Chapter 127: The Wall Had to Choose
"Stop. Swing right."
Glitch pulled away and reversed direction, but Corven had already read it. Before Glitch completed the turn, the Ram began shifting back toward the right side to cut him off. Corven had predicted the exact move Jin appeared to be attempting.
But the Stonehorn had now moved its weight twice, first toward the left lane and then back to the right. Its mass was leaning the wrong way.
"Over."
Glitch abandoned the turn, jumped onto the slab, and scrambled across the top.
Corven answered without hesitation.
"Cut him off!"
The Stonehorn drove its rear hooves into the ground and turned for the far side. It was the right decision, and the only remaining path that might let the Ram reach Glitch before he touched the marker.
Its weight had already shifted twice, though. To intercept now, the Stonehorn needed to brace, reverse, turn, and gather speed from a poor angle. One rear hoof slid across the floor, causing the same tiny break in stability Jin had noticed after the first attack.
Half a second was enough.
Glitch tore down the opposite face of the block without slowing. The Stonehorn found its footing and charged, hooves striking the arena floor in heavy beats as it lowered its horns and drove into Glitch’s route.
The two paths closed together.
Jin’s chest tightened. The Ram would reach Glitch almost in time.
Far too close.
"Go!"
Glitch beat the horns by a single stride and slapped one claw against the marker.
Light burst across its surface as the colour changed, and a barrier appeared between the beasts. A fraction of a second later, the Stonehorn crashed into the shimmering wall.
The instructor’s call carried across the arena.
"Match!"
The result formed overhead.
[Match Complete]
[Winner: Jin Astor]
[Victory Condition: Opposing Marker Seized]
[Combat Ladder Evaluation: Updated After Practical Completion]
A low murmur spread among the spectators.
No one thought Glitch had defeated a Bronze-quality beast through strength. He clearly hadn’t. He had used ground the Stonehorn couldn’t cross, mobility the heavier beast couldn’t copy, and direction changes the Ram couldn’t recover from quickly enough.
A Fifth Class student had beaten a Fourth Class student through command.
Glitch’s discipline was becoming harder to write off as chance, too. He had stopped before committing to attacks, ignored an exposed enemy, and carried out every route change the moment Jin ordered it. The pattern was visible now, and people noticed.
Fortunately, they weren’t noticing anything impossible.
They had only seen a trained lizard and a Tamer who found the one path the larger beast couldn’t cover.
Once the barrier dropped, Corven came over.
"You never meant to beat the Ram directly," he said.
He didn’t sound upset. His attention stayed on the arena as if he were taking the loss apart piece by piece.
"You kept making me decide which lane to defend. I saw the stop-and-reverse coming, so I started covering the right before your lizard had finished turning."
His eyes moved toward the low slab.
"What I missed was you turning it into a third path."
"You had every ground route blocked," Jin replied. "The top was all that remained."
"Right."
Corven breathed out once.
"I won’t miss it next time."
There was no resentment behind the words. He sounded like someone filing away a mistake so the same trick could never work on him again, and Jin had no trouble believing him.
Corven wasn’t an opponent Jin would forget after today. Jin expected to face him again.
Glitch, meanwhile, found the victory deeply unsatisfying.
He had completed an entire match without landing one worthwhile blow on the Stonehorn. Judging by the look he gave the retreating Ram, that seemed like a serious flaw in the official result.
"This puts us closer to the feed reward," Jin reminded him.
Glitch maintained that feed gained without physically defeating the enemy might be nutritionally questionable.
"The win still counts."
Glitch had not yet accepted that conclusion.
Because the Stonehorn had struck his shoulder, academy rules required a post-match inspection. Jin stood beside him and kept his face steady while the scanner moved over Glitch’s body, tracking from the bruised shoulder down through the foreleg and joint.
The reading appeared after a few moments.
[Post-Match Inspection]
[Injury: Mild Bruising — Left Shoulder]
[Joint Function: Normal]
[Status: Cleared to Continue]
Harden had taken most of the force. Glitch’s joints were still stable, his movement showed no problem, and there was no tearing.
Only then did Jin finally release the breath he had been holding.
Glitch was all right.
The bruise still mattered. Inside the quarry, the avatar could die and return two hours later. The Glitch resting against Jin’s leg didn’t have another body waiting.
The barrier had protected him from the Stonehorn after the marker changed hands. It hadn’t erased the shoulder strike that came earlier, and the dark scales over the impact point still carried the dull evidence of it.
Even with instructors watching, combat could leave damage behind. Winning didn’t give Jin permission to forget that.
By the time he returned from the inspection area, another match was already in progress.
A Razorwing Kite circled high above the arena while, beneath it, a ground beast stayed close to its marker and refused to move far. Its Tamer had made the sensible choice. Chasing a flying opponent across the arena would accomplish nothing.
Mira Kest understood the same thing.
Her Kite angled into a shallow descent toward the defender’s open side. The ground beast stepped away from its marker to meet the approach, placing itself between the Razorwing and its Tamer zone.
The attack never came.
"Climb," Mira ordered.
The Kite spread its wings and shot upward, clearing the defender before it could turn around. Then its wings folded, and it dropped behind the ground beast in a dive.
The defender tried to retreat, but the Razorwing had already passed it.
One set of talons struck the marker.
The barrier activated at once.
"Match!"
Only after that did the tournament board change.
[Mira Kest]
[Third Class]
[Contracted Beast: Razorwing Kite]
[Quality: Bronze]
[Combat Rank: Rank 1 Novice, 3-Star]
[Next Opponent: Jin Astor]
Third Class.
Mira stood two tiers above Jin. Her ranking was bad enough, but the way she had taken the victory was worse.
Flight hadn’t won the match by itself. Mira had presented an attack, drawn the defender away from its objective, and claimed the marker the instant it was left open. She understood objective control just as well as Jin.
And her beast could approach that objective from nearly anywhere.
It was a terrible matchup.
The real Glitch possessed Acid Breath after the earlier Sync, but using it here would expose a supposedly impossible hidden skill in front of Meridian’s instructors. For every practical public purpose, he had nothing he could use at range.
Harden wouldn’t help him reach a beast overhead, either. Fast turns and sharp movement on the ground had little value against something that could simply pass over every barrier and stone slab in the arena.
Mira didn’t even need to put the Razorwing within Glitch’s reach. She could leave him alone and send the Kite straight for Jin’s marker from above.
Beside him, Glitch watched the Razorwing Kite circle the arena.
First, enemies had stayed under the floor and attacked upward. Then the Stonehorn had refused to charge in a proper manner. Now the academy had found an opponent that wouldn’t remain on the ground at all.
Jin studied the Kite through another slow circuit, then looked down at Glitch and worked through the situation honestly.
The real Glitch had no clear way to touch an opponent that never landed.