Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 985: No affinity ?

Lucavion stepped forward, the smirk fading—not into seriousness, but into something quieter. A kind of calm that didn’t need to announce itself.

His hands moved with no fanfare, rising to rest gently against the surface of the artifact. The glass shimmered faintly under his touch—thin ripples chasing one another along its inner walls, like minnows darting through still water.

The hall seemed to brace itself.

Several students leaned forward. After all, it was this guy.

Lucavion who had caused a scene. Everyone was curious what kind of affinity he had.

Valeria held her breath without realizing.

The sphere responded.

At first.

A soft pulse—pale and clean, like morning fog catching the sun. Then another—slightly sharper, fracturing the reflections inside the orb into scattered threads of color.

But then...

Nothing.

The pulses stopped.

The sphere stilled.

The glow faded—just enough to be noticeable. The fine lattice of mana that usually bloomed across the surface during resonance remained dormant. Silent. Empty.

The instructor frowned. Tapped her slate. Adjusted something in the interface.

Still nothing.

Not cold. Not fire. Not shadow or storm. No affinity glyphs emerged, no elemental hues took form. Just Lucavion’s hands resting against the artifact, and the artifact... doing nothing.

Valeria’s brow furrowed.

’That’s... not normal.’

Even the worst students triggered something. An unstable flicker. A faint hue. A reaction delayed or incomplete. But this? This was absence. Not a failure—but a void. The sphere wasn’t rejecting him. It simply wasn’t acknowledging him at all.

As though there was nothing there to read.

The instructor cleared her throat softly, her voice no longer clipped—just unsure.

”...Again. Without force. Relax your channeling. Let it scan your base circuit.”

Lucavion didn’t argue.

Didn’t smirk.

He adjusted his stance by a fraction. Exhaled once—slow and precise, as though emptying his lungs not for breath, but for balance.

His hands stayed in place.

The sphere gave one faint shimmer.

Then dimmed again.

Not inert. Just... indifferent.

The silence that followed wasn’t quite silent. It was the kind that bent under its own weight. The kind that stretched just long enough to become noticeable. Then uncomfortable.

Whispers started. Soft. Disbelieving.

”Did it glitch?”

”No way. That’s a high-tier relic—those things don’t glitch.”

”Then... what is that?”

The instructor’s brows were now knit tightly together. She tapped something again—frustrated this time. Her lips moved, casting a soft recalibration glyph into the pedestal. A faint ring of mana traced the base, igniting once.

Then again.

Still nothing.

Valeria’s fingers curled, not in confusion, but in calculation.

This wasn’t a malfunction.

It was something else.

Lucavion stood perfectly still—neither anxious nor smug. He wasn’t reacting. Just... watching. His gaze on the sphere, not in confrontation, but curiosity. Like someone studying a painting that had shifted when no one else was looking.

The instructor finally stepped forward, her voice low. Less commanding now. More searching.

”...Have you been tested before?”

Lucavion’s eyes lifted.

The barest flicker of humor touched the edge of his mouth. Not a grin. Something older. Sharper.

”I’ve been many things before,” he said quietly. ”Tested? I suppose that depends on the standards.”

The instructor didn’t respond.

Not at first.

She stood still for a heartbeat longer than necessary, her eyes narrowing in thought—then straightened and lifted a hand.

”Rune oversight to Station Three,” she called, her voice steadier now, but pitched with formality that rang through the chamber. ”Immediate review. Affinity null-read.”

Those last two words echoed.

Students glanced at one another.

Null-read.

It wasn’t a term tossed around lightly.

From across the hall, a figure began to move.

Not quickly. Not with urgency. But with the composed, deliberate gait of someone who didn’t need to rush to assert authority. His robes were darker than most, marked with deep indigo trim and the layered sigils of the Rune Faculty—etched into the fabric like a second language. His boots clicked softly across the marble, each step measured like punctuation in an unfolding sentence.

Valeria recognized him immediately.

Professor Elir Varnen.

Rune theory, second division. Known less for kindness, more for precision. The kind of man who could break down a misaligned glyph from memory and still have time to correct your handwriting.

He approached the platform without sparing a glance at the murmuring students. His gaze was fixed on the sphere, and then on Lucavion—his expression unreadable, like he was already reconstructing variables before the experiment had even begun.

”Elir Varnen, Faculty of Runes,” he said briskly, nodding once to the instructor. ”Report.”

