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「 Radiant Moth Cloak: Once in its lifetime, a Queen Moth undergoes a single metamorphosis. The shed cloak retains a fragment of the Queen's power. With proper processing, it can be used to command lesser moth demons in battle. 」
"So pretty!" Mana's eyes went wide, the prismatic wings reflecting tiny rainbows across her face. Her hands twitched toward them before she caught herself and pulled back.
She knew better. A Six-Star material was incredibly valuable, especially for someone at Luke's stage. She wasn't going to be selfish about it.
But her gaze kept drifting back. The wings were really pretty.
"If we find another Queen Moth," Luke said, watching her with a grin he couldn't suppress, "I'll have the spare cloak made into something you can wear."
Mana's head whipped toward him. "Really?!"
"Really."
She closed the distance in a heartbeat and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, face flushed pink. "Master, you're the best!"
"Yeah, yeah." He rubbed the spot and ruffled her hair. "Come on. We're burning daylight."
With Simulated Crafting, his success rate on any card he'd fully mapped was one hundred percent. He only needed one Radiant Moth Cloak for the card itself. A duplicate would be pure bonus.
In the monitoring room, Victor coughed.
"Harlow. I understand that a healthy relationship between Card Master and Card Spirit enhances combat synergy. But perhaps... remind Luke that the college entrance exam is approaching. A certain degree of restraint might be appropriate."
The other principals wore identical expressions: half-amused, half-annoyed. Watching someone else's student flirt on a live surveillance feed was a uniquely irritating experience.
"I'll have a word with him," Harlow said blandly. He didn't actually see the problem. Who hadn't been young once?
Besides, Harlow was fairly certain Victor had female Card Spirits of his own. The man wasn't exactly in a position to lecture.
Better that Luke's affections stayed local. If the boy ended up chasing a girl to Moonvale, that would be a real crisis.
Elsewhere in Fae Spirit Hollow, things were going considerably less smoothly.
"Finally..." Marcus slumped against a tree, chest heaving. Beside him, Hailey, Tyler, and Derek were in similar states. Ahead of them, the corpse of a Five-Star Mad Wolf lay in a heap, its fur scorched and frozen in patches from four different Card Spirits attacking simultaneously.
One Five-Star beast. Four of them. And it had still taken everything they had.
"We're only on day one." Marcus wiped sweat from his forehead. "Three days of this."
"Wonder how Luke's doing," Hailey murmured. If he'd agreed to team up with them, this wolf would have been a five-second detour.
"Better than us," Marcus sighed. "Way better."
Two days blurred past.
Luke pushed deeper into Fae Spirit Hollow, Mana clearing the path ahead of him with the same relentless efficiency she'd shown from the start. Five-Star beasts fell without slowing them down. The real engagements came when they hit Six-Star territories.
By the afternoon of day three, Luke had fought his third Six-Star beast: a Tyrant Ape. Ten feet tall, built like a tank wrapped in fur and rage, Six-Star Collectible quality. It was the strongest creature he'd faced inside the Hollow.
Dark Magic Burst put it on the ground.
The ape wasn't dead yet, but it was close. Its massive chest heaved with labored breaths, one arm bent at an angle that said it wasn't getting back up.
"The Tyrant Ape is Six-Star Collectible. That's genuinely strong for this tier." Victor studied the feed, shaking his head. "And it still wasn't enough. I'm almost certain now. Her quality is Perfect."
"I can't think of a better Six-Star card," Harrison admitted. "And I'm including my own collection in that statement."
Victor said nothing, because he'd been thinking the same thing. He owned Six-Star cards. None of them matched what Luke's Spellcaster had been demonstrating for the past two days. The raw destructive power was one thing. The versatility was the real killer: homing spell control, Silence Seal, melee staff combat, wide-area attacks, flight, spatial teleportation via Magical Hats, and an execution finisher. That was the toolkit of three Card Spirits crammed into one.
"What I really want to see," Harrison said, leaning forward, "is his second card. A Commander who gained four stars from a single crafting session built something extraordinary. When is he going to use it?"
"Maybe nothing in here is strong enough to force it out." Victor almost sounded disappointed.
In the Hollow, Luke was thinking the exact same thing.
Three Six-Star beasts, and none of them had pushed Mana hard enough to justify summoning Black Star. The mana drain problem meant he couldn't just call out his second card for fun. Every second of dual summoning was a countdown timer on his reserves.
He needed a real threat. Something that would actually test what Black Star could do.
Mana finished off the Tyrant Ape with a follow-up blast and turned back toward Luke, staff over her shoulder, ready to move on. Then Luke's eyes locked onto something past the treeline, and his expression changed.
"Mana. Fall back."
She didn't understand the order, but she obeyed instantly. Card Spirits followed their master's commands without question, even if the reason wasn't clear.
Because emerging from the undergrowth behind the Tyrant Ape's corpse, drawn by the scent of fresh death, was something that made the hairs on the back of Luke's neck stand straight up.
In the monitoring room, Harlow sat bolt upright.
"Is that a Predator Man-Eater Flower?"