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Harrison, for his part, was enjoying this more than he'd enjoyed anything in weeks.
Edmund Hargrove was the senior figure in the room, and having him turn with that particular polite tone meant one of two things. Either Edmund was genuinely asking for information Harrison possessed, or Edmund was setting Harrison up to be thoroughly humiliated for withholding critical intelligence.
Harrison strongly suspected it was the second.
I have no idea what we're looking at. The thought was almost entirely true.
He knew Luke had crafted a new dragon-related Original Card called Timaeus. He'd watched the construction ceremony personally. But Luke had never shared the card's stats with him, and Harrison had assumed, based on the Mana Surge output during construction, that it was a standard Six-Star card in the same class as Mana and Black Star.
The assumption had been comfortable. Luke had never corrected it.
But Harrison had only witnessed the raw construction phenomena. The Creation Pillar. The anomalous eight phantom stars. The energy signatures. He'd seen a dragon-type card being born. He hadn't seen any specifications about fusion capabilities or seven-star unified knight-dragon forms. The existence of that capability was news to Harrison the same way it was news to everyone else.
"President Hargrove." Harrison kept his voice respectful and carefully neutral. "I don't actually know the specifics. The Association doesn't require members to fully disclose their cards, and I wasn't going to push Luke for details on his private collection."
This was the truth, more or less. Harrison simply omitted the parts about knowing there was a second dragon-type Original Card, and knowing Luke had been sitting on it specifically to ambush the Capital team.
Edmund studied him for a long moment. The smile deepened slightly.
"I see."
Grant Whitfield and Miles Thornton exchanged glances. Neither of them believed Harrison's innocence act, but both of them also knew there was nothing they could do about it. Harrison had played his hand brilliantly. The time to pressure him for information had been before the tournament, not during it.
Harrison, you absolute snake. The collective thought was unanimous across the monitoring chamber.
Harrison's internal smile could have powered a small city.
-----
Inside the sanctum, Luke's own status feed updated with the new card spirit's details.
*「 Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl 」*
Race: Spellcaster / Dragon
Quality: Legendary
Level: ★★★★★★★ (Seven-Star)
Skills: Dark Magic Spiral Force, Spell-Sealing Dragon, Dark Dragon Burst, Dragon Knight Continuation
Skill descriptions surfaced in his awareness:
Dark Magic Spiral Force: Select self or any allied card spirit on the field. The target's attack power doubles for 30 minutes.
Spell-Sealing Dragon: Invokes a special power hidden in the dragon's eyes. Nullifies negative status effects targeting self and converts them into equivalent buffs. Effective against status effects up to one major tier above the user's level.
Dark Dragon Burst: Merges dark magic with dragon-power, maximally channeling internal strength. Can eliminate enemies up to one major tier above the user. Induces weakened state after use.
Dragon Knight Continuation: Upon elimination, special-summon Dark Magician Girl in her original form.
"Seven-Star Legendary." Luke's eyes had lit up. "And the skill kit is brutal."
All four new skills complemented each other with a design elegance that Luke hadn't expected. Dark Magic Spiral Force as a doubler buff. Spell-Sealing Dragon turning enemy debuffs into personal buffs. Dark Dragon Burst as a nuke-tier finisher capable of killing up to Eight-Star targets. And Dragon Knight Continuation as an insurance policy that preserved Mana's original form if the fusion went down.
Even more importantly, the fusion retained access to every ability Mana had possessed before the merger. Silence Seal, Magical Hats, Magic Cylinder, Dark Magic Attack, Dark Burning Attack, Dark Magic Burst. The Dragon Knight hadn't traded her kit for the upgrade. She'd added to it.
Luke turned to regard Elise Hargrove across the sanctum.
A slow, dangerous smile crossed his face.
"You're still a Leader Realm Card Master," he said almost apologetically. "I can't afford to underestimate someone with the Hargrove family's resources. Who knows what else you have ready."
Elise's eye twitched.
-----
"Hraaaaagh!" Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl's voice was a harmonic blend of Mana's bright tone and Timaeus's deeper resonance. She spurred her mount forward.
Elise felt the targeting lock the moment it landed on her. A chill ran down her spine. Even with three Six-Star Perfect spirits arrayed around her, the sense of being hunted by something higher on the food chain was instinctive and absolute.
"Crystal Orchid. Maximum defense."
Eternal Crystal Orchid didn't hesitate. Her parasol spun up into a silver blur, and she called out in her soft, sorrowful voice: "Crystal Cluster."
The silver umbrella bloomed. A cascade of silver-white orchid petals poured from beneath its canopy, and as they landed on the sanctum floor, they crystallized into an expanding lattice of interlocking crystal shields. Dozens of layers. Hundreds. Thousands. The defense formation multiplied recursively, each new crystal plate anchoring three more to spawn from its edges, until the space around Elise was walled off by a kaleidoscope of glittering shields.
This was Eternal Crystal Orchid's trademark technique. The same formation that had exhausted eighty percent of Silver Moon Fox's and Frost Archer's combined output. The same defense that had denied Lily and Serena every attempted breakthrough during their earlier fight.
Against a single Seven-Star opponent, Crystal Cluster should have held for at least a minute. Probably two. Long enough for Mandragora Queen and Dragon Maiden Flower to counterattack, set up control fields, and wear the enemy down.
"Prepare to counter," Elise ordered. "Crystal Orchid tanks, Mandragora sets the thorn trap, Dragon Maiden charges Mimicry Dragon Breath. We break her on the third exchange."
The plan was sound. It should have worked.
Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl raised her gemstone sword.
