Charisma 100: My Academy Life As A Heartbreaking Commoner-Chapter 221: Monster Hunting 7

[... What the hell are these people doing here?]

Aegis didn’t remember this interaction from the game. The enemy didn’t just show up casually like this. They were more of the plot and scheme and send a couple of assassins after you every other month, types of villains, not the types to knock on your doorstep.

Aegis kept her grip on the sword, blood still dripping from its edge.

"Looking for me?" She tilted her head. "I’m flattered, but I don’t think we’ve met."

The lead figure chuckled. It was a woman’s voice, Aegis realized. Young, maybe around her age.

"We’ve been tracking traces of shadow magic in and around Rosevale for months now," the woman said. "Faint signatures, carefully hidden, but present nonetheless. Someone has been practicing forbidden arts. Someone with considerable talent."

[Nazraya.]

The name surfaced in Aegis’s mind immediately. It had to be her. Aegis only ever used shadow magic in controlled environments. The crypts beneath the academy, warded and sealed. The study at Starcaller Manor, similarly protected. The cursed chamber in the ruins. Always contained. Always careful.

Nazraya, on the other hand, had been practicing shadow magic for years. Decades, maybe. She moved around the city, attended faculty meetings, went on "morning errands" that Aegis never asked about. If anyone was leaving traces, it was her.

But that raised a question.

[Nazraya’s not stupid. If she was leaving traces behind, she’d know about it. She’d have fixed it by now.]

Unless she couldn’t fix it. Or unless she didn’t realize how much she was leaving behind.

Or unless there was something else going on entirely.

[I’ll have to ask her about this later.]

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Aegis said, keeping her voice flat. "I’m just a noble who came to kill a griffin. As you can see." She gestured at the corpse behind her. "Mission accomplished."

The woman stepped forward.

For the first time, Aegis got a good look at her. She was shorter than the other two, with a slender build, and she wore a mask shaped like a fox’s face. White porcelain with red markings around the eyes. The kind of thing you’d see at a festival, except somehow more unsettling in this context.

"You can drop the act, Lady Starcaller." The fox-masked woman’s tone was almost friendly. "We’re not here to arrest you. We’re not even here to fight."

"Then what do you want?"

"To deliver a message."

The woman clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her head, the fox mask’s empty eyes boring into Aegis.

"A storm is coming. The kind that reshapes nations. The kind that drowns the unprepared." She paused. "You’ve been touched by the shadows, whether you admit it or not. That means you have a choice to make."

Aegis didn’t respond.

"You can go along with the storm when it arrives. Ride the winds. Embrace what you’re becoming." The woman spread her arms. "Or you can fight against it. Cling to the old ways. And be torn down like everyone else who refuses to see the truth."

Silence hung in the air.

"That’s it?" Aegis asked. "That’s your message? ’A storm is coming, pick a side’? Pretty vague for a bunch of mysterious shadow cultists."

The woman laughed.

"You’ll understand soon enough." She turned to leave, her robed companions falling into step beside her. "When the time comes, remember this conversation. Remember that we offered you a place at the table."

They walked into the darkness.

Between one blink and the next, they were gone. No sound, no flash of magic. Just... gone.

Aegis stood alone in the field, surrounded by tall grass and a dead griffin and a whole lot of questions she didn’t have answers to.

[... Well. That was mildly concerning.]

---

The village cheered.

Aegis waved and smiled at them like she imagined a politician would during a parade. Which was fitting given that she was parading around that griffin’s corpse.

The wagon rolled slowly through Lenninsale’s main street, pulled by a pair of horses that looked about as confused as everyone else by the whole situation.

Behind Aegis, the griffin’s corpse was strapped down, its wings splayed out, its head lolling off the side of the wagon. Blood had dried on its feathers, and its one remaining eye stared blankly at the sky. Not exactly dignified, but very, very visible.

People lined the streets. Farmers, bakers, children, old folks who’d probably never seen a griffin up close in their entire lives. They pointed and gasped and cheered, and Aegis soaked it all in like a sponge.

"Lady Starcaller!"

"She actually did it!"

"By the gods, look at the size of that thing!"

Aegis waved. She smiled. She made eye contact with as many people as she could, nodding and acknowledging their cheers like she was born to do this.

[This is exactly what I needed. By tomorrow, every village in a fifty-mile radius is going to know my name.]

Beside her, Rosalie sat with her hands in her lap, looking like she wanted to sink into the wagon and disappear.

"Why am I up here?" she hissed.

"Because you helped."

"I made potions! That’s it! I didn’t fight the griffin!"

"And those potions saved my life at least twice." Aegis threw an arm around Rosalie’s shoulders, pulling her close. "Why wouldn’t I draw attention to you? None of this would be possible without my cute alchemist."

Rosalie’s face went crimson.

"P-Please don’t call me that in public."

"Cute alchemist! Everyone, give it up for my cute alchemist!"

A few people in the crowd actually cheered. Someone whistled. Rosalie made a sound like a dying animal and buried her face in her hands.

Aegis laughed and gave her a squeeze.

The wagon eventually came to a stop in front of Lord Helmin’s house. The lord himself was waiting on the steps, looking like a man who’d just been told all his problems were over. Which, in a sense, they were.

"Lady Starcaller." He bowed deeply. "I... I don’t have the words. You’ve saved us."

"Just doing my duty." Aegis hopped down from the wagon, her boots hitting the dirt with a satisfying thump. "Couldn’t let a griffin terrorize innocent people, could I?"

Helmin straightened up and gestured to a servant, who came forward carrying a small wooden box.

"It’s not much," Helmin said, opening the box to reveal a dagger resting on velvet. The blade was simple but well-made, with an emerald set into the pommel. "But I want you to have this. It belonged to my father. A token of our gratitude."

Aegis took the dagger, turning it over in her hands.

"I’ll treasure it."

She meant it, too. Not because the dagger was valuable, but because of what it represented. A gift from a grateful lord. A symbol of her growing influence. Another piece of evidence that Lady Aegis Starcaller was someone worth paying attention to.

She tucked the dagger into her belt and looked out at the crowd one more time.

[Well, Evangeline. I don’t know what else you have up your sleeve, but know that by the end of this? It will be impossible to deny me.]