Is It Wrong for an Extra to Steal the Protagonist's Harem?-Chapter 76: Pulling Agro

We left the dormitory and walked toward the main academic building.

As expected, our arrival caused an immediate, massive stir.

The Academy rumor mill was already spinning wildly about my sudden rise in power and the dark rumors surrounding me. But seeing the "Trash of Edelhart" walking into the main courtyard with a stunning, angelic new girl clinging tightly to his arm brought the courtyard to a standstill.

Students stopped in their tracks, whispering fiercely behind their hands.

"Who is that girl?" "She’s gorgeous. Is she a noble?" "Why is she holding his arm like that? Doesn’t she know who he is?" "I heard he uses mind-control magic. Look at how she’s looking at him!"

Emma ignored the whispers completely. In fact, the stares only fueled her pride. She held onto my bicep even tighter, pressing her chest against my arm, beaming radiantly at anyone who made eye contact with her.

We entered the grand amphitheater for our morning Magic Theory class.

The room was already packed. I spotted Martin waving nervously from the middle row. A few rows down, Alicia Raven was glaring daggers at the chalkboard, her arms crossed aggressively over her chest. On the other side of the room, Ren Montclair sat with Lena, both of them staring at me with deep, calculating suspicion.

"Take a seat, Emma," I whispered, guiding her to an empty desk near the front. "The Professor is about to start."

"Yes, Sir Alex," she chirped, sitting down gracefully and folding her hands on the desk like a perfect model student.

I took my usual seat a few rows back.

BANG.

The heavy oak doors swung open, and Professor Cassandra strolled in. She looked just as tired as usual, her massive witch hat slightly askew, a lit pipe resting lazily between her lips.

She walked up to the podium, dropping a thick stack of papers with a loud thud that silenced the chatter in the room.

"Quiet down, you brats," Cassandra drawled, blowing a ring of lavender smoke toward the ceiling. "Before we begin today’s lecture on the structural integrity of localized barriers, we have a minor administrative interruption."

She leaned her elbows on the podium, her sharp, cat-like eyes scanning the room before landing directly on Emma.

"We have a transfer student joining the first-year class today," Cassandra announced. "It is highly unusual for the Academy to accept transfers this late into the semester, but her family’s... donations... were deemed sufficient by the Headmaster."

Cassandra gestured lazily with her pipe. "Stand up and introduce yourself to your peers."

Emma stood up gracefully. She smoothed down her pleated skirt, turned to face the tiered rows of students, and offered a smile so bright and pure it practically blinded half the boys in the room.

"Hello, everyone," Emma spoke. Her voice was melodic, sweet, and perfectly calibrated to sound like an innocent angel. "It is an absolute honor to meet you all. I hope we can all become wonderful friends."

The boys in the room were instantly captivated. Whispers of "She’s so cute" and "Literal angel" broke out across the benches. Even some of the second-year students lingering in the back looked entirely charmed.

"My name," she continued, her golden eyes sweeping across the room until they locked directly onto Alicia Raven, "is Emma Arlon. Daughter of Count Arlon."

A few gasps echoed in the room. The Arlon family was an incredibly wealthy, politically powerful household in the Capital.

Emma’s angelic smile widened, but the golden light in her eyes sharpened into something intensely territorial.

"And I am the official, legally bound fiancée of Sir Alex Edelhart."

Emma’s sweet, angelic voice echoed off the stone walls, but the impact was equivalent to dropping a tactical nuke in the middle of the freshman class.

From my seat in the middle rows, I rested my chin on my hand and observed the chaos unfolding like a player watching a cutscene.

In the original plot, the ’Trash of Edelhart’ was a universally despised pariah. He was meant to be isolated, bullied, and eventually expelled or killed to serve as a stepping stone for the protagonist.

But now? The dynamic had completely shattered. He suddenly changed. He was no longer a thin and lean boy who could neither swing a sword nor cast magic. And now a stunning, high-tier noble girl from the powerful Arlon family had just publicly claimed the pariah as her own. The social hierarchy of the first-year class was short-circuiting in real-time.

Martin’s jaw was literally resting on his desk. Across the room, Ren Montclair, the so-called shining hope of our year, was staring at me with a mixture of sheer disbelief and a strange, competitive wariness.

But the most entertaining reaction was right in front of me.

Alicia Raven. The crimson-eyed Villainess.

She was staring at Emma, her mouth slightly agape. The wooden pencil she had been holding was snapped cleanly in half, the jagged splinters digging into her trembling fingers. She whipped her head around to glare at me.

If looks could kill, the sheer, explosive mixture of absolute fury and possessive jealousy burning in her eyes would have incinerated me on the spot.

[System Notification: Variable Introduced. Social Standing Altered.]

[Alicia Raven - Aggro Level: Maximum.]

"Fascinating," Professor Cassandra’s drawling voice finally cut through the tension.

