Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra-Chapter 649: Gains in the exam

Priscilla stood there in the quiet corridor, the echo of Lucien's footsteps still lingering like an aftertaste of venom.

Her hand remained clenched at her side—tightly, violently—until her knuckles turned white beneath the satin of her glove. The pain in her shoulder pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, but it wasn't the ache that consumed her.

It was the helplessness.

The indignity of being touched—branded—by someone who wore cruelty like a crown and called it authority.

She couldn't strike him.

She couldn't speak against him.

Not here.

Not yet.

Her lips parted, but no breath came.

And then—

Soft footsteps.

A faint rustle of fabric.

"Your Highness," Idena said gently, voice low as she approached, eyes flicking to Priscilla's stiff posture. "Are you—"

"I'm fine," Priscilla said before the question could finish.

Too quickly.

Too sharp.

Idena said nothing more, but her gaze lingered at the shoulder Lucien had gripped, her brow subtly furrowing.

Priscilla finally exhaled—long, slow.

A breath to bury the fire.

To chain the scream.

Then, without another word, she straightened her coat, turned toward the arched corridor ahead, and began walking.

Not a single tremble in her stride.

No fury in her step.

But the silence around her deepened, as if the palace itself had noticed the fracture in its spine and had chosen, wisely, not to speak of it.

Because Priscilla Lysandra had learned, long ago, that in a house like this—

To endure was not weakness.

It was preparation.

****

The terrain had changed.

Gone were the fractured cliffs and elemental valleys that had once defined the outer zones. Here, near the center, the crafted space became something else entirely—tighter, denser, heavier. The air itself pulsed with ambient mana, saturated enough to thrum beneath Lucavion's skin like a second pulse.

It had been two days since the trial began.

Two days of movement, skirmishes, silence, blood. He had counted, loosely—thirty-seven eliminations by his hand, maybe more if you included the ones who'd fled and collapsed from lingering wounds later. Most hadn't been threats. A few had been decent. None had been interesting.

He stepped over the shattered remnants of what might have once been a small team's camp—a broken shield charm still flickering faintly under a collapsed stone pillar, blood smudged across the runes like an unfinished sentence.

[Still no signs of her?] Vitaliara asked, her voice calm but knowing.

Lucavion didn't answer right away. He just kept walking.

'Two days in,' he thought, gaze flicking upward toward the warped sky, where the false stars now seemed to watch more than shine. 'And the rhythm's starting to shift.'

The exam, as he remembered from the novel, spanned five days in total. Five days to decide who among nearly ten thousand would claim one of ten seats. Elara had carved her name into the trial during the final two—a miracle fighter rising from obscurity.

Which meant, if the pacing held true…

"The real contenders are about to wake up," Lucavion said aloud.

[Finally.] Vitaliara stretched languidly, though her claws remained just slightly unsheathed. [I was beginning to think this was just a traveling showcase of mediocrity.]

"To be fair," he mused, sidestepping a crater where a mana trap had recently detonated, "most of them were only here for a chance at being seen. Not to win."

[And yet they fought.]

"They always do. Hope is a fascinating addiction."

He stopped at a rise, overlooking a basin that pulsed with structured enchantments—half-ruined buildings arranged in a spiral, runes carved into the walls still glowing faintly with warding spells. A convergence zone.

Lucavion's eyes narrowed.

The moment stretched—silent, still—and then the air shifted.

He could feel it before he saw it: a subtle tightening, like the whole fabricated world had just drawn a boundary around itself. The wind stilled unnaturally, not from lack of motion, but because something larger had just wrapped its fingers around the sky.

He tilted his head upward.

There, far above the twin moons and false stars, faint outlines flickered into existence—geometric patterns interlaced with arcane script, forming translucent barriers that stretched like a dome across the heavens. They pulsed once with a deep, golden hue, then settled.

"Oh…" he murmured.

[Vitaliara stiffened.] [That's a seal.]

Lucavion's smirk returned, slow and inevitable. "It is."

[What does it mean?]

He didn't answer right away.

Instead, he turned his gaze back down to the spiral-shaped ruins in the basin below, the glow of active enchantments growing brighter, more focused. And then—he felt it.

A presence. No, several. New signatures blooming like stars coming alive across the horizon, each one tied to a point of power.

Just like the novel.

He exhaled.

"The Local Zones," he said softly, almost reverently. "So it begins."

The world answered.

A voice—not quite a voice, more like a chorus of echoes folded through layers of mana—reverberated through the terrain, clear and precise, resonating across stone, air, and bone.

----------

"PHASE TWO: LOCAL DOMINION TRIALS

Objective: Establish control zones by capturing one of the activated relics.

Designated contestants who successfully claim a relic shall be recognized as Zone Lords.

As a Zone Lord, you must defend your relic from challengers during the Dominion Period.

Sub-trials now apply. Your relic draws challengers. Defeating them strengthens your bond with the domain.

At the conclusion of the Dominion Period, all surviving Zone Lords shall be granted a cultivation boon derived from the relic's origin—unique, and irreversible."

----------

Silence returned, only for a heartbeat.

Then, far off, the ruins shuddered as golden light erupted from its center—no explosion, no sound—just a brilliant, pure pillar rising skyward.

A relic had activated.

Lucavion's eyes flicked toward the pulse of light, then beyond it. He could already feel the other pillars awakening, flaring in different corners of the central map.

"…There they are."

The golden light from the first pillar lanced through the darkened sky, piercing the false heavens with divine clarity. As the second, third, and fourth erupted across the distant terrain—each beacon painting its corner of the world with unique hues—Lucavion's eyes narrowed, not at the spectacle, but at the feeling that followed.

Then came the fifth.

To his east.

Its light was different.

It wasn't sharp or aggressive like the others. It bloomed—soft, vibrant, almost breathing with a gentle cadence. Green and gold wove together like spring after frost, and with it came the unmistakable pulse of something ancient and eternal.

The energy of life.

Vitaliara's breath caught, and her claws tensed against his shoulder.

[This…] she whispered, eyes wide, pupils narrowing like a predator scenting home. [This one…]

Lucavion didn't look at her—he didn't need to.

He could feel it too.

The warmth curling under his skin. The way the very ground seemed to pulse with dormant fertility. Not healing. Not magic. But vitality in its purest, unbound state.

Each pillar drew from its surrounding zone. Mana shaped by environment, by memory, by the themes of the land itself. And this zone—eastern, forest-choked, half-swallowed by thorned ruins and old stone groves—had long been marked in the novel as the cradle of renewal.

Life. Growth. Vital restoration.

The pillar's light pulsed again, its rhythm almost… familiar.

[If I reach that zone,]

Lucavion nodded once, calm as ever.

"I know."

[You—]

"I felt it," he said simply, finally turning his gaze east. His expression didn't change, but his stance did—more alert, more certain. "And I was already heading there."