Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra-Chapter 644: What happened ? (2)

"Let's see how it feeds," Keleran murmured.

But then—a flicker.

Just one.

"Eh?"

So fast that even the mana-sensitive lenses failed to track it properly.

Then came the sound.

A ping.

Subtle, crystalline, and deadly final.

A red glyph bloomed in midair before one of the analysts—an alert beacon, stark and pulsing with quiet urgency.

"…No," the mage whispered.

Another ping. The same glyph. Now louder. Then a third.

Keleran's brow furrowed. "Report."

"I—I think it's a glitch," stammered the analyst. "The system's reading one of the apex test constructs as… neutralized."

A silence cracked through the chamber like thunder in a monastery.

Levrinne's eyes narrowed. "Which construct?"

The analyst's voice caught in his throat. "Vekorith."

The word fell like a curse.

"Timestamp?" Keleran snapped.

"Nine-point-seven seconds since deployment. Nine-point-seven, exactly. System registered mana deconstruction and full dissolution of all core bindings—like… like it was dismantled surgically."

"Impossible," Levrinne hissed. "Even if it was defeated, the collapse protocol shouldn't've triggered unless the core was unraveled entirely."

One of the senior mages scrolled furiously through runic overlays, eyes wide. "No explosion. No rupture. Just… stillness. It was there, and then—it wasn't. Dissolution traces….."

The silence thickened.

Eyes shifted toward the analyst—young, wide-eyed, now visibly pale as she tried to make sense of the data sprawled before her.

"Yes?" Keleran's voice was a razor now, impatient and cold. "The traces?"

The analyst swallowed hard, her hands shaking slightly as she scanned the projection again. "It doesn't show anything."

"What?" Levrinne's voice cracked like thunder.

"There's... no identifiable residue," the analyst murmured. "The aether imprint left behind is non-attributable. It's not matching any recorded elemental or conceptual basis. Not even Void or Null-aligned signatures. There's nothing. Just absence."

Another mage leaned forward, tapping into the backup threadwork. "There must be a mistake. Run it again. Pull from the raw matrix. Layer Two."

The analyst obeyed instantly, recalibrating the projection sphere.

The data flickered.

Remained blank.

A void where there should have been a battlefield's scars.

Keleran's brow furrowed, deeper now. "No trace of combat. No counterforce. No displacement. No decay signature of the construct's core?"

"None, Archmagister. It's as if Vekorith... never existed."

"Absurd," Levrinne hissed. "Find the contestant. Who was nearest to the encounter point?"

The glyph-matrix pulsed, and the spatial grid zoomed inward, the quadrant unraveling in expanding rings of magical geometry. The terrain layers peeled back like pages in a book.

There, near the heart of the distortion—

Fifteen glowing orbs.

"Fifteen candidates were within range," another mage reported, sweeping through the data. "Ten sword users, three elemental casters, one martial variant… and—"

His voice stalled.

Keleran turned his head.

"Well?" he snapped. "Speak."

"There's one more. Candidate with black hair… and a white feline-type creature perched on his shoulder. Static interference near his aura output. It's... heavily masked."

The orb brightened as the spell focused on the figure.

A black-cloaked young man stood at the edge of the aqueduct ruins. His face unreadable. His posture relaxed—too relaxed. He wasn't even looking in the direction Vekorith had approached from. The white cat blinked slowly beside him, tail coiled like a question mark, as if the creature too were watching the Citadel itself.

"Name?" Levrinne demanded.

"Lucavion. Contestant Number 7342."

Another mage scanned his performance logs. "He's eliminated ten candidates so far. None with significant resistance. Estimated rating... four-star."

Keleran's arms folded slowly, his eyes narrowing.

"Four-star?" he repeated.

"Yes, sir. Estimated strength only. We have no full combat logs—he suppresses his aura field to near-zero. And... according to the logs, he was not recorded casting any external techniques."

"No spells?" someone echoed.

"No mana surge," the analyst confirmed. "Only faint traces of kinetic disruption and thermal imbalance."

"That's impossible," a third mage muttered. "Even a precision kill leaves aftermath. Especially against a creature like Vekorith."

"And yet," Levrinne murmured, "there he stands. Unharmed. Unmoved."

The orb pulsed again.

