Chapter 130: The Web Left One Road Open
Jin had a short interval before the round, and he spent all of it watching what little footage he had of Elian’s last match.
Glitch’s shoulder still carried the bruise from the Stonehorn beneath the Razorwing’s talon marks. The academy had cleared him, but cleared did not mean untouched. Minor injuries added up, and Glitch’s real body carried every one of them.
Data Appraisal supplied the Chainweb Spider’s registered basics and visible physical condition. The Engine supplied nothing; another Tamer’s contracted beast was outside its registration rules. Jin watched instead and pulled the rest from what ordinary eyes could see.
The Spider had to physically travel between surfaces to place its threads, so it couldn’t blanket the arena in an instant. Fresh single strands were thin; intersections reinforced several times were not. It climbed the stone blocks naturally, and most importantly, it seemed to feel disturbances through its connected web, reacting to tension changes in strands it hadn’t been near.
Glitch couldn’t rip through reinforced silk produced by a Silver-quality beast. If Jin waited and allowed the network to grow, the matchup would only get worse.
That reversed everything he’d done against Mira. Patience had forced the Razorwing down; against the Spider, patience would surrender the entire floor.
He had to attack before the web was finished.
Glitch agreed with enormous enthusiasm. In his assessment, any opponent that arrived at a fight carrying its own walls, floor traps, and restraints had fundamentally confused combat with construction.
Elian crossed halfway before the barrier, unhurried and economical.
"You beat Corven by finding the route his Ram couldn’t cover," he said. His tone was calm and matter-of-fact. "You beat Mira by making every choice she had left a losing one. You test a defence, find the gap the opponent’s body can’t reach, and go for the marker instead of the fight."
He glanced at Glitch.
"Corven tried to block your routes. Mira tried to control when you could use them."
"And you?"
"Neither." Elian paused. "I’ll let you move wherever you want."
He returned to his zone without explaining what that meant.
Jin watched him go. Somehow, being allowed to move sounded more dangerous than being fenced in.
"Begin."
The Chainweb Spider climbed straight onto a central block and started anchoring threads between surfaces.
Jin didn’t give it time.
"Marker—straight through. Go!"
Glitch drove into Elian’s half before the Spider could claim it, and the sudden rush stirred the watching students. Jin had fought defensively against Mira, yet now he was attacking from the first second.
Elian didn’t react. Jin had expected him to understand the same thing: the web only became stronger with time.
The central route looked open. The Spider didn’t stand in Glitch’s way or try to overpower him; it moved across the blocks instead, laying diagonal strands behind and beside his advance.
Jin’s stomach tightened.
Elian wasn’t fencing Glitch out. He was letting Glitch enter deeper into his half while quietly removing the safe directions he could use to leave.
Glitch avoided the first visible lines with sharp stops and cuts, his mobility drills earning their keep. Then a thin strand, almost invisible against the floor, caught his foreleg.
"Stop—don’t pull!"
Glitch froze instead of thrashing. The connected strand tightened against his leg, but it didn’t wrap farther around him.
Jin followed the line to its anchor.
"Toward it. Slowly."
Glitch stepped toward the anchor rather than away. The movement created just enough slack for him to slip his leg free, leaving the strand trembling behind him.
Pulling away tightened the adhesive. Moving toward the anchor loosened it.
Jin fixed that rule in his mind as the scoring panel above Elian’s zone flashed.
[Positional Control: Elian Voss]
Elian had taken the early advantage, but Glitch had escaped cleanly.
The Spider kept connecting the arena, and the floor changed beneath them. Open lanes narrowed into channels, safe turns vanished, and blocks that had offered cover became anchor points. Glitch’s fast reversals turned dangerous because one careless change of direction could carry him back into a line he’d already passed.
Meanwhile, the Spider moved through its growing structure with increasing ease. It pressured Glitch with brief approaches, then retreated along its own threads before he could land a counter.
On its next approach, Glitch feinted hard and snapped at its front legs.
The Spider broke away and scuttled up a strand.
Glitch sent a surge of smug satisfaction through the bond. Apparently, forcing the Spider to retreat proved that construction workers were not immune to teeth.
Jin kept watching the web.
It restricted Glitch’s movement while telling the Spider when and where a connected strand had been disturbed. More importantly, every new line kept nudging Glitch toward the lanes Elian wanted him to use.
The web wasn’t merely a trap spread across the floor. It was a map Elian was drawing around Glitch, one strand at a time.
The scoring panel flashed again after another closing strand forced Glitch away from the central lane, widening Elian’s lead.
Jin stopped chasing the Spider and started reading the silk.
Fresh strands were different from junctions that had been reinforced again and again. Glitch couldn’t tear apart one of those intersections, but a single new strand dragged across the sharp corner of a stone block might be worn through by friction.
"Hook the thin one. Pull it across the corner, then let go."
Glitch caught the strand with one claw and dragged it against the rough edge.
The Spider turned the instant the tension changed.
"Left line," Elian ordered. "Reinforce."
It crossed the block and laid another strand over the first before Glitch could saw through it. The attempt failed, but Elian had shown his response.
This time, Jin had Glitch disturb a strand farther to the right.
The Spider felt the vibration and shifted.
"Again," Jin said.
Glitch pulled harder on the decoy line. The Spider committed to protecting it, and Jin’s attention moved to the fresh connection by the block.
"Thin strand by the block. Now."
Glitch hooked it and scraped it across the rough stone corner.
Once. Twice.
The strand parted.
A usable road opened toward Elian’s marker, and the watching students reacted at once. Jin had made a path through a matchup that seemed designed to deny him every step.
Elian didn’t order the Spider to repair it.
He simply watched Glitch and left the gap open.
Jin’s whole plan went cold in his chest.
Elian had spent the entire match protecting his web. Now Jin had finally broken part of it—and Elian was letting the damage stand.