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Wesley wasn't the only one waiting on Luke's answer now. Conrad was too. If Luke joined as well, at least Conrad wouldn't be the only fresh conscript in there, and he'd have something to tell himself besides: it wasn't that he was weak. The Society was just that strong.
"Not interested." Luke shook his head, and for a second the whole road went silent.
He didn't actually think Wesley was out of line. The Magic Card Civilization had its rules, but the strong still preyed on the weak everywhere, and Celestial's competition was famously cutthroat. The Academy wouldn't rank among the Four Greats otherwise.
He'd meant exactly what he said. Society life just didn't appeal to him.
Join a society and there'd be activities to attend, then some tangle of connections to manage on top. All of it would eat into his freedom, and Luke would have to be bored out of his mind before he signed up for that.
"He REFUSED Brother Wesley?"
"Who does he think he is? One exam title and he thinks he's untouchable?"
"Turning us down flat, like nobody else ever wore that title. Brother Wesley was exam first LAST cohort! And he needed exactly one year to take our Society's third seat. Put anyone else in his place and it doesn't get done."
The voices came from the Magus Society members at Wesley's back, and those three were the polite ones. Wesley had made believers of every one of them, and he'd done it with his fists.
"That freshman's in for it. Wesley Brandt is not a man to cross, and the kid just refused the Magus Society to his face. Let that slide, and his own people stop listening tomorrow."
"Weren't we all that cocky once. Then reality gets its say. Celestial ranks by credits, sure, but how many ever actually make the cut?"
"At our stage, one extra year of training opens a real gap. And in card-crafting, nothing pays off like time put in."
Up and down the road, hardly anybody watching was betting on Luke, and the seniors, unlike the freshmen, knew exactly how rare a hand like Wesley's was.
Even inside Celestial, Seven-Star cards were hardly commonplace. Plenty of students carried Six-Stars and nothing higher, and the ones who ever climbed past that line were a small handful.
Normally, Seven-Star cards were Monarch Realm territory. Only geniuses of the Luke, Elise, and Conrad stripe managed to craft them before ever reaching Monarch, and the whole populous East produced maybe a few such talents a year.
And Wesley's spirits weren't just high in level. They were high in quality too, one Collectible and one Perfect, past anything an ordinary student could touch. Even Elise and Conrad, Seven-Star holders themselves, couldn't produce a Collectible-grade Seven-Star anytime soon, let alone a Perfect. Every step up in quality multiplied the crafting difficulty, and a Seven-Star at the Collectible grade or above was a combination few students anywhere managed to put on a card.
"So long as the green hills remain, there's no fear of running short of firewood." Conrad spoke up as well, turning to Luke. "The Magus Society is still the top society in Celestial. Only the Student Council and the Discipline Committee stand above it. Honestly, joining doesn't cost us much."
Forced in or not, it was done now. And the way Conrad saw it, even Luke, a shade stronger than himself, was no match for Wesley Brandt. The refusal was pride, nothing more: Luke couldn't very well fold in front of this many eyes.
"Give me one good reason." Wesley's face was perfectly calm, unreadable to everyone watching.
"Just gave you one, didn't I? I'm not interested." Luke shrugged.
"And if the ones at your door were the Student Council? Or the Discipline Committee?"
"Council, Committee, or your Society. Same answer. And you don't need to fish."
Ssss!
Even Conrad's head snapped around in open disbelief. Was Luke actually serious?
"Freshmen are this bold nowadays? Not even our Student Council rates a look?"
"Never mind your Council. By the sound of it, our Discipline Committee doesn't rate a glance from him either."
All this was happening close to the dormitory gates, where foot traffic never thinned, and the crowd it drew naturally included seniors from both official organizations. Their strength might not touch Wesley's, but no fresh enrollee got to treat them as beneath notice either, and a seat in the Council or the Committee was itself proof of what they could do. This freshman had just declared he'd turn both down before either had even asked. It sat poorly with every one of them.
"Hahahaha! Now that's interesting. Refusing even the Council and the Committee." Wesley threw his head back. "True or not, even I never dared say that much back in the day. You're wilder than I was."
"But wild talk needs wild strength behind it." The laugh shut off, and his eyes fixed hard on Luke. "Beat me, and we'll say today never happened. Otherwise, you join the Magus Society like a good boy."
Some part of him could tell Luke wasn't bluffing, but no freshman had the goods to back up talk like that. Even at his own wildest, a year ago, he'd never have said it in public. Even now he wouldn't. So what, exactly, gave a freshman the nerve?
"So you were never going to take no for an answer." Luke had genuinely run out of patience with this, all the more with the Dark Purgatory barely behind him. He raised a hand, and WarGrowlmon surfaced before him. "No need to hold back."
ROAR!
At the command, WarGrowlmon charged the Giant Ice Bear and the Frost-Soul White Tiger both. Two same-grade spirits at once, and there was no fear anywhere in it.
"A dragon-family card spirit? That's not possible!" The crowd churned. For plenty of them it was their first sight of a dragon-kind spirit in the flesh, and the summoner was a freshman, no less.
"I heard this year's intake has two Dragon's Valley freshmen, but weren't those a pair of sisters? Was the news wrong?"
"Not necessarily. Nobody ever said only the Valley crafts dragon cards. The Discipline Committee's own president, Sinclair Voss, holds a dragon-family spirit, and he's Kingdom-born same as us."
"True enough. Still, a dragon-kind in this year's intake. That firepower is no joke. No wonder the freshman walks that tall."
"You have a SECOND Seven-Star card?" Conrad was staring at Luke as though at a stranger. This was his first sight of the crimson dragon too.
With the angel from the exam, that made two known Seven-Star cards in Luke's hands. An angel and a dragon. Both apex races.