Chapter 70: The Room Needed Him
Chapter 70: The Room Needed Him
Full-Clear Route Optimization saved an absurd amount of time.
Jin’s first response was to spend every minute of that savings on more grinding.
Rustwater Drain reset completely twenty-four hours after the first clear. Leeches clung to the pipes again. Every broken walkway had rebuilt itself. Above the reservoir, the filtration platform Glitch had dropped onto the 4-Star boss was back in place, with no sign it had ever fallen. Far below, surrounded by glowing waste, the Rotmist Salamander slept without a wound or a memory of its defeat.
Digital Glitch remembered the entire run.
The real Glitch was still asleep on the blanket, safe and unaware. Only the avatar returned to the dungeon.
Jin used the first hour to refine the route. It was the most fun he’d had in days.
Combat had never been his favorite part of games in his last life. Optimization had. He liked taking a pile of messy paths and forcing them into one efficient circuit. The upper and lower drains were linked through checkpoints. Enemy groups with useless drops were removed from the route. Everything remaining pointed toward the materials he needed: Corrosive Glands from the leeches and Rustjaw Scutes from the Caiman.
He added retreat rules as well. Withdraw when toxin crossed a set threshold. Disengage if health fell below the chosen line. Abandon the route if an enemy appeared where it wasn’t supposed to be. Begin at the deepest checkpoint and leave no wasted movement between farming zones.
[Rustwater Drain — Full-Clear Route Configured]
[Target Drops: Corrosive Glands / Rustjaw Scutes]
[Boss Engagement: Manual Control Required]
[Emergency Retreat Conditions: Active]
Replacement materials came in much faster than they had during his earlier, clumsy attempts.
Faster did not mean free. The route still had to be completed. Enemies still needed to be killed, and Corrosive Glands continued to drop only when the dungeon felt like giving them to him. Optimization shortened the work. It didn’t erase it.
Jin also made himself remember that the route wasn’t flawless.
Small details changed whenever the dungeon reset. An enemy might appear several meters away from its previous position. The Salamander remained outside the automated route entirely. Boss Engagement: Manual Control Required sat in plain text for a reason. Giving a script control against an adaptive 4-Star boss was how people lost avatars.
A week earlier, a Rustlung Toad had killed his avatar on a route marked safe. It had hidden in an area the autopilot had crossed cleanly a hundred times.
Recorded routes only showed what had succeeded before.
They did not guarantee the dungeon would cooperate again.
Even so, once the loop began running without him, Jin could put down the phone and spend some time as an actual person in the room.
The room had plenty for him to do.
"This is the checklist," Elsa declared.
She unrolled a sheet that almost touched the floor.
Jin stared at it. "That’s a scroll, not a checklist. You’ve written a founding document."
"It’s complete. You’ve never lived by yourself, so you don’t even know what you’re going to forget." She pointed her pen at the first section. "Laundry. You have to wash your clothes, Jin. It will not happen on its own. If you keep putting it off, you’ll run out of clean things in an unfamiliar shelter, and then you’ll have to explain to your combat instructor why you stink."
Her pen moved down.
"Documents. Your ID and scholarship papers go somewhere secure. They do not stay loose in a bag. Lose them, and you’re nobody. Just some boy carrying a lizard with no evidence of who he is. Then there’s food. You cannot survive only on cafeteria meals—"
"Living on cafeteria meals," Jin said, "is the main reason I picked Meridian."
Elsa fixed him with a stare. "That’s not a reason. You can’t choose a school because of that."
"They serve three meals every day, and I don’t have to plan any of them. It may be the best thing Meridian offers."
He wasn’t entirely joking.
There were other reasons free meals mattered, but he couldn’t explain those. Letting Elsa believe he was lazy was simpler. It also wasn’t false.
She added EAT VEGETABLES to the scroll in large letters, then drew two lines beneath it.
Elena returned near dusk. Her shift had left her grey with exhaustion, but she didn’t lie down. Instead, she sat under the lamp with a needle and one of Jin’s few good shirts.
One seam had always been slightly loose. She took it in so the shirt would fit properly when he wore it somewhere important.
Elena never announced that kind of thing. She simply noticed what needed fixing and handled it, as she always did. Jin watched in silence. Thanking her would turn it into a discussion, and then she might stop.
Arthur had made a small pile of the things that truly mattered. He checked through them with steady care: Jin’s identification, scholarship confirmation, transport authorization, and emergency contact sheet. Each one was compared to the enrollment documents twice.
"These are what people misplace," Arthur said without raising his head. "Not shirts. Papers. Keep them on you or locked somewhere safe. Never give the originals to anyone. Hand over copies. Always."
"I know, Dad."
"You’ll know it more thoroughly after I repeat it four additional times."
Glitch had discovered the open school bag in the meantime.
He solved the packing problem by climbing inside and lying down.
"He is not packed," Elsa told everyone. "Sitting in the bag does not count as packing. Get out."
Glitch stayed where he was.
The bag belonged to him now. Meridian would have to arrange itself around that fact.
Arthur was working on the budget when Jin noticed what neither of them mentioned aloud.
The household ledger lay open in front of his father. It was the real ledger, where every credit was weighed against rationed food, recycled water, and wall-defense levies that were collected whether the family could afford them or not.
One glance told Jin that Arthur was calculating what came afterward.
Meridian would feed Jin, so his meals could be removed from the household column. The school’s monthly allowance would cover Glitch’s feed too. Two mouths would disappear from a budget that had never been large enough for the people already depending on it.
Arthur didn’t smile.
He would never allow himself to look pleased that his son’s departure made the household less expensive. Still, as the totals settled into place, some of the tension left his shoulders.
The change was tiny. A narrow margin in a ledger that had offered none for years.
But it was room.
Maybe enough room for Elena to refuse some of the double shifts they offered her.
Nothing needed to be said. Jin understood what his father had found, and the knowledge sat badly inside him.
At Meridian, both he and Glitch would receive what they needed. Their absence would make life a little easier for the family they left behind.
Those facts pointed in the same direction. Leaving was practical. It was responsible. Any reasonable person would look at the situation and go without hesitation.
That didn’t stop it from feeling like leaving.
Jin kept that thought to himself as well.
He watched Arthur make space in the numbers. Elena repaired his shirt. Elsa continued threatening a lizard who had no intention of obeying her.
He stored the evening away with the other good ones, somewhere deep enough that he would have to search for it later.