Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra - Chapter 651

Chapter 651: Gains in the Exam (3)
The Warden Beast’s breath came slower now—deep, rhythmic, a lullaby carved from the old world’s lungs. Its massive form, once poised to destroy, now softened into light. The final threads of its essence lifted from its bark-veined limbs like mist rising from morning soil, spiraling gently into the air.

Vitalaira didn’t move at first.

She simply stood there, eyes locked on the dissolving beast. She didn’t speak again—not with words. Not yet. But the forest around them understood. It had heard her.

And it obeyed.

The clearing brightened—not from the sky, but from beneath. The earth began to glow, faint at first, then steadier, as if something beneath the soil had awakened. Lines of mana—thin, bioluminescent veins—crisscrossed underfoot, converging around the base of the ancient tree that housed the relic.

Lucavion took a breath, slow and steady. The air here had changed. Not denser. Not heavier.

Fuller.

Then Vitaliara turned to him.

[Lucavion, sit.]

He blinked.

“Commanding me now?”

[Yes,] she said simply, padding over to the moss-covered stones beneath the relic. [This place is not like the others. The mana rising from here—it’s unfiltered, pure, life-shaped. You won’t get a better chance.]

Lucavion glanced at the tree behind her, its roots thick and tangled, pulsing with quiet light. He gave a short nod and stepped forward, settling beneath its canopy, his back resting against its trunk. The moment he did, the ground answered—mana rising into him like water soaking into parched earth.

His body tensed.

[Don’t try to absorb it,] Vitaliara instructed. [Not directly. You’re not using this to advance your core. Your [Flame of Equinox] is already compressed to its peak. If you try to push it further now, it’ll collapse.]

“So what am I doing?”

[Strengthening the channels.]

Lucavion’s eyes narrowed. He closed them.

[Your mana veins and ganglions—they’re still rigid, overstructured. Human cultivation isn’t made for you. But here, now, this vitality can do what structured methods won’t. You must guide it. Gently.]

She leapt onto a nearby stone, watching him like a priestess beside a sacrificial flame.

[Start with your lower abdomen. Find the central ganglion beneath your dantian. Let the mana seep in—don’t force it. Let it choose.]

Lucavion followed her voice, steadying his breath. The warmth rising through the soles of his feet flowed upward like smoke, curling through his legs, weaving into the subtle lattice of his inner network. His focus narrowed. Ganglions—the nerve-like clusters of mana response—lit up under the flow.

One by one, he found them.

He didn’t command.

He invited.

And the vitality responded.

It poured through him like spring floodwaters, but not to empower. To refine. His veins—the conduits that carried his power—groaned under the tension, their density shifting, their width expanding in microfractures before knitting back together stronger, more efficient. Each breath deepened the process, his body humming low with pressure, his blood heated not by fire but by the quiet song of life itself.

[Good,] Vitaliara murmured. [Keep going. Don’t resist the change.]

His chest thrummed with energy—not chaotic, not blinding.

Just right.

It lasted less than two minutes.

And then—

It changed.

Lucavion’s eyes shot open.

He hadn’t moved.

Hadn’t reached out.

But the vitality rising from the tree—the leftovers, the ambient residue Vitaliara had let drift free—moved on its own.

Straight into him.

The pulse was clean. Warm. And real.

Not like devouring. Not like conquest.

Like recognition.

His body drank it in, and he felt the shift—not just in the veins, not just in the ganglions.

In everything.

Like the world had acknowledged him. Not as intruder. Not even as heir.

But as part of it.

[That’s… new,] Vitaliara said quietly, voice laced with wonder.

Lucavion opened his eyes fully. They gleamed faintly gold-green, just for a breath, before returning to obsidian black.

[That’s… new,] Vitaliara said quietly, voice laced with wonder. [I didn’t expect that.]

Lucavion didn’t speak yet, still listening to the echoes beneath his skin. The vitality wasn’t burning or pulsing like most mana did—it was nesting. Seeping into tissue, curling into bone. His muscles twitched subtly, not from strain but from adaptation. A low warmth ran through his spine, not sharp like heat, but steady, anchoring.

[Vitality isn’t supposed to do that,] she murmured, leaping lightly to his side. Her eyes, glowing faintly in the relic’s light, narrowed with studious focus. [Your muscle fibers… they’re absorbing it. Your bones, too. Like they’re drinking it directly.]

Lucavion finally moved, flexing a hand, watching the way his fingers responded—cleaner, sharper. As if they’d shed microseconds of delay that he hadn’t even known were there.

“What does that mean?” he asked, quiet, curious.

