Chapter 280: One Patrol at a Time
The junction lay below the quarry’s familiar galleries, where a descending northern ramp opened onto a low chamber. A second passage entered from the southeast. Beyond the chamber, the route continued deeper into the colony.
Two patrols crossed it on overlapping cycles.
Jin watched the northern group descend: four workers and two guards, their shells brushing the ramp walls. The southeast patrol appeared less than forty seconds later with five workers and one guard.
Twelve mantises, three of them capable of stopping Glitch long enough for the others to surround him.
The route beyond paid nearly twice as well as the lower gallery circuit. Jin checked the patrol timings again, hoping he had missed a generous gap somewhere.
He hadn’t.
Fine. Let’s see how bad it is.
He sent Glitch’s avatar against the northern group before it reached the chamber. The first guard went down, and Glitch had begun driving the workers back when the southeast patrol arrived behind him.
Jin switched Flicker’s target, trying to draw the newcomers away. Two workers followed her. The guard climbed instead, cutting across the wall above the passage and forcing her toward the low ceiling.
He tried to pull her out and missed Glitch’s exposed side for a moment too long.
Both health displays dropped.
[Avatars destroyed.]
[Respawn available.]
Jin set the phone against his knee and rubbed his eyes. He had known the second patrol was coming. Watching the first fight had still swallowed his attention.
The next attempt was shorter. He held Glitch nearer the chamber entrance, hoping the walls would protect his flanks. They did, until the second patrol came through the other entrance and made him fight in two directions.
On the third, Jin used Flicker to harass the northern guards. They kept descending while their workers drove her away.
He stopped before spending another run on the same mistake.
The problem wasn’t finding a position from which Glitch could fight twelve mantises. Jin needed to stop giving him twelve mantises to fight.
He rotated the view toward the southeast approach.
Two side passages branched off before the junction. Neither led anywhere useful for Glitch, which was why Jin had ignored them after mapping the route. Flicker could use them, though. There was room to turn inside one and a narrow overhead gap at the mouth of the other.
He traced a route with his finger without touching the screen.
In Sabel’s hall, he kept watching the stave until he forgot everything else. Here, he had been staring at Glitch’s fight until Flicker became an emergency button.
This time she needed a job before the trouble started.
Jin respawned the avatars and positioned her ahead of the southeast patrol. He waited until its guard passed the first side opening, then sent Flicker down behind the trailing workers.
She struck one across the back and rose before it could turn on her. A second worker swung toward the disturbance. She darted into the side passage, reappeared at its mouth, and attacked again.
The workers turned. Their guard shifted sideways to cover them, briefly blocking the narrow approach with its shell.
Jin switched to Glitch and sent him up the northern ramp.
The first guard lowered its head. Faultline Rush carried Glitch straight into it, driving it against the wall before the workers could spread around him. He finished it at close range and braced as the second guard lunged over the fallen shell.
Harden took the impact. Glitch gave a little ground, keeping his body across the narrow ramp.
In the other view, Flicker had two workers pursuing her toward the overhead gap.
A doubled vibration passed through the connected stone, registering through Glitch’s Tremor Sense. Jin recognized the queen’s command pulse. The southeast guard began pulling its formation back together.
Already? Come on.
He sent Flicker over the passage mouth instead of deeper inside it. A worker turned too sharply and collided with another. The guard had to halt again.
The delay was small. He used it.
Glitch’s Acid Breath swept the workers crowded behind the second northern guard. Three went down. The fourth scrambled over them, exposing the guard’s side as it tried to force past Glitch’s shoulder.
Jin directed him into that opening. His ordinary claws caught the seam, and a second close strike brought the guard down. He crushed the remaining worker against the ramp wall before turning.
The southeast patrol had reached the junction.
This time, Glitch was waiting for it.
Jin kept him on the ramp while Flicker crossed above the chamber. The surviving workers followed their guard uphill, with too little room to surround him.
The guard tried to push Glitch backward over the fallen northern patrol. Jin let him retreat two short steps, then shifted his angle so the guard had to climb across its own colony’s shells to reach him.
One foreleg slipped.
Glitch struck the exposed joint. Flicker drew a worker away from his other side, and Jin stayed with Glitch long enough to finish the guard before directing her clear.
Without its heavy front, the remaining patrol could not hold the ramp. Glitch drove it back into the chamber, taking scratches from the workers that crowded his legs while Flicker harried the ones trying to get behind him.
The last worker fell near the southeast entrance.
Jin lifted his thumb.
Both avatars were alive. Glitch’s health was lower than he would have liked, and Flicker had lost feathers along one wing, but the floor between the passages was finally still.
[Junction patrols defeated.]
[Route access extended: Third Descent.]
[Coins awarded.]
He grinned at the screen.
"That’s more like it."
Real Glitch opened one eye from his sleeping place. Jin lowered his voice and reached over to rub his shoulder.
"Not you. You’re off duty."
The route took further practice before Jin trusted it.
An early command pulse nearly spoiled the next run. Later, a ceiling-climbing guard forced Flicker to abandon the overhead gap and circle through the chamber instead. Jin learned where he could safely leave Glitch braced for a moment and where taking his attention away cost too much.
Eventually, the two fights became repeatable. He still had to watch them. That was acceptable for the extra growth and Coins they earned.
Flicker’s avatar made the difference, and once the session ended, Jin looked over at the real bird sleeping with her head tucked down.
Earlier, he had praised her for landing on a wooden perch. On-screen, she had been drawing armed patrols out of position.
The contrast no longer made him impatient with her. He remembered too clearly how excited he had been when she first stood without help. Her body needed time to become accustomed to being healthy, let alone anything beyond that.
He checked Glitch’s accumulated development before closing the Engine.
[Combined with banked development: sufficient for Star advancement]
[Projected result: Rank 1 Novice, 8-Star]
Jin read the projection twice, then opened the condition notes he had kept across the three days.
The foreleg was settled. The cut near Glitch’s eye had closed, and Lesser Regeneration had reduced the scrape across his muzzle to a faint line. He was eating well, holding near his established weight, and showing no renewed soreness after ordinary work.
Doyen had cleared that work. Jin’s own checks had found nothing to make him delay the transfer.
He booked a private care stall for the following morning and checked the monitoring equipment listed with it. Food first, measurements before and after, then controlled movement once Glitch was ready.
He was still smiling when he put the phone down.
Glitch rolled closer in his sleep and trapped Jin’s foot beneath one warm foreleg. Jin left it there for a while.