SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 223: Lines in the Dark

The lantern flickered low, casting long, gold-tinted shadows that stretched across the cracked concrete walls like ghosts learning how to breathe. I sat cross-legged near it, the heatless hush of the shelter curling around my shoulders like damp cloth, watching 3830 work.

She moved like a machine long since freed from the need to think.

Knife—checked.

Ammo—counted, weighed, set aside.

Folding stock—snapped into place with a quiet click.

Safety tested—once, twice.

Reset.

Her hands never trembled. Her expression never shifted. Not frantic. Not even cautious.

Just practiced.

Like this wasn’t prep.

Like this was ritual.

Like she’d done it a hundred times before.

Because she had.

Camille crouched near a stack of canisters, each one worn smooth by time or weather or both. She pried the lid off one with a screwdriver fashioned from bone and twisted wire—just another tool in the language of survival.

It hissed faintly. She recoiled slightly. "Good news—it’s not poison gas. Bad news? Still not marshmallows."

No one laughed. Not really. But the effort was appreciated.

Alexis stood a few feet away, eye to a battered scope, checking for distortion. She muttered numbers under her breath—range, angle, windspeed, nothing the jungle would care about. But she cared. She always did.

In the corner, Evelyn sat with her legs crossed beneath her, tracing the curve of a dismantled rifle like it was a memory. She didn’t need eyes to learn it. Her fingers committed each groove, each ridge, each flaw to memory.

She was reading a weapon the way I read rooms.

And Sienna—

Sienna stood in the center of it all, arms folded tightly across her chest. Watching us. Watching the walls. Watching the space between the breaths we took and the ones we didn’t.

Like if she blinked too long, one of us might disappear.

I didn’t blame her.

I leaned back against the wall. Cold. Rough. My ribs flared with pain like cracked glass beneath skin.

Three hours.

That’s how long the System said I had left.

Three hours until it returned.

Until then—nothing.

No jobs. No skills. No titles. No interface. Just a name. A history. And a thousand reasons to be hunted.

I wasn’t even dead weight.

I was just a weak point in the circle.

And yet—despite everything—they still looked at me.

Still glanced when decisions were made, still waited for me to speak, to direct, to shape the coming storm into something that could be survived.

They didn’t say it.

But they still believed in me.

Even if I didn’t know why.

Even if I didn’t deserve it.

So I stayed upright.

Sat straight.

Held the silence without breaking.

The least I could do was stay standing when it counted.

Even if it broke me.

Even if it already had.

"Here," 3830 said, flattening a creased map over the lantern crate. Her scarred fingers smoothed the edges without looking at them. "We’re here. South tunnel. Entry’s possible through the canopy line—north ridge or east slope."

Her voice had gone cold again. Not aggressive. Not angry.

Tactical.

Camille dropped to a crouch beside her, one knee brushing old cement. "What do they usually use?"

"They’ll come from the East slope," 3830 replied, tapping the corner with a fingertip. "Less noise. Smoother incline. Their scouts typically run the Terrain Dampening skill—quiet movement, low-profile thermal. But they’re weak to elevation shifts. Bad knees. Heavy packs. Means they’ll avoid the ridge."

"Recon units?" Alexis asked, already unzipping an old pouch of electrical strips.

"Usually three. One with Target Identification. One with Terrain Mapper. One backup with Footprint Isolation and Strategic Retreat."

I blinked. "That’s... oddly specific."

3830 nodded. "It’s not standard recon. These aren’t soldiers. They’re retrieval units. Trained to find, extract, and disappear."

"And if something gets in their way?" Camille asked, straightening. Her tone had cooled too.

"They neutralize it," 3830 said simply. "Minimal mess. Minimal witnesses."

Evelyn, seated near the shelter wall, raised two fingers slowly. "Do we have a fallback route?"

3830 pointed without hesitation. "Back tunnel. West crawlspace. Reinforced hatch, six meters down. It’s tight—barely crawlspace wide. Good for bottlenecking. Bad for breathing. Use it only if we’re down to smoke and shouts."

Alexis stepped toward the ventilation duct, peering up. "I can make a flare—fruit pulp outside glows red when fermented. Mix that with cloth and heat, it’ll light like phosphorus."

3830 gave a single approving nod. "Burn it if fallback’s needed. Smoke’ll hang long enough for a drone to catch."

