Chapter 103 : Chapter 103
Chapter 103. Chief Judicator
These elderly men wore old-fashioned gray trench coats, and their hair was already graying.
Some of them even leaned on canes, looking like retired old men who had just come back from a game of chess in the park.
One of them even slowly pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the fog from his glasses.
“Young people these days are far too hot-blooded.”
The old man in the lead sighed and set his glasses back on the bridge of his nose.
In the very next second, the private soldier charging at the front only felt his vision blur.
He did not even see how the old man moved.
He only felt a piercing pain shoot through his wrist.
Crack.
Crisp and pleasing.
That was the sound of bone breaking.
“Ahhh!!!”
The private soldier’s longsword clanged to the ground as he clutched his wrist, now bent at a ninety-degree angle, and let out a pig-slaughtering scream.
But that was only the beginning.
That old man, who looked as though he might collapse from a stroke at any moment, shifted sideways by a single step and neatly avoided another private soldier’s slash.
Then he casually grabbed the man by the collar.
Without seeming to exert any force at all, he flung the one-hundred-eighty-pound brute away like a sack of trash.
Bang!
The brute slammed into the wall and knocked himself unconscious.
The other private soldiers froze.
What the hell was happening?
“What are you all standing around for?! Get them! Hack these old bastards to death!”
Viscount Gleiman roared from horseback in a fury.
The private soldiers gritted their teeth.
Relying on their superior numbers, they abandoned any thought of respecting the elderly and closed in around the old men with more than twenty gleaming blades, slashing down in a frenzy.
Inside the carriage, Cicero covered his daughter Emily’s eyes with one hand while holding his slightly nervous wife close with the other.
Watching the scene outside through the crack in the window, he even had the leisure to glance at his pocket watch.
“Dear, do not be afraid.”
Cicero’s tone was relaxed.
“They are all former Judicators of the Homomorphic Court. A street brawl of this level does not even count as a warm-up for them.”
Just as Cicero said, the battle outside—or rather, the one-sided beating—had a strangely artistic quality to it.
These old men had no intention of drawing weapons at all.
One could even say that they themselves were the weapons.
“The one on the left has an unstable lower body.”
One old man leaning on a cane muttered to himself as he casually tapped the cane against the ground.
The tip struck one private soldier’s ankle with perfect precision.
The man cried out in agony, instantly lost his balance, and crashed face-first into the ground like a dog eating dirt, knocking out two front teeth.
“The one on the right swings his sword too wide. He is full of openings.”
Another bald old man kept one hand behind his back and defended himself using only the other.
His fingers were like iron clamps.
Whether grabbing wrists or locking throats, any private soldier he touched instantly lost the ability to fight and collapsed to the ground clutching their joints and howling.
Their movements were small.
One could even say they were concise.
There were no flashy techniques and no wasted motions.
Every action was aimed purely at making the opponent lose the ability to move.
Dislocating arms.
Breaking legs.
Locking throats.
Striking jaws.
This was professionalism.
In barely half a minute.
It really was only half a minute, not even enough time for a pot of tea to cool.
The ground was already littered with groaning private soldiers.
Some rolled around clutching broken legs.
Some held dislocated arms and wept bitterly.
Some had already fainted outright.
Of the more than twenty men who had looked so imposing moments ago, not a single one could still stand upright.
As for those old men, they looked as if they had merely done something trivial.
They were not even breathing hard.
The old man in the lead patted dust that did not exist from his trench coat and even took the time to straighten the collar of the companion beside him.
“Warm-up complete.”
The surrounding spectators were all dumbfounded.
Their mouths hung open so wide that their jaws nearly hit the ground.
Where in the world had this monstrous old-men squad come from?
Viscount Gleiman was even paler with fright.
He swayed on horseback and nearly fell off.
The elite family guard he had always been so proud of had been reduced to something no sturdier than paper.
“Y-you…”
Viscount Gleiman pointed at the old men, his finger trembling from both rage and fear.
“You filthy commoners! How dare you attack a noble?! That is a capital crime! A capital crime!”
As he screamed hysterically, he fumbled in a panic and pulled a red signal flare gun from his coat.
