Chapter 46: The Fifth Marker
Chapter 46: The Fifth Marker
Jin had eighty-six seconds to teach Glitch the most important rule of boss fights.
The boss didn’t need to die.
He raised his phone against the booth glass and activated Data Appraisal on the chamber—not the beast, but the room, because the room was the part nobody else was studying.
Device Link could not magically understand architecture. It could, however, read the standardized maintenance data broadcast by Association equipment to approved examination devices: mass ratings, movement cycles, safety classifications, and registered emergency systems. Jin still had to decide what those measurements meant.
Numbers appeared.
Mass: High
Acceleration: Extreme
Turning Radius: Poor
Jin’s mouth twitched.
The combat beast was a freight train. Terrifying in a straight line, but once it reached full speed, it couldn’t correct its course any more than a falling anvil could change its mind.
Then Jin examined the supports.
He had noticed them on instinct. Supports inside a boss room were rarely decoration.
Structure: Breakaway Safety Anchor
Activation Requirement: High-Impact Collision
Linked System: Emergency Containment Lattice
Jin stared at the information.
Then he began to smile.
They hadn’t built a fight. They had built a trap, placed a large, angry beast in front of it, and labeled the entire chamber an OPTIONAL COMBAT OBJECTIVE.
Across the nation, exhausted candidates would read the word combat and immediately reach for their strongest attack.
The arena wasn’t asking whether their beast could overpower its opponent.
It was asking whether they understood that overpowering something wasn’t the only way to win.
TIME REMAINING: 01:19
Okay. Now the difficult part.
The difficult part was that Jin couldn’t explain any of this.
Their contract link wasn’t capable of carrying proper language. It was a narrow wire that could comfortably handle a handful of simple intentions.
Left. Wait. Now. No. Marker. Come back.
And Jin was about to attempt architecture through it.
He stopped trying to send words.
Instead, he sent images.
The support.
He pushed the image of the left anchor through the link, focusing on its base.
A brief pause followed.
Then came a flicker of interest.
Glitch had found it.
The beast. Charging.
Jin sent the path of its movement and the point where the creature needed to collide with the anchor.
Move aside.
A small sideways movement. Not a leap.
Then take the marker.
Silence traveled back through the link while Glitch considered the plan.
The emotion that returned nearly made Jin laugh.
It wasn’t fear.
It wasn’t nervousness.
It was pure, blazing delight.
For ten minutes, Glitch had endured ignore it, leave it, don’t fight, not worth it. He had swallowed every insult from every creature that hissed at him.
Now his idiot human had finally said the magical words.
You may annoy that one.
One condition, Jin sent firmly.
No jumping. Protect your leg.
The response felt suspiciously like a teenager saying yeah, yeah while already walking out the door.
Glitch.
Yeah, yeah.
TIME REMAINING: 01:04
Glitch entered the chamber.
He didn’t rush. He moved low and carefully, keeping most of his weight off the injured leg while his golden eyes remained fixed on the enormous creature guarding the marker.
The combat beast lowered its body.
Muscle tightened across its shoulders. It didn’t roar. Academy-trained beasts weren’t here for intimidation. It simply planted its feet and prepared to charge.
Glitch stared at it.
Then he extended one foreclaw and deliberately flicked a pebble into its face.
Oh, you absolute menace.
The beast charged.
It came forward like a collapsing building. Appraisal filled Jin’s screen with rapidly shifting calculations—distance, acceleration, closing speed and the narrowing window for escape.
Now!
Glitch moved.
But the combat beast adjusted.
It shouldn’t have been able to, but it hadn’t reached its maximum speed yet. During that final fraction before committing to the charge, it twisted its body and corrected its angle.
Glitch’s clean sidestep suddenly placed him directly in danger.
He twisted away.
The beast thundered past close enough to tear the air from his lungs. Glitch landed badly, his injured leg folding slightly before he caught himself.
Jin was out of his chair.
He didn’t remember standing. One palm pressed against the glass while his heart climbed into his throat.
Stop. Enough. Come back.
He meant it completely.