”Initial read was neutral. No elementals. No projected response. No latency glyphs. Recalibration yielded nothing.”

Varnen stepped closer to the pedestal, hands folding behind his back. He studied the artifact, the faint shimmer of his own mana flickering across the embedded glyphs—interfacing not with force, but with invitation.

A soft hum answered.

The sphere pulsed once. Then again. Passive. Unbothered.

His brow furrowed.

”Step aside, please.”

Lucavion obeyed without a word, stepping back just enough to give space. Varnen touched the artifact lightly, tracing the arcane edge with a fingertip—just enough to reset the sequence. He began murmuring under his breath—low, clipped syllables that formed the backbone of recalibration spells. The glyphs embedded in the pedestal stirred, sparking to life beneath his hand.

Varnen extended his other hand toward Lucavion.

”Once more. Same posture. No exertion.”

Lucavion nodded, calmly resuming his stance.

His palms met the sphere.

A breath.

Then another.

Then stillness.

The sphere did not respond.

No color. No vibration. No internal shift. Even the embedded glyphs, now enhanced by Elir’s presence, remained inert. There was nothing to read. No signature to track. No circuit to map.

Just stillness.

Like the sphere had never been touched.

Varnen stared for a long time.

Then again.

Then again.

And then finally, he stepped back.

Not sharply. Not with panic.

But with the slow, precise motion of someone whose reality had just cracked in a way he didn’t yet understand.

His eyes narrowed. The lines of his mouth pressed together.

Then—quietly, barely audible—

”Just what...”

His voice trailed off, the rest of the thought too unwieldy to name.

A few students shifted uncomfortably. One audibly swallowed.

The instructor from before stepped forward. ”Professor Varnen?”

Elir didn’t answer right away.

Then, finally, he spoke—low, and not for the crowd.

”...This isn’t absence,” he said. ”It’s negation.”

The words dropped like a stone in a still pond.

Valeria’s heart thudded once, sharply.

’Negation?’

She did not know what the word meant at all....But from the looks of it, the professor appeared to be really confused.

Elir turned toward the instructor, his tone sharpened now, laced with a thin edge of theory that hadn’t been proven yet. ”The artifact is not failing. It’s reacting correctly. There is nothing to read—not because the system is broken, but because the input defies the framework. No elemental projection. No spirit trace. No channeling echo. Not even a flawed core alignment.”

”Ahem....”

The cough was small—more throat-clearing than interruption—but it broke through the theoretical fog just enough.

Elir Varnen blinked.

Then exhaled, adjusting his tone like a man pulling himself down from a ledge only he could see.

He turned fully toward Lucavion now, his gaze no less sharp, but his words stripped of excess.

”Boy,” he said plainly, ”you have no affinity.”

The sentence dropped like a guillotine.

This time, the hall reacted.

Audibly.

A low ripple of disbelief surged across the gathered students—murmurs rising in waves, gasps half-muffled by hands. One girl near the front twisted in her seat to look at a friend, her expression caught somewhere between confusion and alarm. Several instructors exchanged glances—some skeptical, others clearly shaken.

And Valeria?

She didn’t move.

But her pulse quickened.

Lucavion? No affinity?

It didn’t make sense. Couldn’t.

And from the crowd—

”But—wait—!”

A voice rang out, louder than it meant to be. A boy stepped forward, arms raised slightly like he was trying to explain something obvious that everyone had forgotten.

”That’s not possible. I saw it! We all did, right?”

Murmurs of agreement rippled.

”He burned through an entire duel during the commoners’ entrance exam! That was black fire—everyone saw it! It was broadcast all over Arcanis!”

”Yeah,” someone else added, half in awe. ”I remember that. He didn’t even draw a circle. It just—came out of his hand.”

All eyes turned back to Lucavion.

He didn’t look surprised.

Or confused.

He just tilted his head slightly, as if considering how much trouble this might cause—or how entertaining it might be to let it unfold.

Elir Varnen frowned, eyes narrowing again, this time less in theory and more in practical concern.

”Fire?” he repeated.

Lucavion shrugged a shoulder. ”If you’d like me to show you...”

A pause.

Then Elir nodded once, curt and precise. ”Yes. Please do.”

Lucavion lifted one hand.

There was no chant.

No seal.

No dramatic shift in air pressure.

Just a flick of his fingers—and from the center of his palm, it came.

Black fire.