Free Web NovelJulian's fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword.
He glanced at the spectator stands.
There were thousands of eyes there.
Everyone was watching him.
Watching him confront this mysterious mecha that had fallen from the sky.
Watching him face a once seemingly invincible enemy with the support of six instructor mechas.
This was his chance.
No—this was the chance destiny had given him.
He would take down this white mecha of unknown origin with his own hands before the instructors actually arrived.
He wanted everyone to see—
Julian von Weber was not that trash who had been defeated by a Little girl in twenty seconds.
He was the eldest son of the Weber Family.
The glory of the Iron Cross.
One of the strongest swordsmen in the third year of the Royal Knights Academy.
With this strike, he would take all the humiliation, mockery, and pity of the past month—
And cut through it all!
Julian's mecha lowered its center of gravity.
The steam boiler's output was pushed to the maximum.
The cooling system's indicator light turned from yellow to orange, even approaching red at one point.
But Julian no longer cared.
Let it overheat.
If it was scrapped today—
Then let it be scrapped at its most glorious moment!
He drew his sword to his right hip.
The tip pointed backward.
The blade was parallel to the ground.
This was the only starting stance in Cross Fencing that was not in the standard curriculum.
Because this stance was a secret technique passed down through generations of the Weber Family.
"Wind Splitter"!
This move consisted of only one strike.
Compressing all speed, power, center of gravity, and the mecha's entire kinetic energy into a single horizontal slash.
The moment the sword ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) was swung, the blade would cut through the air, creating a sharp whistling sound—as if the wind itself were being torn apart.
This was his trump card.
He hadn't used it once during the entire competition.
He had originally intended it for Konrad.
But now—
Julian's gaze locked onto the target.
The white mecha's waist.
Right where he had left that shallow scratch earlier.
The opponent's evasion success rate in that area was the lowest.
The opponent's reaction speed was decreasing.
The opponent had no weapons.
The opponent was surrounded.
All conditions pointed to the same conclusion.
This strike—
He would definitely land it!
"—!"
Julian's mecha shot out like a cannonball from a barrel.
The steam thrusters erupted at full power.
The mecha's feet left two deep furrows in the concrete ground.
The acceleration slammed his body into the seat.
The distance was closing rapidly.
Thirty meters.
Twenty meters.
Ten meters.
Julian drew his sword.
The blade carved a silver arc from his waist.
The air in front of the blade was compressed and torn.
A whistling sound rang out.
Sharp.
Piercing.
Like someone scratching glass with their fingernails.
This was "Wind Splitter"!
A strike polished over three generations by the Weber Family!
The sword's tip pointed at the white mecha's waist joint—the only spot where he had left a mark.
In Julian's vision, everything slowed down.
He could see the trajectory of his blade carving through the air. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
He could see the sunlight reflecting off the white mecha's armor.
He could see that shallow scratch rapidly approaching.
Five meters.
Three meters.
One meter—
Then he saw the white mecha move.
It moved forward.
The white mecha took a step toward him.
Julian's brain screamed a piercing alarm at that moment.
No.
This wasn't right.
The opponent shouldn't be moving forward.
Facing a full-charge horizontal slash, any rational pilot should retreat or move sideways.
Moving forward would only bring them into the blade's strike range faster.
Unless—
Julian wanted to correct the attack trajectory, but it was too late.
The entire kinetic energy of "Wind Splitter" was already poured into the blade; the attack path could not be changed.
This was the price of this move—compressing everything into a single strike while losing all room for adjustment.
The white mecha's left hand rose.
Very slowly.
At least, it seemed slow to Julian.
Like moving through water.
That empty palm opened, five fingers extending, palm facing his blade.
Julian's pupils constricted.
Was this lunatic going to catch the sword with their hand?!
However—
The white mecha's palm didn't go for the blade.
It bypassed the blade.
An instant before the blade reached the waist, the white mecha's left hand precisely gripped the wrist joint of Julian's mecha's right hand.
Five fingers embedded themselves like iron pincers into the gaps of the wrist joint.
*Click.*
An extremely faint, precise sound of metal interlocking.
Julian's right wrist joint was locked tight.
The blade stopped less than three centimeters from the white mecha's waist armor.
Three centimeters.
Just three centimeters short.
Before Julian could even react—
Force.
A completely irrational force erupted from the palm gripping his wrist.
Using its wrist joint as an axis, the white mecha's left hand performed a simple, textbook-standard wrist twist—a wrench.
But the force applied—
Julian's entire right arm was dragged by this wrist twist, causing an anti-ergonomic torsion starting from the shoulder joint.
The hydraulic system let out a piercing shriek.
Alarms for joint servo motor overload exploded in the cockpit.
His sword was twisted out of his hand.
Along with it, his entire right arm joint produced a tooth-grinding sound of metal snapping.
The sword flipped twice in the air and stabbed into the concrete ground over ten meters away.
But that wasn't the end.
The twisting force didn't stop.
It followed the locked wrist joint, along the forearm, elbow, and upper arm, all the way to the shoulder.
Julian's entire mecha was yanked off the ground by this force.
The inertia of his full-speed charge combined with the torsion applied by the white mecha; the two forces met on his body, creating a rotational torque.
Julian's world began to spin.
The sky.
The ground.
The spectator stands.
The instructor mechas.
The sunlight.
Everything spun wildly before his eyes.
His mecha, like a thrown top, flipped once and a half in the air.
Then, back-down, it slammed heavily onto the concrete ground.
*Boom—*
The entire training ground shook again.
The back of Julian's head hit the seat's headrest, and his vision went dark for a moment.
Alarms.
Alarms were everywhere.
"Warning: Right arm joint destroyed."
"Warning: Back armor deformed."
"Warning: Steam pipeline leakage."
"Warning: Main boiler pressure abnormal."
Julian tried to make the mecha stand up again.
But his mecha couldn't move at all.
Because a foot was stepping on his chest armor.
The white mecha's right foot.
In the exact same posture as it had stepped on Konrad just now.
Julian looked up.
The white mecha looked down at him.
That golden halo was still slowly rotating behind the mecha's head, emitting a soft glow in the afternoon sun.
Julian lay on the ground, gazing up at that golden halo.
His mind was a blank.
What... what happened?