“I’m calling for reinforcements! I’ll have the city defense army arrest every last one of you! I’ll have you all torn to pieces!”
Bang!
A red signal flare shot into the sky and burst into a glaring red flower against the gray heavens above Winter City.
When the old men saw the flare, not one of them panicked in the slightest.
Instead, they exchanged glances and showed expressions of helpless resignation, the sort that said, It looks like this is about to become a much bigger mess.
One of them even yawned.
Not long after that—
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The ground began to tremble in a steady rhythm.
It was the sound of something incredibly heavy smashing into the ground, each impact striking the heart like a hammer blow.
At the far end of the street, a black flood of steel was advancing.
The hissing of steam, the grinding of interlocking gears, and the clang of colliding metal merged into a suffocating sense of oppression.
It was Sylvia’s Personal Guard.
Ten fourth-generation Magitech Powered Armors, each standing three meters tall.
Their entire bodies were covered in streamlined silver-white armor.
Blue mana glows shimmered at the joints.
In their hands they carried thick Magic Burst Guns, and the dark muzzles radiated the breath of death.
The watching civilians instantly fell silent.
When Viscount Gleiman saw that force, his already pale face flushed red at once, as though he had just grabbed hold of a lifesaving straw.
“Hahahaha! It seems even the heavens are helping me!”
He thought his signal flare had summoned a nearby patrol from the personal guard.
Scrambling off his horse, Viscount Gleiman hastily straightened his disheveled collar and ran toward the line of steel giants.
“Sir! Sir! I am Viscount Gleiman! My father is the chief administrator of the city defense army’s logistics department!”
He pointed at the carriage and the group of old men in the distance, spraying spit as he spoke, his face full of venom.
“These reckless commoners dared to openly attack a noble right at the inner city gate! They even injured my guard unit! This is rebellion! This is a trampling of Northern Territory law! I demand that you open fire immediately and blast them all into dust!”
The more he spoke, the more excited he became, as if he could already see those hateful old men being blown to pieces by the Magic Burst Guns.
However—
The Powered Armor leading the formation did not even spare him a glance.
The cold red crystal visor ignored his twisted face entirely.
Its massive metal foot nearly stepped on his toes.
“Move aside.”
The voice, amplified through a magitech speaker, was cold, deep, and completely devoid of emotion, with a metallic texture to it.
The smile on Viscount Gleiman’s face froze.
“S-Sir?”
The captain of the personal guard treated him like a pebble by the roadside and shoved him aside with one hand.
That kind of strength was far beyond what an ordinary human could resist.
Viscount Gleiman staggered several steps like a rag doll before collapsing onto the snow with a thump.
The steel giants marched forward in perfect formation and headed straight for the black carriage.
Clang!
All ten Powered Armors came to a stop and snapped to attention at the same time.
That perfectly synchronized metallic impact was even more thunderous than a lightning strike.
At last, the carriage door slowly opened.
Cicero stepped out with one leg first.
His polished leather shoe touched the snow with a light sound.
Then he emerged completely.
He wore that carefully tailored dark gray suit, with a fine black cashmere overcoat draped over it, and held an exquisite cane in one hand.
Even in the icy Northern Territory, and even after just experiencing a violent confrontation, not even the slightest wrinkle could be seen on him.
His entire bearing radiated the aura of an untouchable elite.
He turned, helped his wife and daughter down from the carriage like a gentleman, and then faced the line of steel giants before him with a calm expression.
“Akash, Captain of Her Highness Sylvia’s Personal Guard, greets you, my lord.”
A respectful yet dignified voice came from the Powered Armor’s speaker.
Immediately afterward—
The three-meter-tall steel giant suddenly brought its legs together.
Its enormous metal feet slammed into the ground with a heavy boom that sent the surrounding snow shaking loose.
Not only him.
The nine suits of armor behind him made the exact same motion at the same time.
Accompanied by the precise mechanical hum of interlocking gears, ten thick mechanical arms rose in unison, clenched into fists, and struck heavily against the thick armor plates over their left chests.
“Salute to the Chief Judicator!”
The resounding metallic impact rang out in perfect unison, like thunder exploding from level ground, and echoed through the sky above Winter City for a long time.