Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra - Chapter 652

Chapter 652: Who is this person ?
The viewing chamber of the Citadel pulsed with sudden light—no longer veiled by camouflage or masked by spatial turbulence.

The event had unfolded clearly. Publicly.

And the chamber reacted as though the very laws of reality had just… blinked.

Silence followed the display—one that wasn’t born from awe, but disbelief so complete it swallowed sound.

Dozens of mages froze mid-sentence, mid-calculation. The aetheric projections circling the main observation pillars replayed the moment again and again.

There was no violence. No explosion.

Just a white cat walking across moss-covered stone, its steps elegant, measured. Toward the Warden Beast.

And then the Warden simply—

Knelt.

Its monstrous form—immense, ancient, and coiled with territorial aggression—had bowed. Not under threat. Not under spell. But willingly.

Its mana hadn’t shattered.

It had surrendered.

A senior analyst broke the silence first, voice cracking slightly. “The… the beast didn’t fight. It submitted.”

Another mage shook his head. “That’s not submission. That’s reverence.”

“Then how—”

“He didn’t use any spells,” another added. “There was no aura burst. No coercion. Nothing to command the beast.”

More voices now, overlapping in a rising hum of confusion.

“Could it be an illusion—?”

“No, no, the Warden’s structure rejected all illusions on entry. That creature is ancient. It wouldn’t yield to misdirection.”

“Then what was it?”

“Who is that contestant?!”

“Candidate 7342—Lucavion,” someone supplied. “Estimated four-star rating, but the projections are inconsistent. Earlier analysis marked him as Tier Three. His elimination count is rising exponentially.”

“He’s manipulating the relic’s mana without drawing from it directly—”

“That’s not manipulation. That’s resonance. He’s not consuming the zone’s energy. He’s syncing with it.”

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

But then—

A new voice entered.

Deeper.

Slower.

Unmistakable.

“…That is a mythical beast,” the Headmaster’s voice said, his tone quiet—but it spread like thunder across the chamber.

Every mage stopped.

“…That kid,” he continued, “is contracted to a Mythical Beast of Life.”

The room nearly cracked.

Someone choked on their breath.

Another dropped a quill.

“A—what?!”

“Impossible. There’s no record—no signature—how did we not detect it before?!”

The Headmaster didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. The weight of his words had already changed the air.

Mythical beasts were legend. Not metaphorical legend—literal. Higher beings born of the world’s primal origins. Known not for power alone, but for dominion over abstract forces. Time. Death. Life.

And Life…

“Warden-class guardians yield only to higher-ordered entities,” whispered a scholar-mage, her lips pale. “Not through combat. Through hierarchy.”

“She didn’t dominate it,” another muttered, replaying the moment. “She recognized it. And it obeyed.”

Keleran’s voice cut in, sharp. “Where’s the familiar registration data? That beast—has it ever appeared in an academy contract roster?”

A fresh wave of panic surged through the Citadel’s observation chamber.

Dozens of mages clustered near the central pillar, their fingers flying over suspended arrays of script and code, glyphs blinking erratically as they dug deeper into the familiar registries—pulling from sealed records, archived threads, restricted channels normally kept buried under political clearance and war-time classification.

Because that word—Mythical Beast—was not one to be used lightly.

And now, it had a face.

“…Who is this boy?” someone whispered.

Keleran’s jaw clenched. “Cross-reference his application. Lucavion—pull his lineage, origin, arcane signature. Any affiliations, any documented contracts—now.”

Another mage, pale and shaking, gestured toward a floating scroll. “That earlier incident—the collapse in Quadrant Thirty-One. The Vekorith disappearance. We couldn’t detect any magic signature then… but now?”

He expanded the recording.

And there she was.

The white cat.

Faint. Barely visible.

But present.

Not fleeing. Not watching.

Walking.

Straight into the site where Vekorith had dissolved.

“You mean to say…” another mage began, breath catching, “…that both events—the Warden surrender and Vekorith’s vanishing—are linked to that creature?”

“And to Lucavion,” someone else added, quietly.

Then, a shout: “I’ve found a record.”

The chamber stilled.

The mage, eyes wide with disbelief, highlighted the thread for all to see. The floating scroll projected above the core lens—lines of ancient war-record transcripts unraveling, each word stamped with timeworn authority.

