Chapter 344: Permission to Begin

On Monday morning, Dr. Alcott opened Saturday’s images and said, “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

Jin moved his chair closer. She set them beside the earlier scans and let him look through the sequence before explaining.

The first few were the ones he knew by heart: angry color pooled along Glitch’s shoulder channels, branching out from his Core like cracks in glass. Then fainter. Then patchy. Then the flushes after each drill, brightening and settling, brightening and settling, each one a little smaller than the last.

In the final image, taken forty-eight hours after Thursday’s check, the recovering channels had returned to an even baseline. None showed the delayed elevation she’d been watching for.

“Stable,” Alcott said. “Two days after the hardest work I’ve given him, and stable.”

Jin looked at it for a long time.

“The last maintenance dose went in yesterday,” he said.

“I know. I read your log.” She turned off the wall screen. “The revised course is complete. The repeated checks and the follow-up support clearance.” Alcott folded her hands. “The targets on your sheet are met.”

“So he’s cleared,” Jin said.

“He’s cleared to begin breakthrough preparation.” She held up a finger before he could say anything else. “That’s a different sentence from ready to break through. I want you to hear the difference.”

Jin opened his notes before she continued.

“These results show that he tolerates the assessed load and recovers properly,” Alcott said. “The cultivation office still needs to assess your bond, the energy available for formation, and your contribution. I’ll consult on his condition. They’ll guide the preparation itself.”

“My side,” Jin said.

“Your side.” She leaned back. “You sat through the demonstration last week. Glitch will supply most of the energy. That’s the usual arrangement for a first awakening. But your talent forms the bridge, and somebody has to guide what goes across it and hold the shape while it sets. That’s you. It isn’t passive. People who think they’ll just lie there and let the beast do it tend to get a weaker core than they could have had.”

“And the Silver (Peak)? The bond?” Jin asked.

“Advantages,” she said. “Real ones. A strong first beast and a good relationship with it give you a better foundation than most people bring. They’re not a guarantee. Nothing is.” She looked at him directly. “And before you ask, neither is your talent grade. I’ve read your file. C-Rank. I don’t think that decides anything on its own, and neither should you.”

Jin nodded, and said nothing, because the true answer to that was a conversation he could never have with her.

She asked him one more question before he left, and it caught him off guard.

“When you’ve got a skill of your own,” she said, “what do you want it for? Not which skill—you’ll find out what’s compatible when the time comes. I mean what role. What do you want to be able to do, standing behind him?”

Jin opened his mouth to give a quick answer, and found he didn’t have one.

Then he remembered the semifinal.

Mantle had driven toward Glitch’s shoulder while Sera moved around the other side. Jin had seen the light beneath her foot and retreated, but she’d still nearly reached him. Glitch had checked his turn toward the tiger to block her approach, losing the angle from which he could threaten it.

Jin had stepped where Sabel taught him and called the right command. He still remembered the snap of electricity beside his cheek.

“Not need him to come back for me,” he said slowly. “If something gets through. I want to be able to stand there for a few seconds without him having to drop what he’s doing.”

Alcott considered that.

“That’s a good answer,” she said. “Keep it. Don’t decide what it looks like yet.”

He told his family that evening by video, sitting on the feed crate in the stall with Glitch’s head in the frame behind him, because Elsa had insisted on seeing Glitch.

“Cleared,” he said. “For preparation. Not the breakthrough. Getting ready for it.”

Elsa made a noise that set Breeze barking somewhere off-screen.

“That’s huge. Jin, that’s huge! When? How long? Does it hurt? Can I watch?”

Jin laughed. “I don’t have a date yet. I’ll ask about the rest. You’re not sitting beside me shouting instructions, though.”

“Rude.”

Elena was leaning into the camera from the side, and her face had done something complicated: relief first, then a carefulness right behind it.

“And the doctors are running it,” she said. “Properly. Step by step.”

“Step by step,” Jin assured her. “The academy’s cultivation office, with Dr. Alcott consulting.”

“And you?” Elena asked. “Your blood?”

“Normal,” Jin said. “Monthly checks from now on.”

“Monthly.” She seemed to file that away somewhere she could reach it quickly. “You’ll tell me if that changes.”

“Same day,” Jin said. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Good,” Arthur said from somewhere off camera. Then he leaned into the frame himself. “Good. That’s how it should be done.”

He said it quietly, but Jin knew his father, and he heard what was underneath it. Arthur had made Rank 2 once, a long time ago, before the leg. He knew exactly how many people tried too early, on their own, with nobody watching, and what happened to some of them.

“I’ll tell you everything,” Jin said. “Before anything happens.”

“You’d better,” said Elsa.

After the call, he sat for a while with his beasts.

Glitch was lying in the straw with his chin on his forelegs, eyes half open. Flicker had flown up to her new crossbeam and was watching both of them from above.

The sheet was still taped to the stall door.

Finish the Stillwater course. Pass repeated moderate-load checks. Stable recovery after.

Jin took a pen from his pocket and ticked each line. Then he took the sheet down, folded it, and put it in his jacket. He didn’t want to throw it away.

He taped a fresh sheet in its place and stood looking at it with the pen in his hand.

He’d needed the old instructions where he could see them. Some evenings, when Glitch looked perfectly well, they had been the reason he’d left the Engine’s transfer screen closed.

This time, he wrote a heading.

Preparation.

Underneath it, he started listing what he wanted to know instead of what he wasn’t allowed to do. How to guide his side of the bridge. What a bond-stability assessment actually measured. What Flicker would need when the second slot opened. What standing there for a few seconds might look like, once he had something of his own to stand with.

Glitch had lifted his head and was watching the pen move with great interest. Up on the beam, Flicker leaned down to see too.

“You’re in this,” Jin told them. “Both of you.”

Glitch’s tail swept the straw.

His phone buzzed just after ten.

[Meridian Academy — Cultivation Office]

[Breakthrough Preparation: Initial Assessment]

[Wednesday, 10:00. Tamer foundation review. Please attend in person.]

Tamer foundation. Not the beast. Him.

Jin read it, and the question he’d been holding off since the demonstration came back and settled in properly.

The office would measure a bridge they believed was C-Rank Data Appraisal. Ordinary, modest, well understood. They’d plan around it. They’d tell him what to expect.

His real talent was EX-Rank. It held dungeons and respawning avatars, then transferred their development into living bodies. It had helped a Grey Rock Lizard become the armored beast lying beside him. Jin also suspected it was involved in the blood depletion, although he still had no proof of the cause.

He didn’t know how much an assessment could detect, or whether the Engine would affect the bridge the office intended to measure.

What would a Bond Core look like, formed across that?

He checked the appointment’s attendance instructions, then saved it. Wednesday would be the first time someone examined his foundation with awakening in mind.

Until now, concealing the Engine had mostly meant explaining Glitch. This time, they would be looking at him.