Lucavion slowly raised his hand, as if brushing off dust from his shoulder.

Only—there was no dust.

Just the faintest flicker of something that had never been there.

Keleran stepped closer to the central obelisk, peering into the layered aetheral readout now fixed on the boy.

Keleran's gaze remained locked on the orb, the calm tension in his posture concealing a storm beneath.

He tilted his head slightly, watching the boy's faint smile—not one of triumph, nor even satisfaction. It was detached, clinical. As if he had done nothing at all.

Is it him?

The question echoed—not spoken aloud, not yet—but it lingered in the air, traced in the sharp furrow of the Archmagister's brow.

But no answer came.

Because there was no answer.

Not yet.

The data was too clean. Too still. As though the encounter had been erased, not concluded.

And with a creature like Vekorith—a thing still in its experimental phase, a fusion of theory and nightmare—there were gaps. Uncertainties. Alchemic instability, untested integration sequences. Maybe, just maybe…

"There is a possibility," one of the senior engineers offered, cautiously. "That the construct's dissolution wasn't caused by external combat at all. The internal matrix was still incomplete. There were risks of spontaneous self-collapse if the binding formulae hadn't fully integrated."

Levrinne scoffed. "You're telling me it just fell apart on its own?"

The engineer shrugged slightly, more hesitant now. "It's within the realm of possibility. The binding was layered over multiple conceptual cores. If any one of them misaligned under active pressure, it could cause a cascade—non-violent, total mana dispersal. Instantaneous."

Keleran's expression didn't shift. But his arms slowly dropped to his sides.

A long breath.

Then—

"…We'll consider that possibility," he said at last, his voice neutral. "The construct is, after all, in trial phase. And the reaction we observed—abnormal or not—may not be anomalous in the long run."

He turned away from the orb, the spell array dimming as his attention moved on.

"If it was him… we'll know in time. And if it wasn't…" He trailed off, then gave a small shake of his head. "Then it was our own failure in design."

Levrinne looked like she wanted to argue. But she said nothing.

Keleran gave one final glance at the orb, the boy's figure now smaller, walking off through the mist-slick ruins without urgency.

"Lucavion, huh…" he murmured. "An interesting name."

With a flick of his fingers, the orb dimmed fully. "Redirect surveillance resources. Priority on candidates showing signs of abnormal mana evolution. Vekorith's data is to be logged but not obsessed over. Not yet."

He turned, cloak billowing faintly behind him as he ascended the command platform once again.

"Focus on the upcoming terrain shift. And prep a new construct. We move to Phase VI by end of cycle."

"Yes, Archmagister," came the chorus.

The mages obeyed. The data feeds recalibrated. The hum of glyphs resumed its rhythm.

The Citadel returned to function.

But no one noticed—no one dared to look closely enough to see it—

A narrow flicker.

A slight tightening in the Headmaster's eyes.

*****

[You really used that,] Vitaliara murmured, her tone edged with something between awe and accusation.

Lucavion rolled his shoulder, letting the lingering mana slide off him like water from silk. The air was still thick with the scent of scorched ichor and dissolving ether, but the silence that followed was absolute.

Then—

[Why that technique?] she asked, more pointed this time. [Didn't you say it was still incomplete?]

"I did," Lucavion replied, brushing a fleck of blue ash from his coat as he stepped around what was left of the beast. "But that thing was a good way to test it."

[Hmm… Suspicious.]

He arched a brow, amused. "Suspicious? Me?"

Vitaliara narrowed her eyes, her tail lashing lightly across his shoulder. [I feel like you had another reason.]

Lucavion offered nothing at first—just a slow exhale, the kind that let the silence stretch a little longer than necessary. Then he gave a slight shrug.

"Maybe," he said at last, his smirk faint, unreadable. "Who knows?"

[You know.]

"I do."

[And you're not telling me.]

"That is Lucavion for you."

[Stupid.]

He didn't answer—just started walking again, heading deeper into the fractured wilderness, where the terrain grew stranger and the sky seemed to pulse with closer stars.

The path ahead twisted with rising stone ridges, faint glows flickering at the edges of sight—mana shifts, active combat, or perhaps just the zone itself reacting to his presence. The battlefield was changing. Folding inward.