Chapter 317: Under the Breaking Floor

Chapter 317: Under the Breaking Floor

Mantle’s next step landed on the crack.

A fragment of reinforced surface shifted beneath its paw, turning a clean strike into a scrape along Glitch’s plating. Glitch drove forward before the tiger recovered and caught its left shoulder with his horns.

Mantle twisted away, leaving blood on one tip.

"Footing!" Sera called.

"Watch the breaks," Jin told Glitch, retreating with him onto an intact section.

Neither beast had expected the floor to move. For a few exchanges they circled the damage, and Jin found himself checking the ground as often as he checked Sera’s feet.

An alarm sounded above the ring.

[Arena 1 — Surface integrity warning]

[Containment: nominal]

Staff hurried along the outer rail carrying squat devices with handles on both sides. One team fixed them beside the barrier supports; another cleared the nearest service passage for medical access.

A second layer of light spread along the containment.

The referee spoke into his collar, watched the readings on his wrist, and signaled for the bout to continue. Jin saw the movement without hearing the words. He was busy getting away from the next attack.

Mantle came around the broken section with two quick forepaw strikes and a driving lunge. Glitch caught the first on his horns, rolled his shoulder beneath the second, and met the lunge chest to chest.

For a moment both beasts strained in place.

Then Glitch shoved, and the tiger skidded backward.

Jin almost shouted. He managed a command instead.

"Stay!"

Glitch checked himself before following into Sera’s reach. The impulse to chase was strong through the bond, but he listened.

Thank you. Keep doing that.

Mantle recovered and changed its approach. A leftward feint drew Glitch’s head, then a short lightning burst carried it toward his flank. Jin called the turn as claws scraped across the outer plates.

Glitch snapped at the tiger’s shoulder and came away with pale fur between his teeth.

It happened again from the other side, faster. Jin’s voice was getting rough. He had never seen Glitch answer combinations like these, and he would have enjoyed it enormously if every successful block hadn’t left another mark on him.

The next crackle jumped from Mantle’s ruff across the horns. Glitch recoiled just enough for a paw to strike his chest.

Harden blunted the impact. It did nothing to spare him the electrical shock, and Jin felt the pain before Glitch steadied himself.

"Out. Two steps."

He followed the retreat, scanning the lizard’s movement. Glitch placed each foot cleanly and turned when asked. The internal strain had risen, but the circulation remained ordered.

Jin wanted those readings to be simpler. A green mark and a red mark, something that would tell him exactly when trying became too much.

Instead, he had a beast waiting for the next command and Marris watching from the rail.

Sera began moving toward him.

She walked this time, maintaining the pulses around her hands while Mantle pressed Glitch’s front. Jin shifted behind the lizard’s shoulders, trying to preserve the angle.

Sera changed direction with him.

Glitch noticed her approach. Without abandoning Mantle, he took a short lateral step and turned his head far enough to show her his jaws.

She stopped beyond his reach.

Jin saw the calculation in her glance between the two beasts. A burst might get her past him, but maintaining the rhythm with Mantle already demanded attention. If Glitch intercepted her, she would be close to a beast that had just shoved her tiger backward.

Sera withdrew toward Mantle and resumed her earlier position.

Jin let himself breathe properly.

He couldn’t outrun her. He could make reaching him expensive enough that she hesitated.

For a while, that was enough.

He watched her back foot and moved before the light gathered fully. He called a low strike when Mantle’s hindquarters stayed crouched beneath a high feint. He brought Glitch across a clear strip of floor instead of allowing the tiger to drive them onto the fractured center.

The commands were ordinary things he had practiced until Sabel got bored of hitting him for saying them too slowly.

They mattered here.

He was still afraid, and his shocked arm continued to tingle, but Glitch was answering him. Jin had something useful to do besides watch him bleed.

Then Mantle cut off the clear strip.

Its first strike caught a horn. The second drove against Glitch’s shoulder. The third came low, beneath the guard, and opened the recently healed skin along his left foreleg.

Blood ran over the foot.

"Back," Jin said immediately.

Glitch obeyed, moving onto intact ground. He placed weight through the injured leg without buckling, though Jin felt how badly he wanted to spring forward and answer the blow.

"Turn with me."

He turned. Jin checked the limb through Appraisal during Mantle’s recovery. The wound was open, but the deeper structures still held. Bleeding had begun to slow beneath Lesser Regeneration.

They could continue. He hated how relieved he was to find that.

Mantle approached before he could think about it further. Glitch caught the tiger high on the shoulder, where the horns had already drawn blood, and forced it to break away.

They met again in a close grapple. Mantle got inside the horn points, jaws snapping near Glitch’s throat, while Glitch pressed forward with his forelegs braced and his tail dragging a furrow behind him.

He was winning ground until Sera fed another pulse into the tiger.

Lightning jumped across Glitch’s face. He released his hold and staggered a step, following Jin’s retreat command before Mantle could catch his exposed neck.

Across from them, the tiger rose stiffly. It was favoring a hind leg now.

Sera flexed her fingers between pulses. They had begun to ache.

She had saved this reinforcement for the final, expecting to use it in short stretches while Mantle controlled the floor. Instead, Jin’s lizard kept making her sustain it here, with the final itself slipping further from certainty each time they exchanged blows.

Mantle’s shoulder hurt. So did its hindquarters. She could feel both, along with an insistence that had become almost impatient every time she considered ending this.

It wanted to fight.

Sera watched it turn at her command, checked the steadiness of its breathing, and held back the next pulse until its footing settled. Wanting wasn’t enough. It still had to be able to answer her.

It did.

"All right," she said quietly. "We change the entry."

Mantle’s ears turned toward her. Across the ring, Jin moved with his lizard, pale and exhausted-looking but still calling those irritatingly short, timely commands.

Sera wished she could have met them both fresh. Right now, she wanted one clean opening and enough strength left to use it.

The crowd had stopped cheering every exchange.

Some collisions drew a roar. Others silenced whole sections until both beasts pulled clear. Jin glimpsed a man leading two children toward an exit and understood the decision better than he wanted to.

The reinforced floor kept breaking beneath the heaviest impacts. Staff shifted their equipment along the perimeter, and the containment held steady around the ring.

By then, the exchanges had run into the hundreds. Jin couldn’t have counted them: paw strikes turned aside, teeth closing past plating, tail blows checked by a leap, brief collisions followed by another change of angle.

He remembered particular ones because they left consequences.

The neck scorch that made Glitch carry his head lower. Mantle’s shortened step on its sore hind leg. The left shoulder the tiger increasingly protected when it withdrew.

That last detail stayed with him.

Glitch had struck it with his horns and raked it during a close pass. Mantle guarded it effectively until Sera reinforced a full driving attack. Then the tiger extended the foreleg, stretching the injured area beneath the shoulder and carrying its weight beyond the point where it could turn freely.

Jin watched the movement once more and felt his stomach tighten.

The claw could reach there.

Getting close enough meant accepting the front of that attack. Glitch’s internal strain was still climbing; Jin couldn’t ask him to wait through another dozen exchanges for a kinder opening.

Across the floor, Sera raised her hands. Mantle lowered its body and gathered lightning along its forequarters.

At the rail, Marris had moved alongside the referee. Jin could see her watching the injured foreleg. He knew she would not give them many more exchanges like the last few, and he could not honestly ask her to.

Glitch looked back at Jin for the command.

Jin had found their chance. It was coming straight at the leg that was already bleeding.