Chapter 18: The World Doesn’t Wait
"Get up."
Jin stayed where he was.
Across sixteen years split between two different lives, he had become extremely skilled at refusing to get out of bed. He used every bit of that experience now: eyes closed, breath steady, body limp enough to pass for dead.
Elsa yanked the blanket away.
"Arthur’s at the warehouse already," she said. "You’ve been stuck to that cot since we came back yesterday. At this rate, you’re going to become part of it."
"I’m in the middle of low-impact conditioning," Jin muttered into the pillow. "Very sensitive stage. If I move, I could—"
"Glitch is waiting by the door."
One of Jin’s eyes cracked open.
Glitch really was there. The hatchling sat perfectly upright beside the door, golden eyes shining, his entire little body trembling with the excitement of someone who had heard outside and immediately decided nothing in existence could be better.
He chirped twice, both times at full volume.
Jin stared at him. "...Betrayal."
Elsa held out his jacket. "He wants to leave. Your lizard has more drive than you do." She gave the jacket a sharp shake. "Get up. Right now. Otherwise, I’m telling Dad you slept through the entire low-impact schedule he made."
That threat had teeth. Arthur took the schedule seriously.
Jin got up.
Two blocks from the apartment, the public training ground stretched beneath a mana barrier that drooped badly in several places. Packed earth filled the wide rectangular space, worn flat and cut with scars from ten thousand sparring sessions. Battle dummies stood around the edges, battered until stuffing poked through their seams.
The place was packed, noisy, and crawling with teenagers.
Jin paused after crossing the barrier.
Around sixty candidates occupied the grounds, most close to his age and all preparing for the same exam three days away. Some trained by themselves, sweating as they forced their beasts through repeated forms. Others had paid instructors gathered around them, usually gray-haired former Tamers who shouted corrections without pause. The rest stood in tight groups, studying their future competition like obstacles they might need to climb over.
Then Jin looked at the beasts.
That was what really caught him.
His gamer instincts switched on by themselves and began sorting everything in sight.
One boy proudly called commands to a broad gray wolf whose spine was covered in layered natural armor. A Bronze Ironback Wolf. It smashed one shoulder into a dummy and split the wood.
Heavy. Charge telegraphs early. Can absorb the counter, but turns badly.
A small bird with storm-gray feathers flashed from perch to perch, moving too quickly for the eye to follow and stirring tiny gusts behind it. Silver Wind Sparrow.
Fast. Breaks easily. Glass cannon.
There was even a rabbit. Its fur stood in hardened thorns, and those spikes scraped across a dummy whenever it kicked. Bronze Thorn Rabbit. Nearby, an orange-tipped fox leaked faint smoke from its coat and snapped out little bursts of heat. Bronze Fire Fox. Restless. Aggressive.
None of them were terrifying. Lucian Vale’s electric falcon belonged in a different category entirely. These were standard beginner beasts, the kind poor districts could realistically provide.
Every last one of them, though, ranked Bronze or Silver.
Glitch was Iron.
Jin kept his face blank as he watched. This was not jealousy. Jealousy cost energy, and more importantly, he had already seen what none of these candidates ever would.
He only needed information.
Wolf shifts left before charging. Sparrow circles counterclockwise every time. Fox commits too far.
He stored each observation away.
Useful. Move on.
Glitch had no interest in useful observations.
Glitch had discovered paradise.
Small gray birds nested among the supports of the mana barrier. The hatchling became so focused on them that he walked directly into Jin’s ankle. A few dry leaves slid over the dirt in air leaking from a vent, and Glitch threw himself after them with complete confidence and no strategy at all.
He pounced.
Missed.
Tried again.
Missed again.
Then he stared at the drifting leaves as though wind itself had cheated him.
Across the training ground, a Bronze Fang Wolf suddenly released a deep, sharp BARK.
Glitch launched six inches straight upward. He scrambled behind Jin’s leg and flattened himself against the dirt.
For a moment, he did not move.
Then he eased back out, very slowly and with great care. Once clear, he sat tall with his tail curled neatly around him, gold eyes fixed forward. Clearly, no noise had frightened him. The suggestion was ridiculous.
Jin looked down.
"Sure," he said. "Terrifying. The whole wasteland is shaking."
Glitch answered with an offended chirp, then returned to his war against the leaves.
"All right." Elsa crouched beside them, her expression turning serious. "Ignore the difficult commands for now. We’ll check the basics. Hatchlings his age usually can’t perform them properly yet, so don’t worry if he—"
"Sit," Jin said.
Glitch sat immediately.
Elsa paused. "Fine. Could’ve been luck. Try—"
"Turn."
The hatchling spun in one tidy circle, then faced Jin again.
"Jump."
Glitch made a small, controlled hop and landed evenly on all four feet. No tumbling, no wild flailing, none of the usual hatchling mess.
Elsa kept staring.
"He shouldn’t be able to do that." She turned to Jin. "Jin, young beasts don’t respond to commands this cleanly. They fall over. They go too far. Half the time they don’t understand what you want. He’s acting like someone’s been training him for a month."
"He learns fast," Jin said.
It had nothing to do with power. Glitch remained a tiny, soft creature who could still lose a serious battle against a sock.
This was obedience. Response.
The Training Instance had carved command patterns into him, and now those patterns showed through in a hatchling who understood the first time and followed through without mistakes.
A pair of candidates nearby had wandered closer to watch.
"That Iron lizard’s pretty obedient," one of them said, eyebrows raised.
The other gave Glitch another glance, then shrugged. His interest was already fading. "Probably got lucky. Maybe it’s naturally quiet. Iron is still Iron." He turned back toward his own beast. "That won’t help during the exam."
Nobody came away impressed.
For a few seconds, they were curious. Then the moment passed and they forgot about him.
Exactly right, as far as Jin was concerned.
Curiosity vanished quickly. Curious people moved on. Impressing them would make them start asking questions.
"Good," he said softly, scratching beneath Glitch’s chin.
The bully made his arrival obvious in the usual way: he raised his voice until everyone nearby had to notice him.
He was a broad, heavyset boy from the Outer Ring. Jin would later learn his name was Garrick. A lean Bronze Fang Wolf stood at his heel, scarred and mean-looking, with jaws that clearly knew how to do damage. Several admirers clustered around Garrick, and he had been watching Glitch perform.
He did not seem pleased.
"That thing belongs to you?" Garrick pointed at Glitch, speaking loudly enough for his little audience. "I figured somebody dropped a stone over there. Look at it. Iron-tier, one-star. It’s a brick with legs." He laughed. "What’s the plan for the exam? Burn the examiners to death with charcoal?"
The boys around him snickered.
"And you’re Astor, aren’t you?" Garrick looked Jin over. "C-Rank. Data Appraisal." He made the words sound disgusting. "What are you going to do, calculate the monsters? Keep reading their stats until they get bored and die?"
More laughter followed.
"Some families will throw away a candidate slot on anybody."
Jin met his stare.
Several answers came to mind. He considered each one, sorted all of them into not worth the effort, and let the silence stand.
His expression stayed flat and uninterested, the patient look of a man waiting for an elevator.