Jin turned the spear across his chest.
The shaft struck the wagon first.
It bent. He folded over it, boots digging helpless furrows while the burst drove him into the rail. Wood punched the breath from his lungs.
Then the movement released him.
He fell beneath the wagon.
Grain poured over his head.
“Excellent,” he wheezed. “I'm breaded.”
The animal shoved again.
Jin rolled out before the axle could pin him. Kessa caught his spear shaft and pulled until he could scramble behind the rear wheel.
The weapon had a long pale crack.
She looked at that, then at him.
He put one thumb up.
She knocked it down.
Across the yard, a guard pulled two children back through a doorway. The creature heard the door slam. Its head came up.
Jin rapped the spear against the rail.
“No. Your complaint is with me.”
The tail swept through the spilled grain. The wagon twisted on its three intact wheels and crashed against the wall. Its far side rose.
For a moment, Jin saw the animal's underside.
Between the chest plates, two front legs pulled against each other. The narrower fold beneath one opened; Kessa had already made it bleed.
He showed her two fingers, then pointed to the doorway.
She looked at his spear.
“I know,” he said. “One more.”
Kessa stepped into view and drove her spear against the plated snout.
The creature snapped at it.
The two guards dragged the wrecked chair across the doorway to keep the children behind it. A child peered over the seat. One guard pushed the small head gently back down.
Jin circled toward the animal's left flank.
It turned with him.
He stopped.
The club scratched a slow line through the dirt.
Not blindly charging this time.
“Learning,” Jin said. “Hate that.”
Kessa feinted at its eye. It kept its head toward her but brought the club around to Jin.
He backed away from the swing. The club caught the remains of his stool and flung them against his shins.
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He stumbled.
The beast pushed off with both forelegs.
The point missed, skidded along a plate and scraped white.
The animal closed the distance. Its shoulder caught the spear and shoved him backward.
Jin let the cracked shaft turn through his hands.
He dropped one knee, keeping the butt outside his hip.
Kessa stepped in beside its head.
Her point drove into the already wounded forefoot.
That leg folded.
The beast's weight dropped onto the other one. Its chest rolled toward Jin.
The pale fold opened.
He put the point into it and shoved.
The shaft split along its crack.
Jin caught the lower half as it sprang sideways. No reach now. Just jagged wood and the iron point embedded in the beast.
It heaved upward.
He drove the broken shaft against the embedded end, using it as a punch.
The point went deeper.
Kessa caught his undershirt and hauled him backward as the club smashed down between his knees.
The creature lurched after them.
One step.
Another.
Its legs stopped together.
The club struck the earth for the last time.
Blue-white cracks spread beneath the plates.
Jin held his breath until light rose out of the eye.
The iron head dropped into the grass with a handspan of split shaft attached. He picked it up, still gripping the longer broken piece.
RECLAIM DETECTED: EXP +45
LEVEL UP: 5 → 6 → 7 → 8
LEVEL 8: 13/15
FREE AP: +15
Three.
Jin looked at the broken spear in his hands.
Three levels for the thing that had just tried to drive a wagon through him.
He laughed, coughed grain and laughed harder.
Kessa sat down on the doorstep beside the wreckage.
Jin held out his palm before the speech began.
Ten copper fell into it.
He closed his fingers.
The man pointed at the wrecked fence.
Jin pointed at the empty place where the monster had been.
Then the broken spear.
Then his shirt, hanging from a jagged piece of the broken chair-back.
The man looked at Kessa.
She said one short thing.
He abandoned the negotiation.
A deep laugh sounded from the path.
A broad man with a cropped beard stood beside a cart. He looked at the wagon, the chairs and Jin's handful of broken wood.
“Garran,” he said, tapping his chest.
“Jin.”
Garran repeated it, then mimed the final thrust. He moved his own foot outward and opened his empty palm beside the narrow gap Jin had attacked.
He'd seen the end.
Jin tried the position. His hip stopped fighting his shoulder.
Oh.
Garran offered a padded practice spear from the cart.
Jin held his money behind his back.
The man burst out laughing again.
Kessa covered her mouth with her good hand.
“You people need a less predatory education system.”
Later, Jin spent the new fifteen points: six Strength, five Agility, four Endurance.
MODIFIERS: STR +10 | AGI +16 | END +9
AP REMAINING: 0
His legs felt solid beneath him. His back still objected to the wagon.
Kessa helped him tie the coins into a scrap of his ruined shirt. She led him to a shelf inside the watch building, touched his chest and set the bundle there.
He added the broken spear ends beside it. Borrowed weapon; he hadn't been told to discard them.
At the cedar, he reached for the Earth anchor.
Garran stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
He held up the picture-board.
Someone had drawn a little chair beneath Jin's stick figure.
Then Garran turned it over.
The club-tailed beast was crossed out.
Below it, a much larger drawing had wings.