She stood at the podium, completely unfazed, blowing a thick ring of lavender smoke from her pipe toward the ceiling. She tapped her ash against the desk.

"I’m sure the society papers will have a field day with that, Arlon. But this is a Magic Theory lecture, not a matrimonial registry. Sit down."

"Yes, Professor," Emma smiled radiantly, offering one last perfect curtsy before gracefully taking her seat. She didn’t look at anyone else; her golden eyes were locked entirely on me, overflowing with obsessive pride.

"Now," Cassandra sighed, waving her hand. The massive chalkboard behind her illuminated with glowing, complex magical runes. "Before we were so rudely interrupted by aristocratic breeding schedules, we were discussing the structural integrity of localized barriers."

She pointed the stem of her pipe at a massive, intricate diagram of a spherical shield.

"This is the standard Imperial Aegis Matrix. It is taught to every Royal Knight and high-tier mage. It requires three distinct mana cores to sustain. However, it has a fatal flaw in high-density combat. Who can tell me what it is?"

The room, still reeling from Emma’s announcement, struggled to focus.

Ren Montclair raised his hand confidently. "The mana consumption, Professor? Sustaining three cores simultaneously drains the caster too quickly."

"Wrong, Montclair," Cassandra shot down the protagonist instantly. "If you don’t have the mana capacity to sustain it, you shouldn’t be casting an Aegis in the first place. Next."

Alicia, desperate to reassert her dominance after being humiliated by Emma’s mere existence, stood up.

"The flaw is in the elemental resonance, Professor," Alicia stated haughtily, her silver twin-tails swaying. "The three cores are strictly non-attribute. If struck by an opposing high-tier elemental spell—like a localized Absolute Zero—the rigid structure cannot adapt and will shatter."

Cassandra took a slow drag from her pipe. "A textbook answer, Raven. Technically correct in a controlled environment. But practically? In a real battle, no one is going to give you the time to cast Absolute Zero."

Alicia bit her lip, sitting down in frustration.

"Anyone else?" Cassandra’s cat-like eyes scanned the room, eventually landing on me. A dangerous, challenging glint appeared in her gaze. "Edelhart. You’ve been awfully quiet while your fiancée does the talking. Enlighten us."

All eyes turned to me. The murmurs started again. They expected the "Defective Noble" to stutter and fail.

I stood up slowly, my expression deliberately languid. I didn’t look at the magical runes as mystical, ancient text. Thanks to my modern intellect and my [Calculation Power: 28], I looked at them as lines of code. As pure physics.

"The flaw isn’t magical, Professor," I said, my voice carrying effortlessly across the amphitheater. "It’s architectural."

Cassandra raised an eyebrow. "Go on."

"The Imperial Aegis uses three cores to maintain a perfect sphere," I explained, stepping out from my desk. "But a sphere distributes kinetic impact equally across its entire surface area. If a point-blank, concentrated attack hits the apex, the opposing kinetic force pushes against the structural curve, causing the three nodes to bear unnecessary load tension. It creates friction."

I walked down the steps toward the chalkboard.

"It’s an incredibly inefficient design born from an obsession with making magic look ’perfect’ rather than practical."

I picked up a piece of chalk. Without asking for permission, I drew a sharp, slanted line directly through the center of the ancient, sacred Imperial diagram.

Several noble students gasped at the sheer blasphemy of defacing a standard text.

"If you drop the third node entirely," I said, drawing a new, slanted geometric shape, "and angle the barrier at exactly forty-five degrees like a sloped embankment, you don’t need to absorb the impact. You simply deflect it. The kinetic energy of the enemy’s spell glides off the slope, reducing the required mana load by sixty percent and completely neutralizing the ’flaw’."

I tossed the chalk back onto the tray, dusting off my hands.

"Why build a brick wall to stop a boulder, when you can just build a ramp and let it roll past you?"

Silence descended on the room once again. It was a completely different kind of silence this time. It was the silence of absolute, paradigm-shifting shock.

The ’Trash’ hadn’t just answered the question; he had effortlessly deconstructed and optimized a spell that scholars had used for centuries, applying logic that didn’t even exist in their standard magical theory.

Cassandra stared at the newly drawn diagram. For a brief second, the sleepy, indifferent mask dropped, replaced by genuine, predatory awe.

"Sloped kinetic deflection..." she muttered, a slow, wicked smile spreading around her pipe. "Well, I’ll be damned. Ten points to House Edelhart."

I walked back to my seat, ignoring the gaping stares of the protagonist and the rest of the class. I caught Emma’s eye; she looked like she was about to openly swoon right out of her chair.

But as I sat down, I felt a burning sensation drilling into the side of my head. I didn’t need the System to tell me who it was.

Alicia Raven was gripping her desk so hard her knuckles were white, her crimson eyes locked onto me with an intensity that promised violence.