagine you didn’t plan for Evelyn to be your blindfolded witness either," Camille added with a laugh.

There was a short pause.

"I couldn’t keep it a secret. It was relevant information," Evelyn said plainly, though I could tell from the flat tone that she was putting on her most professional voice to mask the obvious blush.

Sienna, off in the kitchen, was humming quietly as she stirred something aromatic. The home felt lived in, almost peaceful.

I leaned my head back against the cushions and exhaled slowly, eyes half-closed. This wasn’t going to last. I couldn’t just exist in this limbo. I couldn’t ignore what was coming, or the things I still needed to prepare for. But Alexis had been right, I couldn’t afford to take another job. Not in my condition. My body was burning itself out.

So what was left?

Level up the skills I already had.

Or... master whatever I’d been doing lately. That strange unity of purpose I’d felt during the last few battles. Like I wasn’t just using skills, but becoming them. When I fought Ragnar. When I fought the bear. It was like I was perfectly in tune with everything in my arsenal, every job, every skill, all working together in absolute harmony.

What if that was the path forward?

I opened my system interface reluctantly. The notification for a new job still hovered there, tempting and patient like an unopened letter. I ignored it. Instead, I opened the Database. Last time I did in-dept research through this was when I was trying to understand how S-Rank jobs caused overstimulation. Back then, there had been documentation. Now, I wasn’t so lucky.

No one had ever publicly discussed using skills in perfect synchrony. Why would they? Only Cain Protocol subjects and I had multiple jobs, and they were hardly the type to go publishing research.

I sifted through hundreds of archives. Searches. Articles. Most were irrelevant. Combat strategies. Skill modifiers. Passive enhancements. Nothing I needed.

Until I stumbled across a dated article from a long-defunct research division of FutureVision, the same company that created the Prototype. It was written by a lead researcher, and most of it had been dismissed by peers as speculative nonsense.

He claimed that every skill and job had two states: passive and active. In passive state, skills functioned at a fraction of their potential, useful but diluted. In active state, they reached full power, responsive and dynamic. He had dubbed this phenomenon Full Professional Sync, a condition in which a person became fully aligned with their system, wielding all their abilities without friction.

The article had been widely ignored.

Critics pointed out that certain skills, like Instinct, Intuition, or Language Retention, operated perfectly well in passive state. The inconsistency had buried the theory.

But to me... it fit. It clicked. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

That’s what had happened with Ragnar. With the bear. I had stopped thinking of my jobs and skills as tools and started acting from raw emotion, rage in one case, survival in the other. The skills hadn’t activated individually. They had converged.

So maybe that was the key.

Emotion.

I tried to summon that feeling again. Anger. Fear. The memory of Ragnar’s cruelty. The terror of a bear crashing through the trees. Nothing. I tried to picture one of the girls hurt, gone. Still nothing. No resonance. No sync.

An hour passed. Then another.

I was still scrolling imagining the most wild scenarios, even picturing the girls being victims of the NovaCore experiments, but nothing worked.

"Rey! Dinner’s ready!"

I stood, sighing under my breath. Another dead end. I crossed the living room slowly, my thoughts weighing me down like lead.

"Something wrong?" Sienna asked as I stepped in, setting the table.

"Just tired," I replied, trying to mask the disappointment.

Then it happened.

Evelyn, still blindfolded, reached for a cup of juice. She must have misjudged the distance and accidently tipped it. The glass slipped, the liquid arcing outward.

Time slowed.

My skills flared, not individually but as one.

I lunged, not just with speed, but with synchronization. One hand caught the glass before it shattered. The other moved fluidly to intercept the juice, each droplet suspended like beads of glass in air. Using a mix of Reflex Calibration, Observation and Instinct, I swept the liquid back into the cup in a clean, seamless movement.

The room was silent. I stood frozen, hand outstretched, still holding the glass. Camille’s jaw was slightly open. Even Alexis had poked her head in, blinking in disbelief.

Then the notification pinged.

[SYSTEM UPDATE]

New Special Skill Unlocked: Full Profession Sync

Description: You have synchronized every aspect of your system. All active skills and job traits may now be accessed in unison. Efficiency and power increased exponentially while in Sync State. Use with caution.

I stared at the glowing words, heart pounding.

It was real.

It had a name.

And now it was mine.

The most uptodat𝓮 n𝒐vels are published on (f)reew𝒆(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