Chapter 47: Fourteen Days
Chapter 47: Fourteen Days
The entire arena thought Jin had tied Lucian Vale.
Lucian was the first person to tell them they were wrong.
"Five markers," someone said. "He collected all five."
"That’s an Iron-quality Grey Rock Lizard. With a bandage on."
"Same as Vale. He tied Vale—"
"He didn’t."
Lucian had approached the observation rail. He was watching Glitch rather than Jin, and there was nothing unkind in his expression.
"Same number of markers," he said. "Not the same performance."
He was right.
Jin understood that better than anyone watching.
Lucian had completed the trial faster and more smoothly. His Silver Thunder Falcon had emerged in excellent condition, and his command precision was the result of years of disciplined training.
He had solved every challenge at speed, without hesitation or wasted movement.
Jin had spent nearly a minute resting Glitch on a stone platform and claimed the final marker by activating the building’s emergency restraint system.
They weren’t the same performance.
They wouldn’t receive the same score, and they shouldn’t.
Whatever the central Association’s evaluators eventually decided about Jin, they would be measuring something different from what they saw in Lucian.
Jin was fine with that.
He had never been competing for the same thing.
Lucian’s gaze met his.
Something passed between them without either speaking.
You didn’t defeat it.
No. I read the manual.
The corner of Lucian’s mouth shifted slightly.
He nodded once and walked away.
Inside the observation gallery, the veteran examiner sat down and added another note to Jin’s record.
He didn’t explain what he wrote.
The remaining evaluations required another two hours.
Eventually, the Head Examiner stood before a thoroughly exhausted crowd and formally closed the national examination.
The performance data would be uploaded that night. Shelter 7’s incident footage had been flagged for manual review. Official scores would arrive in approximately two weeks.
The breached holding pens had been sealed and every released Pack Stalker accounted for. The unexplained drone convergence, the northern mana surge, and the contamination that had turned the river red were now part of a formal Association investigation. Candidates were ordered not to approach Sector Nine or circulate unverified theories while the inquiry remained active.
Only candidates cleared by the medical staff had been permitted to take the final evaluation. Anyone who withdrew after the emergency retained their completed Phase One and Phase Two scores without penalty. That, at least, made continuing the standardized test feel less like the Association pretending nothing had happened.
No rankings today.
No school placements.
Go home.
And that was it.
Jin stood among the candidates and felt his exhaustion arrive all at once.
The four days. The obstacle course. The broken bridge. The red river. Leading the stranded candidates. The Silent Command Arena.
The weight of everything landed now that there was finally nothing left for him to hold up.
He had entered the examination hoping to pass.
That was the honest, unglamorous truth.
Pass. Receive a decent score. Find a school his family could afford. Give them a little more room to breathe.
Whether his performance was exceptional, average or barely adequate was beyond his control now. His actions had become numbers on a central server, waiting to be compared against hundreds of thousands of other candidates.
Nothing left to optimize.
What Jin still possessed was a small black lizard walking beside him, slowly favoring one leg but completely alive.
That part mattered more.
The outer barrier doors opened.
Light and noise poured into the forward camp. Beyond the cordon waited the candidates’ families.
Elsa struck Jin like a thrown rock.
"You idiot!"
She punched him in the shoulder first.
Properly. With genuine intent. The way only a fourteen-year-old who had spent four days terrified could punch someone.
Then she wrapped both arms around him tightly enough to make his ribs creak.
"Ow," Jin said. "Elsa. Ow."
"Shut up. They said there was an incident. They said the drones went north, and you didn’t—you were just—"
Her voice cracked in the middle of the sentence.
She buried her face in his jacket before anyone could see.
"You’re an idiot."
"Yeah." Jin awkwardly patted the back of her head. "That’s fair."
Arthur approached more slowly.
He always moved slowly. His ruined leg didn’t allow anything else.
Jin watched him cross the ground one careful step at a time—a man who had spent four days outside the barrier with a cup of coffee growing cold in his hand.
Arthur stopped before him.
He didn’t look toward the arena. He didn’t ask about the markers, the combat beast or Jin’s possible score.
