Chapter 71: One Fragment Was How It Started
Chapter 71: One Fragment Was How It Started
The boss unlocked again that night. Jin switched over to manual control as soon as it did. No matter how reliable the farming routes became, the Salamander was still beyond anything he would trust to autopilot.
There was no need to review the strategy from the beginning. He and Glitch had learned the fight: the platform overhead, the glands fixed to its supports, the protection from the scutes, and the opening at the gills after the boss emptied a full breath. They also knew how savage it became once trapped and how hard it fought to pull itself free.
Everything before the drop went more smoothly this time. They placed the bait faster, and Glitch worked over the supports during the first barrage like he had been through the routine a dozen times.
Then the platform came down badly.
The reset had moved one support by the smallest amount. Instead of landing across the tail and rear leg, the slab struck too far forward. It pinned the Salamander at the shoulder and trapped one foreleg, but its tail was barely caught.
The boss immediately started wrenching with its free leg. Its tail came loose much earlier than planned and began sweeping through the arena while Glitch was still circling toward the open side.
Neither of them froze.
Jin altered the route as the fight unfolded. Glitch watched the tail’s path, stepped inside each swing instead of backing away, and took the longer way around to the neck. The short route had become unusable with the tail cutting through it like a wrecking bar.
They lost time, and the toxin meter climbed farther than Jin wanted. Even so, they reached the opening. They forced out one complete breath, watched the gills fade, then ripped the wound wider before the window closed.
Glitch handled the second fight better than the first. Jin could see it in individual moments. An attack that would have hit yesterday missed. Glitch kept control of a position he would previously have been forced to abandon.
The experience was sticking. Run after run, it was settling into the avatar’s instincts.
That did not mean the fight had become harmless.
By the end, Glitch was swaying on low stamina, and the toxin meter sat deep in amber. The Salamander itself had not weakened. They had simply become familiar with it, and that familiarity was the only reason the battle had become survivable.
The boss fell before reaching the reservoir. The reward display appeared.
Boss core. Coins. A venom sac.
Then the last line showed up.
[No Acid Breath Skill Fragment Obtained]
Jin kept staring at it.
On the blanket, the real Glitch had awakened when the victory passed through the bond. He looked toward the same message with an equally blank expression, as if the game had personally betrayed him.
Their disappointment matched so perfectly that it nearly became funny.
"Yeah," Jin said. "Same."
He should have expected it. During the Corrosion Resistance grind, his second Caiman clear had dropped nothing. Getting one fragment from a first clear had never guaranteed another. The game gave players an early taste, then left them beating their heads against terrible luck for whatever came next.
Jin had no idea what the real drop rate might be. He had nowhere near enough clears to estimate it, and he was not going to invent a percentage just to make himself feel informed.
One fragment out of three had seemed like a good beginning.
After a second clear with nothing to show for it, that first fragment felt more like bait.
He was already counting the resources needed for another reset. How many glands do I have stored? Do I need to run the Caiman again? If I start the loop now—
Elena called from the other room.
"Jin, come eat. Dinner’s already on the table, and it isn’t going to stay warm just for you."
One minute almost came out automatically.
Instead, he looked between the two evenings waiting for him. One remained on the phone. The other was in the next room, where his family sat around a table they would not all be sharing for much longer.
Jin started the safe farming loop under Auto-Battle. He tightened the retreat settings so the avatar would pull out at the first unusual sign, then placed the phone facedown.
He joined his family for dinner.
Nobody treated the meal like some important final occasion. It wasn’t their last dinner together. They still had time, and none of them wanted every meal before he left to become an early goodbye.
So they ate normally.
Elena asked what sort of room he wanted. Jin said he wanted one with a locking door. Elsa said a window mattered more, and Elena agreed that she hoped he would get one.
Elsa ordered him to send a message every day. Almost immediately, she changed the rule to two messages, one in the morning and another at night, with no negotiation allowed.
"I’ll message when I actually have something to tell you," Jin said.
"There’s always something to tell me," Elsa replied. "And I’ll be checking."
Arthur ate for a while before offering the sort of practical advice that came from having been young in rough places himself.
"Dorms get robbed. Keep anything important locked up, don’t show off what you own, and figure the friendliest kid in the hall is probably the one who’ll search your things."
He paused for another bite.
"School politics exist, and most of them are stupid. Stay quiet during the first term. Learn who really controls things and who only likes hearing himself talk." Arthur lifted his fork toward Jin. "And I’m saying this one again because it’s the mistake that’ll cost you: never sign something before you’ve read every word. Club form, resource waiver, anything. You know that already. One day you’ll forget. Don’t."
Glitch made his way around the table, gathering scraps and affection with the same polite confidence.
Food wasn’t the only thing drawing him from one person to the next, though. He lingered beside Elsa longer than any scrap justified. He leaned against Elena’s ankle, then spent a while sitting near Arthur’s bad leg.
The lizard did not understand that Jin would be leaving. Not in the way the humans did. Still, he knew something in the household had shifted. The two small rooms felt quieter, everyone a little more careful, and Glitch moved among them checking that his people were all right. It was much like the time he had invented a signal because ordinary words could not tell Jin what he needed to know.
As they talked, Jin found himself studying the apartment properly.
He noticed the ceiling stain that had never resembled anything. The wall crack Elsa always kept outside the camera frame. The lamp that only turned on when adjusted to one exact angle. In the corner lay the blanket that belonged to Glitch now, though it had once been Jin’s.
He had spent sixteen years in that room and hated most of them. Now he was memorizing every piece of it because he was afraid some of it might disappear from his mind.
Jin kept that to himself.
Instead, he made fun of the way Elsa had underlined the vegetables on her plate and let dinner stay ordinary.
That was what he would actually miss.