Chapter 120: When in Doubt, Throw a Rock
Jin guided Glitch away from the loose mineral dust and onto a shelf of solid stone. The footing was stable there, where Glitch wouldn’t slip as easily and every small shift of his weight wouldn’t grind through the dust and announce his position.
Controlled ground.
That was where Jin wanted the fight.
Glitch remained still, his anger banked behind his obedience.
"Get the round stone," Jin said.
Glitch hooked one claw around a loose piece of rubble.
"Across the groove. Make it roll."
He sent the stone skipping through the open cut.
The mantis reacted.
[Iron-Shell Tunnel Mantis]
[Quality: Iron]
[Combat Rank: Rank 1 Novice, 3-Star]
[Traits: Mineral Carapace, Vibration Detection, Buried Ambush]
A line formed beneath the dust as the hidden creature turned away from Glitch and followed the bouncing stone.
Exactly as the experiments predicted.
"Move. Now, while it’s rolling."
Glitch slid two careful steps sideways, letting the stone’s vibrations cover his own movement. The rubble bounced once more, slowed across the uneven floor, and finally stopped.
"Freeze."
Glitch became motionless.
The buried trail continued for a moment before losing its target. For several seconds, nothing happened, while the last trace of displaced dust settled back into the groove.
Then the mantis surfaced near the dead stone.
Dust erupted as its plated head and bladed forelimbs broke through the floor. Half of its segmented body remained buried while it searched the place where its target had seemingly vanished.
Exposed.
"Another stone," Jin said. "Hard. Throw it past the mantis."
Glitch flicked another loose stone across the floor. It struck the ground on the far side and skittered away, each impact sharp against the quarry stone.
The mantis committed.
Its body burst from the dust, forelimbs extending as it lunged toward the new vibration.
"Move into it—Harden!"
Glitch surged forward.
His scales darkened half a heartbeat before the bladed limb struck him. The impact produced a harsh grinding scream, and several hardened scales chipped beneath the force, but Glitch held his footing.
More importantly, he’d gotten inside the mantis’s reach just as its forelimb reached full extension.
The joint opened.
A thin line of pale tissue appeared beneath the armored blade.
"Acid! The joint, now!"
Glitch spat.
This time, Acid Breath didn’t wash uselessly across the mineral carapace. The stream struck the exposed gap and flooded into the softer tissue beneath it.
The mantis released a horrible grinding shriek. Its bladed forelimb spasmed as corrosion ate through the joint, leaving the limb hanging at an unnatural angle.
The creature immediately tried to burrow.
Its body twisted downward, legs clawing at the loose floor as it fought to disappear into the safety of the dust.
"Don’t let it dig! Pin it against the stone!"
Glitch slammed into it before it could sink. He drove the mantis sideways and trapped it against the solid shelf with his hardened weight, claws scraping for purchase as the creature thrashed beneath him.
Its mineral shell endured Glitch’s claws, and its remaining forelimb scraped dangerously close to his throat. Glitch shifted his weight and crushed the damaged limb beneath him before it could recover.
The mantis bucked again.
Glitch refused to let go.
He found the flexible seam where its armored head joined its body, clamped his jaws around it, and bit down. The plating bent beneath his jaws, then the softer tissue underneath tore.
The mantis’s legs hammered against the stone.
Then they slowed.
Finally, the creature went still.
[Iron-Shell Tunnel Mantis Defeated]
Glitch remained on top of it, breathing hard. Several hardened scales had chipped where the blade struck, and the impact had come close to breaking his stance. Acid Breath had only worked because it hit a narrow gap during the brief moment the joint was exposed.
Even after that, the mantis had nearly escaped underground before Glitch could pin it.
It had not been an easy victory.
Jin had created the opening, and Glitch had trusted his timing enough to perform the difficult part. Between them, the enemy count had finally climbed above zero.
Glitch stepped onto the corpse and became magnificent about it.
One clawed foot rested on the dead mantis’s shell while he surveyed the passage with the immense dignity of a conqueror standing over a fallen empire. Satisfaction poured through the bond, followed by pride, vindication, and the deep joy of a debt finally collected.
Beside Jin, the real Glitch mirrored the avatar’s posture. His chest rose and his head lifted as though everyone in the academy should somehow know what he had accomplished.
"One," Jin reminded him. "That’s one mantis. It doesn’t make you king of the quarry."
Glitch disagreed immediately and without hesitation.
As far as he was concerned, that was exactly what it meant.
"Fine. King of one dead mantis. Enjoy your crown."
Glitch accepted the title as his rightful due.
[Iron-Shell Tunnel Mantis Defeated]
[Stored Growth Acquired: Minor]
[Loot Acquired: Cracked Iron-Shell Plate ×1]
[Skill Fragment Acquired: Tremor Sense Fragment ×1]
[Fragment Completion: 1/10]
Jin’s gaze stopped on the final two lines.
Tremor Sense Fragment.
Most of Glitch’s earlier skills had required three matching fragments. Before Jin could turn that pattern into a rule the Engine had never actually stated, a smaller line opened beneath the counter.
[Fragment requirements vary by skill complexity and compatibility.]
[Tremor Sense Requirement: 10 Matching Fragments]
The Engine wasn’t changing its rules. Jin had assumed one it had never promised.
Tremor Sense was a foreign sensory ability being fitted onto a Grey Rock Lizard, and this time the grind was longer.
There it was: the reason he’d chosen the quarry instead of the easier Rotmist Basin. This dungeon punished Glitch’s lack of a sensory skill, but it also contained the means to correct that weakness. If Tremor Sense formed, Glitch might eventually read movement through the ground the same way these mantises did.
One fragment out of ten was nowhere near a complete skill.
It was enough to confirm that Jin had chosen the right place.
The stored growth remained inside the Engine, while the cracked plate settled into the digital inventory. Tremor Sense was still only an incomplete possibility, one that would require nine more matching fragments before it became anything useful.
Small, honest progress.
Exactly the kind Jin trusted.
He opened his notes to record the result.
He never finished.
The mantis had thrashed as it died. Its legs and damaged shell had struck the quarry floor in a violent, irregular rhythm, far harder than any of Glitch’s careful footsteps.
Jin had dismissed the movement as death spasms and focused on the rewards.
Then the mineral dust began to shift.
One groove trembled in the darkness of a side passage.
Jin looked up from his notes.
A second trail moved beneath the floor from another direction, pushing a thin line through the dust. Before that one reached the open cut, a third answered from deeper inside the quarry.
The mantis’s death had carried.
Whatever those vibrations meant to the other creatures beneath the floor—wounded prey, a territorial challenge, or the death of their own kind—they had traveled much farther than a normal footstep.
And something had heard them.
[Multiple Vibration Sources Detected]
The Engine provided no names or numbers. It couldn’t see through the quarry walls any better than Jin could, and all it had done was confirm what the moving dust was already showing him.
Several underground trails were converging on the open cut from three different passages.
Glitch remained proudly planted on his first kill, chest lifted over the corpse as though the quarry had already surrendered. One loose stone rested beside his claw.
The first mantis hadn’t been guarding the passage alone.
It had merely been the closest.
Jin examined the corpse, the trembling grooves, and the final stone. The familiar cold focus settled over him again as the approaching trails drew nearer beneath the dust.
Their first solution had worked.
Now the quarry wanted to know whether it could work against several enemies at once.
Glitch had asked for worthy opponents.
The floor answered from three directions.
"All right," Jin murmured, his mind already moving ahead. "Let’s see if they’re all dumb enough to chase the same rock."