Charisma 100: My Academy Life As A Heartbreaking Commoner Chapter 261: Endgame*

Selene’s fingers gripped the edge of her desk, her knuckles white against the dark wood, her white armor discarded on the floor in a heap she would have been mortified by under any other circumstances.

Aegis stood behind her, one hand on Selene’s hip and the other pressed flat against the small of her back, driving into her pussy with deep, steady strokes that made the desk creak with each thrust.

It felt incredible.

"God," Selene gasped, her head dropping between her arms, her white hair sticking to her forehead. "Aegis, I—"

"I know," Aegis said, and fucked her harder.

Selene’s back arched and her whole body tightened, her pussy clenching around Aegis’s cock as she came with a sound she muffled against her own arm. Aegis followed a few thrusts later, pushing in deep and cumming inside her, her hips flush against Selene’s ass.

They stayed like that for a moment, both of them breathing hard, the office quiet except for the sound of it.

Aegis pulled out slowly. Selene stayed bent over the desk, catching her breath, and then she did something that made Aegis’s brain short-circuit. She reached between her own legs, scooped a trail of cum from her pussy with two fingers, brought it to her mouth, and licked them clean.

Aegis blinked.

She did it casually, like it was nothing, like she was tasting sauce off a spoon, and then she straightened up and started collecting her armor from the floor.

[... Holy fuck.]

A notification popped up in her HUD.

[Bondmark Acquired: Selene Arlyn]

[Divine Aegis: Incoming dark magic damage reduced by 20%. Divine spells cost 15% less MP.]

[Oh. Oh, that’s good. That’s really good.]

Twenty percent dark magic resistance and cheaper divine spells. Given what she was about to do in seven days, that bondmark might be the difference between surviving and not.

Aegis got dressed, kissed Selene on the cheek while the woman was still buckling her chestplate, and left the office with her hands in her pockets.

MP: 700/700

The number sat in the corner of her vision as she walked through the academy corridors.

Seven hundred. Three weeks of morning sessions with Nazraya and nightly sessions with Rosanna, pushing shadow and aether through her pathways every single day until her body screamed, and she’d more than tripled her capacity.

Which, thankfully, put her in endgame territory for Queen of Hearts.

She remembered the benchmarks from her four hundred hours of playtime. She was close. Not there yet, but close.

[One more week of training. If the numbers keep scaling the way they have been, I can hit eight hundred by the Ball. Maybe eight-fifty if I push it.]

And she was going to need every single point.

Because Rosanna’s plan, the plan Aegis had spent three weeks preparing for, was simple in concept and suicidal in execution.

When the convergence bomb detonated, Aegis was going to absorb it.

Not block it, not deflect it, not try to disarm it somehow. She was going to stand at ground zero, open her aether pathways, and take the entire blast of concentrated Umbral energy into her own body.

The same cycling technique she’d been using to expand her mana pool, except instead of controlled doses from Nazraya and Rosanna, it would be a... well, a bomb’s worth of shadow magic all at once.

[And either I absorb it, or I fucking explode. Those are the two options.]

She hadn’t told anyone. Not Talia, not Nazraya, not Selene. Nobody knew the full plan except Rosanna, and Aegis intended to keep it that way until the night of the Ball.

[Because if I tell Talia, she’ll freeze me to the floor to stop me. And honestly? Maybe she’d be right to.]

---

The married student quarters were crowded.

Talia sat on the bed with Liora beside her. Scarlett had claimed the desk chair, tilted back on two legs with her boots on the desk until Evelyn walked past and pushed them off without a word. Kanna stood by the window, arms folded. The twins sat on the floor, cross-legged. Rosalie perched on the arm of the couch, a notebook in her lap.

Aegis stood in the center of the room and looked at all of them.

[My people. Every single one of them here because of choices I made over the past year. If I fuck this up, I’m not just risking my own life. I’m risking theirs.]

"Alright," Aegis said. "One week. Let’s go over what we know."

Kai’Lin spoke first.

"Seven confirmed Umbral Blade operatives including Sylceris. We’ve tracked all of them for the past three months. Their patterns, their meeting points, their routines." She set the knife down. "We’re confident this is everyone, nya. No new contacts, no unknown faces. Seven is the full cell."

"You’re sure?" Talia asked.

"We’re sure," Mei’Lin said. "If there are others, they simply aren’t here, nya."

Aegis nodded.

"Good. Now, the Ball itself. I don’t think they’re going to sit through the whole event. The bomb is on a timer, or a trigger, either way, they don’t need to be in the blast radius when it goes off. My bet is they show their faces early, make sure everything’s in place, and then disappear before detonation."

"So, they leave early," Scarlett said. "That’s our signal?"

"That’s our signal. When the shadow mages start heading for the exits, we know it’s happening. Kai’Lin, Mei’Lin, I need you two watching the doors. Every exit, every side passage. The moment one of them moves to leave, I want to know."

"Got it, nya."

"Scarlett, Kanna. You’re on crowd control. If things go sideways and the Ball turns into a panic, you two keep people from trampling each other. Get the civilians out, keep the nobles from doing anything stupid."

"Define stupid," Scarlett said.

"Anything a noble would do in a crisis."

Kanna nodded.

"Understood."

"Evelyn, Rosalie, you two stay at the manor. If this goes wrong and the academy becomes a war zone, Starcaller Manor is the fallback point. Get it ready."

Evelyn made a note in her ledger. Rosalie nodded, her face pale but determined.

"Talia." Aegis looked at her. "You stay at the Ball. You’re one of the main targets, and if you leave early, the shadow mages will know something is wrong. Dance, smile, act normal."

"And what will you be doing?" Talia asked, her yellow eyes sharp.

[Absorbing a weapon of mass destruction into my body and hoping I don’t die.]

"I’ll be handling the bomb," Aegis said.

"How?"

"I’ve got a plan."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the answer you’re getting right now." Aegis met Talia’s eyes and held them. "Trust me."

Talia stared at her for a long moment, her jaw tight. Then she exhaled through her nose.

"If you die," Talia said, "I’m going to kill you."

"Noted."