Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 877: Thoughts

“Core Weave: Musculature Optimization Sequence—Level 1.”

“Oh good,” Lucavion muttered. “Level one.”

[You activated a combat rehabilitation basin, you idiot.]

“I didn’t know it was a combat rehabilitation basin!”

[Because you didn’t read the inscription below it!]

“Stop with the nagging,” Lucavion muttered, rolling his neck as the glowing bathwater pulsed again. The pressure had shifted—less crushing now, more like… resistance training conducted by a polite ghost.

At first, it had been sharp, jarring. But now?

Now it was settling. Contained. Rhythmic.

The hum of mana wrapped around him like a second skin, woven into the fibers of muscle and bone with deliberate care. It pressed—yes—but no longer with the same overwhelming weight. His body had adapted.

No—endured.

’This thing was probably calibrated for your average Awakened,’ he thought, glancing lazily at the still-glowing glyphs. ’A baseline framework. Some middling graduate with soft nerves and glass wrists.’

But Lucavion was not average.

Not anymore.

His body, reforged through trials they didn’t document in any Academy syllabus, was denser, faster, more conditioned than most of the empire’s ranked Awakened twice his age. Muscles that had been broken and rebuilt under pressure spells, mana flux, physical trauma—and something deeper. Something older.

He let the next wave of mana crush down along his shoulders and didn’t even flinch.

In fact… it felt kind of nice.

Not like a bath.

More like sparring with gravity itself and winning.

“Mm,” he exhaled, sinking deeper. “There it is.”

[You’re enjoying this?] Vitaliara sounded both disgusted and mildly betrayed.

“It’s calibrated for the weak,” he said lazily, eyes closing. “And I’m not.”

[Oh, now that’s not insufferable at all.]

He didn’t rise to it. Just let the water cycle through another pulse, and this time, his body met it with ease—stability. Not resistance, but balance. Like the mana had finally recognized what it was dealing with and adjusted accordingly.

The glyphs flickered in a soft, steady sequence now. More like acknowledgment than aggression.

“I could stay here all night,” Lucavion murmured.

[Don’t tempt fate.]

“Temptation implies doubt. I’m just relaxing.”

[You are the only person I’ve ever seen call magical muscle compression relaxing.]

“I’m not most people.”

She didn’t answer.

But from the sill, her golden eyes watched. Quiet now. Not irritated. Just… watching.

Because whether she’d admit it or not—

She agreed.

[That man. Or… thing. Whatever it was.] Vitaliara’s voice echoed faintly in the chamber, like her thoughts had found a way to ripple through the steam. [That wasn’t normal.]

Lucavion didn’t open his eyes. Just let the compression field hum across his spine as he exhaled, slow and deep. “No argument here.”

[You didn’t recognize him? From the novel?]

That pulled a thought from deeper inside—the quiet space where calculation and memory slept like wolves in waiting.

’I didn’t,’ Lucavion thought. Not a whisper, not even for her to hear—just a truth folding inward.

There had been no mention of such a figure in the original narrative. No ink-smeared notes in the margins, no foreshadowed Chapter tucked between lines. And Lucavion remembered every scene with surgical clarity. Every name. Every death. Every power tier and narrative cue.

Yet that man—his voice, his eyes, the way he’d glitched as if reality had tried to swallow him back—

Nothing.

“I didn’t know something like that existed,” he finally said aloud, voice calm despite the undertow of unease.

Vitaliara emerged more fully now, perched just beside the glyphwork, her knees drawn up, her hair curling in the mana mist. Her gaze was unreadable, a storm concealed in still water.

[He was made of mana, I think.] Her tone dropped. [Not shaped by it. Made of it. Like a cast with no core.]

Lucavion turned that over slowly. “But he spoke. Thought. Reacted.”

[Exactly.] She tapped one claw lightly against the glyph-lit stone. [And yet when he said “Unstable,” I felt nothing. Nothing. No source. No core. No link. Just… void.]

He opened his eyes, barely, gaze flicking to her. “So he didn’t lie.”

[Not about that.]

Silence fell between them again, dense and layered. The mana field pulsed once more—subtler now, as though it too were listening.

[But he did one thing that no construct, no projection, no puppet should be able to do,] Vitaliara murmured.

Lucavion turned his head slightly.

[He identified you.]

His expression didn’t change. But the stillness around him did.

[Lucavion… there is no one else I know—nothing in the Academy—who could look at you and see what I see. Who could name it.]

“You think he knew?”

[He said Abyss. But that wasn’t what hit me.]

“What, then?”

[Your mana. He recognized it. You weren’t suppressing it fully, were you?]

Lucavion gave a faint shrug. “Didn’t feel the need to.”

[Exactly. That thing didn’t need your permission to see. It felt it.]

There was a pause. Not accusatory—just cautious.

[No normal human can sense death mana, Lucavion. Not truly.] Vitaliara’s tone was soft now, but not uncertain. [It’s not just rare. It’s forbidden. Forgotten. The body rejects it, the soul recoils from it. Most mages can’t even see it, let alone name it.]

Lucavion’s eyes drifted to the ceiling, watching steam coil into soft spirals above. The mana in the basin pulsed again, but it barely stirred him now. He’d long since adapted to its rhythm—made it his.

“So,” he said slowly, “how’d he do it?”

Vitaliara didn’t answer at first. She traced the edge of a glyph with one fingertip, her nails glinting faintly in the charged air.

[That’s what unsettled me. That wasn’t some highborn enchanter or academy elder with a fancy bloodline. That thing didn’t even have a proper form. It was stitched together with mana like it had crawled out of the seams of a broken spell.]

He exhaled softly, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.

“And yet it saw me.”

[It did.] Her golden gaze met his. [And not just you. It saw what you carry.]

Lucavion’s eyes half-lidded again.

The [Flame of Equinox].

A black fire that burned not with heat, but with silence. It devoured noise, light, presence—left no ash, only absence. In all his uses of it, no one had ever been able to name it. Scholars had speculated. Alchemists theorized. But the truth always slipped past them like ink through cracked parchment.

That was why he didn’t hide it.

Because no one could trace it.

Because even seeing it didn’t mean understanding it.

Most just assumed it was a rare affinity or a corrupted elemental strain—dangerous, yes, but still within the realm of the known. Manageable.

’But he knew.’

Lucavion’s jaw flexed.

That… thing hadn’t recoiled in fear.

It had identified.

Named.

Abyss.

A word never spoken aloud in the original script. A word that had weight even in silence.

[That’s why you’ve never been careful, isn’t it?] Vitaliara said quietly. [With the flame. You let them see because they can’t recognize it. You wanted someone to.]

Lucavion didn’t respond.

Not at first.

Then—”Maybe,” he said, too lightly to be casual.

But both Vitaliara and himself knew that was not just a maybe.

’A clue.’

After all, there were a lot of things that he didn’t even know about himself.

Weren’t there?