He placed one hand on Jin’s shoulder.
"You came home."
Jin met his father’s eyes.
"Told you I would."
Arthur nodded once.
That was their entire conversation.
Somehow, it was also the largest conversation they had ever shared.
Then Arthur’s gaze dropped.
His expression sharpened.
"That leg’s wrapped."
He was already lowering himself, fighting against his bad hip and ruined knee until he could crouch beside Glitch.
"Dad—"
"Hush."
Arthur’s fingers moved over the bandage with a precision Jin had rarely seen from him. He tested the tension, checked the heat above the joint and carefully traced the swelling.
"Who dressed this?"
"Me."
"Hm."
Arthur adjusted the top of the wrap with two fingers.
"Bit tight here."
The pressure immediately improved.
"Who taught you?"
"Nobody," Jin said. "I watched you check injuries when I was little."
Arthur’s hands stopped.
Only for a second.
He said nothing. He finished adjusting the bandage, cleared his throat and looked away, but something in the set of his shoulders had changed.
Glitch permitted the entire examination.
He remained perfectly still, allowing the strange limping human to fuss over him with the gracious tolerance of a monarch enduring a court physician.
When Arthur finished, Glitch sniffed his hand.
Arthur released a quiet, surprised laugh.
Then the family left together.
As they moved through the forward camp, people looked at Jin.
Not many. There was no crowd.
But a candidate nudged another one. A woman whispered something to her husband. One of the boys Jin had helped near the collapsed bridge raised a hand as he passed.
That’s him.
That’s the boy who brought all eight of them back.
It wasn’t fame.
It was only a few dozen people inside one Shelter who now knew a name they hadn’t known last week.
Still, Jin suspected it was the beginning of something.
Probably a nuisance.
He would deal with it later.
The transport home rattled through Shelter 7’s tunnels.
Glitch fell asleep against Jin’s leg within ten minutes.
Completely exhausted, his bandaged leg stretched out and his small chest rising and falling steadily. The great warrior of the Silent Command Arena was drooling faintly on Jin’s trousers.
Elsa had also fallen asleep halfway through a sentence, her head resting against Arthur’s shoulder.
Arthur remained awake, watching the tunnel lights pass with an expression Jin declined to examine too closely.
Jin took out his phone.
To anyone else, the screen displayed a cheap puzzle game. A dull icon. Nothing deserving a second glance.
The Mythic Sovereign Game Engine appeared.
[Main Quest Complete: Raise Your First Beast] [— Hatch your bound beast: Complete] [— Reach 100% Synchronization: Complete] [— Survive the Academy Entrance Examination: Complete] [Quest Reward Granted: Synchronization Archive] [Feature Unlocked: Auto-Battle Configuration]
The blacked-out menu Jin had glimpsed days earlier finally opened. The Synchronization Archive held the movement patterns, command responses, and survival habits Glitch had learned in both realities. Auto-Battle could now assemble those archived behaviors into limited routines—but only from situations Glitch had already experienced. Unknown enemies and unmapped terrain would still require Jin.
[Bound Beast: Glitch]
[Real Body: Recovering]
[Digital Avatar: Fully Operational]
[Dungeon Deployment Available]
[Death Penalty: None — Respawn Enabled]
Jin stared at the screen.
Then he looked down at the real Glitch—small, injured and sleeping against his leg.
Back on the screen, the digital avatar stood at full health inside the game interface, waiting for deployment.
The real Glitch needed rest.
His digital counterpart didn’t.
The avatar could enter a dungeon. It could fight, die and respawn as many times as necessary without placing another ounce of strain on the real body.
In fourteen days, a distant central server would finish comparing Jin against hundreds of thousands of strangers and send him a score.
For every other candidate, that meant fourteen days of pacing, worrying and refreshing the results page.
Fourteen days of useless waiting.
Jin looked at the sleeping dragon.
Then at the healthy avatar on his phone.
Fourteen days until the results.
Fourteen days of grinding.
Jin smiled down at the screen.
Now that was a schedule he could work with.