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"There's one more thing you should understand," Edmund continued. "The Eternal Night Plane was discovered during a joint exploration involving all three of the Eastern Region's capitals. Stormvale and Mistvale will both be sending teams as well. We won't be the only ones inside."
The room registered that. Three capitals meant three competing interests, three sets of younger Card Masters with their own ambitions, and three sets of senior leadership with their own strategic calculations.
"And since the Eternal Night Plane is a newly formed Plane," Edmund continued, "its internal hazards are unknown. The reconnaissance teams over the past year have only mapped the perimeter. The interior is unexplored."
He let that sit.
"We're offering you slots. Whether you accept and participate is your decision. There's no pressure to commit tonight."
Edmund stopped speaking. The silence that followed respected the gravity of what had just been put on the table. He didn't rush them. The decision deserved consideration.
A newly formed Dimensional Plane offered resources beyond what most Card Masters would see in their lifetimes. It also offered the possibility of dying inside an unmapped, unstable reality. The trade-off was real. So was the time pressure. Six months from today wasn't a casual deadline, and the next entry window after that one came with reduced expedition value.
Three competing capitals adding their own variables made the calculus more complex. Allies could become rivals inside the Plane. Resources could be contested. The senior leadership of all three capitals had presumably reached arrangements among themselves about how the expedition would be coordinated, but those arrangements would only constrain Sovereign-and-above behavior. The younger Card Masters were going to have to navigate their own interpersonal dynamics on the ground.
"So roughly six months to prepare." Elise said it as a statement, working through the implications aloud. Her professional voice had returned, and the warmth she'd shown Luke at the banquet was tucked back behind her composed surface.
Edmund nodded once.
"Then I'm in."
Elise didn't waste a sentence on it. The other young Card Masters in the room shifted their attention to the next person in the queue.
"No Card Master could refuse this," Luke said simply. "I'm in."
Internally, his thinking was running at a different layer. The Digital World's worldview simulation had just hit one hundred percent. The next few months would let him construct Sistermon and her three evolution chains. The advancement push would carry him from Commander Realm to Leader Realm at minimum, possibly higher with the right materials. More mana. More deployment slots. A meaningful jump in combat output.
Monarch Realm Card Masters were still beyond his current reliable threat profile. Source Synchronization gave them survival tools that pure tier comparison didn't capture. But anything below Monarch, by the time he entered the Plane, he was confident he could handle.
A newly formed Plane was an all-or-nothing proposition. Half-measures didn't work in unmapped reality.
Lily Fairchild and Serena Frost both nodded silently, their commitments delivered through expression rather than words. Vance Ashton followed with a quiet "I'm in" that was professional rather than enthusiastic.
Five for five. The full slot allocation accepted.
Edmund permitted himself a small approving nod. Roland looked privately relieved that none of the candidates had backed out, including his daughter.
The branch presidents in the room didn't intervene. None of them had risen to their current positions through cautious career arcs. Every Card Master in this office, including Edmund and Roland, had survived periods of acute danger to reach their current levels. Discouraging the next generation from accepting comparable risks would have been hypocritical.
"Then your slots are confirmed." Edmund's tone shifted slightly, signaling the conclusion of the primary agenda. "Six months from now, the five of you will enter the Eternal Night Plane as part of the Eastern Region's first formal exploration team. Until then, prepare. Train. Strengthen your card decks."
He paused.
"And before any of that, you have your entrance examinations to complete."
Roland nodded, picking up the thread. "An expedition into a newly formed Plane is significant. So is your entrance exam. The exam determines which academy you attend, and the academy you attend will shape the next phase of your career. If any of you can score high enough to be admitted to Celestial Academy, your access to senior mentorship and rare resources will increase by orders of magnitude."
Celestial Academy was one of the Four Great Academies, the highest-tier institution in the Eastern Region. It accepted only the top scorers from each capital's entrance exam, and its alumni dominated the highest realms of the Card Master profession. Getting into Celestial Academy meant doors opening that simply didn't open for graduates of regional academies.
Given Luke and the other competitors' performances in the Youth Training Competition, none of them were at risk of failing the exam outright. But the Celestial Academy ceiling required more than passing scores. It required excellence. Excellence ranked against every competitor across the Eastern Region's three capitals, including all of Stormvale's and Mistvale's top students.
The exam was, in effect, an inter-capital competition. Each capital wanted its students to outperform the others. Each branch president wanted Ashenvale's representation to outshine Stormvale's and Mistvale's contributions. The pride of the Eastern Region's three capitals would be measured against each other's scores.
Edmund and Roland's underlying interest was straightforward. Luke and Elise and the other Capital-aligned candidates needed to crush the exam scoreboard. It was that simple. The Capital wanted bragging rights, and these five candidates were the bragging rights.
"Understood," Luke said. The other competitors nodded their acknowledgment.
-----
Half an hour later, they filed out of Edmund's office. The branch presidents stayed behind. Whatever logistics needed to be coordinated for the expedition would presumably be ironed out among the senior leadership over the rest of the night.
In the corridor, the five competitors found themselves at the building's main intersection, standing in awkward silence. Vance was the first to break it.
"Anyone heading back to the banquet?"
The question wasn't strategic. It was personal. Vance had been mid-conversation with a particular young woman when Harrison had collected him, and he was hoping to resume the trajectory. Half an hour wasn't long enough to lose momentum entirely.
"Pass." Lily Fairchild shook her head decisively. "I never wanted to be there in the first place. President Whitfield's the only reason I went at all, and I'm officially off duty."
Beside her, Serena Frost glanced briefly at Vance with the level of investment a person might give a piece of furniture, and didn't bother responding aloud. She had not attended the banquet. She did not intend to attend the banquet now. The matter required no further discussion.
Luke and Elise exchanged glances and arrived at consensus without speaking. They had escaped the banquet with considerable effort. Returning would defeat the entire point of the escape.
"Pass," they said in unison.
Vance absorbed the unanimous rejection.
"Right. Banquet, then. By myself." He gave the group a wry, self-deprecating wave and headed back toward the venue.
Walking with this particular collection of people would have been hazardous to his romantic prospects regardless. Elise was off-limits as the Hargrove heir and currently apparently in some kind of arrangement with Luke. Serena was iceberg-grade unapproachable. Lily was theoretically more conversational, but Vance had the distinct impression that any move on Lily within Elise's line of sight would result in his legs being broken.
Luke, of course, was a non-issue. Vance wasn't desperate.
-----
"I'll head back too. See you all at the entrance exam." Luke gave a small wave and turned toward his guest he wanted to do. He'd need to accelerate his standard schedule.