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Red-Eyes Black Dragon opened its jaws, and the world held its breath.
Heat gathered in the dragon's maw. Not the controlled, focused burn of Star Flare Shot. This was something rawer, something older. Black fire condensed between teeth the size of longswords, compressing tighter and tighter until the air around the dragon's head began to warp. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed through the space above the clearing, the Dimensional Plane's weakened fabric physically cracking under the energy buildup.
And the dragon hadn't even fired yet.
The Abyss Predator felt it coming. Every compound eye dilated. Its carapace split open along the dorsal ridge, and the largest bone-eater swarm yet erupted outward, thousands upon thousands of chitinous bodies forming a wall between itself and the dragon. Thicker than anything it had deployed before. Denser. A living barricade of expendable insects, every one of them sacrificing itself to buy the beetle behind them another fraction of a second.
Black Flame Shot.
The condensed fire left the dragon's jaws and crossed the distance in an instant. Not a projectile in the traditional sense. More like a tear in reality that happened to be made of fire, leaving a trail of scorched atmosphere and charred space in its wake. The air behind it was still burning when the flame hit the swarm wall.
The bone-eaters screamed. Thousands of voices in a frequency that scraped against the inside of Luke's skull. The wall that had been thick enough to block combined Six-Star attacks didn't last three seconds. Black flame ate through chitin and flesh like acid through tissue paper, layer after layer evaporating, the insects at the front already ash before the ones at the back realized the wall had been breached.
The Black Flame Shot punched through the far side of the swarm and hit the Abyss Predator square in the center of its carapace.
The beetle became a fireball.
Dragon flames engulfed its entire body, so intense that the space around the impact site warped into visible distortion. The ground beneath the Predator liquefied. Trees within a hundred feet combusted spontaneously. The Black Gate, still hovering nearby, caught fire along its edges, dark energy and dragon flame wrestling for dominance along the frame.
"Is this kid trying to demolish my Dimensional Plane?" Victor extended his hand and pushed. Sovereign Realm energy flooded outward, pressing against the cracking spatial fabric like a hand holding together a fracturing window. The Hollow stabilized under his power, but just barely. "The destructive force from that attack... it's approaching Eight-Star territory. If it hit a few more times, even I couldn't hold this space together."
Below, the Abyss Predator thrashed. It rolled across the burning ground, trying to smother the flames, but dragon fire wasn't ordinary fire. It didn't need oxygen. It didn't respect physics. It burned because it was dragon fire, and nothing short of cutting off the source was going to stop it.
Bone-eaters fell from the Predator's body in clusters, already ablaze, dying before they hit the ground. They left trails of ash that dissolved on contact with the air. The Predator's six legs clawed at the earth, trying to drag itself back toward the Black Gate, back to the extradimensional space where it belonged, but the flames had already eaten through two of the leg joints that Mana and Black Star had cracked earlier.
It collapsed. Rolled. Screamed in that horrible grating frequency.
Ten seconds. That was all it took.
The Abyss Predator stopped moving. Its massive body, which had shrugged off combined attacks from two Six-Star cards, had been reduced to a charred quarter of its original size. The bioluminescent shell was black and cracked. The compound eyes were dark.
Seven-Star Rare. Extradimensional beast. Dead.
"First Seven-Star kill." Luke walked toward the corpse, more out of curiosity than celebration. His legs felt unsteady. The mana drain from maintaining the Red-Eyes Black Dragon was hollowing him out by the second. "Might as well make it count."
Extract.
The skill pulled materials from the charred husk. Standard drops came first, some useful, most unremarkable. Then the special items.
「 Extract successful. Acquired: Bug Heart ×1 」
「 Bug Heart: Exceptionally rare. Only forms inside insect-type beasts after prolonged gestation. Contains the essence of insect evolution. 」
「 Extract successful. Acquired: Puppet Key ×1 」
「 Puppet Key: An artifact from a collapsed world once known as the Puppet Realm. The key grants its holder authority over all puppet-type constructs, unlocking their true potential. 」
「 Extract successful. Acquired: Dark Night Veil ×1 」
「 Dark Night Veil: A veil once worn by the mysterious Queen of Night to conceal her beauty. Infused with potent dark energy. When unleashed, its power can overturn perception itself. 」
Three special materials on top of the standard loot. The Abyss Predator's description had mentioned it collected treasures from every Dimensional Plane it visited. These must have been accumulated over who knew how many raids across who knew how many collapsed worlds.
"Not bad for one beetle." Luke stored everything in the Card Editor. His mind was already flickering through possibilities, but the mana drain was making it hard to think straight. He needed to wrap up and recall the dragon before he passed out standing up.
Then his gaze landed on the Black Gate.
It was shrinking. Without the Abyss Predator to anchor it, the rift was losing cohesion. Dragon fire still licked at its edges, accelerating the decay. In another minute, it would close on its own.
But Luke looked at it and thought: I wonder.
He pointed at the Black Gate and cast Extract.
「 Extract successful. Acquired: Black Core Fragment ×1 」
「 Black Core Fragment: Saturated with extradimensional energy. The substance that maintains a Black Gate's existence. Collect seven fragments to synthesize one Black Core. Legend holds that when seven Black Cores are assembled, their true purpose will be revealed. 」
Luke stared at the description for a long moment.
"Are we playing Dragon Ball right now? Is that what's happening?" Seven fragments for one core. Seven cores for the real prize. That was forty-nine Black Gates total, minimum.
The Gate, robbed of its energy source, collapsed in on itself. The rift shrank to the size of a fist, then a coin, then vanished entirely. The spatial tear sealed. The connection to extradimensional space was gone.
So removing the fragment destroys the Gate. Luke filed that away. Useful knowledge. But getting close enough to Extract a Black Gate meant dealing with whatever extradimensional beast was guarding it first.
Which brought things right back to the fundamental problem: you needed to be strong enough to kill Seven-Star creatures before any of this mattered.