Free Web NovelChapter 8: The Grand Tribunal
The morning sun bled through the high, stained-glass windows of the Academy’s Grand Hall, casting long, fractured shadows across the rows of stone benches. Usually, this hall was reserved for royal graduations or high-profile declarations of war. Today, it was packed to the brim with hundreds of whispering students, noble sponsors, and high-ranking faculty members.
Word had spread like wildfire: the useless "no-talent" of the manual labor division had supposedly assaulted the Duke of Oakhaven’s heir inside an F-rank dungeon.
At the center of the raised podium sat a panel of three judges. In the middle was Vice-Principal Alden, his white robes pristine, his expression radiating a cold, smug certainty. To his left and right were two elder mages from the disciplinary committee, their faces obscured by heavy hoods.
"Bring in the accused," Alden’s voice boomed, reinforced by a low-tier amplification spell that echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
The heavy oak doors at the back of the hall groaned open.
Vince stepped through the threshold. He wasn’t wearing the tattered, ash-stained tunic of a manual laborer. Instead, he wore a tailored, midnight-black uniform he had pulled from Elena’s private collection, tailored for high-ranking battle mages. His posture was relaxed, his hands casually clasped behind his back.
As he walked down the center aisle, he deliberately activated a fraction of [Sovereign’s Pressure]. An invisible, heavy gravity seemed to ripple outward from his steps. The whispering students in the closest benches suddenly gasped, their breaths catching in their throats as an instinctual, primal fear washed over them. They didn’t see a trash-tier outcast; they felt a predator entering the room.
Walking a half-step behind him, her expression a mask of absolute, icy authority, was Professor Elena Vance. frёewebηovel.cѳm
Her robes had been replaced with a fresh set of dark crimson battle vestments, completely zipped up to her throat. No one in the hall could see the glowing purple crown tattoo etched into the skin above her heart, but the way she carried herself was entirely different. Her silver hair gleamed, and her eyes flashed with a dangerous, hyper-focused intensity. Her mana pool didn’t just feel restored—it felt oppressive.
Vince stepped up to the center of the podium, looking directly into Alden’s eyes.
"Where is the so called victim, Vice-Principal?" Vince asked, his tone mocking. "I thought I’d see him here to point fingers."
"Silence, boy!" Alden snapped, slamming his fist onto the stone table, causing a resonant shockwave to ripple through the room. "Lord Brad is currently undergoing intensive holy regeneration. His throat was nearly crushed, and his mana veins were heavily shocked by a volatile, unauthorized magical source. You will speak only when spoken to."
Alden waved his hand toward the three coward students standing in the witness box, trembling but eager to please the noble faction. "We have already taken the testimonies of your peers. They state unanimously that you hid a forbidden, rogue magical artifact, used it to assassinate the dungeon boss, and then turned your weapon on your classmates and your instructor to hide your tracks."
A collective murmur of outrage broke out among the noble students in the audience.
"Is that so?" Vince smirked, casting a glance back at the three students. The moment his glowing, purple-tinted eyes locked onto them, all three of them instinctively took a step back, hiding behind the guards.
"Vice-Principal Alden," Elena stepped forward, her voice ringing out like a shattering glacier. "As the commanding officer of the expedition, my testimony takes legal precedence over terrified rookies who broke formation. Brad panicked. He abandoned the rear flank when a mutated Hobgoblin appeared, causing a tactical collapse. Vince did not assault me. He acted as my magical conduit when I experienced a critical mana backflow. He saved my life, and he executed the beast with his own physical strength."
Alden’s eyes narrowed into slits. "Elena, you expect this council to believe a no-talent—a boy with a verified mana capacity of absolute zero—channeled a B-rank Mage’s backflow and killed a mutated boss with his bare hands? The logic is absurd. It is far more likely that you are under the influence of a rogue charm artifact, or worse, cooperating with a spy from the Demon Realm."
Alden stood up, a malicious grin spreading across his face as he reached into his robes and pulled out a glowing, teardrop-shaped diamond. The Memory Projection Crystal.
"Fortunately, the Academy Guild Guards retrieved the core memory log from the dungeon’s tracking ward before it collapsed," Alden sneered, holding the crystal high. "This crystal does not lie. It projects the raw, objective reality of what occurred. Let us see the truth of your ’hero’, Elena."
The hall fell into a dead silence. The two elder mages channeled their mana into the crystal.
A brilliant beam of light shot out from the diamond, projecting a massive, translucent screen in the air above the grand hall.
The projection materialized, showing the dark, damp cavern of the F-rank Subterranean Grotto. The audience leaned forward, holding their breath.
The video played clearly: The shadows writhed. The mutated Goblins ambushed the party. Then, the critical moment appeared—Elena’s mana snapped, her fire backfiring through her veins as she fell to her knees, coughing blood. The massive Hobgoblin raised its rusted iron club directly over her head.
"Look closely," Alden called out triumphantly. "Here is where the anomaly begins!"
On the screen, Brad shrieked, dropped his golden sword, and ran away like a frightened rabbit, followed by the other three students. The entire grand hall went dead silent. The noble sponsors turned their heads, their faces turning bright red with embarrassment. Brad’s "heroic tactical retreat" was exposed as a pathetic, cowardly desertion.
Before Alden could cut the feed in a panic, the projection continued.
Vince was seen sprinting forward, hurling the brass torch to blind the beast, getting slammed into the wall, and breaking his ribs. Then, the footage blurred for a split second as the system’s time-freeze had corrupted the local magical tracking ward.
When the visual stabilized, the entire audience gasped.
The projection showed Vince hovering over Elena, his hand firmly holding the massive Hobgoblin’s club with a single bare palm. The raw, muscular definition rippling through his arm was clear as day. Then, with a casual flick, he yanked the giant monster off its feet and shattered its skull with a single, violet-infused punch.
The projection cut to black.
The Grand Hall was dead silent. You could hear a pin drop. Hundreds of elite students stared at Vince as if he were a god walking among mortals. A no-talent had caught a boss’s strike and annihilated it in one blow.
Alden’s face turned an apocalyptic shade of purple. He stared at the black crystal, his hands trembling. "This... this is impossible. The footage must be corrupted! He used a forbidden artifact! Guards, seize him! Force his mana channels open and find the artifact!"
Four heavily armored A-Rank elite guards stepped forward, drawing their enchanted halberds.
"I’d like to see you try, Alden."
Vince didn’t just step forward—he let his aura explode.
[Ding! Shared Skill [Infernal Overdrive] Activated!]
[Sovereign’s Pressure Tier 1: Maximized!]
A wave of intense, dark violet fire erupted from Vince’s body, swirling around him like a protective dragon. The sheer heat caused the stone tiles of the Grand Hall to melt into liquid magma within seconds. The crushing, suffocating weight of his 600 Strength stat combined with Elena’s maxed-out fire magic slammed into every single person in the room.
The four A-rank guards were instantly forced to their knees, their armor burning their skin, their weapons clattering to the floor.
Students in the audience screamed, scrambling backward over the benches to escape the radiating heat. Even the two elder judges fell back into their chairs, their eyes wide with absolute horror.
Vince stood in the center of the melting podium, his eyes glowing like twin stars of pure cosmic energy, looking down at the trembling Vice-Principal.
"You want to check my mana channels, vice principal?" Vince whispered, his voice carrying a resonant, terrifying vibration that shook the entire foundation of the academy. "Come down here and check them yourself."
