SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 224: Split the Line

The jungle swallowed us whole.

Not gently. Not like a blanket pulled over your shoulders or the hush of sleep creeping in.

It devoured us.

One breath at a time.

No lights. No skills. Just us—boots pressed into slick earth, breath kept on a leash, eyes scanning the shadows for movement that didn’t belong. The air was thick with the stench of wet rot and leaf mold, undercut by something metallic—tension, old and serrated, pressing along the edges of our necks like a wire we couldn’t trace back to its spool.

Every tree leaned in like it wanted to hear us fail.

"North perimeter," 3830 whispered, her voice thinner than the wind but sharper than broken glass. "Twenty meters wide. Staggered arc. No direct engagement."

She didn’t wait for acknowledgment.

She didn’t need to.

That kind of voice didn’t allow room for argument. It didn’t ask for trust. It demanded silence—and got it.

The rest of us fell into motion.

No talking. No questions. Just movement—fluid, quiet, and deliberate. The kind that made you feel like maybe the jungle wouldn’t notice. Leaves gave way underfoot like they were tired of resisting. Moss clung wetly to our soles, every step pulling at us with the gravity of something buried.

The mist hung low. Oppressive. Not just around us—but inside us. It felt like we were breathing someone else’s breath. Like the forest had been exhaling for centuries and we’d just stepped into its lungs.

Branches drooped overhead like ribs made of bark. Ancient. Slick. Watching.

We moved beneath them like ghosts that hadn’t decided whether they wanted to live or be mourned.

It should have felt ridiculous. Suicidal, even.

Trailing trained agents—real ones—with nothing in my hands but recycled air and borrowed time. No System to fall back on. I didn’t have Observation to chart patterns. Nor did I have Instinct to know what decision would be ideal. No Strategist. No Command Presence. No physically enhancing skills. Not even Copy or Database was available to me.

Just me.

Just bone, breath, and the muscle memory of someone who used to be more.

And still—

I saw.

A smear of pale sap along the underside of a fern—wrong angle, too precise. Not an animal.

Resin. Boot tread. Government issue, most likely.

A patch of moss along the slope, flattened in a way that suggested weight—not from a fall, but from a crouch. Someone had knelt there. Recently.

Another thirty paces forward, a birdcall rang out.

Short. Crisp. Repeating every twelve seconds.

Wrong.

Birds don’t repeat with clockwork accuracy.

That was a signal.

I paused just long enough to glance sideways.

Alexis was already looking. She caught my eye, gave a small, precise nod.

Affirmation. Confirmation.

We were tracking ghosts, but they weren’t invisible.

Even stripped down, even stripped bare—I still had eyes.

I still had instinct.

The forest had become the room, and the silence had become its walls.

And I was still reading.

Two hours passed like a knife slipping under skin.

We tracked without touching. Stalked without sound.

The scouts were good—good enough that I almost didn’t believe 3830 when she began calling out their traits in hushed tones.

"Target Identification’s northeast. Look at the hesitation. He fixates—too long on static objects. Likes structure. Likes control. He’ll be the last to break pattern, but the first to commit once a mark is set."

She gestured subtly toward the north ridge, where a flicker of movement betrayed the scout’s silhouette against the moon-dimmed trees.

"Terrain Mapper is closer. Center grid. See how nothing repeats? His trail’s methodical—same spacing, clean turns. But he’s never been in a real fight. Look at how he avoids tension points—roots, stones, uneven ground. He’s not expecting a confrontation."

Then she shifted her attention westward.

"And that one?" Her voice dropped. "Footprint Isolation. Strategic Retreat. He’s the wildcard. Double-backs. Makes noise on purpose. Erratic paths to bait pursuit. Won’t engage unless he knows he’s got advantage. Probably watching for a straggler."

Camille’s mouth tightened. "So we’re the bait."

"Only if you look like it," 3830 replied. "Keep your weapons hidden. If he thinks you’re armed, he’ll vanish."

Sienna shifted beside me, knuckles white on her blade hilt. "One of them’s looping," she whispered. "Trying to box us in."

Alexis knelt low, brushing two fingers through a mark on the soil. "They’re triangulating. Two of them are feeding positional data to the third."

3830 nodded. "We herd them now. Gently. One false push and they scatter. Keep the pressure invisible."

So we did.

