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The roar shook the Hollow from end to end.
Townsend and Brandt froze mid-step. The sound was unmistakably draconic, the same frequency as the pressure wave from earlier, but heavier. Deeper. As if the dragon that had announced itself minutes ago had grown even larger in the time since.
"The pressure increased." Brandt's voice was clipped. "How? It's been less than five minutes."
She didn't have an answer. Neither did Townsend.
Below them, Marcus's group had figured out exactly one thing from the escalating chaos, and that one thing was enough.
"That's a DRAGON." Marcus stared in the direction of the deep zones, every hair on his body standing straight up. "That roar, that pressure, that's a dragon. A real one."
"Oh no." Tyler's face had gone the color of old paper. "Did something come through the Black Gate? Did a dragon come through?!"
It was the obvious conclusion. Black Gate opens, extradimensional beast emerges, the principals rush in, and now a dragon was shaking the entire Hollow. The math wrote itself.
"If the Moonvale delegation hadn't shown up and forced that stupid exchange match," Hailey said through gritted teeth, "we would have finished this trip two days ago. BEFORE the Black Gate. BEFORE the dragon."
"I'm gonna send Moonvale a strongly worded letter," Derek muttered. "Assuming we survive."
All four students simultaneously arrived at the same unspoken agreement: every bad thing happening right now was Moonvale's fault.
"Professors." Hailey turned to Brandt and Townsend with a look that was equal parts respect and desperation. "We still haven't seen Luke. He went into the deep zones alone. If there's really a dragon in there..."
You sweet, oblivious children. Brandt kept her expression neutral. The dragon wasn't FROM the Black Gate. The dragon was Luke's card. The boy they were worrying about was the one who'd cracked the Dimensional Plane's spatial fabric and summoned the nightmare they were all running from.
If they ever found out, they wouldn't sleep for a week.
"The City Lord, Association President, and Principal Harlow all went in together," Brandt said, choosing her words carefully. "They'll bring Luke out safely."
"In that case," Marcus said, with a firmness that surprised even himself, "can we please leave?"
Unanimous agreement. No debate. No hesitation.
"Let's go." Townsend didn't argue. He led the group toward the exit portal at top speed, which was fine by everyone involved.
Deep in the Hollow, Victor, Harlow, and Harrison had stopped flying.
They were hovering at the treeline, staring upward at something that made every other surprise Luke had produced look modest by comparison.
Red-Eyes Black Dragon filled the sky.
Not Black Star. This was something else. Something more. The dragon that had emerged from the fire cocoon was half again the size of Black Star, with scales so dark they pulled light into themselves and a wingspan that turned the clearing below into permanent shadow. Every breath it took distorted the air around its jaws, and its eyes, those crimson eyes, burned with arcane formations that flickered like ancient code running behind the surface of reality.
Seven-Star. Legendary. The pressure it radiated made the Abyss Predator's Seven-Star aura feel thin by comparison.
"He planned it." Victor was the first to speak. His voice was quiet, almost reverent. "The dragon getting 'killed' wasn't a failure. He let it happen. The death triggered this transformation."
"Death as a weapon." Harrison's analytical mind was already cataloguing the implications. "The card doesn't end when it's destroyed. It evolves. Temporarily, yes, and there's clearly a time limit, but the concept... death is no longer the endpoint for a Card Spirit. It becomes a second phase. Another form of combat power."
"If this was a real battlefield," Harlow said slowly, "and your enemy killed your dragon, thinking they'd won... and then this crawled out of the corpse..." He trailed off. "Your opponent would need a new pair of pants."
Victor shook his head in disbelief. "He designed this into the card from the beginning. The smaller dragon dies, and instead of reverting to card form, it triggers a transformation into something far more powerful. The 'death' isn't a loss condition. It's an activation condition."
They noted the time limit. The Red-Eyes Black Dragon's form was clearly temporary. Energy was bleeding off its body at a visible rate, trails of crimson light flaking away from its wings like embers. But even so, what it represented was staggering: a Commander Realm student had designed a Card Spirit with a built-in Seven-Star emergency transformation.
The creativity alone was worth more than the raw power.
Down on the ground, Luke felt his mana reserves ticking down like a countdown timer that someone had set to "aggressive."
Red-Eyes Black Dragon consumed mana at a rate that made Black Star look economical. Three minutes. Maybe less. After that, the transformation would expire, the dragon would revert, and Luke would be standing in front of a Seven-Star extradimensional beetle with nothing but empty pockets and bad luck.
I really did become Ultraman's chest light, he thought. Blinking red from the moment I transformed.
No more time to waste.
"Red-Eyes Black Dragon." Luke's voice carried the calm of someone who'd already calculated the outcome. "End this."