Chapter 263: Bigger in Person
The challenge acceptance came back in eleven minutes, which told Jin something before he even opened it.
[Challenge accepted.]
[Third-Class Rank 28 — Dell Varro]
[Match scheduled: tomorrow, 14:00, Arena 2]
Jin had expected Dell to spend the evening studying the new profile. Apparently he had seen enough to accept. With the cutoff approaching, neither of them could afford to leave a challenge unanswered for long.
Sixteen days for me. Same sixteen for him.
Dell Varro read the updated profile for the fourth time that evening and it still said the same thing.
[Beast Profile — Glitch]
[Quality: Silver (Peak)]
[Combat Rank: Rank 1 Novice]
[Star Level: 6-Star]
[Mass: 261 kg]
Every recording he had of Jin Astor showed the older grey-black lizard. Eleven of them, all built around a beast that had weighed a hundred and forty kilograms. He had watched the Rank-30 match twice tonight. Its movement mattered less now than he wanted it to.
Peak Silver. In Third-Class. On a boy with a C-Rank appraisal talent and no family fortune behind him.
Anvil shifted in the pen behind him, sensing the mood, and Dell reached back without looking and put his hand flat on the ram’s shoulder.
"I know," he said.
He could still surrender the match and protect Anvil. He would lose his ranking position, but at least his beast would be healthy for the next challenge. Dell left the profile open while he considered it.
Glitch was still six-Star, though. Anvil was further developed and had spent season after season learning to punish a charge. Higher Quality had given the lizard a formidable body; it had not given Jin experience moving it through a match. Dell kept coming back to that distinction.
And there were sixteen days left, and Dell was at 28, and 28 did not qualify for anything.
"We’ll make him come to us," he said, and Anvil leaned into his hand.
Jin spent the morning being looked at.
That was the part of Peak Silver nobody had warned him about. Glitch could not walk anywhere on campus now without a small wake forming behind him — students stopping mid-sentence, second-years angling for a better view, one boy who followed them a hundred meters to the feed hall and then lost his nerve and left.
Glitch handled it by ignoring all of them, which was more restraint than Jin managed.
"Stop enjoying it," Jin told him.
Glitch huffed and did not stop enjoying it.
The rest of the preparation was short, because he had been studying Varro since before the Coin grind. He watched two Varro recordings on the walk to class, mostly to re-time the rhythm, and put them away. Doyen caught him outside the feed hall before class, and that conversation lasted ninety seconds.
"One claw," she said.
"One," Jin said.
"No full-power breath."
"None," Jin said.
"Withdraw him the moment anything in the shoulder feels wrong, and I mean the moment—"
"—not the moment after," Jin finished. "Yes."
She looked faintly annoyed at having her sentence taken. "Then go and win, and don’t make me regret writing that clearance."
Flicker came out to the sheltered yard at noon under Verrick’s escort. She walked a slow circuit beside the feed crates, then let Jin lift her onto the folded towel on the lowest one. From there she watched Glitch drink, apparently fascinated by how long it took him.
"She’s decided she’s supervising," Verrick said.
"She’s waiting for him to finish," Jin said.
"That too."
Verrick checked her readings, let her watch a little longer, and took her back inside before Jin had to leave for the arena.
Glitch had eaten early. Jin sat beside him for the last few minutes before they were due at Arena 2, one hand on the plating behind the horn where the new bone met the old.
You used to fit in a crate. I could pick you up when you were annoying.
Glitch’s tail thumped against an empty feed bowl and sent it rolling under the bench.
"You can help me get that back." Jin leaned under the bench anyway. Glitch watched him do it.
Arena 2 had a stone-composite floor and a raised boundary ring, and about ninety students in the tiers, which was more than a Rank-28 match usually drew.
Word had gotten around about the profile.
Dell walked out with Anvil beside him and stopped dead about four paces in.
Jin watched it happen, and it was not what he’d expected. Dell’s gaze went from the horns to the foreclaws and stayed there. He tightened his grip on Anvil’s lead before loosening it again. The profile had evidently failed to convey something.
Anvil was a Slate-Horn Ram: heavy, compact, grey-plated, with a horn spread thick enough at the base to make its skull look armored. It had been the larger beast in every recording Jin had watched.
Beside Glitch it looked ordinary.
Dell recovered, which Jin respected. He set his shoulders, said something quiet to his ram, and took his position.
"Tamers ready," the referee called. "Beasts to the marks."
Glitch walked to the line and stopped where Jin wanted him, low, weight distributed, claws set into the composite.
"Nothing until I say," Jin said. "He’s going to make it look like you’re missing something. You’re not."
Glitch tipped his head toward Jin, then settled his attention on the ram.
"Begin."
Anvil moved first, and moved beautifully.
It came forward four steps, dropped its head, and rolled its shoulder in — the front foot landing, the whole body pitching toward a charge, the horns coming around.
Everything about it said now.
Jin felt the foot land through the floor, through Glitch’s feet, through the bond, and it landed light. Weight arriving and not committing. A step that could be recalled.
Glitch did not move.
Anvil pulled up short two meters out and drifted right.
Good. Again.
It did it again from the right side, sharper, with a stamp in it this time. Light. Then a third from a diagonal, with the head-drop that had ended four matches in the recordings, and that one Jin genuinely admired — the timing was excellent — and it was still light.
Glitch stayed exactly where he was.
The calls from the tiers dwindled. Dell glanced at the boundary behind Glitch, then brought two fingers forward in a sharp signal to Anvil. Jin had seen that signal in only one of the recordings.
Changing it already?
"Anvil — pressure," Dell called. "Move him."
The next approach was real.
Not a full countercharge — a short, hard, honest drive with weight behind it, aimed not at hurting Glitch but at putting a shoulder into him and shoving him toward the boundary ring. Anvil hit, dug, and drove, and two hundred and sixty-one kilograms slid a full half-meter backward across the composite before Glitch got his claws set.
Jin let Glitch settle rather than order a shove in return. Anvil had strength enough to move him, but there was plenty of floor behind them.
Come back and do it again.
It was a good adjustment. If Glitch wouldn’t come to the trap, Dell could spend Anvil’s superior development on pushing him toward the edge. Eventually Jin would have to answer or risk a ring-out.
Anvil backed off and circled. When Glitch made no attempt to recover the ground, Dell sent the ram in again.
It reset to twelve meters, dropped its head, and started forward — and this time the front foot came down and stayed down, the hindquarters loaded, the whole animal transferring its weight into the floor and forward, heavy, committed, real.
The stone carried it straight into Glitch’s feet.
There.