One swing.
The sword descended in a shimmering arc, leaving a wake of condensed dark-and-sapphire energy that seemed to tear space as it passed. It wasn't a melee strike. The blade acted as a focusing conduit, projecting a compressed wave of fused Spellcaster-Dragon power across the distance in a single silent stroke.
The Crystal Cluster formation screamed.
Every shield in the lattice, all thousands of them, shattered simultaneously. Not cracked. Not fractured. Shattered. The silver-white crystal plates exploded into glittering particulate that filled the air and caught the ambient light like a blizzard of diamond dust.
And behind the shattered lattice, Eternal Crystal Orchid herself took the full force of the attack.
The elegant, sorrowful figure in the silver-white dress was lifted off her feet, hurled backward through twenty meters of dense plant-growth, and slammed into the sanctum wall with enough force to crater the stone. Crystal fragments scattered from her dress like a constellation of broken stars. Her parasol tumbled from her hand and rolled away.
Her form wavered, flickered, and dissolved back into card format.
Gone. In a single exchange.
"That's…" Elise's voice had gone hoarse. She stared at where Eternal Crystal Orchid had been moments before. "That's not possible."
Her father had told her, in person and on more than one occasion, that Eternal Crystal Orchid's defensive capabilities were unmatched within her tier. That no card spirit at Six-Star or lower could kill her through the Crystal Cluster formation. That even Seven-Star opponents would need extended time to break through.
One exchange. One strike. The Crystal Cluster and the Crystal Orchid herself. Both gone.
"How strong is that thing?" Elise whispered. The answer was obvious, and she hated it. At least Seven-Star. Possibly higher. Raw output that Leader Realm Card Masters simply didn't encounter from opponents their own age.
Just who are you, Luke Mercer? This isn't the output of someone at our exam year. This is a professional.
-----
Before Elise could readjust her strategy, Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl had already moved.
Timaeus folded his wings and dove. The fusion spirit plunged directly into the thorn trap Mandragora Queen had woven around the perimeter, ignoring the defensive setup entirely, diving into the paralytic fragrance zone that had taken out Callum Ward without effort.
"Trap spring!" Mandragora Queen squeaked, and the thorns erupted upward in a converging forest, aimed at Timaeus's underside where the dragon's armor was thinnest. Simultaneously, the fragrance intensified, saturating the air with paralytic compounds designed to immobilize anything short of Emperor Realm.
The thorns converged on Timaeus.
The fragrance entered Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl's lungs.
Spell-Sealing Dragon.
Timaeus's sky-blue eyes flared with a pulse of colder light. The dragon's pupils narrowed to vertical slits, and a ripple of sapphire energy expanded outward from his gaze in a slow-moving wave.
The paralytic fragrance entering the Dragon Knight's lungs met the wave and transformed. The toxic compounds broke apart and reorganized into something else entirely, particles of sapphire-edged violet energy that flowed into the Dragon Knight's armor instead of poisoning her, pouring power into her system rather than draining it.
The Dragon Knight's aura flared brighter. Timaeus's scales glowed with renewed intensity. Mana's gemstone sword pulsed with doubled output.
The debuff had become a buff.
"No." Elise's voice was strangled. "No, no, no."
She'd seen this kind of conversion effect before. Once. Her father had used it in a demonstration spar, triggered by one of his Nine-Star card spirits to show her how apex-tier defensive abilities worked.
Nine. Star.
And here it was, on a Seven-Star spirit that had apparently crystallized into existence within the last few minutes.
What kind of card kit even is this?
-----
The Dragon Knight's silver sword carved through the thorn forest in long scything arcs. Each swing cleared a ten-meter corridor of vegetation. Timaeus followed up with wingbeats that ripped the remaining growth from its roots. Within seconds, the thorn trap that had been the cornerstone of Mandragora Queen's control strategy was reduced to uprooted wreckage.
Mandragora Queen, the tiny girl with her silver crown, stood in the middle of the ruined garden with an expression of growing, owlish horror. Her innocent eyes had gone wide enough to show the whites all around, and her crown sat slightly askew from the buffeting.
Behind her, Dragon Maiden Flower had finished her charge.
The crimson petal-construct's jaw unhinged, revealing a throat filled with coalescing fire. Heat shimmered off her crystalline scales in visible waves. The power she'd been accumulating during the distraction was reaching its peak.
Mimicry Dragon Breath!
Dragon Maiden Flower released her ultimate technique. A beam of concentrated flame, tuned to mimic the output of an actual dragon's breath attack, tore across the sanctum in a white-hot lance. The attack had been charging the entire fight. Even with Dragon Maiden's output reduced by Timaeus's pressure, the beam carried saturated energy output that could crack tier-resistant materials.
It was aimed at Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl's chest.
The Dragon Knight raised her gemstone sword.
Magic Cylinder.
Two massive cylindrical barrels materialized in the air beside Timaeus, runic patterns spiraling along their surfaces in glowing crimson. Just like in the fight with Vance, one was aligned toward the incoming attack, the other pointed elsewhere.
The Mimicry Dragon Breath plunged into the first Cylinder's mouth and vanished, the entire beam consumed in a single gulp.
Dragon Maiden Flower's eyes, which had been narrowed in triumph, went wide in confusion.
Then the second Cylinder flared.
It wasn't pointed at Dragon Maiden Flower.
It was pointed at Mandragora Queen.
The little girl in the silver crown had barely enough time to register what was happening before a concentrated beam of compressed dragonfire, originally charged by her own teammate, erupted from the second Cylinder on a direct trajectory to her position.