Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1117: Foundational Principles

How closely did the density of students correspond to the burden placed upon an Academy facility?

The answer appeared obvious at first.

More students meant more work.

More books left their shelves. More reference conduits remained occupied. More private rooms changed hands. More questions reached the circulation desks, and every additional body passing through the entrance created another possibility for misplaced texts, damaged materials, confused requests, or the occasional student who believed a librarian somehow possessed intimate knowledge of every obscure manuscript written during the last six centuries.

Yet the Western Library had taught Maggie that the relationship was considerably less elegant than simple arithmetic suggested.

Ten students preparing quietly could create less work than one panicked noble searching for a citation he had apparently known about for three months.

A hundred students might fill the reading galleries while barely troubling the staff.

Then examination week arrived.

During examination week, the numbers almost ceased to matter.

Urgency mattered.

Confusion mattered.

The number of students who had suddenly discovered, several hours before an evaluation, that a subject they had ignored for half a term remained academically relevant mattered considerably more.

And Friday morning had produced an impressive concentration of all three.

Maggie had been behind the western circulation desk since shortly after the first bell. During that time, she had directed seven students toward introductory historical commentaries, corrected two mistaken catalogue requests, explained three times that restricted rune compendiums required faculty clearance, and prevented one young man from attempting to carry a reference folio into the dining hall because he intended to ”continue studying over breakfast.”

That particular exchange had required more patience than the matter deserved.

The library itself hummed around her.

Pages turned.

Shoes passed softly over stone.

Whispered arguments rose and fell beneath the acoustic wards woven through the upper galleries. Somewhere beyond the circulation wing, a retrieval formation chimed as another requested volume descended from the archive stacks.

The staff became accustomed to strange people in places like this.

Students arrived desperate, arrogant, sleepless, brilliant, frightened, distracted, or occasionally all six at once.

Examinations merely removed the effort many of them usually spent hiding it.

Which was why the young man standing before Maggie should have been ordinary.

He was not.

He leaned against the edge of the circulation counter with the loose posture of someone who possessed neither a pressing appointment nor any particular concern regarding the twenty students moving around him with the urgency of a city preparing for siege. Dark clothing. Black hair pulled partly away from his face. An estoc rested at his side, immediately placing him among the Academy’s martial students, although the weapon itself was unusual enough to make her eyes pause upon it once.

Then he spoke.

”I’m looking for Foundational Principles of Mana Circulation.”

Maggie’s fingers stopped above the registration crystal.

She looked at him.

He looked back.

The title itself required no search.

Everyone working in the Western Library knew it.

Foundational Principles of Mana Circulation belonged to the introductory shelves, alongside the sort of texts normally consulted by tutors, preparatory students, young heirs beginning formal magical education, and the occasional researcher who needed to verify how a principle had been simplified for beginners.

First-year Academy students rarely borrowed it.

Why would they?

Entrance into the Imperial Academy already presumed a particular threshold of education.

For nobles, that threshold began long before admission.

A household capable of satisfying the Academy’s financial expectations generally possessed tutors, private instructors, family libraries, affiliated mages, or some combination of all four. Even middling noble houses regarded foundational mana circulation as childhood material. Students might disagree over doctrine, regional terminology, advanced pathway theory or specialized applications once they arrived here, but the basic principles belonged to the educational floor beneath all of that.

And this young man wanted the book now.

After entrance.

During examination week.

Maggie studied him more carefully.

”You are looking for the introductory edition?”

”Yes.”

”Third revision?”

His expression changed by the smallest degree.

”Is that the one beginners use?”

That answer worsened the matter.

Maggie lowered her hand from the crystal.

”Yes.”

”Then that one.”

He sounded sincere.

Which created its own problem.

Perhaps he wanted the text for someone else.

A younger sibling.

A servant.

A sponsored student.

Some private comparison between elementary Lorian instruction and Arcanian standards.

Those explanations required fewer assumptions.

She reached for the catalogue interface.

”Is this for reference comparison?”

”No.”

”Tutoring?”

”In a manner of speaking.”

Maggie paused again.

The young man seemed perfectly comfortable with each answer.

His eyes occasionally moved toward the retrieval shelves behind her, though she could see no impatience in the gesture. He simply appeared curious about the mechanism.

She tried a different question.

”What do you intend to use the text for?”

”To learn.”

Her fingers remained suspended over the catalogue.

The answer had arrived so naturally that for one brief moment Maggie wondered whether she had misheard him.

”To learn?”

”Yes.”

He nodded once, as though the matter had finally become clear between them.

Maggie stared.

’To learn?’

Her attention dropped toward the estoc again, then returned to his face.

The boy appeared roughly the age of the Academy’s current first-year cohort. His uniform had been replaced by simpler morning clothes, though his student insignia remained clipped near the inner edge of his outer layer.

He belonged here.

That much was obvious.

Which made the answer absurd.

’You are meaning to tell me that you do not know the contents of the book?’

The thought formed with enough force that Maggie nearly said it aloud.

Instead, she kept her voice even.

”You mean to study its foundational material personally?”

”Yes.”

”From the beginning?”

”Preferably.”

His mouth curved faintly.

”I’ve recently learned that beginning near the beginning saves time.”

Maggie felt her expression stiffen.

Was he mocking her?

The possibility arrived naturally.

