Julian'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 cha that had fallen from the sky.
Watching him face a once seemingly invincible enemy with the support of six instructor chas.
This was his chance.
No—this was the chance destiny had given him.
He would take down this white cha 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 swordsn 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 cha 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 mont!
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 cha's entire kinetic energy into a single horizontal slash.
The mont 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 cha'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 sa conclusion.
This strike—
He would definitely land it!
"—!"
Julian's cha shot out like a cannonball from a barrel.
The steam thrusters erupted at full power.
The cha's feet left two deep furrows in the concrete ground.
The acceleration slamd his body into the seat.
The distance was closing rapidly.
Thirty ters.
Twenty ters.
Ten ters.
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 soone 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 cha'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.
He could see the sunlight reflecting off the white cha's armor.
He could see that shallow scratch rapidly approaching.
Five ters.
Three ters.
One ter—
Then he saw the white cha move.
It moved forward.
The white cha took a step toward him.
Julian's brain scread a piercing alarm at that mont.
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 adjustnt.
The white cha's left hand rose.
Very slowly.
At least, it seed 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 cha's palm didn't go for the blade.
It bypassed the blade.
An instant before the blade reached the waist, the white cha's left hand precisely gripped the wrist joint of Julian's cha's right hand.
Five fingers embedded themselves like iron pincers into the gaps of the wrist joint.
*Click.*
An extrely faint, precise sound of tal interlocking.
Julian's right wrist joint was locked tight.
The blade stopped less than three centiters from the white cha's waist armor.
Three centiters.
Just three centiters 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 cha's left hand perford 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 tal snapping.
The sword flipped twice in the air and stabbed into the concrete ground over ten ters 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 cha was yanked off the ground by this force.
The inertia of his full-speed charge combined with the torsion applied by the white cha; the two forces t on his body, creating a rotational torque.
Julian's world began to spin.
The sky.
The ground.
The spectator stands.
The instructor chas.
The sunlight.
Everything spun wildly before his eyes.
His cha, like a thrown top, flipped once and a half in the air.
Then, back-down, it slamd 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 mont.
Alarms.
Alarms were everywhere.
"Warning: Right arm joint destroyed."
"Warning: Back armor deford."
"Warning: Steam pipeline leakage."
"Warning: Main boiler pressure abnormal."
Julian tried to make the cha stand up again.
But his cha couldn't move at all.
Because a foot was stepping on his chest armor.
The white cha's right foot.
In the exact sa posture as it had stepped on Konrad just now.
Julian looked up.
The white cha looked down at him.
That golden halo was still slowly rotating behind the cha'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?
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