The first round of the knockout stage began.
Over my comms, Jinx's voice carried a hint of gleeful warning.
"Mad Dog, your opponent this time isn't like those hacks from the previous rounds. Viscount 'Silverblade'—military nobility, a bona fide academy elite."
"Oh?" I replied nonchalantly while checking the energy readings on *The Wrench*. The newly installed military-grade cooling pump was silent, and the energy readings were as steady as a rock. For the first time, I felt a real sense of confidence.
"He's been talking smack before the match," Jinx paused, seemingly mimicking the other's nauseating tone. "He called you a 'monkey swinging a wrench' and said you're an insult to sacred mecha dueling. He claims he'll 'correct' you within three minutes with a 'textbook battle.'"
I laughed. The sound came from deep in my throat, thick with the taste of engine oil and rust.
A monkey?
Fine. Then I'll show him how a monkey dismantles his high-end toy with its bare hands.
The lights and shadows of the virtual arena took shape before me, pulling me from my cramped shipping container into a completely different world.
"Sky Arena."
A massive, magnificent platform suspended above an endless sea of clouds. The sunlight was blindingly fake, and the wind howled, making it feel like a playground for the gods of myth.
Fucking pretentious.
My opponent, Viscount Silverblade's mecha, the *Peregrine*, was already hovering silently a hundred meters away.
It was a beautiful mecha—so beautiful it was sickening.
Pure silver-white, its lines were as sleek as a real falcon; it was clearly the latest model of a military scout unit. It carried no heavy weaponry, only a slender beam rifle, obviously built for a core tactic of high mobility and precision shooting. Pure, efficient, and expensive.
"Trash picker."
A cold, arrogant voice came over the public channel, carrying a sense of condescending charity, as if he were taxing the very air I breathed."I'll give you a chance. Surrender now, and I'll let you walk away from this farce with your dignity intact."
I didn't even bother answering. My fingers brushed over the virtual projection of the giant wrench on the console.
Dignity? When I was fighting tooth and nail in the trash heaps for half a piece of moldy bread, who the hell ever talked to me about dignity?
"Looks like you've chosen the hard way." Seeing that I didn't respond, Viscount Silver Blade's voice turned cold, like quenched steel. "Then pay the price for your ignorance."
The starting bell boomed!
*Vwoom!*
The "Peregrine" instantly transformed into a silver streak, pulling away to the flank at a speed my naked eye could barely track.
Too fast!
Is this what a military-grade scout can do? Pure speed, pure power—a monster built on nothing but cash.
*Crack!*
A blinding beam grazed the shoulder of the "Wrench," its searing energy nearly scalding my senses.
The commentator shouted excitedly, "Did you see that! Viscount Silver Blade's perfect 'kiting tactic'! He isn't giving the 'Wrench' any chance to get close! The 'Wrench's' clunky frame can't possibly keep up with the 'Peregrine's' speed!"
A burst of laughter and cheers erupted from the stands, like a pack of hyenas at a bloodsport.
Viscount Silver Blade's mecha circled me, performing textbook harassing fire. Every time he fired, every time he changed direction, it was precise to the millimeter. He maintained an absolutely safe distance at all times, rendering my giant wrench completely useless.
His goal was clear.
He wanted to use this elegant and efficient method to drain my energy bit by bit, like toying with a caged animal, breaking me down slowly just to humiliate me.He didn't even bother targeting my critical systems; every shot slammed into my heavy reactor shield, scattering weak sparks of energy. He might as well have been saying: "Look, I'm not even trying, and you're completely powerless to fight back."
"Give it up, monkey," he mocked, his voice dripping with derision. "Your brute force is worthless against true skill."
I remained silent, like a mountain of rusted iron.
I let him buzz around me, letting those beams leave scorched marks across my shield. Through my "Engineer's Eye," his flashy mecha and showy flight paths didn't exist.
In my world, there was only data—cold, real, data that never lies.
First shot: main thruster power fluctuation, 0.03 seconds.
Second shot: slight overload in the arm's energy circuits.
The more he showed off, the more weaknesses he exposed. He thought he was putting on a performance; in my eyes, he was merely submitting a detailed diagnostic report.
And then... there were his joints.
To achieve peak agility, the Peregrine's servo motors had been tuned to their absolute limit. Every high-difficulty maneuver inflicted microscopic metal fatigue on the alloy at the joints.
Invisible to the naked eye, undetectable by instruments.
But to my eyes, those points of fatigue stood out like beacons in the night.
I was waiting. Waiting for the perfect moment.
