Chapter 244: Five Places Higher

Chapter 244: Five Places Higher

Beside him, Lysa had written the number down before he had.

"Forty to twenty in eight weeks," she said. "That’s four clean challenges."

"That’s four clean challenges in a ladder where forty other people are about to start challenging."

"Yes." Lysa closed the notebook. "I’m farther down than you. I need at least one more clean challenge, probably two once the board starts moving."

"You’ll get them."

"I know. I’m telling you because I’d rather you hear it from me than find my name on a challenge form." She stood up. "I said spring cycle. That was before the League."

Corven Ashe caught him at the door, which Jin had half-expected.

"Your lizard’s six-star."

"He is."

"Bad month. I slipped outside the five-place window beneath you." Corven said it without much heat. "So I can’t challenge you yet, and you can’t challenge down, which is the single most annoying arrangement I’ve ever been in."

"You could climb back into range."

"I intend to," said Corven, and went.

Jin walked back to the block and turned the problem over the whole way.

Rank 40 was not a wall. It was a starting position with a published route out and a deadline, and Jin had spent his life in this world discovering that most problems did not come with either.

Glitch remained on gradual resumption for another week, which placed the first realistic match eight or nine days away.

The challenge board was already filling by the time he opened it that evening. Students above and below him had heard the same deadline and started searching for their own shortest routes.

He filtered the ladder to the five names immediately above Rank 40 and started reading.

The challenge range from Rank 40 was five positions, which gave him exactly five legal targets.

[Rank 39 — Ferren, D.]

[Rank 38 — Berne, T.]

[Rank 37 — Ossai, M.]

[Rank 36 — Hala, K.]

[Rank 35 — Voss, T.]

Jin read all five profiles twice, then went through them a third time with a different question in mind.

The first had been Who can I beat? The better question was What does beating them cost me?

Ferren at 39 was the safest match on the board — a Bronze quadruped with a straightforward hold-and-press style that would walk into Glitch’s middle and stay there. Jin gave himself better than eighty percent on it.

And it moves me one place. Then I’m at 39, I still need nineteen more, and I’ve spent a week.

Berne was two places above him. Jin had just coordinated the Ashvein Serpent through the practicum, so he knew exactly how awkward it was to relocate and exactly how dangerous its denial field became once it was placed correctly. He could build a reliable answer around that information, but two places were not much better than one. He also liked Berne. That was not a tactical consideration, though pretending it meant nothing would have been dishonest.

Ossai at 37 had a flier. Jin ruled that out in about eleven seconds. Tremor Sense did nothing against something that never touched the ground, and Glitch had exactly zero answers to altitude.

Hala at 36 had a Silver-quality beast at 4-Star. Higher Quality, lower Star, and too little recent footage for Jin to predict how the matchup would behave. Uncertainty was the worst property available in a match he could not afford to waste.

A defeat would leave him at Rank 40 after spending days preparing for no upward movement. The safe choice was not automatically the efficient one, but neither was the largest possible jump. He needed a difficult match whose risks he could actually describe.

Which left Rank 35.

[Voss, T. — Third Class, Rank 35]

[Contracted beast: Slateclaw Lynx — Bronze Quality, Rank 1 Novice, 6-Star]

Jin pulled the arena footage and watched forty minutes of it.

The Lynx was a ground skirmisher and it was very good.

It did not have the raw speed of Cray’s Windclaw — nothing Jin had seen did — but its acceleration out of a change of direction was more useful in an arena. It could stop, reverse, and return to full pace inside about a second. The Lynx used that speed to enter from new angles instead of simply running away.

In three of the four matches Jin watched, it won by getting behind an opponent that could not turn quickly enough. Tarin never sent it into a contest of strength if he could make the other beast rotate instead. When an opponent tried to hold the middle, the Lynx circled. When one chased, it changed direction. When one finally committed its weight, it appeared behind them.

Which is me. That’s exactly me.

He paused the fourth recording with the Lynx already inside a heavier beast’s rear quarter. The sensible response was to pick Ferren and take the nearly guaranteed single place.

Ferren is one place for a week of preparation. Voss is five places for the same week. The matchup isn’t unknown. It’s bad, and it’s legible.

Hala’s Silver 4-Star felt like a coin flip because Jin could not predict it. Voss’s Lynx presented a hard match he could describe precisely: an agile skirmisher that would refuse Glitch’s middle, circle his reach, and punish every rotation he made.

A problem I can name is worth more than a problem I can’t.

He submitted the challenge that evening.

[CHALLENGE FILED — Astor, J. (40) → Voss, T. (35)]

[Maximum permitted range: 5 positions]

Acceptance came back in under two hours.

The match was set for the eighth day after the assembly. It was enough time for Glitch to complete his return to full load, but not enough to spend several days discovering that Jin had chosen the wrong problem.

He met Tarin Voss two days later in the equipment hall. The encounter was unplanned, but it told Jin most of what he needed to know.

Voss was tall and unhurried. He had a slate open when Jin came into view and closed it without haste, which was fair enough. Jin would have done the same.

"Astor."

"Voss."

"I’ve accepted, obviously." Voss set the slate down. "Six days until the match. Is that enough for your beast? I saw the six-star registration and I know what consolidation looks like."

Jin considered the question and decided it was genuine.

"He’s cleared for gradual resumption. Six days is fine. He’ll be at full load by then."

"Good. I’d rather not win because your medic was cautious." Voss picked the slate back up. "I’ve watched your ladder match with Ashe and both of your Managed Rift summaries and the E-9 citation."

"The citation’s public?"

"The commendation is. It says you held an exterior sector with a delegated structure." Voss shrugged. "That tells me how you think. It doesn’t tell me much about how your lizard moves."

"You’ve got the Ashe footage for that."

"I’ve got five-week-old footage of a beast that’s since advanced a Star." Tarin said it without any particular concern. "That’s the problem I’ve been chewing on. Either the six-star fixed his turning, in which case I’m in trouble, or it didn’t, in which case I’m not."

Jin did not answer that.

Voss noticed him not answering it and smiled slightly.

"Fair enough," he said, and went.

Three days later, Tarin watched Jin and Glitch from the walkway above the conditioning hall.

Jin caught him at it during a break — a figure leaning on the rail with a slate, watching Glitch work through low-load positioning drills on the beast-safe floor.

Tarin did not leave when Jin noticed him. He merely raised the slate in acknowledgment.

"Is that allowed?" Jin asked, when he came down.

"The hall’s public. Your booking isn’t." Voss put the slate away. "I’ll tell you what I was watching, because you’ll work it out anyway. He’s very good at deciding where to stand. He was doing it in that drill and there wasn’t even an opponent."

"That’s the whole plan."

"I know. That’s why I was watching."

Tarin left. Jin returned to the drill with the irritating realization that the obvious parts of his strategy were already known. His opponent had not mistaken six-star stability for speed, had not relied entirely on old footage, and had spent part of his own preparation watching how Glitch occupied empty ground.

Jin had wanted a problem he could name. He had found one that was studying him back.