Chapter 72: The Time He Couldn’t Grind
Chapter 72: The Time He Couldn’t Grind
When the Salamander reset again, Jin and Glitch went back in. This run flowed so cleanly that Jin could tell they were no longer fighting the way they had before.
He hardly needed to spell anything out. A half-made intention crossed the bond and Glitch carried it the rest of the way. Jin thought of the platform, and Glitch was already attacking the correct supports. A breath was coming, and he had begun shifting toward the opening before Jin finished warning him.
The boss used the false inhale again, the same feint that had almost killed them on their first night. Glitch caught it before the warning reached him. He stopped, reversed direction, and escaped the trap on his own.
Jin didn’t even tense. He took Glitch’s movement and worked it into the next step as though they had planned the response from the beginning.
At this point, maybe they had.
They kept one scute intact by using a path Jin would not have approved of a week earlier. Instead of relying on cover, he trusted Glitch to judge how the acid would spread. Later, Glitch attacked the gills through the smallest opening they had ever attempted. The window was tight enough to be dangerous, but he reached it.
Glitch had learned exactly how far he could push himself.
Jin had learned to believe him.
The clear was faster, though speed was not what held Jin’s attention. Somewhere along the way, they had stopped being a boy giving commands to a beast. They fought more like two pieces of the same person now. Glitch made decisions that mattered, Jin caught those decisions through the bond and adjusted around them, and the whole battle moved on an instinct shared between them.
No examiner would know how to describe it. No instrument would be able to measure it.
The Salamander still came close to killing Glitch.
That part was never going away. They were farming an enemy 2 Stars above them, and familiarity did not erase the difference. One short burst caught Glitch half a step late and tore his health down far enough to make Jin’s stomach drop. Lesser Regeneration immediately began consuming stamina to pull him back.
Knowing the fight did not make it safe.
It only made the danger recognizable.
They killed the boss before it reached the reservoir, as usual. The reward screen appeared. Jin waited without breathing until the result settled.
[Skill Fragment Obtained: Acid Breath — 2/3]
The satisfaction came fast and clean. Two fragments out of three. A ranged attack was no longer some distant possibility. It was close enough to reach.
Then the thought that always followed the good ones arrived.
Two out of three meant the last fragment felt possible. One fortunate clear could finish it. That made leaving much harder. Once he boarded Meridian’s transport, this dungeon would be out of reach, and he might be walking away while the final piece sat only one run beyond him.
It was far easier to abandon two-thirds of nothing than to leave an almost-complete skill behind.
Jin knew what he had done to himself as soon as the thought took shape.
This was the same trap that had killed him the first time. *So close. One more pull.* That exact urge had sent him in front of a delivery truck because of a digital beast. He knew every part of it.
Recognizing the pattern did nothing to shut it up.
The repeated clears had added even more growth to the unsynchronized bank. The Sync button waited at the edge of every screen, glowing as patiently as ever.
Jin left it alone.
The reasons had not changed. Meridian’s allowance would begin after he arrived, not before. Syncing now would make Glitch ravenous while they were still trapped in an apartment without enough food to satisfy him. Acid Breath also remained incomplete, so rushing the Sync would accomplish nothing.
The growth could stay in the bank.
At least the bank kept everything placed inside it. That was the one kindness built into the system.
Jin worked out the timing anyway. He could not stop himself from doing that.
He compared the Salamander’s respawn with Meridian’s transport arrival. The numbers lined up badly enough to tempt him. One more reset would become available a few hours before the transport came.
There would be time for exactly one final attempt.
Provided nothing went wrong, he could enter the dungeon once more and take one last chance at the fragment.
But having enough time to complete a run did not mean the hours belonged to the dungeon.
Jin understood that. The final window was not really a collection of spare hours. It was his last morning in the apartment with those three people before he left for a place none of them could follow.
The encounter would consume materials, but that was not the cost that mattered.
The real question was who owned those hours.
It should not have been a calculation. Jin kept trying to turn it into one because numbers were easier to deal with, and the problem refused to cooperate.
That night, most of the packing was finished. Only a few lines remained unchecked on the scroll list.
Elsa sat cross-legged beside Jin’s bag. She looked tired, and for once she had moved past arguing.
"Tomorrow morning is everything we have left," she said. "Finish packing, then spend the rest of the time with us. And don’t sit there looking at some stupid game the whole time."
Her voice stayed light, but she could not quite hide what sat underneath it.
"Deal?"
"I’ll finish the bag," Jin said.
"That wasn’t the question. You know it wasn’t."
He answered with a shrug that promised nothing either way.
Elsa narrowed her eyes. She knew exactly how little that shrug meant.
Glitch was curled inside the open bag, which he still regarded as his personal property. He raised his head and looked first at Elsa, then at Jin.
After that, very slowly, he turned toward the phone lying facedown on the cot.
The movement was deliberate enough to make it seem as though he understood what waited on the screen and what it was doing to Jin.
Jin looked at the phone too. He did not reach for it, though he also failed to pull his attention away.
[Acid Breath: 2/3]
[Departure for Meridian: Less Than 1 Day]
[Rotmist Salamander Encounter Reset: 06:12:44]
A little more than six hours remained before the Salamander encounter resets.
Meridian’s transport would arrive soon after that.
For once, the resource giving Jin the most trouble could not be found in any dungeon.
It was time.
He was almost out of the only version that mattered. There was no respawn for it, no coin payment that could restore it, and no reset he could grind until more appeared.
Only a fixed number of hours remained. Hours with the lamp that worked from one particular angle. Hours with Elsa and her absurd scroll. His mother mending things without ever mentioning them. His father repeating the same advice for the fourth time because maybe that would finally make it stay.
Jin kept the phone facedown for the rest of the night.
He remained on the floor with his family, inside the small, bright room he had spent sixteen years failing to value properly.
The dungeon would reset in six hours.
He could decide in the morning.