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"If you encounter a Black Gate, get away from it immediately." Victor's voice carried the weight of someone who'd seen what happened when people didn't listen. "The extradimensional space on the other side is not safe. The weakest creatures that drift through those rifts are classified as high-tier beasts. Seven-Star minimum. You cannot fight them. You cannot outrun them if they lock onto you. Your only option is distance."
The monitoring systems showed Fae Spirit Hollow's spatial integrity as relatively stable, but Black Gates were inherently unpredictable. Victor had to make sure these students understood the stakes.
Even Luke. Five-Star Commander with a Six-Star card was impressive for a student. Against a Seven-Star extradimensional beast, it was meaningless. The gap between Six-Star and Seven-Star wasn't like Four to Five. It was the dividing line between mid-tier and high-tier. A different world of power entirely.
"Understood, City Lord." The gravity of the warning registered on every face.
But beneath the caution, excitement still hummed through the group. Black Gates were rare. The odds of encountering one in a stable Dimensional Plane were low. And everything else in Fae Spirit Hollow was fair game.
Fifteen minutes later, a square portal shimmered to life in the center of the Mansion's staging chamber. Luke, Marcus, Hailey, Tyler, and Derek stepped through together, and the world shifted.
Fae Spirit Hollow looked... normal. Trees, clearings, distant hills. If not for the faintly wrong quality of the light and the total absence of wind, it could have been a forest anywhere in Ashenvale.
"Huh." Tyler looked around. "I expected something more... alien."
"It looks calm, but the danger here is real." Hailey had clearly done her research. "Fae Spirit Hollow's beasts specialize in camouflage and ambush. The peaceful surface is the trap."
Once the portal closed behind them, Victor led the principals deeper into the Mansion, to a monitoring room lined with screens that displayed live feeds from inside the Hollow.
"Luke." Hailey turned to him, and her voice carried a note of carefully managed hope. "We're planning to explore as a group. Safety in numbers. Want to join?"
She wasn't subtle about it. Luke had solo-killed five Moonvale fighters two days ago. Having him on the team was the difference between a dangerous expedition and a guided tour.
"I think I'll head out on my own first." Luke shook his head. "See what the deeper zones look like."
Hailey's face fell, but she recovered quickly. She'd expected that answer.
Luke didn't say what he was actually thinking, which was that the four of them would slow him down. Their strongest cards were Four-Star. Anything that threatened Luke wouldn't even register as a challenge for his party, and anything that challenged them would be a waste of Mana's time. It was a mismatch in both directions.
More importantly, he had unfinished business. Victor had said Six-Star beasts lived in the deep zones. Luke needed a Six-Star opponent to field-test Black Star. Nothing in the outer areas would serve that purpose.
"Looks like Luke's going solo," Victor observed from the monitoring room.
"He knows his own strength." Harlow leaned back, unbothered. "I trust his judgment."
Townsend and Brandt exchanged a look but said nothing. Their students were in the other group. The group that was currently being abandoned by the strongest member.
"More than his strength," Harrison Cole murmured, "I'm curious about his new card. A Commander who jumps four stars in one crafting session built something significant. Harlow, do you know what it was?"
"You'll find out when he uses it." Harlow maintained his poker face. Internally, he was just as curious. He had no idea what Luke had built.
Please let it be something impressive.
Deep in Fae Spirit Hollow, Luke moved fast. Mana drifted beside him, picking off beasts along the route with casual efficiency. Four-Star creatures went down in a single spell. Five-Stars took two, sometimes three if they had decent defensive abilities. None of them slowed Luke's pace for more than a few seconds.
Extract. Harvest. Store. Move on. The rhythm was mechanical and satisfying.
"Master, there's something up ahead." Mana floated back to his side after dispatching another beast. "A big colony. Lots of winged things. I can feel their mana from here."
"Winged colony?" Luke's eyes lit up. A beast colony meant concentrated materials. One raid could net more loot than hours of picking off strays.
"That direction..." In the monitoring room, Victor traced Luke's path on the map and cross-referenced it with the Hollow's known territories. "That's the moth demon nesting ground. A Queen Moth controls it. Six-Star Normal."
"A moth demon colony?" Harrison frowned. "The Queen Moth herself isn't the main threat. It's the hallucinogenic pollen. The entire swarm produces it. Inhale too much and you'll drop into a coma trapped in illusions. Plenty of experienced Card Masters have walked into moth demon territory overconfident and woken up three days later surrounded by their own vomit."
The group fell silent, watching Luke and Mana approach the colony's outer perimeter.
The first wave of moths rose to meet them. A dozen Five-Star moth demons, wings shimmering with toxic dust, closing in from all directions.