[It means your body isn’t just evolving to hold more power,] she replied, tail flicking in a tight motion behind her. [It’s becoming power. You’re not just cultivating energy anymore. You’re rewriting the rules it obeys.]

Lucavion opened his mouth, something sharp and amused ready on his tongue—

—SWOOSH!

His head snapped to the right.

Too fast.

Too close.

A flicker—just the barest whisper of motion—and then pressure behind him, sudden and sharp, like the kiss of a blade at the base of his neck.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t need to.

The estoc was in his hand before thought caught up to motion, raised just a fraction—not to strike, but to check.

The air behind him split like paper.

A figure stepped into clarity from nothing—a ripple in space folding open to reveal a cloak the color of smoke, boots soundless even on leaf-covered ground. No presence. No mana signature. Just intent.

“Well,” Lucavion said calmly, gaze forward even as his blade held steady to the side. “You’re late.”

Lucavion’s blade remained poised, its point still faintly tilted toward the now-empty air behind him.

And yet… nothing moved.

No leaves stirred. No breath. Not even the usual hum of the forest’s deeper rhythm.

He exhaled slowly, lowering the estoc just an inch—just enough to signify he’d noticed, not enough to say he’d let his guard down.

“Disguises, cloaking, silence techniques,” he mused aloud, gaze still on the tree before him. “And still, you rely on theatrics.”

The silence deepened.

He tilted his head slightly.

“No reply?” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You must be nervous.”

Nothing.

Not a twig snap, not a single heartbeat out of rhythm. Even Vitaliara remained still, her luminous eyes narrowed, tail frozen mid-flick as she scanned the surroundings with a predator’s patience.

Lucavion’s fingers flexed once around the hilt of his blade.

“Or perhaps,” he murmured, lowering his voice to something almost playful, “you just want me to turn around again. Make a show of it. Pretend I don’t know you’re crouched—” he shifted his foot slightly, feeling the faintest breeze, “three steps off-center, hidden by a mana veil fine enough to pass through most detection arrays.”

No movement.

Just quiet tension.

A heartbeat passed.

Then another.

Then—click.

The subtle sound of shifting weight on moss-covered stone, deliberate and measured.

Still no figure.

But a voice came, finally, light as drifting ash and just as elusive.

“What was that just now?”

The voice was no longer behind him—it came from across the relic, threaded with curiosity, and something sharper. Something that watched too closely.

Lucavion didn’t glance toward it.

He simply exhaled, slow and measured, as if the question had been tossed into a still pond and he’d chosen not to disturb the ripples.

“I imagine you’re referring to the beast,” he said lightly. “Or the technique I used.”

A pause.

A silence so complete it almost hummed.

Then the voice again, this time laced with a hint of tension.

“You dismantled a Warden-class in a single motion. Its mana defenses alone should’ve repelled any direct compression. Yet your flame… pierced it. Broke the channels. What was that?”

Lucavion shifted, stretching his fingers once before letting them rest lazily on his hip.

“I like to call it art,” he replied with a smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes. “But if you’re looking for a name, you’re a little late to the gallery showing.”

Another silence.

Not empty—no, far from it.

The forest suddenly felt off, as if the angles had subtly shifted. Light bent wrong. The sound of rustling leaves echoed twice, like a playback from another direction. His heartbeat came delayed—then too early. The chirp of a distant bird warped into a whisper.

Illusion.

Not crude. Not haphazard.

This was an artifice, a layered distortion of space and sense.

Lucavion closed his eyes for just a breath, letting go of the noise in his ears, the flickers in his sight.

‘So she wants to play with perception.’

Unfortunate.

Because she’d chosen the one target she shouldn’t.

Where most relied on aura, scent, sound—Lucavion had something far more insidious.

He could feel vitality.

The rhythm of life. The flow of breath through soil and skin, the quiet tension in coiled muscle, the scentless pulse of being.

And there it was.

A ripple.

Above.

He opened his eyes just as the illusion shimmered once—then fractured like glass catching too much sun.

And in that instant—

SWOOSH!

A blur descended from the canopy. Cloak trailing, dagger glinting, intent deadly and direct.

Lucavion moved without sound.

His body rotated half a degree, his foot grounding with perfect poise, and the estoc was already there—angled back, tip rising like a drawn breath—

CLANG!

Steel met steel.

Her blade caught against his in a burst of pressure, the strike arrested mid-air. Her eyes—just barely visible behind the veil of illusion—widened for a fraction of a heartbeat.

“Nice try,” Lucavion said softly, their weapons locked between them. “But I don’t fight by what I see.”