Chapter 281: Say That Again
Chapter 281: Say That Again
Jin had the food weighed out before eight and the monitoring pads in place before he opened the Engine.
Glitch stood in the private stall, watching the bowl.
"In a minute," Jin told him. "Let me finish."
[Sync — Glitch]
[Transferring: accumulated development]
[Confirm?]
He confirmed.
Warmth spread beneath Glitch’s plating. His breathing deepened, and Jin watched the readings rise before settling into a steadier range. He kept a hand on the shoulder, feeling the slow movement beneath it.
[Sync complete.]
[Rank 1 Novice, 7-Star → Rank 1 Novice, 8-Star]
[Quality: Silver (Peak) — unchanged]
Jin let out the breath he had been holding.
"Eight," he said softly.
Glitch looked at the food again.
"Yes, you can have it."
He set the bowl down. Glitch pushed toward it with his usual eagerness and stopped with his nose against the stall wall, having gone further than either of them expected.
Jin caught the bowl before the tail knocked it over.
"You all right?"
Glitch backed up and inspected the wall. Nothing was damaged except, apparently, his opinion of it.
Jin laughed before he could help himself. "We’ll walk it out after breakfast."
The notification arrived while Glitch was eating.
[Challenge received.]
[Challenger: Rion Hask — Third-Class Rank 22]
[Target: Jin Astor — Third-Class Rank 20]
Jin glanced from the screen to his beast.
You could have sent that yesterday.
Every public recording Hask had studied showed a seven-Star Glitch. The information had become outdated a few minutes ago.
He checked the challenge terms, including the line confirming that post-cutoff ladder changes did not alter the filed League delegation. His qualifying place was settled. This defense concerned his academy ranking.
He accepted and scheduled it for the day after next.
Two days would give Glitch time to adjust. After weeks of trying to fit training, recovery, and matches around one another, Jin almost distrusted such convenient timing.
Rion Hask’s first message arrived before they left the care block.
Must be nice getting carried into the delegation by one lucky evolution.
Jin read it while Glitch practiced walking a straight length of the yard without overshooting the turn.
He put the phone away.
The second message was longer. Hask had watched every recording. Jin had never won anything himself. A lizard with an expensive resource in it was doing all the work while its tamer pretended to be clever.
That one irritated him enough to make him start typing.
He had spent forty-seven attempts developing the movement Hask was so confident he understood. He had watched Varro’s recordings until he could recognize Anvil’s weight transfer with the sound off. Glitch had done the fighting, but neither of them had arrived here by accident.
Jin deleted the reply.
I’m not explaining any of that to you.
He saved the messages and reopened Hask’s match history instead.
Maul was an Ironjaw Hound, Rank 1, eight-Star, Silver (High). It had a deep chest, powerful jaws, and a habit of following one lunge with another before its opponent recovered.
Hask had trained that sequence well. The hound changed its target between the shoulder and foreleg, pressing until a retreat exposed something worth biting.
Jin replayed a bout in which Maul deliberately left room along its flank. Its opponent charged the opening. The hound sprang aside and caught the extended front limb.
He watched the same movement in a second recording.
There it is.
Against Faultline Rush, that could be nasty. Once Glitch launched, he could not correct his line. Hask needed him to commit, miss, and leave his foreleg available while he recovered.
Jin made a note beneath the recording.
Stay close. Make Maul enter their reach. No Rush into an offered flank.
Glitch had enough strength now to punish a bad lunge without racing nine meters to do it.
Over the next two days, Hask made his opinions public.
Jin heard about the feed-hall speech from another student: an appraisal talent, a suspiciously fortunate evolution, somebody who had squeezed through the cutoff on favorable matchups. By the following afternoon, two people asked whether he had seen the challenge announcement Hask was circulating.
He had. He also had other things to do.
Glitch practiced short advances and controlled stops. Jin measured where his feet landed, widened the stopping zones when necessary, and let him finish before frustration made him careless.
Doyen supervised a short session and checked him afterward.
"The new Star hasn’t bought you another claw strike," she said. "One. And the throat restriction stays."
"I know."
"I’m telling him too." She looked at Glitch, who was trying to reach the feed pouch on Jin’s belt. "Both of you can be ambitious after I finish checking you."
Sabel worked Jin through two more mornings of stepping, turning, and speaking. He still struggled when she changed her attack late, but he no longer stopped every time he gave a command.
On the last evening, Flicker completed her perch circuit and chose Glitch’s shoulder as her resting place. Jin sat beside them and reviewed Maul’s lunges once more.
He was looking forward to the match now. Hask had made that part easy.
Arena 2 was busier than Jin expected.
Students leaned over the rails, calling to friends as he entered. Hask stood near his mark with Maul beside him, plainly enjoying the audience he had gathered.
"There he is," Hask called. "Our regional representative."
Jin walked past the official checking their registrations and took his place.
"You brought enough people," he said.
"I wanted them to see this." Hask grinned toward the nearest tier. "Figured you wouldn’t mind proving you belong."
Glitch settled beside Jin. His claws rested flat on the floor, his head angled toward the hound.
The referee checked the space between the marks. Hask kept talking.
"Fifty thousand Credits. That’s what your family spent on the egg, isn’t it?"
Jin’s hand stopped against Glitch’s shoulder.
"Everything they had, for a kid with a C-Rank appraisal talent." Hask laughed. "Your parents must be fools. Spending their savings so you can read feed charts—"
"Leave them out of it."
Hask looked pleased to have finally got an answer.
"Why? They made the decision."
Jin remembered his mother coming home tired and asking about the egg before she had even sat down. His father’s hand on the payment confirmation. Neither of them had known there was an Engine. They had done it for him anyway.
He looked at Hask, suddenly unable to find anything funny in the crowd or the messages or the match.
"Say that again."
"What?"
"The part about my parents."
Hask’s grin faltered. Somebody close to the rail stopped speaking.
Then Hask lifted his chin. "I said they were fools."
Jin nodded once and returned his hand to Glitch’s shoulder.
The beast had gone rigid. His head lowered, and Jin felt the urge to move coming through the bond before he gave a command.
"Wait," he said.
He would have been content to beat Hask quickly when he walked into the arena. He wasn’t content with that anymore.
"Tamers ready," the referee called.
Jin set his feet and watched Hask raise an arm toward Maul.
[If you have bought privilege, thank you so much; if you haven’t, please do that would help me a lot]