The wreckage of the martial automatons had barely been swept away when the arena's atmosphere shifted again — this time from stunned silence to a thick, suffocating tension.
The Proctor’s voice rang out, steady but carrying a faint tremor he couldn’t quite hide:
“Trial Three: Weapon Mastery.
Objective: Neutralize the target using the weapon of your choice.
No raw mana projection. Technique and precision only.”
He gestured toward a massive weapon rack that rose from the center of the arena like a steel tree. Longswords, rapiers, greatswords, spears, axes — each one hummed faintly with high-grade mana conductivity, their surfaces gleaming under the artificial light.
“Choose your steel.”
The noble applicants in the stands leaned forward.
Some whispered bets.
Others smirked, already imagining the bcksmith’s son fumbling with a weapon too heavy for his frame.
Zef walked past the ornate bdes, the ceremonial spears, the enchanted cymores that nobles loved to funt.
His hand went straight to the back of the rack — two bckened, unadorned daggers.
Short. Curved. Simple.
Serpent fangs forged from pin bck iron.
A nervous ugh rippled through the stands.
“Daggers?” one noble boy scoffed, voice loud enough to carry. “Does he think he’s peeling fruit? Against a Knight-Css Automaton he won’t even reach its armor.”
Zef ignored them.
He twirled both bdes once — a single, fluid motion — feeling their perfect bance in his palms.
To him a weapon was never a status symbol.
It was an extension of intent.
A tool designed to shorten the distance between life and death.
[Weapon Selected: Dual Bck-Iron Daggers]
[Syncing with 'Structural Fracture' logic…]
The central gate groaned open.
The ground trembled.
A Rank-S Knight-Css Automaton stepped into the light — a towering fortress of enchanted mail and bckened steel.
Eight feet tall.
A massive greatsword in one hand, a tower shield covering its entire front in the other.
Runes of impact absorption glowed dull red across its surface.
The Proctor’s voice was quieter now:
“Begin.”
The automaton did not hesitate.
It lunged — a horizontal sweep of the greatsword so powerful the wind pressure alone pushed the front row of spectators back into their seats.
The bde cut the air with a low, howling scream.
Zef dropped low — almost ft to the ground — sliding beneath the arc like a shadow caught in a storm.
[Skill Activated: Ghost Step – Enhanced]
[Movement speed +30% when closing distance]
He reached the shield in an instant.
The automaton reacted instantly — smming the tower shield down with crushing force.
The impact cratered the obsidian floor in a spiderweb of cracks.
Zef didn’t flinch.
He pnted his left foot, raised his right dagger — and struck.
Not the shield itself.
A single, tiny rivet in the handle grip — the exact point of structural resonance his [Insightful Eye] had already mapped.
A high-pitched ting rang out — sharp and clear.
The shield vibrated violently.
The automaton’s arm recoiled as though stung.
For a split second — instability.
That was all Zef needed.
He became a blur of bck steel.
He didn’t hack. He didn’t ssh.
He stitched.
Daggers danced across the armor — touching leather straps, neck joints, knee slits, elbow gaps — each contact light, almost gentle.
But every touch carried a precise vibrational pulse, a silent poison injected into the machine’s structural weak points.
Clink.
Shhh.
Clink.
To the audience it looked like a dance around a mountain.
To Zef it was surgery.
The automaton swung again — desperate now.
Zef spun inside the arc, leaped onto its broad shoulder pte.
The machine tried to grab him.
Too slow.
Zef reversed his grip on both daggers.
He drove them into the narrow seam between helmet and chest pte — not with brute force, but with a sharp, rhythmic twist.
A pulse of energy at exactly the right frequency.
[Skill Triggered: Nerve-Link Severance]
The automaton froze mid-motion.
Its glowing red eyes flickered once.
Twice.
Then died.
For one long heartbeat the giant stood perfectly still — a statue of steel and silence.
Then — with a sound like a thousand tiny chains snapping —
it colpsed forward.
The crash shook the entire arena.
Dust billowed outward in a gray cloud.
Zef nded lightly behind it.
He sheathed both daggers with a cold, precise click.
[Third Trial Results: Perfect (Rank-S Neutralized)]
[Weapon Mastery Level Increased: Unranked → Master of Bdes]
[New Skill Acquired: 'Vortex of the Fang' (Active)]
[Description: Rapid succession of strikes that ignores 20% of physical defense.]
[New Skill Acquired: 'Phantom Edge' (Passive)]
[Description: Bdes move 15% faster than visible perception, leaving momentary after-images that confuse opponents.]
Silence.
Not stunned silence this time.
Fearful silence.
The Proctor stared at the fallen colossus — the pinnacle of their training arsenal — defeated by two pin bck-iron daggers and a boy who never once raised his voice.
In the stands, noble students who had ughed earlier now sat rigid, faces pale.
A girl in silk whispered: “He didn’t even break a sweat…”
The Proctor’s hand shook as he raised it.
“Third Trial… Perfect score. Rank-S neutralized.”
He looked at Zef.
At the hands that had never clenched into fists.
At the boy who had dismantled a Knight-Css war machine with touches lighter than breath.
Zef met his gaze — calm, almost bored.
“The physical tests are rather tedious,” he said, voice carrying clearly across the arena. “When do we begin the Magic and Soul trials?”
No one answered immediately.
In the deepest shadows of the VIP box, a woman in a dark cloak — Intelligence Branch — pressed a red stamp onto Zef’s file.
Three sharp strikes.
Ink bled across the parchment.
Priority: Extreme
Potential Threat: Unknown → Recssified: Immediate Observation Required
She looked down at the arena.
At the boy in the bcksmith’s tunic standing amid the wreckage of a machine built to break armies.
For the first time in years, she felt the faint prickle of something very old and very dangerous.
Below, Zef waited — motionless, inevitable.
The next trial would not test his bdes.
It would test theirs.
