Episode 56. The Merge Before the Hunt Closed
# Episode 56. The Merge Before the Hunt Closed
The moment they broke out from beneath the dark frame, Jiwoo's skiff and Kael's glider settled onto nearly the same outer line at almost the same time.
Not exactly the same path.
Jiwoo's side, having scraped up from beneath the dead slope, was lower and rougher. Kael's side, descending from the wide detour line, joined a little further out. But the distance between them was now close enough for voices to reach. Two teams that had crossed different zones throughout the race were, for the first time, truly on the same line.
Sion felt his breath shorten for no particular reason in that moment.
Now there were more people. Which meant more roads to live—but also a bigger board.
Kael spoke first.
"Made it."
Jiwoo answered without looking back.
"Barely."
Sern was looking farther than the distance between the two teams. Eyes calculating how far down the collapse line from above was descending, which line the dark-red glider was re-joining on, and when the hands from outside the arena would reach this lower line.
"Now is the right time to merge."
He said low.
"But clustering up immediately slows us down."
Kael asked shortly.
"Then."
"Move together, but don't overlap on one line."
Sern answered.
"Jiwoo's team opens ahead. We brace from half a beat outside."
Jiwoo, hearing that, glanced sideways for the first time.
"Not bad."
Short words. But Sion heard them strangely loud. For Jiwoo to accept someone else's calculation on a board like this meant, at minimum, the line Sern was reading right now was trustworthy.
Sion wrapped the ember tighter in his hand.
Sern's eyes, Kael's craft, Jiwoo's piloting—all of it was now beginning to move around this single ember. Not as a scoreboard won from the race, but as a formation for getting the hand holding the real thing out alive.
Behind, the dark-red glider was recovering its line.
Experienced, undeniably. It had lost the flow twice and still had not fully died. One side panel was torn off and the rear rider's shoulder had shaken badly, but the front pilot held the line to the end. Only now it was no longer the leisurely pursuit from the start. The team holding the ember had doubled, and it was the one that had to decide which to tear into first.
"They'll bite Jiwoo's team first."
Sern said low.
Kael asked the reason immediately.
"Because the ember's there?"
"That, and also."
Sern answered.
"Our glider is more about enduring than seizing, so there's less payoff in smashing us right now."
Kael laughed shortly.
"You're even calculating payoff."
"They are."
Before those words finished, the dark-red glider's nose drove deeper from outside to inside. The direction said it would bite the side with the ember first.
Sion said at once.
"Incoming."
Jiwoo answered shortly.
"I see."
The outer line ahead was still far from clean.
The line that had come through the dead slope kept breaking and reconnecting, with metal fragments and vitrified debris from collapses above scattered across patches. They had not fully left the arena, nor were they properly outside—it felt like a line forcibly stitched together at the edge of a Hazran-style board. Not an escape route someone built on purpose, but lines originally left for recovery and maintenance, now being forced to life.
That was why it read even more like Jiwoo.
Not a good road, but a road everyone else had discarded as not-a-road—wrung for one more use to the end.
"Splits in two ahead."
Sion said.
"Right is clean—suspicious. Down left is dirty but connected."
Jiwoo took the lower left immediately.
Almost simultaneously, Sern spoke to Kael.
"We take the upper right."
Kael asked at once.
"You said it was suspicious."
"That's why we check it."
Sern answered.
"Jiwoo's team is carrying. We confirm."
Only then did Kael press the glider's nose upward without argument.
The two teams split once more.
But this time it was not the separation of the race, where they drifted apart. It was a split that shared the same purpose, only dividing roles.
Sion felt the difference immediately.
Until now, each team had been enduring its own board. From here, they had become something closer to a two-layered defense line centered on the same real thing.
That flow was being read from the stands too.
Luhai stared down with a face near madness. Seorin traced the angle of the two teams' split with her gaze instead of words. Ater was looking farther still, at which line the hands from outside the arena would descend on.
"Look at them splitting."
Luhai said.
"This isn't a race at all anymore."
Seorin answered very low.
"Now it's finally a real board."
Ater understood what she meant.
A race had rules that cut people. But a board recalculated from the point of where the real thing entered. What was moving below had become the latter.
Nasim was still organizing. Harun had grown even quieter. Zahir had not moved to the end. Yet all three now had their gazes fixed on the lower outer line. Not eyes watching a race result—eyes watching how far the one carrying the real thing could go.
Aka was the same.
Half-hidden in front of Nahira, Aka's eyes seemed to be looking not at Jiwoo's team's hand but at where the two teams would meet again after splitting. Those were not the eyes of a race spectator. They were the eyes of someone who knew what line the hand holding the real thing would ultimately be pushed onto.
Right then, a short metal burst cracked from the upper-right line Kael's team had climbed onto.
Kael's glider did not stop. But beneath the floor that had looked too clean, a thin plate lifted and scraped past the glider's front. Sern had been right. A suspicious line. Not simply a good road—a maintained line someone had deliberately left for recovery.
"Figures."
Kael said low.
Sern was already looking at the next thing.
"Not dead."
He said.
"But ride this long and we get caught. Drop back down now."
Kael forced the glider to scrape the upper-right line only briefly, then angled to rejoin Jiwoo's team on the lower line.
In that moment, the dark-red glider hesitated briefly over which to bite first.
Jiwoo's team was carrying the ember. Kael's team had become the outer line shielding it.
A structure where neither could be left alone.
Seeing that brief hesitation, Sion drew a slightly larger breath for the first time.
Good. Now they're the ones with the dilemma.
Jiwoo would not miss that moment.
She dug deeper along the dead outer lower line and dropped the skiff one more level. It looked almost like a fall, but Sion knew now. Jiwoo was someone who survived by looking like she was falling. She was the one who turned the angle others saw as collapse into a living surface at the last instant.
"Hold on."
She said shortly.
Sion, instead of answering, pulled the ember deeper against his chest.
Behind, the dark-red glider closed in again. To the side, Kael and Sern's glider was setting its angle to rejoin from below. Above, the hands from outside the arena were catching the escape line's scent more and more.
And Sion knew.
What came next was not a simple merge. From here on, the two teams carrying the real thing had to decide how to run together.