Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra-Chapter 639: Central nobles

The clink of porcelain.

The muted rustle of silk.

The kind of laughter that didn't reach the eyes.

Valeria sat with her back straight and her hands folded politely over her lap, the gold-threaded edge of her sleeve catching faintly in the light. The salon was, of course, exquisite—gleaming with polished marble floors, skyglass chandeliers that shimmered with captured daylight, and a ceiling enchanted to reflect the cloudless Arcanian sky beyond.

The tea was perfectly brewed. The pastries were delicate, airy, probably woven by aether-fed ovens and kitchens that never saw dust.

She hadn't touched any of it.

Her eyes were fixed on the projection hovering above the center table.

It was shaped like a disk of water suspended in midair—one of the newer scrying enchantments. She didn't understand the theory, not really. Something about binding a directional lens to a stabilized leyline thread, layered with an observing sigil tuned to broadcast.

All she knew was that it worked.

She could see the arena.

Or at least, the artificial space carved from reality where the Candidate Trials were being held.

At first glance, it resembled a forest.

At second glance—it didn't.

The trees shimmered. Moved subtly. Like they weren't made of bark or leaf, but light and intention. Some floated, untethered by root. Others rearranged their own canopies to provide cover or cut off escape. The ground was shifting too—slowly, steadily shrinking.

Not visibly.

But you could feel it.

The pressure. The urgency.

From the sky's-eye view offered by the broadcast, it looked like a calm expanse. But Valeria knew better. She could see it in the way the contenders moved—always glancing over shoulders, always repositioning, knowing the space would only get smaller.

The rule was clear.

Survive.

And to survive?

You fought.

"They've structured it cleverly, this exam," one of the nobles beside her commented. "Much more dynamic than anything I had ever expected. Let the commoners cull themselves. Natural selection, but with glamour."

"They've structured it cleverly, this exam," one of the nobles beside her commented. "Much more dynamic than anything I had ever expected. Let the commoners cull themselves. Natural selection, but with glamour." freeweɓnovel.cѳm

The voice belonged to Lady Serette Valcarrini.

Valeria turned her gaze just slightly—enough to see the woman without offering her full attention.

A high noble, first daughter of House Valcarrini, whose holdings stretched from the eastern mineral provinces to the Aetherglass coasts. Well-bred, immaculately dressed, and recently appointed as a junior patron of the Arcanis Cultural Circle—a meaningless title used to inflate court visibility. Her family ranked high. A whisper beneath the inner circle of the imperial court itself.

She was also the host of this tea gathering.

The hall they sat in wasn't hers, not technically—it belonged to a historical embassy villa—but everything in it bore the subtle fingerprints of Valcarrini taste. Pale lavender drapery enchanted to catch the sun at a flattering angle. Imported harpists playing too softly to matter. Dishes trimmed in lapis threadwork. A performance of elegance, through and through.

And yet, Valeria thought, none of it masks the rot.

Lady Serette smiled faintly at her own remark, sipping from her cup as though she'd just observed the weather.

Valeria said nothing.

She watched the projection instead—saw a young boy with no crest dodge a bolt of ice and immediately retaliate with a flare of crimson fire that nearly scorched the trees above him. Quick. Adaptable. The strike lacked polish, but not instinct.

"I suppose they'll let a few through," Valcarrini added, her tone light. "A token handful, to keep up the appearance. But truly, what could they hope to gain by flooding our halls with untrained mongrels?"

Before Valeria could reply, another voice joined from her left.

Softer. Sweeter. But worse for it.

"Indeed," said Lady Clyenne Montellara, her gloved fingers brushing idly against the rim of her cup. "We will be attending the same academy as those people. I truly wonder what the Council was thinking."

She leaned forward slightly, the pearls in her earrings catching the enchanted light.

"Honestly, I've seen horses with more decorum. Some of these 'candidates' barely know which end of a spell crystal to hold. It's going to feel more like a stable than a school."

Valeria's cup hadn't moved.

Her posture remained perfectly straight, perfectly unoffended.

But her eyes were still locked on the scrying disk above the table.

Where another contender—a girl with patchwork armor and a jagged blade—had just caught a casting rune mid-air, ripped it from the space between them, and turned it back on her attacker in a burst of unexpected brilliance.

It wasn't clean. It wasn't noble.

But it was precise.

And it worked.

Stable, Valeria thought bitterly. These women wouldn't last five minutes on a real field, and they dare compare them to beasts.

She didn't speak.

Not yet.

She didn't speak.

Not yet.

But silence, in rooms like these, was never allowed to last for long.

Lady Montellara turned her gaze toward Valeria with a smile far too practiced to be genuine.

"And you, Lady Olarion," she said lightly, as if requesting a fashion opinion and not treading into a minefield. "Surely you've dealt with… people like them?"

There was a touch of something sharp beneath the sweetness—a goad wrapped in silk.

"Yes," Valcarrini chimed in, tilting her head ever so slightly. "You've spent the last year swinging blades on the Empire's behalf, haven't you? Marshes, baronies, border disputes—how do you manage such company? I imagine it must be… character-building."

A few quiet laughs circled the table.

Valeria's fingers remained still around her cup.

The projection above them shifted again—now showing a clash between four contenders over a single raised platform. Spells collided mid-air, shattering into scattered light. One boy was already on the ground, unconscious or worse, while the others moved like wolves circling a wounded beast.

Valeria exhaled.

And then, at last, she looked up.

Her voice, when she spoke, was even. Polite. Sharpened only by what wasn't said.

"People like them," she repeated, as if tasting the phrase.

She turned to face the two women, her tone measured and calm. "I've marched alongside all kinds, Lady Montellara. Highborn, lowborn, mages, sellswords. And yes—commoners."

She paused, letting the word settle.

"In my experience, titles rarely stop arrows. Or fire. Or hunger."

The room quieted—not out of shock, but because the words were spoken with too much weight to be dismissed outright.

Valeria's gaze lingered on the scrying disk, then returned to Valcarrini.

"I have seen cowardice in velvet and loyalty in rags. And I've seen fools—noble and not—die the same way: screaming, and far from home."

Montellara blinked.

Valcarrini's smile stiffened, just barely.

Valeria offered neither apology nor elaboration.

Her voice, still calm, dropped just slightly. "If the Academy has decided to open its gates to them, then I can only assume it is because someone finally realized that power doesn't care where you were born."

A beat passed.

Then Lady Valcarrini lifted her chin, her smile returning—tight, composed, and gleaming like a dagger under fine lace.

"How very noble of you, Lady Olarion," she said, voice dipped in elegance and edged in disdain. "Truly. But perhaps that's the difference between those of us born to lead… and those raised to follow."

Her teacup clinked softly against its saucer as she set it down with calculated grace.

"You speak of hunger and fire as if they are the great equalizers," she continued. "But power is not simply about survival. It is about refinement. Control. Elegance. And those things, I'm afraid, are tied to blood."

She gestured vaguely toward the scrying projection. "Let them prove themselves. Let them claw and scramble through mud and illusion. But they will still be what they were—children of dirt, dressed in borrowed light."

Her gaze drifted toward Valeria with the smallest arch of a brow.

"And no matter how sharp a blade becomes, it cannot change the ore from which it was forged."