Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

By the time Lucavion returned to the residential tower, the morning had advanced considerably farther than he expected.

The clock mounted above the common hall showed 10:17.

He slowed beneath it.

’Huh.’

Nearly four hours had disappeared since he left his room.

Breakfast with Mireilla had claimed part of that. The Western Library had taken another portion, although Lucavion suspected the librarian behind the circulation desk would argue that he had taken time from the library instead.

His mouth curved faintly.

That woman had been rather strange.

Lucavion adjusted the collection beneath his arm as he started climbing the stairs. Foundational Principles of Mana Circulation sat beneath the practice sheets, with the small bottle of ink secured against its spine and the quill resting between two fingers.

For someone who had gone outside intending to wander, he had returned looking suspiciously like a student.

Still, his thoughts lingered briefly on the librarian.

He had never learned her name.

There had hardly been a reason to ask.

Yet toward the end of their conversation, the woman had started looking at him in a way he found difficult to place.

Her eyes had lingered.

Face.

Hair.

Shoulders.

Then lower.

Then back again.

Almost as though she had been... sizing him up.

Lucavion knew that sort of attention well enough.

Years spent travelling had introduced him to plenty of women who possessed very little interest in hiding what they were thinking. Adventurer guilds, in particular, cultivated an impressive disregard for subtlety once alcohol entered the equation. A mercenary woman twice his age had once informed him exactly what she thought of his waist before Gerald dragged him away by the collar.

That had been straightforward.

The librarian’s gaze had felt different.

It kind of...

Lucavion’s steps slowed.

’Hmm.’

More clinical?

That sounded worse.

He pictured the slight tilt of her head as she studied him, followed by whatever judgment had passed silently through those eyes.

Perhaps she had simply been deciding whether he was mentally deficient.

Considering the conversation they had shared, that possibility carried considerable weight.

Lucavion shook his head.

Whatever.

The woman had given him the things Elara demanded, which made the morning productive enough.

Most of the missing time belonged somewhere else anyway.

The Sword Hall.

Close to two hours, by his estimate.

His legs still carried the evidence.

A comfortable heaviness sat through his calves and thighs, while the smaller muscles around his hips protested whenever he climbed another step. The feeling belonged to repeated controlled movement rather than a proper fight, which somehow made it more noticeable in places Lucavion usually ignored.

The Sword Hall had been good.

Very good, actually.

Perhaps that should have been obvious.

This was the Imperial Academy of Arcanis.

An institution capable of building entire halls for examination alone would hardly place a few wooden posts inside a room and declare its martial education complete.

Even so, knowing that intellectually had done little to prepare him for the actual equipment.

The movement grounds Varen recommended had occupied several enclosed chambers deeper within the Sword Hall. Lucavion had selected one mostly because it was empty and activated the formation without expecting much.

Then the floor began remembering him.

Every step remained behind as pale light.

His balance shifts appeared through variations in brightness. Turns left curved traces around his feet, while the formations tracked the alignment of his hips, shoulders, and weapon separately. When he thrust, a silver line followed the estoc through the air and remained suspended long enough for him to walk around it.

That had consumed him rather quickly.

One thrust became another.

Then a third.

He compared them.

Changed his shoulder.

Changed his heel.

Shifted the point at which his weight transferred forward.

Repeated.

The chamber gave him information without trying to decide what his sword ought to look like.

Lucavion appreciated that most.

A conventional instructor watching his footwork might have called half his movements inefficient before understanding what the next step intended to accomplish. Gerald certainly had opinions regarding efficiency, although his definition usually began with whether Lucavion remained standing after someone tried to kill him.

The Academy’s formations simply recorded.

The swordsman interpreted.

That suited Lucavion perfectly.

The weapon-mana chamber had occupied another portion of his time.

That one had proven dangerous in a completely different way.

It measured how mana travelled from his body into the weapon, then displayed the flow separately across a suspended formation. Lucavion had watched the first result, noticed a slight delay near his wrist, and immediately wondered whether altering his grip would change it.

Naturally, he tested it.

Then he changed the timing.

Then the amount of mana.

Then the route through his fingers.

By the time he remembered that the Academy contained other buildings, nearly two hours had vanished.

Lucavion reached his floor.

