Chapter 271: Two Bowls

Chapter 271: Two Bowls

The second day between matches started with numbers.

[Accumulated development: sufficient for controlled transfer]

[Projected result: Rank 1 Novice, 7-Star — peak of current Star]

[Star advancement: insufficient accumulated development]

Jin checked the projection against the previous evening’s reading. Eight-Star was still beyond the banked growth, but he could bring Glitch to the peak of seven. Better conditioning and a larger reserve would matter against the next opponent, even without another Star on his profile.

He would have liked the extra Star. He also would have liked another month before the cutoff. Neither was available.

He ran the lower gallery four more times that morning, checked the transfer projection again, then prepared a private care stall in the west block. Seven days remained before the cutoff. Tomorrow was the earliest he intended to fight, and only if Glitch settled well after the Sync.

Glitch was two days past the Sorrel match, eating normally, moving normally, and the flank rakes were pink lines that would be gone by tomorrow. Doyen’s morning sheet said cleared for progressive work.

"Last one for now," Jin told him. "Eat everything I give you afterward and don’t argue with me about the rest."

[Sync — Glitch]

[Transferring: accumulated development]

[Confirm?]

He confirmed it.

The warmth beneath Glitch’s plating rose more gently than it had during the last transfer. Jin watched the monitoring readings climb and settle while the lizard’s breathing deepened, slow and even. Within a few minutes, the Engine confirmed the result.

[Sync complete.]

[Rank 1 Novice, 7-Star — peak of current Star]

[Quality: Silver (Peak) — unchanged]

Jin left the status open while he checked the monitoring pads. The transfer had brought growth alone; Glitch’s form and skills were unchanged. He was still watching the food bag with the same impatient attention.

Glitch got up, shook himself, and walked the length of the stall block and back.

Jin watched for an uneven step or hesitation at the turn. Glitch moved comfortably, and the warmth beneath his plating was already easing. Testing the increased output could wait until the readings had stayed quiet for a while.

"Walk it out. Then food."

Glitch went for the door before food had finished.

After food, Glitch settled on the mat beside the stall. Jin kept the monitors running until he was satisfied, then arranged an evening check and a review with Doyen the next morning.

He had something else he wanted to do that afternoon.

Jin went down to the Ring Six market rather than using the academy supply, because the academy supply stocked one grade of avian feed and he wanted the other one — the imported high-protein blend with the dried river shrimp in it, the stuff Verrick had once called "unnecessary" in a tone that suggested she’d bought it for her own birds.

It cost more than he’d spent on food for himself that week. He bought it anyway, checked it against her care plan on the walk back, and confirmed with Verrick that it fit inside her ration before he opened the packet, because he was not going to celebrate by giving his fragile bird digestive problems.

"It fits," Verrick said. "Don’t make it a habit."

"It’s not a habit. It’s a party."

Flicker did not initially understand that anything was happening.

Jin set the bowl down, sat cross-legged on the mat, and waited while she inspected it with the deep suspicion of a creature who had been fed medicine in her food many times.

Then she got a shrimp.

The transformation was immediate and undignified. She went through half the bowl in ninety seconds, stopped, looked at Jin, and went back in.

Jin grinned down at her. He had paid rather a lot to learn that Flicker liked shrimp, and he found he didn’t mind at all.

He stayed while she ate, then watched her preen and walk two lengths of the mat. At the end of the second, she made a small pleased hop and turned toward him.

You might actually get there.

"Good?" he asked, offering a finger for her to inspect. "There’s more for tomorrow."

She pecked lightly at his nail, looking for crumbs. He let her, reluctant to get up just yet.

Glitch had been watching the special treatment from beside his own bowl.

He did not make a sound. He lay down beside his own bowl — which was full, which held the enormous evening ration Jin had weighed out for him personally — and rested his chin next to it without eating any of it.

He looked at the packet, then turned toward the wall with tremendous dignity. A moment later, his eye slid back to the packet.

"You have food," Jin said.

Glitch’s tail moved once.

"That’s bird food. You’re two hundred and sixty kilograms."

The chin stayed on the floor. The eye stayed on the packet.

Jin lasted about four minutes, which he felt was respectable.

"Fine."

The market had a butcher two stalls down from the feed shop, and Jin came back with a wrapped slab of proper marbled ridgehog — real meat, not ration block — and Glitch ate it in a way that could not be described as savoring and then licked the wrapping and then licked the floor where the wrapping had been.

Flicker watched this entire performance from her bowl with visible contempt.

"Don’t start," Jin told her. "You did the same thing."

He messaged Elsa that night.

Flicker’s numbers are still holding. Verrick showed me yesterday. Her weight’s up, and she managed her circuit twice without tiring more the second time.

I think she might actually get to be a normal bird.

The reply came in under a minute, which meant Elsa had been awake and on her tablet, which meant she’d be tired at school tomorrow and would deny it.

NORMAL normal? like flying normal?

Jin answered, Not yet. Maybe.

JIN.

He smiled at the screen and typed, I said maybe.

You usually just send me the readings. You actually sound happy.

Jin started an answer, then stopped when her next message arrived.

does she know?

He looked over at the mat, where Flicker had gone to sleep with her feathers puffed and her head under her wing and the packet of expensive shrimp on the shelf beside her.

She knows she got shrimp.

The last thing he did that night was open the ladder.

[Third-Class Rank 20 — Osric Kane]

[Contracted Beast: Cairn — Stoneback Bear]

[Quality: Silver (High)]

[Combat Rank: Rank 1 Novice]

[Star Level: 8-Star]

Kane was a fourth-year whose recent defenses had kept him securely at Rank 20. In the one interview clip Jin found, he’d been asked about the season’s climbers and had said, evenly, that everyone worth worrying about eventually shows up at your door.

Jin opened Cairn’s most recent match and quickly understood why the position had been difficult to take.

The bear advanced behind layered plates over its shoulders, shortening its steps whenever an opponent tried to pass around it. Once its forelimbs got past the opposing guard, it pulled the beast against its chest. Jin watched a struggling boar lose its footing in the grip and stopped the recording before the referee intervened.

Jin watched six matches. Four ended with the opposing beast held against Cairn’s chest until the referee intervened.

Kane would have the Sorrel recording by now. Closing under those plates would deny Glitch a clean launch and bring him straight into the fight Cairn preferred.

Jin replayed the attempted grips. A completed hold would be trouble even with Glitch’s improved development. He needed his feet beneath him and one foreleg free before Cairn pulled him close.

There was an opening under the shoulder armor when the bear reached. Jin paused the recording there, then compared the next two matches. The seam appeared each time, but an opponent already trapped against Cairn’s chest couldn’t use it.

I can work with that. If we keep an arm.

He marked the frame and wrote down the body angle he wanted to check during tomorrow’s warm-up. The claw would need a stable base, not a desperate swing while Glitch was being lifted.

Jin filed the challenge.

[Challenge submitted.]

[Challenger: Jin Astor — Rank 23]

[Target: Third-Class Rank 20 — Osric Kane]

Kane accepted in six minutes.

[Match scheduled: tomorrow, 15:00, Arena 1]

[If you have bought privilege, thank you so much; if you haven’t, please do that would help me a lot]