Chapter 404: Kilnback

Chapter 404: Kilnback

Three days after the transfer, Jin checked Flicker’s panel again. He’d been watching her settle at 9-Star and making notes for the next care visit. Her landings were even, her appetite good. He opened the panel to compare his observations with its assessment.

[Flicker — Rank 1, 9-Star]

[Breakthrough readiness: full]

He read it three times.

Full?

Glitch’s preparation had meant Highmarch, hospital visits and a recovery programme that had filled their days. During the breakthrough itself, Jin had fought to steady a Core that hadn’t existed a moment before.

Flicker already had a place in that stable network. He knew that mattered. So did her care, the consumed Dual Fire-Wind Core, the development course and all those evenings of avatar work. Still, he’d expected more difficulty at the final step.

The Engine said she was ready.

So this is what she’s been building toward.

He looked from the panel to the bird asleep on her perch. Her hidden SS potential had always been a rating he could read. Now he was beginning to see what it meant when the rest of her development could keep up.

He didn’t book the breakthrough chamber that day. He wanted her ready. He also wanted her able to hit. He kept thinking about the wolf at the fence gap, coming on through two of her shots without stopping.

If she was going to Rank 2, he wanted her to go there with something heavier than a flinch. The passage at the far end of the fissured gallery went down, and got warm.

He brought both avatars back through the cleared gallery to explore it, checking the route before advancing. The air changed from cold draughts to a dry, still heat that rose from the floor.

The walls turned from grey to a dark reddish stone. In the cracks along the walls grew long black roots, as thick as Jin’s thumb, threaded into stone too warm for Jin to imagine touching. He wondered where the plant itself grew, and how deep those roots went.

Beads of something amber-red stood out along the roots, glistening in the heat. Flicker’s avatar went straight to the first cluster and peered at it.

[Emberheart Resin]

[Affinity: fire]

[Supports handling of concentrated fire energy]

He had Glitch’s avatar scrape three good beads free over the course of the first evening, from three different clusters along the passage.

[Emberheart Resin — 3 portions stored]

He checked one against Flicker’s avatar before he did anything else.

[Emberheart Resin — compatible: Flicker (avatar)]

She ate the first portion that night. Afterward, she sat on Glitch’s crest for a long time with her feathers puffed out and the sun mark burning very bright. Then she flew one slow lap of the passage. Her Ember Shot, when Jin asked for one against the wall, came out a little heavier than usual and left a deeper scorch.

[Emberheart Resin — 2 portions stored]

The first beetle was in a narrow stretch of the passage on Saturday night.

[Kilnback Beetle]

[Combat Rank: 2 — 1-Star]

It was the size of a small cart and shaped like a cobblestone: low, wide and dark red, with a domed back of overlapping shell plates that shimmered faintly with heat. It filled most of the passage. It came at Glitch slowly, its head low.

Flicker put an Ember Shot on its back. The fire hit the shell, spread, and slid off. The beetle didn’t even flinch. She tried twice more, and both times the same thing happened: a bright splash and nothing.

It’s built for this, Jin thought. It lives in here.

Glitch went in and checked it with his horns, a hard shove to the front of its shell. The beetle braced, and then it did something Jin had hoped for. To turn and push back at Glitch, it had to shift its weight, and the plates over its back legs lifted apart. Underneath was a seam of soft, pale joint.

It closed again in a second.

"Flicker. The legs. When it turns."

She tried. Glitch shoved the beetle again, and it shifted and the plates lifted, and she fired. The shot struck the joint’s edge, but the overlapping plates shielded most of it. The beetle jerked its leg and kept pushing. Hitting the opening was possible. Getting enough fire into it before it closed was harder.

She tried twice more, changing her angle. A shot landed cleanly in the seam and blackened it, but the leg still held. Jin had her wait through the next turn and watch the gap open fully. When he signalled again, she did something different.

She didn’t fire straight away. She hung in the air a meter behind the beetle, beating hard to hold herself still, and the sun mark on her forehead went from bright to white.

Jin saw the fire gather in her beak. It wasn’t a splash. It was a point, narrow and steady. When the plates lifted, she let it go into the seam. The beetle’s back leg buckled.

It was only half a lance, ragged at the edges, and she nearly fell out of the air afterward with the effort of it. But the beetle was lopsided now, dragging that leg.

Glitch shoved it hard into the passage wall, and it couldn’t brace, and he found the seam behind its head with his claws.

[Kilnback Beetle — defeated]

[Reward: 35,000 Coins]

Flicker landed on Glitch’s back and sat there panting.

On Sunday he checked the residue of strain before using the second compatible portion. He left her resting until Monday evening. Keeping his own blood reserves healthy through regular meals, supplements and sleep helped the living avatar recover normally. It required no extra blood payment, and he still had to wait for her condition to improve.

He also watched the fight back in his head a dozen times. It hadn’t been luck. She’d stopped trying to fire fast. She’d held still, gathered it, and put it in one place. It had cost her a lot, and it had worked.

[Emberheart Resin — 1 portion stored]

On Monday the second beetle was in a wider chamber farther down, where the passage opened into a hot, rounded room with a raised shelf along one wall. It was bigger than the first.

And it didn’t come at Glitch on flat ground. It climbed onto the shelf and waited there, looking down at him. Glitch could reach the sloping end of the shelf, but climbing it would put him in front of the beetle on a narrow approach. Jin kept him below. Flicker circled far enough out that the creature had to turn sideways to follow her.

Its rear legs were now nearer the shelf’s outer edge. As it shifted forward, Glitch’s avatar placed a brief Gravity Press beneath the forefeet. The step checked. The beetle spread its legs to recover, opening the joint behind the nearest plate toward the room.

Flicker was waiting on that side. She steadied her wings, gathered the fire and drove the narrow strike into the exposed seam. The leg gave. Its weight tipped outward, and the beetle fell from the shelf onto its side. Jin had Glitch release the pressure before closing in. The drake caught the soft underside before it could roll upright.

[Kilnback Beetle — defeated]

[Reward: 45,000 Coins]

[Flicker (avatar) — skill acquired: Ember Lance]

[A concentrated fire strike aimed at a small opening. Requires a steady firing moment. Higher cost than Ember Shot.]

He tested it on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, against marked rocks in the warm passage. It was exactly what the panel said, and what he’d seen. It took her a moment to gather, a second or more of holding still in the air, and that second was dangerous if anything was close.

It hit hard, much harder than Ember Shot, and it went where she aimed it. When it hit, it went in, scorching a narrow, deep mark where Ember Shot left a broad, shallow one.

It was also expensive. After three Lances in a row, she was breathing hard and her wingbeats had gone ragged. He didn’t ask for another.

[Avatar Condition — Flicker: 81%]

[Status: fatigue]

He stopped there. She still had Ember Shot. It was quick and cheap, for flinches and interruptions and the moments when a wolf just needed to look somewhere else. Ember Lance gave her a chance to cause a more serious injury when she had the opening and time. She would still need someone to cover that gathering moment.

He added up the two beetles on Thursday night: thirty-five thousand and forty-five. Eighty thousand. Forty went into the family note. It went from a hundred and thirty thousand to a hundred and seventy. The other forty went to operating funds.

The heart in the corner still said five. None of these sessions had triggered a blood charge. If one did, the Lives would cover it automatically; feeding himself properly hadn’t changed that protection.