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"Abyss Predator." Victor identified the creature the instant he cleared the treeline, and to the surprise of everyone behind him, his shoulders actually relaxed. Slightly. "That's manageable."
Extradimensional beasts came in tiers. The Abyss Predator sat near the bottom. Seven-Star Rare, dangerous by any student's standards, but far from the worst thing that could crawl through a Black Gate. If the breach had attracted something higher up the hierarchy, they'd be having a very different conversation.
Below them, the fight was already in full swing. And it was something to watch.
Black Star was running interference from above, drawing the bone-eater swarms away from Luke's position with strafing runs of dragon fire. Every pass incinerated a section of the cloud, buying Mana clear lines of fire. The dragon would bank, sweep a column of flame through the densest cluster, and Mana would fire a homing Dark Magic Attack through the gap before it closed, aiming for the damaged leg joint they'd cracked earlier.
The beetle kept rotating to shield the wound, but the coordinated pressure was forcing it to choose: protect the joint or deal with the dragon. It couldn't do both.
Mana wasn't staying in one position either. She'd planted three Magical Hat markers around the battlefield, blinking between them to fire from unpredictable angles. Left flank, behind, overhead. Each time the Predator oriented toward her, she was already gone, reappearing somewhere else with a spell already charged.
"They're coordinating." Harrison leaned forward, impressed despite the danger of the situation. "The dragon draws aggro and clears the swarm, the Spellcaster exploits the openings. They're fighting it like a raid boss."
"Two Six-Star cards holding off a Seven-Star through pure tactical superiority." Harrison nodded. "That confirms everything we've seen. His cards aren't just powerful individually, they work as a unit. Even against a tier advantage like..."
The Abyss Predator's foreleg blurred.
It had been tracking Black Star through four consecutive strafing runs. Not just reacting. Learning. Cataloguing the rhythm. The bank angle. The exact moment the dragon committed to its turn and couldn't change direction.
On the fifth pass, it didn't swipe where the dragon was.
It stabbed where the dragon would be.
Six feet of chitin-armored leg punching upward like a siege lance, timed to the millisecond. Black Star flew directly into it. The impact folded the dragon's body around the blow like a rag doll. Momentum arrested. Wings crumpled. The dragon slammed into the ground hard enough to crater the earth, sending a shockwave rippling through the trees.
Harrison's mouth hung open. Mid-sentence. Mid-compliment.
"..." His face cycled through several interesting colors.
"You." Harlow's voice was dangerously quiet. "You absolute crow-mouthed jinx. You cursed him while the words were still leaving your mouth."
"I didn't... that wasn't..."
"I will sew your mouth shut. I will personally find thread and a needle and I will sew it shut." Harlow had never sounded more sincere about anything in his life.
Victor ignored both of them. His eyes were locked on the crater. Black Star's body lay motionless in the dirt. Limbs splayed. Scales cracked. Unmoving. Any other Card Spirit would have dissolved back into card form by now.
Black Star hadn't.
"Harlow." Victor's voice cut through the bickering. "The dragon didn't revert."
Harlow stopped mid-threat. Looked at the crater. Black Star's body was still physical. Still present. Which meant, against all appearances, the Card Spirit was not dead.
On the ground, Luke watched his dragon lie motionless and felt nothing but calm.
"It's over."
Not a lament. A statement of fact. This fight was ending now.
The Abyss Predator was smart. It had learned Black Star's flight pattern in four passes and predicted the fifth. Brute force couldn't bridge a full tier gap, and the mana drain meant Luke couldn't sustain a war of attrition. They'd cracked one leg joint. The beetle had dozens.
But Luke had built Black Star with exactly this scenario in mind. The dragon's entire identity was about chasing a legend it could never reach in life. And in death, it became that legend. Briefly. Gloriously.
True Red Soul.
Black Star's body ignited.
Not the controlled flame of Star Flare Shot. Not the breath weapon that had incinerated the Predator Flower. This was something deeper. Dragon fire erupting from inside the body, pouring out of every crack in the scales, flooding the crater with crimson-black flame that climbed higher and higher.
Mana had pulled back the moment Luke's command rippled through their bond. She hovered above the treeline, staff ready, watching the fire pillar climb. Her eyes were wide. She could feel the energy building inside that inferno, and it was nothing like what Black Star had carried before.
This was something older. Something that predated the Black Star Dragon by millennia.
Inside the fire, something moved. Something bigger than what had gone in.
The Abyss Predator's compound eyes locked onto the pillar. Every single one. Dozens of independent lenses converging on the same point for the first time since the fight began.
And in those eyes, unmistakably, there was fear.
The fire split open.
Red-Eyes Black Dragon.
The legend itself. The dragon that Black Star had spent its entire existence chasing. Larger by half again. Wingspan that threw the entire clearing into shadow. Scales so dark they drank light, with an inner luminescence that pulsed like a heartbeat. And the eyes. Twin pools of crimson fire, ancient and absolute, with arcane formations flickering in their depths like a language written before the world had words.
Seven-Star. Legendary.
Dragon Pressure doubled. Then doubled again. The wave of primal authority that rolled outward made Black Star's earlier debut feel like a whisper. This was a declaration that hit every living creature in the Fae Spirit Hollow simultaneously, pressing down on them like the sky had gained weight.
The Abyss Predator's legs buckled. Not from a physical attack. From pressure alone. Its mandibles clicked in rapid, involuntary patterns, producing a hissing screech that sounded like a scream. It couldn't meet the dragon's gaze.
Mana floated above the battlefield, staff in hand, and stared. She'd watched the Black Star Dragon fight. She'd calculated its power relative to her own. She knew, in her bones, that Black Star was slightly stronger than her.
What she was looking at now was not Black Star.
This was something else entirely. And for the first time since Luke had crafted her, Mana felt genuinely small.
"Master," she murmured. "What is that?"
Luke didn't answer immediately. He was staring too.
So this is what Seven-Star Legendary looks like.
Miles away, Marcus's group was on the ground.
The earlier Dragon Pressure from Black Star had been uncomfortable. This was something else. The air itself had weight. Breathing took conscious effort. Tyler was on his knees, hands flat in the dirt. Derek was braced against a rock with both arms. Even Marcus and Hailey, the strongest of the four, felt their legs shaking under a force that had nothing to do with gravity.
"I take it back," Tyler wheezed. "Everything I said about the exam being worth it. We got scammed."
Then the pressure vanished. Cut off like a switch. Two figures landed beside them, and the oppressive weight evaporated behind a barrier of Emperor Realm energy.
"There you are." Townsend surveyed the four students. Shaken but intact. "On your feet. We're leaving."
"What's happening?" Marcus asked immediately. "What's in the deep zones?"
"A Black Gate appeared," Brandt said. "An extradimensional beast entered the Hollow. The situation is being handled, but the expedition is ending early."
She didn't mention Luke. She didn't mention the dragon. She didn't explain that a student's card had cracked the Plane's spatial tolerance. The entrance exam was approaching. The last thing these four needed was a crisis of confidence from learning the gap between them and Luke had grown from "large" to "incomprehensible."
"Let's move."
The four students exchanged looks. Still shaking. Still full of questions. But arguing with Emperor Realm principals wasn't an option.
Behind them, deep in the Hollow, the ground shuddered again.