SSS Awakening: I Can Class Change at will

Moon decided to bring up something he had been quietly curious about.

Rowan was one of his closer subordinates. The man had brought his unconscious body back to Earth. Moon had asked around during his week at Tom’s estate, gathering small details about Rowan’s history through the connections Tom had opened for him.

One detail had stood out.

Moon spoke without stopping his walk. His eyes stayed on Rowan’s back.

"I heard you haven’t taken any leave from the base to return to Earth. You only went back the one time, to find me help."

Rowan didn’t stop walking.

There was a long silence before Rowan spoke, "Yes. That’s correct."

"Why is that? I gave you standing permission to leave whenever you needed. You’ve been through a lot. You should have taken a break. You need fresh air. You shouldn’t overwork yourself."

Rowan sighed.

His footsteps slowed and then stopped entirely.

He didn’t turn around.

"That’s not the issue. It’s more complicated than that."

Moon caught the crack in Rowan’s voice near the end.

He stopped walking too.

He didn’t press.

"I see. Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I’m all ears."

Rowan stayed silent for a few seconds before his shoulders rose and fell once with a slow breath. Then he nodded. "Thank you, boss."

They didn’t speak about it further.

After ten minutes of walking, they reached the location where the beast had ambushed Rowan’s patrol.

Moon paused at the edge of the clearing and looked around.

The distant sounds of flying creatures had stopped somewhere along the last few hundred meters of their walk.

Scattered rocks broke up the short grass in irregular patterns. The air smelled faintly of iron and stone dust,.

"Feels off."

"It does." Rowan’s voice was low. "It didn’t feel this way when we found the beast last time. Similar terrain, but the atmosphere was different."

Moon nodded slowly.

They began to explore.

They moved carefully, sticking close together, testing the ground with every step.

Moon spotted the first suspicious thing after about a minute.

In a five-meter radius, pinecones, loose stones, and dead branches lay scattered together, as if a novice hunter had placed them there as a crude trap for beasts to stumble into.

Moon noticed there was no hole beneath them, immediately ruling that possibility out. But one thing was clear, the arrangement was far too coincidiental to be natural.

"Did you find this during your last exploration?"

Rowan crouched beside the scattered stone, and pinecones.

He recalled the memory carefully before shaking his head.

"No. This wasn’t here."

Moon nodded, keeping that information in mind.

The two jumped over the patch and continued walking further.

A few tens of meters further, Moon spotted another arrangement of pebbles. Another few meters, and they found a massive piece of bark that had been carefully stripped from a nearby tree and set flat on the ground. Then a shallow depression in the earth.

’Something big and round must have been here recently before being removed...’

Rowan checked each one and shook his head.

"None of these were here. They’re new."

Moon nodded.

The pattern was concerning. Individually, each object could have been dismissed. Together, they suggested that someone or something had been in this area recently, arranging small markers across the region. Whether the arrangements were tracks left by another expedition or something with a more concerning purpose wasn’t clear.

They walked a little further.

Then Moon stopped.

At the top of a small hill, roughly two hundred meters ahead of them, something was glowing.

A single flower, standing alone on the crest of the rise. Its petals radiated a soft golden light that illuminated the place around it. Its stem was tall and straight, its head angled subtly toward Moon and Rowan even at this distance.

"That’s the Mystical Sunflower. A B-Rank Natural Treasure."

Rowan’s eyes widened.

A B-Rank Natural Treasure was significant. The Mystical Sunflower was rare enough that even the Association’s central archives listed it as a rare natural treasure.

Moon looked slowly around the area.

He couldn’t see any beasts nearby.

There was no movement in the surrounding brush. The Sunflower sat alone on the rise, exposed and unguarded.

Which felt wrong, considering a B-Rank Natural Treasure did not sit unguarded in the middle of a Second Sanctuary region.

’Something must be protecting it.’

The absence of any visible guardian only meant the guardian was likely concealed, ambient, or dangerous enough that the beasts in the area had learned to avoid its territory entirely.

Moon’s voice stayed low.

"Let’s approach carefully. There has to be something protecting it. We just haven’t spotted it yet."

Rowan nodded.

The two of them began moving toward the hill slowly.

In the span of a minute, Moon and Rowan arrived at the crest of the hill.

They stood only inches from the Mystical Sunflower.

Still, there was no sign of the supposed protector.

Moon glanced around slowly, letting his sharpened perception sweep the surrounding terrain in a full three-hundred-sixty-degree radius.

’Is there really no protector?’ Moon thought, finding nothing in the vicinity.

Finding no beasts around made him uncomfortable. It was outside the norm, his instincts didn’t like it.

A B-Rank Natural Treasure without a guardian was as unlikely as an unlocked vault in the middle of a crowded market.

His eyes drifted back to the sunflower.

The glow surrounding the petals wasn’t entirely golden. A faint tinge of yellow remained, a subtle sign that told Moon the flower had yet to fully mature.

The Mystical Sunflower was still a few days away from ripening. Only when it reached full maturity, during the specific mana convergence dictated by its natural growth cycle, would its true potency be unlocked.

That didn’t deter him.

As long as he stored it in his ring immediately, he could transport it back to Earth. The professionals at Tom’s disposal could handle the extraction and maturation process safely. The Mystical Sunflower was rare, but it wasn’t among the finicky category of treasures that lost all their value if removed from their birth location before ripening.

He drew his sword.

He moved into a low stance and executed a precise cutting sequence around the flower’s base. The blade traced a clean half-meter radius through the topsoil, severing the sunflower’s root system from the surrounding earth. His off-hand moved simultaneously, activating his storage ring’s collection function.

The flower vanished into his ring along with its intact root ball.

The golden glow disappeared from the hilltop.

The area went dark.

Rowan exhaled slowly beside him.

"Clean pull."

"Thanks."

Twenty meters below the ground, beneath the specific patch of dirt where the sunflower had been rooted, a pair of eyes snapped open.

They burned a deep golden brown.

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