’Clearly deserving of the Empire’s best Academy.’

For once, the thought carried very little mockery.

The place possessed resources adventurers would fight over.

Facilities capable of showing mistakes people might spend years discovering through repetition.

Specialized grounds for different weapons.

Mana-assisted analysis.

Training spaces built around disciplines rather than forcing everyone through the same methods.

Being assigned to the Close Combatant Block might prove considerably more pleasant than he initially expected.

His hand settled over the door handle.

Then another thought surfaced.

Gerald.

Lucavion paused.

His master had never taught him magic.

Swordsmanship.

Survival.

Movement.

How to read a battlefield.

How to recognize when someone intended violence before their hand ever touched a weapon.

Gerald had taught plenty.

Magic simply never entered those lessons.

Yet Lucavion had seen him use it.

More than once.

Circles drawn quickly enough that Lucavion could barely follow the fingers.

Mana moving through structures with the ease of someone who understood exactly what every line accomplished.

At the time, Lucavion had barely thought about it.

Magic belonged to Gerald in the same way the sword did. Another thing the old man knew because Gerald seemed irritatingly capable of knowing almost everything Lucavion eventually discovered he needed.

’He clearly knew it.’

The realization felt strangely obvious now.

So why had Gerald never taught him?

Lucavion opened the door and stepped inside.

Vitaliara occupied the couch beneath a stripe of sunlight. One ear moved when he entered, though the rest of her remained committed to rest.

He placed the materials onto his desk.

The answer followed before he could spend much time searching for it.

Back then, magic would have been rather ambitious.

Lucavion had been busy surviving his own body.

The darkness within his physique had resisted him at every step, forcing him to brute-force pathways that should have opened naturally. Circulation itself had been painful enough. Some days, moving mana without tearing something had counted as progress.

Gerald teaching him spell formations during that period would have been like teaching calligraphy to someone still learning how to keep his fingers from breaking.

Perhaps the old man had simply waited.

For Lucavion’s body to become capable.

For the darkness to settle.

For a better time.

Then life had continued doing what life tended to do.

Lucavion looked down at the thick introductory book.

’Well... whatever.’

Gerald was absent.

Elara was very much present.

And apparently she had decided that whatever portion of Lucavion’s education had gone missing would now become her personal problem.

A terrifying woman.

He pulled the chair back and sat.

The practice sheets went to one side.

Ink beside them.

Quill within reach.

Then Lucavion placed Foundational Principles of Mana Circulation directly before him.

The cover looked considerably less threatening while closed.

He rested one hand upon it.

For several seconds, Lucavion simply stared.

Then he opened the book.

’All right.’

His eyes settled on the first page.

’Let’s study.’

******

The first several pages were easier than Lucavion expected.

That should probably have worried him.

He read through the introductory explanation of mana circulation with his elbow resting against the desk and one hand supporting his cheek. The author devoted nearly half a page to defining the controlled movement of mana through established pathways, describing pressure distribution, core interaction, and the importance of preventing unstable accumulation within the meridians.

Lucavion reached the end and stared at the paragraph.

’So... move the mana properly.’

Apparently six sentences had been necessary for that.

His eyes shifted toward the diagram beneath it.

A simplified human figure occupied most of the page, its internal pathways marked through thin lines extending from the core toward several major junctions. The illustration itself felt familiar enough. He understood why mana passed through the shoulder before separating toward the arm, and the narrower route near the collarbone immediately struck him as an obvious pressure point.

Too much mana forced through there would rebound.

The shoulder would tighten first.

Then the arm.

If the cultivator continued pushing...

Lucavion rubbed the same place on his own shoulder.

He knew that sensation.

His gaze returned to the explanation beside the diagram, where the textbook spent another paragraph describing almost exactly what he had just concluded.

A faint smile touched his mouth.

"So she was right."

Admitting that while Elara was absent made the experience considerably easier.

Lucavion turned the page.

The pattern continued. Some terms required him to read their definitions before they meant anything. Others produced recognition quickly enough that he found himself skipping ahead, already understanding the principle while the textbook remained occupied with explaining it.

A third category bothered him more.

Those words felt close.

Familiar enough that his attention caught upon them, yet distant enough that he could never quite grasp whatever association sat behind the terminology.

