SSS Awakening: I Can Class Change at will

Chapter 554: Bonus Chapter [1]

Klein’s raised staff formed a concentrated lance of water that hovered at its tip. His green eyes were locked on her calmly, with no emotions present in them.

Whoosh!

The lance shot toward Sierra’s exposed heart at a speed her body couldn’t match. Her four elemental bows were gone. Her escape arrow, the one she used for emergency repositioning, had already been spent to break Baaron’s earlier charge. She had nothing left to help her in this moment.

The betrayal hurt more than the approaching lance. Klein, the man who had stood beside her at Silverpine. The Ascender the Association trusted to oversee this tournament. The one who had been playing a longer game than any of them had understood.

~BOOM~

The lance struck, and steam exploded into the air.

Sierra flinched as the eruption of superheated mist rolled over her.

Small burns bloomed across her exposed skin, but the shockwave gave her exactly the leverage she needed. She kicked off the pressure and used the released force to shove her body sideways, out of the kill zone.

Her boots found empty air and she twisted her way toward the ground in a controlled fall.

The floor cracked as a figure descended from the air.

Tom Glassy landed in a low crouch beside her, one knee down, the earth splintering outward from the impact. The grin hoarding his face was massive, and completely unbothered.

Two gloves burned across his fists, their golden flames wrapping around his knuckles in swirling flames.

Baaron cleared the smoke with a sweep of his cleaver.

He wanted to see the corpse of Sierra.

Instead, he saw Tom standing next to Sierra – who was alive and untouched.

Baaron’s grin froze completely. Whilst Tom’s own grin widened.

"Klein." His voice rushed toward the Ascender still hovering above them. "You really are a sneaky one, aren’t you? Ambushing Sierra when she was most vulnerable. When she had no life-saving skills left in her pocket. You truly are a shrewd traitor. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you."

Klein’s face darkened. His plan had been pitch perfect.

He had been building it for too long. He had even built the plan around the tournament’s format.

Every detail of his plan was crafted with patience. He understood that killing an Ascender required a flawless plan, and he did just that.

He had let Baaron injure himself throughout the fight to keep suspicion off his own contributions.

He had even refrained from coordinating openly with Baaron even during Sierra’s strongest attack, which would have telegraphed his intentions to anyone paying attention.

He had waited for her to spend her mana. For her to spend her escape arrow. For her to launch her strongest attack and leave herself hovering above the ground with nothing left to defend with. Even if she could fly, she wouldn’t have the time to escape his attack.

The lance of water had been meant to end her career and clear the field from one of the Association’s most dangerous Ascenders.

Nobody should have known.

Nobody could have known.

And yet Tom had descended from the sky at exactly the right moment, with exactly the right skill active, in exactly the right position to intercept the lance before it reached its target.

’He was waiting for it. He knew.’

Klein’s eyes narrowed to slits. Tom was smiling up at him. The old fox looked exactly like himself. Nothing about his expression gave away how he had known. "How did you know..."

"How did I know?" Tom’s grin widened further. "Isn’t that a foolish question to ask me? My great wits have carried me through worse than you. Reading a snake like you was hardly a challenge." Tom said shamelessly.

Underneath them, Tom’s actual thoughts were different.

’I didn’t know. I had no idea. I was watching Ian and Farid, waiting for my moment to jump in and finish Ian off. I was seconds away from committing to that engagement when the message came in.’

’Klein. Traitor. Moon.’

Kael’s message consisted of three words without context. Despite that, Tom understood this pefectly.

But Kael would never have sent that message without absolute certainty. Which meant only one person could have fed him the conclusion, the one whose name was also in the message.

Moon.

The boy had figured out that Klein was the spy. In the middle of a battle. Somewhere in the chaos, Moon had put together enough pieces to identify the traitor buried inside the Association, and he had used Kael as the messenger to warn Tom without exposing himself directly to Klein’s attention.

’This kid... He is terrifying.’

Sierra straightened up beside him. Her leathers were smoking faintly from the residual steam, small red patches marking where the burns had touched her skin. She glanced at Tom, then followed his gaze upward toward Klein.

"I owe you one, old fox."

Tom grinned without turning his head. ’You should thank that monster over there...’

She raised her bow again, an elemental arrow already nocked.

"I will take care of the traitor, you can deal with the midget." Tom grinned, rising in the air to match the altitude at which Klein floated.

"Okay."

Klein’s expression finally cracked. He had been exposed. There was no returning to the Association after this.

His hand tightened on his staff. He had failed to complete his mission.

Sierra glanced at Baaron who was still a little shocked. The exchange had been detremental to them. Ian was heavily injured, and Sierra was still very much in the battle.

"Was that the river you were speaking of?" Sierra finally understood Baaron’s words from earlier. The river had been next to her all along, but she had never seen it.

Baaron was no longer in the mood for talking, his aura flared and rushed towards Sierra. "Quit talking old hag, just die for me already."

Moon watched the battle between the six Ascenders from afar.

’Just like I thought...Klein was a traitor.’

---

Author’s Notes: I promised 5 Chapters mass release. This is the first of them, so there will be four left to release. I might release them like today, 3 Chapters a day, until the 5 bonus Chapters are finished. You will be able to know if its bonus from the Chapter title.

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