Charisma 100: My Academy Life As A Heartbreaking Commoner-Chapter 250: Two Fronts

The second lesson went better than the first.

Selene had Aegis cycling through basic divine exercises, pulling light into her palms, holding it, shaping it into a small orb, and then letting it dissipate. Simple stuff. Foundational. The kind of thing a first-year priest would learn in their first month at a seminary.

Aegis nailed every single one.

Not perfectly, mind you. The light flickered sometimes, and the orb wobbled when she held it for too long, but the energy came when she called it, and it didn’t reject her. She could see Selene recalculating with each successful attempt, that calm, pleasant mask shifting as the data stopped matching her hypothesis.

"Your control is improving," Selene said, watching Aegis hold a steady orb for a full ten seconds before it fizzled out.

"I’m a fast learner."

"You are." Selene was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, "Can I ask you something, Mrs. Starcaller?"

"Aegis is fine. And sure."

"Well, now that I’ve seen your proficiency with divine magic, I’m curious... Why did you learn shadow magic in the first place?"

[Ah. There it is. The real question she’s been sitting on since day one.]

Aegis let the light fade from her palms and lowered her hands. She took a breath, and when she spoke, she let her voice go quiet.

"You know about the Autumn Gala assassination attempt? First year?"

Selene shook her head.

"No."

"Right. How could you? Allow me to explain. That day, Talia Stone was attacked by an assassin using shadow magic... and I’m the one who stopped it."

Selene’s eyebrows rose. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"I was there when it happened. Right place, right time, however you want to frame it. I saw the assassin before anyone else did and I stopped them. Talia and I agreed to keep the whole thing quiet so as to not cause a panic, since, well, you know. An attempt on the heiress’s life at the academy’s biggest social event isn’t exactly the kind of thing you want making headlines."

Aegis looked down at her hands.

"After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about how close it was. How if I’d been a few seconds slower, or in a different part of the room, Talia would be dead. And I realized I couldn’t protect her, or anyone, with what I had. My combat stats were garbage. My magic was basic. I needed an edge."

She looked up at Selene.

"So, I started studying shadow magic. Not because I wanted to. Because the Umbral Blade uses it, and I figured the best way to fight someone is to understand their weapons. Fight fire with fire. Or, I guess, fight shadow with shadow."

Selene was quiet. Her blue eyes searched Aegis’s face for a long time.

"That’s... a more reasonable explanation than I expected," Selene said.

"I know how it looks. Trust me. ’Commoner learns forbidden magic’ isn’t exactly a headline that screams ’good intentions.’ But I didn’t seek it out because I wanted power. I sought it out because someone tried to kill the person I cared about and I never wanted to feel that helpless again."

[Okay, that last bit was maybe a touch more dramatic than necessary. But it’s working.]

Selene uncrossed her arms. She looked at Aegis for another moment, then nodded once, slowly.

"Thank you for telling me that," Selene said. "I can’t say it changes my assignment, but... I appreciate the honesty."

"That’s all I can ask for."

[+30 affection]

[Favorability: ❤️❤️🤍🤍🤍]

[Two hearts? Off one conversation?]

Aegis kept her expression neutral as the notification faded, but internally, she was grinning.

[She wanted to believe me. She just needed a reason.]

---

The library was quiet in the late afternoon. Most students had cleared out after the last class of the day, leaving the study alcoves mostly empty. Aegis picked one near the back, spread her notes across the table, and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Sylceris rounded the corner with a stack of books under one arm, heading for the adjacent alcove, and paused when she saw Aegis.

"Oh," Aegis said, looking up. "Hey."

Sylceris hesitated for a half-second, then sat down across from her.

[Right on schedule.]

Aegis had been tracking Sylceris’s library routine for three days. She always came here around this time, always picked the back alcoves, always studied alone. All Aegis had to do was get here first and make it look like a coincidence.

They studied in silence for a while. Aegis worked through Valemont’s latest assignment on trade policy, occasionally scribbling notes, occasionally sighing. Normal student shit. After about ten minutes, she set her pen down and stretched.

"Can I ask you something?" Aegis said.

Sylceris looked up from her book.

"Depends."

"This trade policy assignment. Valemont’s got us analyzing tariff structures between noble houses and how they impact commerce. But all of the case studies she’s using are from the noble perspective. Tariffs that benefit noble trade routes, taxes that protect noble interests. There’s not a single example of how these policies affect commoner merchants."

Sylceris stared at her.

"And?"

"And it’s bullshit." Aegis leaned back. "I mean, I get it. The curriculum was designed by nobles for nobles. But half the students in this academy are here on scholarship, and none of them are going to inherit a trade route. They’re going to be the ones getting taxed, not the ones setting the rates."

"... You’re surprised by this?"

"No. I’m annoyed by it. There’s a difference."

Sylceris set her own book down. She was looking at Aegis differently now, her dark eyes focused, her posture shifting forward.

"You know what I noticed when I got here?" Sylceris said. "The dining hall. There’s a section near the windows where nobles sit. Better chairs, better food, better view. And then there’s the section near the kitchens where scholarship students eat. Same dining hall, completely different experience. Nobody talks about it. Nobody even acknowledges it. It just is."

"I noticed that on my first day," Aegis said. "Pissed me off then. Still pisses me off now."

"But you married into it."

"I married into it because that’s how you change things. You don’t fix a broken system by standing outside and yelling at the walls. You get inside, you figure out where the load-bearing beams are, and then you decide which ones to knock out."

[Careful. Don’t push it. Let her draw her own conclusions.]

Sylceris was quiet for a long moment. She picked up her pen, twirled it between her fingers, set it down again.

"You’re different from what I expected," she said.

"How so?"

"Most commoners who make it into the nobility forget where they came from. You haven’t."

"Hard to forget when you grew up on a farm."

Again, she got a certain pop-up.

[+15 affection]

[Favorability: ❤️❤️🤍🤍🤍]

[There we go.]

They went back to studying. Aegis didn’t push further. She just sat there, working on her assignment, occasionally asking Sylceris’s opinion on a question, and Sylceris answered every time.

Aegis was walking back to her quarters when Kai’Lin fell into step beside her.

It was casual, natural, like they just happened to be heading in the same direction. Kai’Lin didn’t look at her. She just matched her stride and, without breaking step, pressed a small folded note into Aegis’s palm.

Then she peeled off down a side corridor and was gone.

Aegis kept walking. She didn’t look at the note until she was inside her room with the door closed. She unfolded it.

Two words, in Kai’Lin’s sharp handwriting:

We found some stuff.