Chapter 383: The Turn After the Charge

Chapter 383: The Turn After the Charge

The branch left the Guard Corridor a little before the Cocoon Cavern and climbed. Jin had always taken it for a dead end, a side passage of dry rubble that went up and nowhere.

On Tuesday evening, with the real Glitch asleep behind him and the stall door shut, he sent both avatars up it.

It didn’t go nowhere. It ran for two hundred meters, rising and turning, and the damp of the lower tunnels faded from the walls until the stone was pale and dust-dry. Then it opened.

[Quarry Depths — Pillar Court]

Jin held the avatars at the mouth and looked.

It was a long, wide court of cut stone, roughly forty meters from end to end. A broad fissure admitted grey light through the high roof, leaving the edges dimmer than the middle. The floor was mostly clear, with room for a heavy beast to turn.

Pillars of uncut rock had been left standing through it to hold up the roof, like trees left in a felled forest. Some were whole.

More had broken, leaving their bases standing as broad stumps, waist-high to a man or shoulder-high to Glitch.

One of those was nearly in the middle of the court, a little toward the west wall. It was the biggest, about three meters across, with a flat top and clear ground all the way round it.

Jin noticed it the way he noticed anything he might want to stand behind later. Along its eastern side, a clear strip of floor ran north to south. The nearest standing pillar was well beyond the stump’s southern curve.

The broken pillars nearer the west wall were less promising. Rubble crowded their bases, forming narrow pockets between stone and wall. He moved the view along them, then back to the open middle.

Along the east wall, the rock overhung, and there were shallow roofed recesses under the overhang, low enough that anything standing in them had stone over its back.

The passage they’d come in by was at the south end. That was the way out.

Something stood in one of the recesses.

[Ironhorn Ram]

[Combat Rank: 2 — 3-Star]

[Quality: Gold (Low)]

It came out into the light slowly. It was heavy through the chest and shoulders, with a coat like dirty grey wool over a frame built for hitting things.

Two horns swept back from its skull and curled forward again under its jaw, dark and ridged like old iron.

Two Stars up, and the same Quality as Glitch.

So it’s stronger, Jin thought. Not by a mile. By enough.

He started carefully. He sent Flicker’s avatar high into the court, well above horn reach, and had her drop an Ember Shot onto the ram’s back from a long way off.

It flinched as fire splashed across its wool. Then it turned and walked into the nearest recess, where the low overhang sheltered its back, and stood looking out at her.

She tried twice more. Each time, the ram simply stepped back into the recess and the fire hit the overhang.

Jin watched it for a while from the passage mouth, because watching was cheap. It moved round the court in an unhurried circuit when nothing bothered it, always ending under the overhang.

It rubbed its horns against a pillar, and the sound of iron on stone came out of the speaker like a file on a pipe.

When a pebble fell from the roof fissure and clattered across the floor, it faced the noise before the pebble stopped rolling.

Flicker returned toward the southern entrance. The ram followed beneath her until she climbed beyond its reach, then stopped short of the passage and returned to the recesses. Jin marked the route. It had lost interest this time; he wouldn’t count on a doorway making it harmless.

Fine, Jin thought. No free wins from the air.

He brought Glitch out onto the open floor.

The ram came out of the recess at once. It lowered its head and charged.

It wasn’t a long charge. It covered eight, maybe nine meters, quickly, and Jin had Glitch step aside out of its line.

The ram went past and stopped hard beside one of the broken pillars near the west wall. It stood with its head down, breathing heavily, and didn’t turn.

Jin saw it and thought he understood.

It charged. It stopped. It’s recovering.

He’d seen that a hundred times, in a hundred games. A big attack and then a pause, the window where you got your hits in. Glitch was close. The ram was side-on, and its flank was open.

"Go," he said to the empty stall. "Flank. Now."

Glitch went.

His route took him between the ram and the broken pillar, the shortest line to the exposed flank. Jin saw that and didn’t think about it, because the flank was right there.

As Glitch came in, the ram planted its forefeet and swung its hindquarters round. It faced him far sooner than Jin expected, already lowering its horns for another drive.

Jin saw the space go.

The turn carried its horns across Glitch’s retreat. He backed into the pillar before he could swing his hindquarters clear of the rubble. Jin dragged the route toward the open floor, but the ram was already inside the gap.

"Back! Glitch, back—"

The ram’s horns hit Glitch squarely in the shoulder and drove him against the pillar base.

His hide had gone dark with Harden, and the first blow skidded and screeched off the plating. But he couldn’t go anywhere.

The ram backed off a single step, gathered itself and hit him again, in the same place.

Jin had Glitch’s avatar cast Gravity Press beneath the ram’s forefeet, keeping the patch short of Glitch. Its legs bent under the extra load. For a moment the horns eased away, but it was braced on all four hooves, and Glitch still couldn’t turn. Jin released before the effort exhausted him.

[Avatar Condition — Glitch: 44%]

The ram reared. Its forelegs came up, and it came down with all its weight and both horns onto the back of Glitch’s neck, on the seam behind his crest, where the plates had to leave a gap so that he could turn his head.

Jin remembered Flicker in the middle of it, which was the only part he was proud of afterward.

"Flicker. Out. South. Go."

Her avatar went down the court in a straight line and out of the passage mouth without looking back.

The ram reared and struck again.

[Avatar defeated: Glitch]

[Life consumed: 5 → 4]

[Respawning...]

[Respawn: complete. Cost covered.]

Jin sat on the feed crate and looked at the screen until it went dark.

He felt hot and stupid and slightly sick, the way he’d felt as a kid in his old life when he’d lost a boss fight to something he should have seen coming.

On top of that sat something that wasn’t from his old life at all.

He’d watched a ram break his beast’s neck against a pillar, and his beast was lying three meters away in the straw, breathing slowly, one forefoot tucked beneath his chin.

He went and sat beside the real Glitch for a minute without meaning to.

Glitch opened one eye, looked at him, and closed it again.

"That was my fault," Jin told him. "Not yours."

Glitch didn’t seem to have an opinion.

Jin went back to the crate, opened his notes, and wrote it down while he could still see it clearly.

Ironhorn Ram. Short charge, 8–9 m. Stopped hard. Looked tired. WASN’T.

It turned in its own length. Didn’t need a recovery at all.

I sent Glitch between it and a pillar. No exit. My fault.

He looked at that for a while. Then he wrote one more line underneath.

Stopping isn’t the same as needing to stop. Find out which one it is first.

He looked at the heart icon in the corner of the screen. Four. The purchased Life had done its job; there was no dizziness, no weakness dragging at his limbs. He still wished he hadn’t needed it.

The attack command had been so easy to press. Next time he wanted a flank that badly, he would check what stood behind his own beast first.

He didn’t go back in.