Chapter 318: Illogical

Its physical strength and explosiveness was exactly what he needed in this fight, especially considering he didn’t even need to reveal it as a shadow manifestation. It was a pure body enhancement soup mass.

As he readied himself, Nova also leveled her gaze at him and adjusted her stance, her feet sliding into a perfect combat position. “Even if you are trying to prove your expertise with that sword, no Ossuarist who truly takes me seriously would stand there without a soul mass manifested. I will not ask you a third time.”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. She looked up at the golden glow of the dome and spoke the words that triggered the Law of Stratus. Her voice was clear and resonant, carrying the weight of a formal contract.

“By the Law of the Pact and the rules of this city, I, Nova of the Mechanus Noble Xiph, stake my claim,” she declared. “If I am the victor, the unattuned masterpiece shall be mine by right. If I fail, I relinquish all interest in the tool.”

Finn followed her lead, feeling the invisible threads of the city’s authority coiling around them. He didn’t use his name, as he had no reason to give it to her yet.

“I accept the terms,” Finn said. “If I win, the sword stays with me. If I lose, it is yours.”

As the last word left his mouth, a sudden, heavy pressure settled over the platform. It was a spiritual lock that ensured the winner would be rewarded automatically by the mechanism that guided this place.

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Dana’s POV…

Dana stood in the crowd on a nearby landmass, her hands gripped tightly against the railing. She felt a sudden weight settle in the air over the battle platform. It was a familiar, crushing sensation. The Law of the Pact had taken hold. And even though she was not a participant, she could sense the invisible threads of the city’s authority weaving around the two fighters.

She found the entire situation absurd. She was a Master rank Arcanist with years of experience, and she knew that there was more at play here than just a simple sword. A Noble Xiph did not duel a mysterious stranger over a dusty artifact unless there was a deeper point to be proven. She watched with a focused expression, her mind racing through the rumors she had heard about Nobles of the Mechanus empire.

But her thoughts were cut short, as suddenly, the fight started with a bang that surprised her to her core.

Finn didn’t move like a normal human. In the blink of an eye, he burst forward with a speed that defied logic. He didn’t even seem to use a soul mass for the movement. He just vanished from his starting position and reappeared in front of Nova in what looked like two steps.

Nova’s eyes went wide, but she showed exactly why she was a Noble Xiph. She didn’t try to block the incoming strike. Instead, she moved in a flurry of zig-zagging maneuvers, her body flickering across the stone in high-speed bursts.

She circled all the way to the edge of the platform, putting a safe distance between them while Finn skidded to a stop, his head tilted as he watched her move.

Finn was looking pointedly at the mechanical ports woven into the fabric of her clothing. Dana knew exactly what those were. Those ports released rapid, expertly controlled bursts of compressed air that allowed Nova to move with an agility and reflex speed that was totally beyond the capabilities of a human body.

It was a masterpiece of Mechanus engineering, but Dana knew that these contraptions were only the beginning.

Dana was a citizen of the Mechanus empire and a Master rank Nurturer, and she had heard rumors; whispers that the nobility used even more advanced technology that was integrated into their very biology.

If those rumors were true, then Nova was only showing a fraction of what she could do.

Nova reached for her side, and a blade seemed to morph out of nothingness into her hand. Dana leaned forward, her eyes widening even further. That was a Nested Geometry mechanical artifact! The original form of that sword must have been barely larger than a human thumb, yet it had decompacted into a full-length blade in a fraction of a second! Achieving that level of compaction was a sign of an A-grade artifact, a weapon of incredible value and complexity!

Nova kicked into gear, her movements becoming a rhythmic display of death. She went on the offensive, her attacks coming in a relentless and increasingly rapid flow that sounded like a continuous drumroll of steel hitting steel. Finn was on the defensive, meeting her attacks one for one as they moved across the platform in a blur. The speed was so intense that Dana could barely keep track of the individual moves.

The fervor of the spectating crowd had also died down. A heavy silence fell over the thousands of people watching. Ossuarists and Arcanists alike were enraptured by the display. They watched as the two figures moved in a blur across the platform. Both fighters were making and defending attacks at a speed that required them to be planning five steps in advance. It was a display of peak prowess from two opposing power systems.

The experts in the crowd had gone silent. Dana herself had entered a focused state of attention. She wasn’t just watching to see who would win. She was trying to learn. It wasn’t every day a person could witness such a pure clash of skill and technology.

Nova and Finn circled the entire expanse of the platform in haphazard cycles. Nova had been on the offensive for a full minute, her movements becoming more concise as she shaved off every excess motion.

She was becoming harder to keep track of, and her precise blows meant she was hitting harder with less effort. By all standard combat metrics, she was in total control of the rhythm.

But as Dana watched, she began to frown.

Nova was faster and more precise. She was hitting with more force. And yet, not a single blow had actually landed on the young man. Finn seemed to be getting slower than she was as the time passed, but despite the disadvantage, he parried every single slash and thrust with that random, subpar iron sword he had grabbed from the crowd.

Dana couldn’t believe her eyes. That cheap iron should have shattered into a thousand pieces the moment it touched an A-grade Mechanus blade, yet it wasn’t even showing a single scratch.

She looked closer at the iron blade. Finn seemed to be encasing it with a layer of air. At first, she thought it was a simple buffer to protect the metal. But that didn’t make sense. If he were just using the air as a shield to coat the sword then the sword itself was pointless. In that case he could have used a wooden stick instead and he would still achieve the same result…

So she discarded that idea. She had only had a brief encounter with Finn, but he didn’t strike her as someone who would lie about his intentions. He had said he would use the sword to its fullest, and for some reason, she truly believed he would. Or at least he’d try.

It was for this reason that she concluded he must be doing something much more complex to achieve that effect.

But what?

As Dana continued to watch Finn and Nova blitz across the platform, a crazy thought slowly entered her mind. It was a theory she refused to believe for a second, but it became more likely the more she observed the fight.

Finn was brute-force attuning the sword.

He wasn’t just coating it. He was literally attuning the unattuned iron blade to the air element right there in the middle of a high-speed battle… As an Ossuarist!

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