And just like that, we moved.

Not with panic.

With purpose.

Like the only way forward was through.

Camille began spooling copper tripwire between two broken shelves, anchoring it with melted screw caps and a spike from the wreckage. Alexis dug through an old drone plate, muttering frequencies as she modified it into a signal amplifier. Evelyn, quiet as bone, repurposed a broken headset into a crude proximity relay—her fingers elegant, confident, efficient.

The shelter came alive—not with noise, but focus.

A heartbeat beneath concrete.

I tried to speak halfway through—a note about visibility lines, about noise timing near the ridge. My throat seized halfway through the sentence. No projection. Just breath.

Sienna brought me water without a word.

I nodded.

Tried again.

Failed again.

She stayed beside me.

3830 looked over—not unkind, but clinical. Measured.

"You won’t be useful in combat."

She said it like she’d say a weather report.

I didn’t flinch. "Then I’ll try to matter before it starts."

A pause. Then she looked away.

No argument.

But no agreement either.

Just calculation.

Evelyn stood near the lantern, one hand brushing the map. "He’s not what his name suggests," she said quietly.

3830 didn’t face her. "A name typically reflects character."

"Is the child of a murderer guilty of murder?"

That made 3830 pause.

"He already tore down everything Hugo Vale stood for," Evelyn added. "He exposed NovaCore. He brought the truth into daylight. I mean you should see the world right now, it’s pure chaos."

3830 didn’t speak.

Didn’t nod.

But she blinked slower.

"Fine," she murmured. "I’ll watch him a little less closely."

Across the shelter, Sienna and Alexis were tying a net trap near the crawlspace vent, hands steady but silent.

"I hate seeing him like this," Sienna said, tying the knot tighter than it needed to be. "The System made me forget how breakable he really is."

Alexis glanced over her shoulder. "It enhanced him physically. Sharpened his posture, boosted neural lag, synced reflexes. Without it... he’s smaller. Slower."

"But he still acts like he’s bulletproof."

"Yeah," Alexis said softly. "But...just like he is willing to throw everything away to save us. The least we could do is repay it and protect him when he needs us most."

On the other side of the room, Camille sat beside me, letting her back hit the wall with a quiet thud. She didn’t speak right away.

Then, arms resting on her knees, she whispered, "You guide. I fight."

I looked at her, voice quieter than I meant it to be. "Without Strategist or anything... you think I can still do that?"

Her smile was faint. Sharp. "Did you already forget what 3830 said? Stop depending on your damn System. It makes you predictable. Besides, the Reynard that depended on his system was the one who missed crucial details like multiple planes being sabotaged. Maybe it’s time you put it aside and show what the original Reynard can do."

I exhaled, shoulders sagging. The words hurt because they were true. All this time, I’d been telling myself I was more than my titles. freёwebnoѵel.com

But I hadn’t been living like it.

My eyes drifted to 3830 again—where she stood alone, inventorying death like she was trying to decide what kind of silence to wear.

"What made you stay sane?" I asked.

She didn’t turn.

Just said: "I didn’t. I just got good at hiding it."

Then—

The shelter shook.

A tremor. No more than a whisper. But real.

A pulse—subtle, deep. The kind you felt in your teeth. In your marrow.

Everyone stopped moving.

3830’s head snapped toward the corridor like a hound catching scent.

"They’re close."

Evelyn stood, blindfold shifting as she reached up with careful hands—pulling it down just enough to expose one pale eye. Still fogged. Still damaged.

But watching.

Not me.

Not us.

Everything.

Sienna drew her curved jungle blade without sound. Camille picked up the tripwire detonator and slid it into her belt. Alexis snapped a mag into the rifle with one hand and tested the weight with the other.

I stood.

It hurt.

Everything in me screamed to stay down. To wait. To survive.

But I didn’t.

I stood up, slow, breath shallow, knees tight.

And stood with them.

No skills.

No System.

Just me.

A red light blinked on the far wall.

Once.

Then again.

Then held.

Steady.

It was the sound of an alert system. One that was motion-activated.

Not calibrated for wildlife.

Only people.

I turned to 3830.

She didn’t blink.

She didn’t raise her voice.

She didn’t curse, or shout, or pray.

She just said it like a fact.

Like gravity.

"They found us."

And in the breath that followed—

We began.

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