Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra-Chapter 641: A weird monster ?

"Oh," Selphine murmured. "Now he's interesting."

The illusion panned to a clearing strewn with broken branches and glimmering arcane traps—some half-spent, others ticking toward detonation. At its center, a young man towered over the chaos.

Bulky. Broad-shouldered. Arms like siege pulleys, bare to the elbow. His tunic was torn, soaked in sweat, and the axe in his hands was massive—worn, chipped at the edge, clearly used for more than show.

He moved with a brute's ease, but there was calculation in his rhythm. No wasted motion. Every step controlled. Every swing deliberate.

Two opponents circled him—one wielding twin short swords, the other casting mid-range kinetic bursts with precise, elegant gestures.

He didn't retreat.

He advanced.

A parry with the shaft of the axe. A sidestep that barely qualified as such. Then a low feint—and the blade came around, wide, cleaving through the first attacker's defense like parchment.

The second caster blinked backward.

Too slow.

The axe flew—not just swung, thrown—a whirling blur of iron and fury. It collided with the shield ward mid-air, shattered it, and sent the caster tumbling.

"...That's not basic," Cedric said quietly.

Elara's eyes narrowed.

"He's trained. Not formally. But trained."

"Street dueling?" Aurelian offered.

"Wartime," Cedric countered. "Or mercenary work. Maybe both."

"He looks northern," Selphine said thoughtfully, her gaze sharp beneath the flicker of illusion light. "The way he plants his feet… low stance, heavy hips. That's not city training."

Aurelian tilted his head. "North? You mean the icebound provinces? Or the Ironwood range?"

"Ironwood," Cedric answered before Selphine could. "The posture. Axe control. They don't teach that finesse unless you've spent years fighting beasts bigger than wagons. The north doesn't teach style. It teaches survival."

Aurelian gave a soft hum of agreement, eyes still locked on the projection. The young man had retrieved his axe now—dragging it free from the cracked stone like it weighed no more than a dagger. He didn't pose. Didn't look to the edges of the arena for acknowledgment.

He just moved on.

Elara's gaze hadn't shifted once.

The crowd around them murmured with fresh excitement, a cluster of onlookers already tossing spell-encoded tokens into a betting basin glowing with thin gold sigils. His odds were shifting. Fast.

"What's his rank, you think?" Selphine asked, not lightly.

Cedric's lips pressed into a thin line. "Hard to say from this surface."

"There's too much interference in the projection," Aurelian added, flicking his fingers through a sigil to try and adjust the resolution. "It's layered with veil distortion—intentional, probably. They don't want the outside reading signatures too clearly."

"But I saw something," Elara murmured.

They both turned.

Her eyes were narrowed, focused—like she wasn't watching a projection at all, but something far deeper.

"When he caught that second spell," she said slowly. "Right before he threw the axe. His body shimmered. Just for a second. Not illusion. Not armor. It was his 'intent' folding."

"It was his intent," Elara said, her voice low, eyes still locked on the fading shimmer in the illusion.

Selphine blinked. "His intent? From here?"

Aurelian turned fully to face her, brows raised. "Are you sure?"

Elara didn't look away. Her fingers curled slightly at her side, not in tension, but in memory.

"…Not really," she admitted. "Just a guess."

Cedric shifted beside her, eyes narrowing at the thought. Elara continued, voice growing quieter, more measured—like she was turning the memory over in her mind, checking it for cracks.

"But it wasn't mana armor. And it wasn't a defensive glyph. The shimmer came before the spell struck him. Just for a breath. Like something unseen was bracing for impact."

Selphine tilted her head, intrigued. "That's a very unorthodox way of using intent. Blocking a spell with will alone? That's barely theoretical. It's supposed to be suicidal."

Aurelian murmured, "And if it wasn't instinctual? If it was deliberate?"

"Then he's not just trained," Cedric said grimly. "He's conditioned."

The crowd cheered again, breaking momentarily into the heavy quiet that had fallen around the three of them.

