The clumsy knight would not stop shooting me murderous glares, as if my very breathing were a personal offense. Percy.
I noticed him tense the instant I slightly turned my head… and then I understood my mistake.
Elara was watching me.Not the way one looks at an enemy, nor the way one evaluates a subject.It was the gaze of someone trying to read a broken code.
Her expression shifted in the blink of an eye: from annoyance to confusion, from confusion to something dangerously close to disbelief. Her fingers slid toward the hilt of her sword with automatic, trained precision.
Percy reacted instantly.
"Princess!" He stepped forward, his voice trembling between fury and devotion. "Allow me—!"
The steel was a breath away from leaving its scabbard.
"Ah, ah…" Oswin's voice fell over the scene like a bucket of icy water. "Lower your tone, brat."
The old man took a step forward, calmly placing himself between the knight and me, his composure almost insulting.
"Long time no see, Percy," he greeted with a crooked smile. "Still waiting for rain in the desert, huh?"
He chuckled softly, shifting his gaze between the two nobles as if watching a play he had already seen far too many times.
Percy's face flushed into a red worthy of a ripe apple.
"M-Master!" he snapped, indignant. "You shouldn't say such things! We didn't come here to… to play."
His voice hardened at the end, swollen with a determination I couldn't tell whether it was born from loyalty to the kingdom… or something far more personal.
He looked at Elara.
Yes. Definitely the latter, I thought.
This man walked with his heart in his hands… and she knew it.
Elara, however, did not intervene. She didn't need to.
Her eyes remained fixed on me, as if Percy, Oswin, and even the entire forest were nothing but background noise. I felt a strange pressure—not physical, but conceptual. As if the world itself were trying to decide where I belonged, and failing to reach an agreement.
"Interesting…" she finally murmured, more to herself than to anyone else.
She had found no answer.
And that, I realized then, unsettled her more than any act of rebellion.
My silence was the only response she received.The atmosphere grew so dense that even the Vorhul would have seemed like child's play in comparison.And, though it pained me to admit it, Julian was right about one thing.
I will not kneel.
Not because the S.E.C. demanded it, but because doing so would be a blasphemy against the freedom I had long yearned for… and had only just begun to brush with my fingertips.
Elara's glacial gaze hardened further. It was not simple anger.
It was something worse.
Intolerance.
She knew—and at the same time did not know—what my silence meant.
For someone like her, the world had to be classified, ordered, reduced to comprehensible categories.
And I… was an anomaly that refused to fit into her system.
"Sir Perceval," she finally shattered the crystal of stillness.
She did not turn her head toward him.
She did not need to.
Her eyes remained locked on me—cold, clinical, merciless.
"This young man seems to have forgotten how one responds to a crown," she continued, her voice so calm it hurt."Remind him of the gravity of our presence."
Percy did not need to hear it twice. He drew his sword swiftly, as if his life depended on it.
The steel sang as it left the scabbard, a clean sound that sliced through the stagnant air of the garden.
"You will learn respect, peasant!" the knight roared.
He lunged at me with an elegance that, in any other context, I might have admired. His sword traced an arc of silver light, aimed at my shoulder—an attack meant to wound and humiliate, not kill.
I did not move until the tip of the blade was inches from my skin.
"Response delay: 0.4 seconds. Inefficient, Unit 03," Julian's voice clicked inside my mind."His left guard is open by three millimeters. His right boot is improperly secured; if you shift his weight to that side, his ankle will give. End this asymmetry immediately."
"Tetsu, don't go too far," Silas warned, his tone like a lemon candy dissolving."If you break him, the Princess won't be able to use him as a toy—and she hates having her toys broken."
I took a single step to the side.
Only one.
Percy's blade sliced through the air where I had stood a millisecond earlier. Before he could recover his balance, I spun the axe in my hand and used the reinforced wooden shaft to gently strike his wrist.
Percy grunted. His sword didn't fall, but his arm shook violently. The Devoted Shield flared to life across his armor, a golden glow reinforcing his defense—but magic could not correct a miscalculation.
"Stay still!" he shouted, thrusting forward with a fury-filled lunge.
This time, I abandoned efficiency.
I wanted to end it.
I twisted my torso backward in an unnatural motion—one only possible with the reinforced ligaments of the S.E.C. Without them, my spine would have snapped. The world seemed to slow.
I saw the shock in Percy's eyes.I saw the glimmer of Elara's Glacial Eyes.And I saw the breaking point.
I kicked his knee sideways, and as he staggered, I pivoted on my axis and pressed the axe's haft directly against his trachea, pinning him to a nearby tree.
Silence fell.
Only Percy's ragged breathing and the crunch of snow beneath my boots could be heard.
"It's over," I said. My voice came out with Julian's metallic coldness, devoid of any agitation.
Percy stared at me in horror. His dragon-steel armor was impervious to ordinary blows—but my axe rested at the one place where his defenses meant nothing.
"Acceptable," Julian murmured, almost bored. "Though your final stance lacked elegance."
"Enough." Elara's voice cut through the scene.
She wasn't shouting.
She was standing now, having dismounted her steed with lethal grace. She walked toward us, each step freezing the earth a little more. She stopped two meters from me.
She ignored Percy, who withdrew with his face burning in shame, and focused on my hands.
"You have no energy flow," Elara declared, her eyes scanning me like a sensor. "No spirit in your muscles. No trace of elemental affinity in your lungs."
She paused—and for the first time, a small, icy smile curved her lips.
"And yet… your muscles follow a discipline not taught on this continent. You are a walking weapon. A tool without a master."
"I have a name," I replied, tightening my grip on the axe.
"Names are for people, Tetsuo. Legends are for kings," she answered, her mask of authority snapping back into place."Oswin. Lyaris. Prepare your things."
Lyaris stepped forward, jade eyes blazing.
"You can't force us, Elara!" she protested. "We are not your court subjects."
Elara stopped and looked at her former friend. The air temperature dropped sharply in an instant.
"This is not a request, Lyaris. The flare in the tower was no mistake. If this 'guest' remains here, the forest will be reduced to ashes within three days by those hunting him. Going to the castle is his only chance of survival. And yours as well."
She turned on her heel, her midnight-blue cape billowing like a banner of surrender.
"I expect you at dawn. Do not make me send the Winter Guard to retrieve you."
She mounted her horse and rode away with Percy and her escort, leaving behind a trail of silence and unanswered questions.
Oswin sighed, releasing the axe he had been ready to use the entire time.
"Well…" the old man muttered. "Looks like tomorrow's breakfast will be somewhere with much higher ceilings."
The words barely registered. Silas's voice had just echoed inside my skull—weaker than before, like a whisper dragged through a sandstorm.
"Tetsu…" he murmured urgently, in a tone I had never heard from him. "Remember what I told you. Don't trust—"
Suddenly, the voice was amputated by a sharp, unnatural buzzing—like metal being torn apart by electrical interference—right behind my eyes.
A warm, thick liquid flowed from my nose.
Blood.
A thin, crimson line stained my chin.
I wiped it away with a rough, almost violent motion, rubbing my sleeve across my face to erase the evidence before Oswin or Lyaris could notice. The adrenaline from the fight with Percy was replaced by a cold, clinical terror.
The system was failing.
I looked toward the horizon, where the pale-walled castle rose in the distance like a silver cage beneath the moonlight.
I understood then that the training was over.
Now, the war began.