Chapter 122: Running Was Finally Correct
This retreat had nothing slow about it.
The mantises tracked every step Glitch made, and the cautious pattern of moving and stopping had stopped working. Hunters were closing in from too many sides, blood already ran from Glitch’s flank, and standing still for several seconds would only give them time to form a ring around him.
Jin needed some way to make the floor useless as a sensing surface.
The solution was hanging above it.
Loose quarry waste had collected on a broken shelf along the passage’s left wall. Stones and chunks of mineral sat there from an ancient cave-in, and the whole mound looked ready to fall if something struck it hard enough.
"Hit the bottom of that rockpile, then keep running."
Glitch picked up speed, and the vibration trails shifted at once to follow the beat of his feet. He reached the damaged shelf and slammed one hardened foreleg into its base without breaking stride.
The mound came down.
Jin had never expected it to crush the mantises. Instead, rubble and dust flooded the passage as hundreds of stones and mineral fragments struck the ground together, filling the tunnel with overlapping impacts.
For several seconds, everything around them screamed through the floor.
The underground trails snapped toward different signals. Every nearby creature relying on vibration had been flooded with more information than it could sort through, and although Glitch’s footfalls were still there, they were buried under the noise of the collapse.
Since entering the quarry, Jin had finally found a situation where running was the right choice.
So Glitch ran.
Jin guided him through the route they had already mapped while the passage continued shaking behind them. One mantis burst out of the settling rubble and attacked without a clear target, its forelimb smashing a stone less than a body length behind Glitch’s tail.
Glitch kept facing forward.
That, more than anything, showed how much he had learned. He tore through the tunnels they had crossed earlier, cleared the final passage, and reached the dungeon entrance under his own power.
Jin waited until Glitch crossed the deployment boundary before withdrawing the avatar. They had done enough to deserve getting out.
[Shattered Iron Quarry — Current Progress]
[Enemies Defeated: 2]
[Stored Growth: Minor ×2]
[Cracked Iron-Shell Plate ×1]
[Iron-Shell Forelimb ×1]
[Tremor Sense Fragment: 2/10]
[Dungeon Status: Incomplete]
Jin went over the results. Two enemies killed, two fragments gained, a small amount of stored growth, and two pieces of loot from the quarry. It wasn’t much, but every bit of it was real progress.
The greater value came from what the run had taught him about farming the remaining fragments. A single mantis could be fooled with separated footsteps and rolling stones. Several mantises could have their attention split, and even their attacks could cover Glitch’s movement. The problem was that every violent kill sent a fresh signal through the quarry and pulled more creatures toward the same place.
Getting the other eight fragments would require a strict pattern: separate one target, kill it fast, then leave before the dungeon closed in.
The cave-in had taught him something else as well. Hiding Glitch’s vibrations would not always be possible, and in those moments, making everything else louder was the better option.
Jin wrote down the conclusions while Glitch made his displeasure over the surviving enemies extremely clear.
"Coming back alive with useful information beats dying for one extra kill."
Glitch’s reply carried the firm position that Jin had stated an opinion, not a fact, and that it was also a bad opinion.
"Save the argument until we have a plan that doesn’t end with you surrounded."
Glitch appeared more than ready to argue anyway, for as long as necessary.
Jin only checked the time after he finished his notes, and he immediately regretted doing it. Most of the night had disappeared into waiting for the respawn, examining the first failure, carrying out the second attempt, escaping the swarm, and writing down every lesson from it.
There was barely any night left.
He set the phone aside and fell asleep almost at once. The real Glitch curled up beside him, entirely untouched by the violence his avatar had suffered. The bruise on his shoulder had nearly faded, and he slept with the calm satisfaction of a beast convinced that he had done most of the work while his tamer contributed very little.
Jin had made it through creatures that attacked from beneath the ground.
The morning alarm still came close to finishing him.
He lost that battle by points and dragged himself to Meridian anyway.
Glitch had no such problem. His actual body had slept all night while the avatar fought, bled, and ran for its life, yet the beast walking beside Jin carried himself like a hero returning from war, with Jin reduced to the assistant who had filed the reports afterward.
It was deeply unfair.
Jin was too tired to resent it with any real effort, so he did so quietly while nursing a headache.
Before regular training began, Glitch received one final medical examination. The examiner moved his shoulder through the full range of motion, checked the scales, then watched him walk, turn, and shift his weight across both forelegs.
[Previous Injury: Deep Shoulder Contusion]
[Recovery: Complete]
[Joint Function: Normal]
[Movement Compensation: None]
[Status: Cleared for Full Physical Activity]
"He’s completely recovered," the examiner said. "There are no restrictions left."
Everything looked normal. There were no wounds from the avatar, no trace of Acid Breath, no regeneration, and nothing that suggested another Glitch had spent the night battling through an underground quarry.
He was simply a Grey Rock Lizard whose shoulder bruise had healed as expected.
Relief settled over Jin. Glitch’s real body was fully healthy again, but the medical clearance also took away Jin’s last reason for excluding him from full academy training.
An avatar could die and return two hours later. The real Glitch had one body, and there was no respawn timer attached to it.
From this point on, Jin would need to manage academy exercises and dungeon grinding with much more care. Any injury to the real body would carry consequences far beyond the damage an avatar took, which meant the separation between the two kinds of training mattered more now that Glitch was cleared for everything.
Glitch strutted out of the medical room, clearly thrilled that every restriction had been removed. Jin followed him toward the training hall, wondering whether a tamer’s exhaustion could count as a medical limitation.
Apparently not.