Four markers were enough. Four markers could earn him a respectable score and possibly a school with free food.
There was no number on any screen worth watching Glitch’s leg tear open.
Jin prepared to send the command.
Then he checked Glitch.
That was the only reason he didn’t order him back.
There was no panic coming through their connection. No fear.
The combat beast was already turning near the opposite wall. Glitch remained in the center of the chamber with his head raised, studying it.
His attention moved from the beast to the scattered rubble, then to the breakaway anchor.
Jin felt Glitch take the original plan apart and reassemble it into something different.
Then a clear intention traveled back through their bond.
Not obedience.
Not a question.
A correction.
Your angle was wrong. Watch.
TIME REMAINING: 00:31
Jin had spent most of his life believing nothing on this planet was trustworthy enough to alter one of his plans.
His throat tightened.
Okay, he sent. Show me.
Glitch didn’t position himself directly before the anchor.
That had been Jin’s mistake. Standing there too early meant the beast would aim at Glitch, then follow him when he moved.
Glitch turned sideways and struck the rubble with his tail.
Fragments skittered across the floor and struck a metal panel beyond the breakaway anchor. The sound snapped the combat beast’s attention toward it, forcing its body to align with the support.
Only then did Glitch move onto that same line.
He placed himself between the beast and the anchor, becoming the more immediate target without changing the angle of its charge.
He didn’t jump or rush to reach the position.
He walked on three and a half legs into the exact correct square on the board.
In the observation gallery, the veteran examiner stood.
The combat beast charged.
This time, it began perfectly aligned with the anchor.
It accelerated toward Glitch, four hundred kilos of trained muscle committing itself to a straight path.
Jin watched the numbers climb.
Not yet.
The creature crossed half the chamber.
Not yet.
Glitch remained in its path with his injured leg planted. He didn’t move. He didn’t flinch.
He waited with absolute faith for a boy behind a wall he couldn’t see.
TIME REMAINING: 00:12
NOW.
Glitch stepped sideways.
That was all.
One short, economical shuffle. No jump. No dramatic dive. Barely forty centimeters of movement.
The combat beast shot past him and struck the breakaway anchor at full speed.
CRACK!
The impact echoed through the arena.
Candidates along the observation rail shouted because, from outside, it looked as though part of the ceiling had collapsed directly over a small, injured lizard.
Then the containment lattice dropped.
A reinforced sheet unfolded from the ceiling, humming with controlled mana. It wrapped around the combat beast and pinned it safely against the floor.
The creature remained unharmed.
It merely lay beneath the restraint, blinking in confusion.
Silence filled the observation area.
"Did he break the arena?" someone asked.
"No," another candidate answered slowly. "That’s the emergency restraint."
"He activated the safety system?"
Glitch didn’t celebrate.
He didn’t even look at the immobilized beast.
He limped around it, crossed the remaining distance and placed one claw on the final marker.
MARKER: 5/5
TIME REMAINING: 00:05
The timer reached zero.
The lane’s lights activated.
The barriers dropped.
Jin was already moving.
He rushed from the booth at a speed that would have astonished anyone who had ever called him lazy.
The observation rail erupted. Candidates shouted. Someone demanded an immediate replay.
Jin heard none of it.
He dropped to his knees beside Glitch and placed his hands on the bandage.
Please be intact.
The leg was warm. Slightly more swollen than before.
But the wound hadn’t torn open.
There was no fresh blood.
Jin released a breath he had been holding since the first failed charge and sat back on his heels.
For a moment, he wasn’t a gamer, a strategist or an examination candidate.
He was only a sixteen-year-old who was incredibly relieved.
"You’re benched," he said. "For several days. I’m not negotiating."
Glitch raised his head to a magnificent angle.
He pushed out his chest and arched his neck, assuming the dignified posture of a warrior who had faced a superior enemy in honourable single combat and triumphed through pure martial excellence.
Jin stared at him.
"You dropped the arena on him."
Glitch chirped proudly.
He clearly saw no meaningful difference.
"Unbelievable," Jin muttered.
Then he scratched beneath Glitch’s jaw anyway.