We made subtle noise. A rock clatter here. A footstep too loud there. Camille let her coat catch on a branch and tug free. Evelyn "accidentally" snapped a twig.

We weren’t hunting them anymore.

We were pushing them.

Into lanes.

By the time the canopy above darkened to a deeper shade of violet—where the moon barely peeked between clouds—we had them where we wanted.

Isolated.

Fractioned.

Vulnerable.

3830 turned to us, crouched low behind a sloping ridge veiled in brush. Her expression was unreadable. Not calm. Not cold. Just calibrated.

"I’ll take the scout with Target Identification," she said. "He’ll lock onto me the moment I’m seen. He’s wired to engage on visual cues. I can lead him away."

"No backup?" Camille asked.

3830 didn’t look at her. "I won’t need it."

There was no ego in the words.

Just certainty.

Evelyn stepped forward. "I’ll go with Sienna," she said. "The mapper won’t be much of a problem if I’m the one tracking him. I don’t need sight to feel terrain—and Sienna can move things he thinks are fixed. With the two of us, we should have enough Strength and Endurance to overpower him, especially if he’s someone who constantly avoids confrontations."

Sienna raised a brow but didn’t protest. She just cracked her knuckles and nodded.

Camille looked at me, then Alexis.

"We’re the clean-up crew."

Alexis gave a small shrug. "The scout with Strategic Retreat will come for us. We look unarmed. Weak."

I gave her a look. "Thanks."

"I didn’t say you were," she replied. "I said you look it. Big difference."

I forced a smile, but my chest was tight.

How could I help? I needed to command Camille and Alexis in a way that made us win, but how would I achieve that? Was I even capable of doing such a feat?

No...I need to calm down. Camille said it herself. Don’t rely on your skills. When I only had a low level strategist skill, I still came up with a plan to defeat Nathan. I can do this.

We did a final gear check.

Knives. Flares. Hidden sidearms.

A breather mask Camille slipped me without a word.

Alexis handed me a palm-sized comm trigger, stripped from a drone relay. "Click it once if we go loud."

"Twice if you’re hurt," Camille added.

She brushed her thumb against my wrist before pulling away.

"Stay close," she said. "And don’t try to be a hero."

Evelyn moved past with Sienna in tow, voice low as leaves. "Two sets of footsteps, one heartbeat. We don’t get separated."

Sienna reached out and gently tapped my shoulder as she passed. "Watch for tree shadows. They echo more than people."

Then they were gone.

3830 didn’t say goodbye.

She simply slipped into the dark.

No sound.

No scent.

No presence.

Like the jungle swallowed her back.

We were alone now.

Alexis. Camille. Me.

Following the faint trail of a ghost with retreat protocols and baiting tactics.

The trees grew thicker as we moved.

Camille took point—eyes scanning low, feet placed like she was dancing across the world’s thinnest floorboard. Alexis walked middle, rifle hugged close to her side, every sense locked.

I stayed at the rear.

Watching everything.

Cataloguing.

Footprint Isolation was clever.

He used brush movement and false paths. Would pause in places where air currents shifted—so our sense of direction bent. His trail crossed its own three times already.

He wanted us tired.

He wanted us confused.

But we weren’t moving like prey.

We were setting the trap.

A few hundred feet from a runoff stream, Camille slowed.

"He’s close," she whispered. "I can feel it."

Alexis nodded toward a gap in the trees. "He’s either watching us now or waiting for us to cross that point."

She pointed at a clearing—small, moonlit, just wide enough for an ambush.

I stepped closer.

Every instinct told me that was the spot.

"That’s where he wants it," I whispered. "That’s where he thinks he wins."

Camille looked over her shoulder. "Then we show him what losing looks like."

We took our positions.

Low.

Ready.

One breath.

Then another.

We waited.

Somewhere beyond the clearing, I thought I heard Evelyn’s gun click.

Farther still, something echoed like metal against bark—maybe Sienna?

And in the other direction, not even a sound.

That meant 3830 had already made contact.

The pieces had begun to move.

The game had started.

We were the last ones waiting to be dealt.

I looked at Camille.

She gave a small nod. novelbuddy-cσ๓

Then to Alexis.

She tapped her trigger once.

Not as a signal.

Just as a promise.

We were ready.

Three scouts.

Three teams.

Three lines drawn in the dark.

And tonight—

We’d find out who broke first.

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