Primary circulation route.

Auxiliary sequence.

Structural pressure.

Lucavion tapped one finger against the page.

He had used some of those concepts yesterday. Elara had placed diagrams in front of him, asked questions, changed terminology, then watched his answers with the focus of someone trying to map the edges of a damaged structure.

Apparently she had found exactly what she expected.

Lucavion understood enough to function.

He simply understood it in pieces.

His gaze drifted toward the practice sheets beside the book.

Fifteen copies of Mana Light.

Every component labeled.

"Cruel woman."

Vitaliara’s tail moved once from the couch.

Lucavion glanced toward her.

"You agree."

Her eyes remained closed.

He accepted that as confirmation and reached for the quill.

The moment his fingers wrapped around it, pressure gathered behind his right eye.

Lucavion froze.

The sensation was dull at first, more weight than pain, but it sharpened as it spread along his temple. His fingers tightened around the shaft of the quill.

Something shifted at the edge of his vision.

A shadow stood beside him.

Close enough that his body reacted before his mind understood why.

A shiver ran from the base of his neck down through his back.

Lucavion turned sharply.

The room held only familiar things.

His wardrobe stood against the wall. Sunlight stretched across the floorboards in a pale band. Vitaliara had raised her head now, one midnight ear angled toward him while her eyes followed the direction of his stare.

Lucavion remained still.

The pressure behind his eye faded within several breaths, leaving a strange hollow awareness in its place.

"What?"

Vitaliara watched him.

He looked toward the corner again.

Empty.

When Lucavion lowered his gaze, the quill was still caught between his fingers.

His grip looked strange.

His thumb rested higher along the shaft than he remembered placing it, while his forefinger curved across the top with a familiarity that belonged to long practice. His middle finger supported the quill beneath, steadying its angle toward the page.

Lucavion studied his own hand.

He loosened his grip.

Then he held the quill again.

His fingers settled into the same position.

A faint sensation stirred behind his eyes.

Wood beneath his arm.

Ink.

Someone beside—

The impression slipped away.

Lucavion’s brow drew together.

’....’

He waited.

Nothing returned.

That bothered him more than the headache.

Lucavion could deal with something he failed to understand. He had spent years doing exactly that. An unfamiliar technique could be observed. A strange creature could be tested. A battlefield revealed itself through movement, distance, reactions, and mistakes.

This gave him almost nothing.

His body remembered something.

His mind refused to provide the rest.

Lucavion set the quill beside the ink bottle.

For a while, he simply sat there.

The textbook waited open before him, while the blank practice sheets remained stacked neatly at his right. Morning light had moved farther across the desk, catching along the rim of the ink bottle and turning the dark liquid faintly brown near the glass.

He could stop here.

Elara would probably consider that sensible. A headache followed by a visual disturbance would give her enough reason to turn their next lesson into an interrogation, and Lucavion suspected she would become considerably less pleasant if she discovered he had continued despite it.

His fingers rested against the desk.

Then his eyes moved back to the page.

Primary Circulation Routes.

A child’s diagram.

Basic terminology.

The sort of material students at the Academy were apparently expected to understand before they ever entered these halls.

Lucavion breathed out slowly.

His shoulders loosened.

’No.’

He had faced this problem before, even if the shape had changed.

Whenever his body resisted him, he pushed until he understood where the resistance came from. Whenever a technique failed, he repeated the movement until the flaw exposed itself. Whenever an enemy built a wall in front of him, he searched for the weakest point and drove something sharp through it.

This was simply another obstacle.

An unpleasant one.

Perhaps a dangerous one.

Still an obstacle.

Lucavion looked at the quill.

Then he grinned.

"Fine."

He picked it up again.

The headache stayed away.

A faint chill remained along his right temple, little more than the memory of pressure, but his fingers settled around the quill with that same unsettling ease.

Lucavion dipped the tip into the ink.

’If you are going to hide, then hide properly.’

He pulled the first sheet closer.

’I will drag you out eventually.’

The grin stayed on his lips as he lowered the quill.

He never saw how tightly his other hand had closed around the edge of the desk.

Nor did he notice the slight stiffness holding his shoulders in place.

And most importantly.....

His smirk was strained.

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