Chapter 121: The Floor Had Friends
Three grooves. Three arrival times. One rock.
Jin did the math quickly because the math was all he had. The first trail approached through the passage Glitch had entered, the second raced along a groove beside the wall, and the third was still deeper inside the quarry, moving slower than the others.
They were only seconds apart. Not enough time to prepare, but enough time to try something.
"Throw the stone. Across the cut, hard."
Glitch flicked the final loose rock across the open ground.
All three trails reacted, but not equally. One immediately changed direction and chased the bouncing stone, while the second ignored it and continued toward the place where the dead mantis had hammered against the floor. The vibrations had already stopped, but the creature had locked onto the strongest source before they faded.
The third trail halted between the two signals.
Then it began circling toward Glitch’s last known position.
Jin’s stomach tightened. They don’t all chase the same rock.
Overlapping signals confused them, but only briefly. They could split their attention and investigate different sources, which meant the stone trick was excellent for isolating one opponent but fooled only part of the room against a group.
He needed something better, and he needed it immediately.
The first mantis erupted beside the rolling stone and struck empty ground. The second surfaced near the corpse, and after reaching the location of the final vibrations, it seemed to detect the damaged body through scent or some other sense Jin couldn’t identify. Its bladed forelimbs tore into its fallen kin as though it were wounded prey rather than a corpse.
The third remained underground, hunting.
"Move now. While they’re striking."
The two surfaced mantises were loud. Every scrape of their armored bodies and every blow of their forelimbs sent vibrations through the floor, making Glitch’s lighter steps much harder to separate from the violence covering them.
Glitch left the exposed shelf and headed toward the narrow throat of the passage.
Three quick steps. Four.
If he reached the tighter ground, the mantises wouldn’t be able to surround him as easily.
He almost made it.
The hidden third mantis caught the final part of his trail and erupted beneath him.
"Harden! Twist!"
Glitch’s scales darkened as he wrenched sideways. The bladed forelimb missed his belly, but its edge raked across his flank, shattering several avatar scales and opening a shallow line beneath them.
The impact knocked Glitch off balance and sent him stumbling back toward the stone shelf. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was enough to prove the floor hadn’t lost him.
The third mantis pulled itself from the dust near the mouth of the narrow passage. The first was already turning away from the motionless rock, while the second abandoned the corpse and twisted toward the sound of Glitch’s landing.
Three enemies. Three angles.
They couldn’t remain there.
But the mantises had shown Jin one more weakness. Whenever they believed they had located prey, they committed completely. They didn’t hesitate before lunging, and anything that committed that aggressively could be aimed.
"The corpse," Jin ordered. "Shove it across the floor. Hard."
Glitch turned and drove his shoulder into the dead mantis.
The heavy shell scraped away from the shelf and spun through the center of the open cut, producing a rough, irregular vibration far stronger than any pebble or footstep.
The mantis near the dead stone reacted first. It charged toward the moving corpse from one side, just as the creature that had attacked Glitch turned from the mouth of the passage and lunged from the other.
They reached the false target together.
One bladed forelimb missed the corpse and glanced across the other mantis’s mineral carapace with a horrible screech. The collision didn’t kill either creature, but the mantis from the passage was knocked sideways. Its legs slipped in the loose dust, twisting its armored body far enough to expose the pale seam beneath its abdomen.
"That one! Pin it before it digs!"
Glitch attacked immediately. He slammed into the unbalanced mantis and drove it against the solid shelf, using his hardened weight to trap the creature before it could disappear beneath the dust.
It thrashed beneath him.
The mantis it had collided with was already recovering, while the third creature turned back from the original corpse. Glitch had only seconds.
"Acid. The exposed seam."
Glitch spat one precise stream into the gap beneath the armor.
Corrosion bit into the soft tissue. The mantis convulsed, and Glitch clamped his jaws around the weakened neck joint and crushed down while keeping its body pinned against the stone.
Its legs hammered against the floor.
Then they stopped.
[Iron-Shell Tunnel Mantis Defeated]
[Stored Growth Acquired: Minor]
[Loot Acquired: Iron-Shell Forelimb ×1]
[Skill Fragment Acquired: Tremor Sense Fragment ×1]
[Fragment Completion: 2/10]
Jin had manipulated the hunters into creating an opening, and Glitch had trusted his timing enough to complete the kill while two other enemies closed around him.
Two out of ten.
Jin barely had time to register the number before the quarry answered.
The dying mantis thrashed violently against the stone, its impacts traveling through the tunnels. Distant grooves trembled, and new trails began moving in passages Glitch had never explored.
Every kill was an alarm.
Or a dinner bell.
Possibly both.
The two surviving mantises nearby were already approaching from opposite directions. At least one more vibration source was moving somewhere deeper inside the quarry, and the Engine couldn’t tell Jin exactly how many were coming. It couldn’t see through the walls any better than he could.
[Multiple Vibration Sources Detected]
Glitch wanted to remain.
Confidence burned through the bond. They had discovered how to kill the mantises now. Two were already dead, and from the lift of Glitch’s posture and the pressure coming through the connection, the rest might as well have been enemies waiting for their turns.
"No," Jin said. "We’re leaving."
Glitch’s anger pressed against the order.
This was where Jin had to learn the same lesson he had forced onto Glitch. Glitch had learned not to charge merely because an opponent stood in front of him; Jin needed to learn not to keep grinding merely because the dungeon had finally started giving him what he wanted.
The two fragments were already secured. Another reckless fight wouldn’t make them safer, and if Glitch died now, Jin would only lose two more hours to an avoidable respawn when morning was already approaching.
"We got what we came for. We go."
Abandoning living enemies offended Glitch on a personal level.
He obeyed anyway.
At that moment, Jin valued that obedience almost as much as the fragments.