Selphine's gaze flicked to Elara once more. "Have you ever seen anything like that before?"

Elara hesitated.

Then slowly—like drawing a blade from its scabbard—she nodded.

"…I have."

A pause.

The air felt heavier, suddenly. Touched by something unsaid.

Elara's eyes didn't flick to the illusion this time.

They drifted to the cobbled stones beneath her feet, to a memory lodged somewhere between pain and reverence.

"A certain someone," she said softly, "who was really good with a sword… also did that."

Cedric's breath caught—just slightly. But he didn't speak.

Elara didn't name him.

Didn't have to.

The shadow of a name lingered in the silence like a heartbeat underwater.

"Is it him?" Selphine asked, her voice lower now—no longer testing, no longer amused. Just curious, and sharper for it. "The one we talked about before?"

The illusion shimmered in the background, switching to another quadrant of the trial field—flashes of lightning lighting up the distant sky. But Elara didn't lift her gaze. Not yet.

"Yes," she said simply.

Aurelian exhaled through his nose, quietly, as though letting the weight of the truth settle in his chest. "Oh…"

He looked back toward the projection, even though the axe-wielding boy was no longer in view. "So he's talented like that."

"He's more than that," Elara murmured, finally raising her eyes again—not to the illusion, but to the edge of the sky where the first stars were beginning to cut through the dusk. "He's one of the most talented people I've ever seen. Dangerous. Brilliant. Stubborn."

Her voice trailed off. Then came the softer addendum, shaped more like a confession than praise:

"And utterly impossible."

Aurelian grinned faintly. "Sounds like someone I'd like."

Selphine tilted her head, her expression unreadable. "Sounds like someone I'd like to meet."

Elara's lips curved—not quite a smile. Something thinner. A thread of warmth woven into a tapestry of thorns.

"I'm not sure he'd let you," she said quietly.

Cedric said nothing. His jaw had tensed again, eyes forward but distant. He hadn't reacted to the compliments, but there was something in his posture—tight around the shoulders, just enough to suggest friction beneath the surface.

But he stayed still.

Still listening.

Still there.

And Elara—despite everything, despite the storm she felt brewing again behind her ribs—didn't retreat from the conversation.

She turned her gaze back to the illusion just as another clash broke out in a storm-lit clearing. She didn't see the axe-wielder again.

But she would.

She was sure of it.

And when she did… she'd know.

******

Nightfall came like a curtain drawn over the sky—swift, sudden, and strangely graceful.

Lucavion sat at the edge of a jagged cliff-plate, a slanted rise of stone overlooking what had once been part of a forest—now splintered and cratered, its trees twisted like dancers frozen mid-spin. Aetherlight flickered above, stars painted in patterns he didn't recognize, not constellations from the real world, but something older. Crafted.

"This place…" he murmured, leaning back on one hand as his eyes traced the twin moons suspended in the fabricated heavens, "...really is a fine piece of work."

[Hmm.] Vitaliara rested along his shoulder like a coil of warmth, her tail flicking lazily in time with the distant wind. [Takes an obsessive mind to build a world like this just to throw children into bloodsport.]

Lucavion chuckled under his breath. "Aesthetic bloodsport, to be fair. Look at that sky."

The soft crackle of firelight hummed nearby—contained, efficient, a small sphere of enchanted coals nestled beneath a heat-dome.

It was the basic ratio that was given to everyone who would be participating in the exam.

He stretched out his legs with a quiet sigh, a few light nicks still traced along his coat from the earlier scuffles. He'd fought over ten people in total now—some in groups, some one-on-one, but none of them had lasted beyond five minutes.

And not one of them had been a familiar name.

"No Arlenth," he muttered. "No Shiven. No Roulane. Not even that axe brute from the Eloria mines."

[Who are they?]

"People that I will meet."

[….]

She couldn't really reply to that…

Just as Vitaliara's tail settled back into its idle sway and the heat-dome flickered in quiet rhythm, something shifted.

Lucavion felt it first.

Not heard. Felt.

RUMBLE!