I was silently calculating exactly how long his seemingly perfect machine could hold up under such intense maneuvering.
Left knee joint: fatigue at 73%... 81%... 92%...
The commentator's voice was now tinged with impatience. "There is no suspense left in this match! Viscount Silver Blade is putting on a clinic! The pilot of the 'Wrench' can do nothing but stand there and take a beating! The books are closed; now everyone is just betting on how long the 'Wrench' has left!"
Viscount Silver Blade seemed to be getting bored as well.
He decided to deliver the final blow.
"It's over!""It's over!" he bellowed, piloting the "Peregrine" into an ostentatious display of skill—a high-speed lateral slide into a sudden, vertical climb! It was a signature maneuver designed to fully showcase his superior piloting skills and the machine's performance!
The silver "Peregrine" carved a perfect arc through the air, like an elegant falcon baring its sharpest talons.
The entire audience erupted in deafening cheers!
However, the very instant he executed the move—
Now!
My "Engineer's Eye" caught it!
A thousandth of a second!
At the precise moment his turn reached its maximum angle, his left knee joint—which had been under immense pressure—locked up due to the sudden overload. It was a hitch lasting only a thousandth of a second, practically invisible!
That's enough.
"BOOM—!"
The "Harvest-7" engine beneath my feet let out its true roar for the first time! Supported by the military-grade cooling pump, surging energy instantly flooded every circuit!
Under the astonished gaze of everyone present, my clumsy "Wrench," which had been acting as a punching bag, spun around with a ferocity completely at odds with its bulk!
I didn't charge, I didn't fire, I didn't even raise my wrench.
I simply took the reactor shield on my left arm—that slab of protective plating thick as a fortress wall, scavenged from god-knows-what equipment in the junkyard—and with a crude, brutal posture that defied every principle of throwing mechanics...
I hurled it!
The massive shield tumbled through the air like a giant, misshapen hunk of junk tossed at random, carrying a dull, terrifying howl as it flew toward... a completely empty spot.
"Is she crazy?!" the commentator shrieked. "She's throwing her shield? Is she aiming at nothing?!"
The audience was equally dumbfounded.
Only I knew.
That wasn't nothing.
That was the exact spot the "Peregrine" was guaranteed to be in the next second.Viscount Silver Blade also saw the giant slab of scrap flying toward him.
His first reaction was contempt.
"Pathetic..."
He tried to swerve out of the way.
But right then, he discovered to his horror—
His mech wasn't responding!
That one-thousandth of a second of joint lock was infinitely magnified in this instant! His left leg felt as if it had been instantly frozen, causing a fatal pause in his perfect maneuver!
"No! Impossible!"
He let out a scream of disbelief; his arrogant voice cracked for the first time, filled with terror.
The next second.
That incredibly heavy reactor shield, packed with massive kinetic force, struck with absolute precision...
"BANG—!!!"
It smashed ruthlessly into the *Peregrine*'s rigid left knee!
The sound wasn't like metal colliding; it was more like the muffled crunch of a living bone being snapped!
"CRACK!"
The *Peregrine*'s sleek left leg, crafted from perfect alloy, twisted and deformed entirely at the knee before being torn clean off by the immense force!
Countless components and severed wires sprayed outward like exploding flesh and blood!
"AAAAAHHHH—!!!"
Viscount Silver Blade's scream rang through the skies.
Having lost a leg, the *Peregrine* instantly became a bird with a broken wing. It spun wildly in the air, spewing black smoke and electric sparks, plummeting completely out of control toward the sea of clouds below.
"Whump."
With a muffled thud, it was swallowed by the clouds.
The chime signaling the end of the match sounded particularly piercing amidst the dead silence of the arena.
A heavy silence hung over the crowd.
The commentator's mouth hung open, unable to utter a single word. All the spectators who had bet on how many seconds it would take for me to die stared blankly at the solitary, rusty mech standing in the arena, now missing its shield.
I slowly raised my head, as if I could look through the screen and see the slack-jawed faces of those elites.Just then, an encrypted transmission cut in. It was Jinx. The playfulness was gone from her voice, replaced by a heaviness I'd never heard before.
"Nice work, Mad Dog." She used my new nickname. "But you're in deep now. The Viscount is just the start. You humiliated a noble, and they're a hell of a lot worse than the gangs in the Rust Belt."
"Watch your back," she paused. "They won't play by arena rules."
The line went dead.
I looked at my empty left arm, then at the massive wrench in my hand.
Trouble outside the arena?
Perfect. I wasn't planning on keeping this inside the ring anyway.