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( Bonus Chapter )
The vines erupted from the earth the instant Mana's guard dropped.
Barbed tendrils, each one bristling with hooked thorns that glistened with purple venom, burst through the soil in a fan pattern aimed directly at the spot where Mana had been standing. If Luke hadn't called her back a split second earlier, the first strike would have caught her mid-turn.
Mana's eyes sharpened. She'd been riding the high of finishing the Tyrant Ape and hadn't sensed the underground threat at all. Luke had. That can't happen again.
But the ambusher didn't care about missed opportunities. It had a second target.
The Tyrant Ape, crippled and barely breathing after Dark Magic Burst, couldn't dodge. Barbed vines coiled around its massive frame like constrictor snakes, hooks sinking deep into flesh. Purple venom pumped through the thorns. Within seconds, the ten-foot beast that had taken Mana a full fight to bring down went completely limp.
Then the ground split open, and something ate it.
A mouth. Fifteen feet across, lined with rows of inward-curving teeth dripping with acidic saliva. It lunged upward, engulfed the paralyzed ape in a single bite, and dragged it below the surface. The crunching sound that followed was deeply unpleasant.
The thing that emerged afterward stood sixteen feet tall. A plant. Or something that had once been a plant and had decided it wanted to be a nightmare instead. Bulbous body, armored in layered green-brown plates. Tendrils extending in every direction like the arms of an octopus, each one tipped with venomous barbs. And at the top, that mouth, still chewing.
「 Predator Man-Eater Flower 」 Race: Plant Quality: Perfect Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star) Skills: Hunt, Venom, Mimicry, Devour
Six-Star Perfect. Same tier as Mana.
The Flower's acid-dripping maw swiveled toward Luke and Mana. One half-dead ape wasn't going to satisfy an appetite like that.
But it hesitated. It had watched Mana fight. It knew what the Spellcaster could do. That's why it had tried an ambush instead of a direct attack.
"This is it." In the monitoring room, Victor leaned forward. "A Six-Star Perfect opponent. Stronger than Lily's Silver Moon Fox and Nebula Rainbow Butterfly combined. This fight will tell us exactly where the Spellcaster's ceiling is."
Then Luke did something nobody expected.
"Mana, come back."
He recalled her. The Spellcaster dissolved into motes of light and flowed back into Luke's body. Against a Six-Star Perfect enemy. On purpose.
Victor blinked. Harrison sat up. Harlow's poker face cracked.
Luke could feel the excitement building in his chest. This was the opponent he'd been looking for. The Predator Flower was strong enough to give a real fight but not so strong that the outcome was hopeless. Perfect for a field test.
He couldn't sustain both Mana and Black Star simultaneously. The mana drain would flatten him in minutes. So Mana had to go back.
He drew the card.
The Predator Flower saw its opponent dismiss its Card Spirit and immediately surged forward, vines exploding outward. A Card Master without protection was meat.
It made it exactly three feet before the world changed.
A roar split the sky. Not sound alone. Pressure. Weight. The raw, primal assertion of something that sat at the very top of the food chain, announcing its presence to everything within earshot.
Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon materialized above the canopy. Wings spread to a span of over thirty feet, blotting out the sun. Scales the color of a starless void caught the light and swallowed it. And those eyes, crimson as fresh blood, burned with a heat that distorted the air around them.
Dragon Pressure hit the Predator Flower like a physical wall. Every vine recoiled, wrapping defensively around its body. The creature that had just been lunging at Luke was now cowering behind its own tendrils.
But the pressure didn't stop at the Flower.
It rolled outward like a shockwave, washing over the entire Fae Spirit Hollow. Every beast in every territory felt it. Predators dropped low. Prey animals froze. Birds fell out of the sky.
Miles away, Marcus's group felt it too.
"What... what IS that?" Tyler's voice cracked. His legs were shaking and he couldn't stop them. "Why do I feel like something's about to eat me?"
"You're not imagining it." Derek was pale, pressed flat against a tree trunk. "Something just woke up in there."
Marcus and Hailey exchanged a look. They were stronger than the other two, and the sensation was clearer for it. The source was deep inside the Hollow. Whatever had just appeared was orders of magnitude beyond anything they'd encountered.
"A dragon-type card." Townsend's voice came out as a whisper. "He built a dragon-type card."
The monitoring room had gone completely still. Every eye was locked on the screen showing Black Star hovering above the canopy, wings spread, dominating the skyline.
"So that's what gave him four Commander stars in one crafting session." Harrison's hands were gripping his armrests. "A Six-Star dragon. Of course."
Dragon-type cards had been the holy grail of Card Masters for as long as the profession had existed. Every Card Master wanted one. Almost none could build one. The crafting success rate for dragon cards was the lowest of any type in the entire Card Codex. For most Card Masters, attempting a dragon card meant watching rare, irreplaceable materials dissolve into nothing when the construction failed.
That was why dragon materials could still be found on the Association marketplace. Not because nobody wanted them. Because nobody could use them. The materials sat there, purchased by optimists and hoarded by dreamers, and the success rate stayed brutally, stubbornly low.
Outside of Dragon Valley, the only nation with significant dragon card production, dragon-type Card Spirits were counted in single digits per generation.
And Luke had built one. At Commander Realm. As a high school student.
"The crafting success rate for dragon types is the lowest of any category." Harrison's voice was almost reverent. "Most Card Masters attempt dragon cards three, four, five times before they succeed. Many never do. And this kid appears to have done it on his first try. At Commander Realm. I don't even want to think about what his natural crafting talent must be."
He trailed off. There was nothing else to say. The dragon hovering on their screen said it all.