“A cat. White-furred. Golden-eyed. Often seen perched on the shoulder of General Gerald… during the war.”

A hush fell over the room, thick and immediate.

Then—like shattering glass—

“Wait. You mean—the Starscourge?”

Dozens turned, the name falling from stunned lips like a taboo dragged back from the dead.

“Gerald. Starscourge Gerald. The Slayer of Loria’s Heavens. That Gerald?”

“The man who razed the Fifteenth Aether Army in a night—who vanished during the Grand Collapse—that Gerald?”

“How is this young man—this Lucavion—connected to him?!”

Another voice broke through. “It can’t be the same creature. Familiars are bound. When a contractor dies, they don’t just go free—they collapse. Fade. Their essence deteriorates without sustained arcane support.”

“That’s the law of contract sorcery—everyone knows that.”

“No familiar can be linked to more than one mage. Especially not across generations.”

“But if that’s true—then how is this even possible?”

The answer came not from panic.

Not from analysis.

But from above.

From the one man whose silence weighed more than their chaos.

The Headmaster’s voice dropped like a curtain across the entire chamber.

“…Mythical Beasts,” he said, “are not familiars in the common sense. They are not bound by the same threads. They are not born of mortal mana, nor sustained by it. They do not exist for their contractor. They simply are.”

He descended a single step from his arcane ring, the eleven conceptual spells orbiting him shifting—subtly, reverently.

“They are echoes of the world’s original will,” he continued, “the remnants of what existed before even the Aether was named.”

He paused.

Then, softly—

“Especially a Beast of Life.”

The word Life resonated with a weight that couldn’t be mimicked. Not power. Not threat. Just truth.

Unyielding. Fundamental.

“As long as life persists,” he said, “so shall she.”

Eyes turned back to the image of the cat, now framed in the projections above the central obelisk. Her white fur gleamed faintly under the relic’s light, her golden eyes not watching the beast she had silenced—but the boy who had followed her without hesitation.

Lucavion.

A stunned murmur rippled through the Citadel.

The Headmaster’s words had struck like scripture—undeniable, ancient—but they left behind more questions than answers.

A younger mage near the base platform broke the silence, his voice tentative, trembling beneath the weight of what he dared to ask.

“Are you saying…” he began, “that the Starscourge Gerald… truly died? And that the Mythical Beast of Life… perished with him?”

Heads turned. Even the floating arrays faltered for a second, the projection flickering before restabilizing.

“Because if that’s what you’re implying,” he continued, swallowing hard, “then are we also to believe she—the beast—was reborn? And then… contracted herself to this kid?”

The silence that followed was immediate—yet, curiously, not filled with argument.

Because despite how outlandish it sounded, there was only one explanation that didn’t violate the foundational laws of the world.

“She must have died,” one of the elder analysts murmured, eyes locked to the flickering data across his thread-scroll. “There’s no way for a familiar bond to linger this long otherwise. If she hadn’t perished, she’d still be linked to Gerald.”

“And Gerald…” another said, voice low, “hasn’t been seen in nearly three decades. No message. No trace. Not even whispers.”

“It fits,” Levrinne added, almost reluctantly. “He was called the Starscourge, yes—but his strength came from what stood beside him. If she died, and then returned… this new bond, this Lucavion—it’s not a fluke. It’s a continuation.”

“And if the Beast of Life chose to return,” Keleran said grimly, “then it means the world needed her to.”

A pause.

Followed by the slow sharpening of eyes.

Then came a flicker on the central array.

A distortion. An active mana flare in Lucavion’s zone.

“Another contestant’s approaching,” one of the analysts said, voice tight. “One of the flagged Tier 4 entries. We’ve been watching him since day one. Eastern sect representative. Specializes in mistwalking techniques and distortion blade forms. Ranked fifth in projected power.”

A thin ripple cut through the forest zone’s projection.

A figure burst from the edge of the tree line—cloak shimmering with illusion layers, twin blades glowing with spatial resonance. His form curved through the air like a serpent made of glass and will.

Descending.

Hard.

Fast.

Straight toward Lucavion.

Gasps echoed across the Citadel’s chamber as the strike dropped like a divine verdict.

“Oh…” Keleran leaned forward, eyes narrowing with clinical anticipation. “This will be a good chance…”

A pause.

A faint smirk.

“…to see what the boy can really do.”