Chapter 252: Ten Meters, Twice
Glitch’s avatar returned to The Unbroken Line on the second morning after the match while the real beast slept under four clean bandages.
Digital movement did not pull at the closed wounds or irritate the real throat. That separation made the trial safe to grind; it did not make the accumulated results safe to Sync into an injured body.
Jin left the transfer option alone and started the course.
The first obstruction shifted at almost the same moment as before. Glitch delayed his commitment by a fraction, reached 2.4 meters, and turned when the barrier entered his line.
[Trial Failed — forward commitment broken at 2.4m]
[Attempts: 2]
Thirty centimeters of improvement was not a skill. It was enough to prove that the first failure had contained information.
Jin saved the run and stopped there. The real Glitch woke when the interface closed, lifted his head, and objected to breakfast being three minutes late with a rough sound that Doyen would not have approved of.
"Don’t use your throat to complain about your throat restriction."
Glitch stared at him and opened his mouth again.
Jin put the feed bowl down before the argument became medically relevant.
He logged the trial separately from real-body development. Avatar practice could refine timing, coordination, and the path toward a compatible skill. Any physical gains still had to wait behind the same restriction as everything else. The distinction was easy to understand and tempting to blur when the countdown remained visible. Jin wrote NO SYNC UNTIL MEDICAL CLEARANCE across the top of Glitch’s file anyway.
Flicker attempted ten meters again that afternoon, four days after the first completion.
She was slower this time. On the outbound leg, she stopped once with one foot lifted and her wings held slightly away from her body. Jin felt his shoulders tighten while she decided whether to continue, but neither he nor Verrick moved toward her.
Flicker set the foot down and resumed.
The return was steadier than her first ten-meter attempt. Her corrections were smaller, and she needed her wings twice instead of three times. At eight meters her left leg began to drift, but she shortened the next step herself and kept the foot beneath her.
She reached the marker without the stagger that had ended the previous circuit.
There were no spiteful extra steps today. Flicker sat exactly on the line, lowered her head, and breathed while Glitch watched from beside Jin. The bandages prevented him from walking the circuit with her, which he appeared to regard as a failure of academy policy.
Verrick read the display before speaking.
"Ten. Thermal peak lower than the first attempt. Respiration returning faster. Pathways quiet throughout."
"Better than four days ago."
"It is. Her weight held between sessions, and so did her appetite. That’s two ten-meter completions with stable immediate readings and consistent intake between them."
Jin waited.
"Six hours," Verrick said.
"I know."
"Then stop looking at me as if I scheduled the delay personally."
"I was hoping professional guilt might speed it up."
"And yet biology remains inconsiderate."
Verrick started the delayed-observation log.
Jin spent the six hours badly.
He sat through Glitch’s wound check and watched Doyen test each closure for heat and swelling. All four stayed clean. The throat scope showed less irritation than the previous day, which changed nothing about the seven-day plan Jin had already chosen.
Afterward, he completed two hours of coursework and retained little of it. He checked the ladder once, saw two positions change inside the Top 20, and closed the board without opening a challenge profile.
At the fourth hour he returned to the ward and sat on the floor beside Flicker’s cradle, mildly in everyone’s way. She slept through most of the remaining wait with her wings tucked close and her temperature displayed above her in an unbroken green line.
Glitch settled beside Jin after Doyen released him. He lowered his head near the cradle and remained there, awake and watchful, until the six-hour mark.
Verrick ran the readings twice. The second pass took long enough for Jin to start counting the gaps between screen changes.
"Stable," Verrick said. "Thermal, respiration, weight, and pathway activity. No delayed destabilization and no emergency support."
"That’s the threshold."
"It is." Verrick set down the slate and waited.
Jin knew what he wanted. "She can repeat ten meters and recover. She still can’t train normally, fly, fight, or absorb aggressive development."
"Good. We spent the first weeks proving she could remain stable. Now we have a repeatable capacity to build from." Verrick looked toward the sleeping bird. "That is a real change. You’re allowed to be pleased about it."
Jin was. Saying so would not improve the readings, so he sat beside the cradle for another ten minutes instead.
He opened Flicker’s Engine file at half past eleven that night. Glitch slept against the wall nearby, still bandaged and banned from doing anything he considered interesting.
For eleven weeks, the same line had appeared at the top of Flicker’s transfer panel.
Recipient physical condition: below transfer threshold.
Tonight it had changed.
[Controlled Sync — Flicker]
[Recipient physical condition: minimum transfer threshold met]
[Limited Controlled Sync: available]
[Transfer ceiling: automatically restricted to recipient safe capacity]
[Eligible transfer: foundational development only]
[Projected effects: vitality | coordination | thermal stability | basic Astral Core reinforcement]
[Excluded: major combat growth | Dual Fire-Wind Core]
[Full Controlled Sync: unavailable]
[Begin limited transfer?]
Jin read the panel four times, then returned to the exclusions.
The Dual Fire-Wind Core remained stored. So did the avatar’s major combat development: everything earned across the Ember Basin, the Astral Tide Event, the split elite node, and the Wave 30 boss. None of that was entering the fragile bird upstairs.
The available portion was smaller and more important right now. Vitality, coordination, thermal stability, and reinforcement for an Astral Core that had spent more than two months struggling to form properly.
A stronger foundation. That’s enough for the first transfer.
There was no percentage control. The Engine had calculated the safe ceiling from Flicker’s current body and refused to let Jin bargain with it. For once, being denied the option to optimize felt useful.
He did not press the confirmation.
Any transfer created consolidation demand. Flicker ate on a controlled schedule, slept inside a regulated cradle, and had delayed readings taken after every increase in exertion. Jin was not going to alter her body at half past eleven and improvise the feeding and monitoring afterward.
He opened a fresh note and wrote FLICKER — LIMITED SYNC PREPARATION across the top. Food came first, then monitoring, a quiet recovery window, and a cover for whatever improvement appeared in Verrick’s readings.
The confirmation remained unanswered beside the fifth line of his plan: Ask Verrick when her next quiet week is.