Students did that sometimes.

Usually young nobles who had discovered that library staff were obliged to answer questions with professional civility and mistook the obligation for recreational opportunity.

The young man before her had exactly the kind of face that could make a sensible statement sound suspicious.

There was amusement in his eyes.

A little too much, perhaps.

Maggie folded her hands together atop the desk.

”Are you asking for Foundational Principles of Mana Circulation because you genuinely require instruction in foundational mana circulation?”

He blinked.

”Yes.”

The simplicity of it caught her off guard.

He appeared briefly puzzled by the need to clarify.

Maggie watched his face.

The amusement remained, but its target seemed increasingly difficult to identify. He did not appear to be waiting for her embarrassment. His posture carried no tension associated with a joke approaching its conclusion. Even his answer lacked the drawn-out politeness students sometimes used when they wanted the staff member to realize she had been made part of some private entertainment.

He simply wanted the book.

A beat passed.

Then another.

’He is serious.’

That conclusion raised considerably more questions than the possibility of mockery had.

Maggie glanced toward the student insignia again.

”May I see your identification?”

”Of course.”

He reached inside his coat and handed over the card.

She placed it against the registration crystal.

Pale lettering rose above the surface.

Lucavion.

Maggie’s eyes paused.

That was all.

For a brief moment, the absence beneath the name attracted less attention than the name itself.

Lucavion.

She read it again.

’What an odd name.’

Maggie had processed enough student registrations over the years to become familiar with the usual rhythms of Arcanian naming. Noble houses especially possessed an exhausting fondness for repetition. Certain syllables returned generation after generation, attached to ancestors, saints, military heroes, old territorial claims, or whatever long-dead relative a family had decided deserved another life through an unfortunate child.

Lucavion belonged nowhere in that catalogue.

She could not remember hearing it before.

That in itself meant very little. The Empire was large, and even Maggie’s reading habits had limits.

Still...

Her eyes moved downward.

There was no house name, and no lineage marker.

She could not see any registered family surname beside the given name either.

Only Lucavion.

Maggie’s fingers stilled against the crystal.

Ah.

That explained considerably more.

Commoner.

Most common-born citizens possessed personal names alone. Surnames belonged primarily to recognized families, registered houses, old mercantile lineages, guild dynasties, and the various social layers wealthy enough to care about preserving ancestry on paper.

A student entering the Imperial Academy with a single registered name therefore narrowed the possibilities rather quickly.

Then another memory surfaced.

This year.

The Festival of the First Flame.

Something unusual had happened around the entrance examinations.

Maggie had heard portions of it because hearing nothing at all inside the Academy required active effort. Several staff members had discussed the matter for days. A reform. Commoner candidates. Five successful entrants, if she remembered correctly.

There had been speeches too.

Probably.

Maggie had avoided those.

Public ceremonies possessed an impressive ability to stretch simple announcements into several hours of people praising one another.

She preferred books.

Books occasionally repeated themselves as well, but at least one could close them.

Her gaze returned to the young man.

So he was one of them.

That made the introductory mana text considerably less absurd.

A commoner student might easily have reached adulthood without private magical tutors. Even talented families outside the nobility could spend years accessing only scattered instruction, guild manuals, military teaching, temple education, or whatever knowledge happened to exist nearby.

Foundational theory developed differently under those conditions.

Some learned through practice first.

Some memorized techniques without knowing formal classifications.

Some became frighteningly competent in one narrow area while carrying embarrassing holes everywhere else.

Maggie had encountered enough self-taught mages in old research correspondence to recognize the pattern.

Her confusion eased.

Partly.

Then another question immediately replaced it.

’How did you enter the Imperial Academy?’

Her eyes lifted from the crystal and travelled over Lucavion again.

He waited patiently across the counter.

The Academy could admit unusual candidates through reform, certainly. It could waive lineage expectations, alter financial requirements, create preparatory education and offer institutional support.

Academic standards were another matter.

Those entrance examinations were hardly ceremonial.

A student asking for Foundational Principles of Mana Circulation after admission suggested gaps broad enough that Maggie would have expected the theoretical portions alone to become troublesome.

Yet here he stood.

Already enrolled.

Already past entrance.

Already wearing an Academy insignia.

Her gaze lowered.

The estoc drew her attention again.

Long.

Narrow.

Elegant in a severe sort of way.

It looked almost delicate compared with the broad swords common among martial students, though Maggie had read enough weapon treatises to know that appearance meant very little. An estoc existed for precision, thrusting force, narrow openings and killing through protections ordinary blades struggled against.

Rare weapon too.

Very rare.

Especially here.

Maggie’s eyes lingered on the hilt.

’Swordsmanship, then?’

That possibility fit rather neatly.

The Academy did not require every student to excel equally across every discipline. An applicant with exceptional martial ability could survive weaker theory if the total evaluation justified admission, especially under a reform specifically designed to identify talent that noble education might otherwise conceal.

Lucavion certainly carried himself like someone comfortable with the weapon at his side.

His posture lacked the exaggerated awareness inexperienced martial students sometimes showed around their own swords. He neither guarded the estoc consciously nor adjusted it every few moments. The weapon simply occupied space beside him as naturally as his coat.

Maggie looked back at his face.

’Damn.’

Her opinion rose despite herself.

’That’s rather impressive.’