Chapter 134: The Wrong Side Was Chosen for Him
A trail surged beneath the loose ground to Glitch’s left, moving fast and throwing enough dust aside to look heavy. Jin had only that information to work with, and he made the obvious call.
"Right. Go right, now—move!"
Glitch went right.
The trail on the left belonged to an ordinary mantis.
Jin understood that about a second later, which was one second too late, and the realization arrived with a specific flavour he had already tasted once that week.
It gave me something to see, and then it let me choose.
The floor broke beneath Glitch.
Not cracked. Broke.
The entire shelf punched upward as something enormous came through it, and Jin got exactly one clean look before dust swallowed the screen. Bigger. Much bigger. A mantis variant with a carapace layered thick and mineral-dark with age, old scars raked across its bladed limbs, and forelimbs so much heavier than those of the ordinary mantises that they seemed to belong to a different creature.
"Harden!"
The first strike came down as the word left him. Grey armour caught it, and the blade didn’t cut through.
It didn’t need to.
Glitch stood on collapsing ground, and the impact drove him completely off his footing. The broken shelf came apart beneath his claws, carrying him down with it into a slope of sliding rubble.
Jin worked.
"Twist—left, left!"
Glitch wrenched aside. The second blade skinned past his flank instead of through it.
"Rail, tail—hit it!"
His tail cracked against the iron. Two visible trails immediately turned toward the sound and peeled away to the east.
It worked. More importantly, it bought them a lane.
"Cracked edge! Go—it can’t turn in there!"
Glitch scrambled for it, claws tearing at sliding stone while the commander forced its broad body through the collapse behind him. Jin had already seen enough of its shape to know the narrow break would make that bulk harder to pivot.
An ordinary mantis surfaced at the cracked edge.
It didn’t attack. It merely rose and stood there, occupying the space Glitch needed and forcing him to check his stride for a fraction of a second.
The commander was already moving.
Its blade came down while Glitch’s weight was still shifting on unstable ground. Jin saw the angle, saw Glitch trying to recover, and had no time left to command him clear.
Crack.
The avatar came apart.
[Digital Avatar Defeated]
[Respawn Available In: 02:00:00]
The screen went dark and quiet.
Jin lay back down.
The room was black except for the phone. Beside the bed, in a nest of folded blankets on the floor, the real Glitch was asleep—actually asleep, chest rising slowly. The Stonehorn’s bruise still darkened one shoulder beneath the Razorwing’s shallow talon marks, while superficial irritation from Elian’s threads crossed a few scales nearby.
He hadn’t moved. Not once. He hadn’t been in the quarry at all.
The bond, unfortunately, was wide awake. What came through it was pure black fury mixed with humiliation so hot Jin’s jaw tightened on reflex.
"Yeah," Jin said quietly. "I know."
Glitch’s claws flexed once in his sleep.
"You didn’t do anything wrong. I picked the wrong side of the corridor."
Glitch answered with an image more than a feeling: going back, going now, going down there and finding it.
"Two hours," Jin said. "You can’t. It’s a respawn timer, not a mood."
He turned the phone over in his hands and made himself think about the loss properly instead of merely sharing Glitch’s outrage.
He hadn’t been careless. He had checked the obvious trap, tested it twice, rejected it, and deliberately chosen the uglier route because it appeared less useful to the enemy. Then something showed him a moving trail. He read it correctly as information, except the information itself had been placed there for him.
The commander’s strength hadn’t been the whole reason he lost.
Yesterday, Elian had made Jin react to the choices placed in front of him. Tonight, an entire colony had done essentially the same thing. Recognizing that manipulation existed hadn’t given him control; it had only warned him that someone else might have built the doors.
Jin looked at the fragment counter.
[Tremor Sense Fragment: 5/10]
Halfway to acquiring the skill. Five more fragments, and the entire conversation might change.
He was too tired to do anything about it tonight. Meridian waited in the morning, his eyes ached, and somehow his neck ached too, which was outrageous because he’d been lying down for six hours.
Even if the respawn finished at three in the morning, he wasn’t starting another run.
Jin placed the phone facedown on his chest and went to sleep listening to a lizard breathe.
The tournament closed its books on him at 8:40 the following morning, on a wall display in Meridian’s east corridor between a nutrition notice and a poster about proper contract hygiene.
He had moved up several positions on the Combat Ladder. His feed-credit allocation was confirmed and would begin with the next cycle.
He remained in Fifth Class.
Jin read the notice twice and felt absolutely nothing about the last line. Meridian didn’t promote students on tournament results alone; class reviews considered academics, beast care, mission performance, command evaluations, and long-term progress. One good tournament did not move him, and he’d known that going in.
The feed credits were the part that mattered.
They meant Glitch’s protein allocation stopped coming out of the household ration. They meant his mother’s twelve-hour shifts bought slightly more than they had the month before. They meant Elsa could stop quietly eating less on days Glitch ate more and believing nobody noticed.
Jin had noticed.
Jin noticed almost everything except when someone was speaking directly to him.
He photographed the notice for his father and moved on.
"Astor."
Lucian Vale caught him in the training annex with the calm, unhurried directness of someone who had never needed to work out how to start a sentence.
First overall in the academy assessment. Silver-quality Thunder Falcon. The kind of student instructors used as a demonstration when they wanted everyone else to feel inadequate.
"Instructor Kade wants you and Glitch for a session this morning," Lucian said. "Coordination support. It’s remedial training."
Jin blinked. "Whose?"
"Mine."
Jin looked at him, then past him at the Thunder Falcon perched on the rail behind Lucian. Storm-grey feathers covered its powerful frame, and faint blue arcs moved between them before grounding harmlessly through the reinforced perch.
"...You’re remedial."
"Part of me is." Lucian said it without any visible discomfort, which was somehow more impressive than the Falcon. "Ranking first means I’m better than the rest of the year at the things they measured. It doesn’t mean every part of our partnership is flawless."
Jin filed that away as unexpectedly reasonable and made a note to stop deciding what people were like based on their scores.
"Glitch is bruised," he said. "He’s not cleared for combat."
"He won’t be fighting. Medical has already been told what the exercise requires." Lucian nodded toward the examiner’s station. "Get the clearance signed. It’s a protected support role. No impacts, no strain, no construct engagement."
The examiner took nine minutes. She inspected the bruise on Glitch’s shoulder, the shallow talon marks over it, and the irritation left by Elian’s threads. Then she checked the joint, watched him walk and turn, tested how he placed his weight, and signed the clearance.
Permitted: protected guard position only. No contact or strenuous exertion.
Glitch, informed that he could participate in something but was forbidden from hitting anything, made a sound like a kettle developing an opinion.
"You’ll live," Jin told him.