novelDen Chapter 260: Expansion*
Chapter 260: Expansion*
Aegis sat naked on the cold floor of Nazraya’s office, legs crossed, eyes closed, her hands resting on her knees.
Nazraya knelt behind her, fully clothed, her palms pressed flat against Aegis’s bare back. Shadow magic pulsed from her fingers, dark and warm, seeping into Aegis’s skin and sinking into her aether pathways like ink dropped into water.
"Breathe," Nazraya said.
Aegis breathed. She took the shadow energy as it entered her body and pushed it inward, cycling it through her pathways, from her spine to her chest to her arms, then to her legs, then to her core, and back again. Around and around, faster with each pass, the energy expanding as it moved, stretching her pathways wider with every circuit like water carving a river through stone.
It hurt. Not a sharp pain, more like the deep ache of a muscle being forced past its limit, but spread across her entire body. Her jaw clenched and sweat ran down her temples, dripping onto her bare thighs.
"Again," Nazraya said, and pushed another wave into her.
Aegis took it. Cycled it. Pushed her pathways wider. Her mana pool swelled, the number in her HUD climbing steadily.
MP: 220 → 235
Again.
MP: 235 → 248
Again.
MP: 248 → 260
By the time Nazraya pulled her hands away, Aegis’s whole body was trembling and her skin was slick with sweat. She sat there for a minute, breathing hard, feeling the new space inside her, the expanded capacity humming like a room that had just gotten bigger.
MP: 260/260
[Fuck. Rosanna wasn’t lying. I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack.]
Nazraya stood up and walked around to face her, her red eyes studying Aegis with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and suspicion.
"What exactly is the point of this, darling?" Nazraya asked, crossing her arms. "I’ve never seen anyone cycle shadow energy through their own pathways like that. It’s not a technique I taught you."
"Something I read about," Aegis said, wiping the sweat from her face. "Theoretical stuff. Figured it was worth testing."
She chose not to mention the part where she could literally die if she messed this up.
"Mhm." Nazraya didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t push it. She knew Aegis well enough by now to recognize when she wasn’t going to get a straight answer. "And this ’theoretical’ technique is safe?"
Aegis smiled wryly.
"Define safe."
"Aegis."
"It’s not." Aegis stood up, her legs shaky, and started pulling her clothes back on. If she couldn’t be honest with Nazraya, who could she be honest with? "The person who taught it to me said that if I get it wrong, I could end up exploding my aether core and uh, well, die. But, it’s the only way in existence to forcibly expand your aether pool quickly. And, unfortunately, I’m gonna need a far bigger aether pool than the one I currently have for what I have in mind."
"... Whoever this person is that taught you this, I don’t think I like them very much, pet."
[On the contrary, you adore her.]
Aegis changed the topic, though.
"Oh, one more thing. The shadow energy you just pushed into me, is it detectable? If Selene or Mirabel scanned me right now, would they find traces?"
Nazraya tilted her head, considering.
"No. What you did was cycle it through your pathways and absorb it, not channel it externally. There’s no residue, no signature. As far as any divine magic user would be concerned, your pathways are clean."
[Good.]
"Thanks, professor." Aegis buttoned her shirt and gave Nazraya a kiss on the cheek. "Same time tomorrow?"
"You still haven’t told me what this is for."
"I know," Aegis said, smiling, and left.
---
That night, Aegis went up the Sky Piercer.
Same position. Naked, cross-legged, eyes closed. Except this time it was Rosanna’s hands on her back instead of Nazraya’s, and what flowed into her wasn’t shadow magic.
It was pure aether.
Raw, dense, concentrated ambient energy pulled from the meditation platform’s tenfold density and channeled directly into Aegis’s body.
It felt different from shadow magic, brighter, hotter, like swallowing sunlight instead of ink. Aegis took it and did the same thing she’d done with Nazraya, cycling it through her pathways, forcing her body to absorb it, stretching herself wider.
The pain was worse this time. Aether was less forgiving than shadow magic, less willing to be pushed around, and Aegis had to wrestle it through every circuit. Her teeth ground together and her fists clenched on her knees and at one point she tasted copper in the back of her throat.
"Don’t fight it," Rosanna murmured behind her. "Cooperate. You know this."
[Easy for you to say. You’re not the one whose insides feel like they’re being remodeled.]
She adjusted. Stopped pushing and started guiding, coaxing the energy through her pathways the way Rosanna had taught her from the beginning. Cooperative, not forceful.
The pain eased from a scream to a burn and Aegis kept going.
MP: 260 → 280
MP: 280 → 305
MP: 305 → 330
By the end, her mana pool had jumped by seventy points in a single night, and Aegis could barely stand. Rosanna caught her before she fell, lowering her gently onto the platform floor, and Aegis lay there staring at the stars with her whole body vibrating.
MP: 330/330
[A hundred and ten points gained in one day. Shadow in the morning, aether at night. Two different energies, same technique, both expanding my capacity. I’m going to need every drop of this.]
---
The next morning, Aegis sat across from Selene in her office and told her everything.
The Starlight Ball. The convergence bomb. The six confirmed Umbral Blade operatives and their names. The months-long ritual they’d been feeding energy into. The hundred-meter kill radius. All of it.
Selene listened without interrupting. Her tea sat untouched on her desk, going cold. By the time Aegis finished, Selene’s blue eyes were wide and her hands were gripping the armrests of her chair hard enough that her knuckles had gone white.
"Six operatives," Selene said. "Six shadow mages, embedded in the student body for months, building a weapon of mass destruction under my nose."
"Under everyone’s nose. They were smart about it."
"I need to arrest them. Today. Right now."
"No."
Selene stared at her.
"Aegis, if what you’re telling me is true, there is a weapon somewhere in this academy capable of killing hundreds of people, and the people who built it are still walking free."
"And if you arrest them now, the weapon is still there," Aegis said. "You heard what I said. The construct is self-sustaining. Taking out the operatives doesn’t deactivate it. All you’d accomplish is tipping them off, and anyone you miss goes underground. We lose our advantage."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"We wait for the Ball. Let them think the plan is still on track. On the night of the event, we catch them in the act, all of them, and we deal with the construct at the same time."
"Deal with it how?"
"I’m working on that part."
Selene’s jaw tightened. She looked at Aegis for a long time, her blue eyes searching, weighing, calculating the risk of trusting a former shadow magic suspect with the safety of every noble in Valdria.
"If this goes wrong," Selene said, "people die."
"If we move too early, people die anyway. At least this way, we control the when and the where."
Selene exhaled through her nose, long and slow, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the fear was still there, but it was under control.
"Fine," she said. "We wait. But I want daily updates, Aegis. Every piece of information you get, I hear about it the same day."
"Done."
"And if anything changes, if there’s any sign they’re accelerating the timeline—"
"You’ll be the first to know."
Selene nodded. She looked exhausted. Three months of searching for shadow mages and finding nothing, and now this.
Aegis stood up and turned toward the door.
"Aegis."
She stopped. Selene was standing behind her desk, her hands flat on the surface, her blue eyes locked on Aegis with an intensity that had nothing to do with shadow mages or convergence bombs.
"Close the door," Selene said.
Aegis closed the door and locked it.
Selene walked around the desk. She stopped in front of Aegis, and then she sank to her knees.
Aegis’s brows shot up.
Selene’s fingers worked Aegis’s belt open, then the button, then the zipper, and she pulled Aegis’s cock out with both hands. Selene didn’t hesitate. She wrapped her lips around the tip and took Aegis into her mouth.
[Oh, fuck.]
Selene sucked cock like she did everything else, with focus and precision and an almost religious dedication to doing it well. Her tongue worked the underside of Aegis’s shaft as she bobbed her head, slow at first, taking more with each pass, her blue eyes looking up at Aegis the entire time. Her hands gripped Aegis’s thighs, her armored fingers digging into the fabric, and she pulled Aegis deeper.
Aegis’s hand went to the back of Selene’s head, fingers sliding through her short white hair, and Selene moaned around her cock. The vibration made Aegis’s knees buckle and she braced her other hand against the door to stay upright.
"Fuck, Selene," Aegis breathed.
Selene pulled back to the tip, swirled her tongue around the head, and then swallowed Aegis down to the base in one smooth motion. Her nose pressed against Aegis’s stomach and she held there, her throat working around Aegis’s cock, her eyes watering but never breaking contact.
[Holy shit. The church girl can deepthroat.]
She pulled back, gasped, and went right back down. Faster now, her head bobbing with purpose, spit running down Aegis’s shaft and dripping onto the stone floor. She was messy and eager and completely unlike the composed, professional woman who’d been lecturing about divine magic theory an hour ago, and Aegis was losing her mind.
Aegis’s hips started rocking forward, fucking Selene’s mouth in shallow thrusts, and Selene took it, her hands sliding from Aegis’s thighs to her ass, pulling her in deeper. The wet, obscene sounds of her mouth filled the small office and Aegis bit her lip hard enough to draw blood trying to keep quiet.
"I’m close," Aegis managed.
Selene didn’t pull off. She looked up at Aegis, blue eyes burning, and sucked harder, her cheeks hollowing, her tongue pressing flat against the underside of Aegis’s cock. Aegis’s hand tightened in her hair and she came, hard, her cock pulsing in Selene’s mouth.
Selene swallowed every drop, her throat working rhythmically, and she didn’t stop sucking until Aegis was empty and twitching.
Selene pulled off with a soft, wet sound. She wiped her mouth with the back of her gauntlet, looked up at Aegis from her knees, and said nothing.
[+30 affection]
[Favorability: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️]
Aegis stared down at her, her chest heaving, her mind completely blank for the first time in weeks.
"Now you can go."