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"Luke. Mind if I drop in unannounced?"
Victor Ashford stood at Luke's front door with a faint, friendly smile. Behind him, the steward of the Ashenvale City Lord's Mansion offered Luke a small respectful bow. A line of Card Master guards in formal House Ashford livery stood at attention along the street.
The street, predictably, was now crowded. Word of a City Lord's personal vehicle parked outside a private residence had spread through the neighborhood within minutes. Spectators had gathered at every viewing angle, none of them attempting to hide their curiosity.
The steward, recognizing the developing situation, signaled the guards to begin clearing onlookers. Cataloging social atmospheres was a baseline skill for any house steward, and the City Lord's steward in particular had developed it to a fine art over years of service. He'd worked for Victor Ashford long enough to understand what mattered to his employer, and how Victor felt about a particular individual.
The fact that Victor had come personally spoke for itself. In the steward's recollection, Luke Mercer was the first young person to receive this level of personal attention from the Ashenvale City Lord.
The steward kept the observation internal and continued managing the perimeter.
The dispersed onlookers complied without protest. Disrespecting the City Lord's wishes was not on anyone's list of viable life decisions. For ordinary citizens of Ashenvale, contact with the City Lord's Mansion was a once-in-a-lifetime event at best. Even Card Masters rarely had occasion to interact directly with House Ashford. The fact that Victor Ashford himself was speaking warmly to a young man in their neighborhood was, frankly, a bit surreal.
Several parents were quietly informing their children that, yes, the boy down the street was apparently important now, and no, they should not run into his yard chasing rumors. The neighborhood adjusted its risk calculus accordingly.
-----
"City Lord." Luke recovered from his initial surprise quickly. He'd returned to Ashenvale a few days earlier with the rest of his city's contingent, accepted the Association-issued congratulations and rewards from Harrison Cole, and quietly slipped back into his normal pre-exam routine.
He had not expected Victor Ashford to show up at his front door.
He stepped back, opening the door wider. "Of course not. Please come in."
Victor's relationship with Luke had, over the past several months, evolved from formal acquaintance to something closer to a senior patron. The City Lord had quietly facilitated a number of opportunities and had personally absorbed inconveniences that would otherwise have created friction in Luke's career. Luke had developed a measured trust in him, comparable to his trust in Harrison Cole.
But unannounced personal visits weren't part of the established pattern. Whatever had brought Victor here today was something he hadn't been willing to handle through channels.
"All of you, take up positions outside," Victor instructed his guards. "No one comes through this door without my explicit approval."
The guards moved to surround the property in a discreet but obvious security perimeter. The remaining onlookers, registering that this was now a serious meeting rather than a social call, completed their dispersal with newfound urgency.
Victor stepped inside. Luke closed the door behind him.
-----
"I heard about your performance in the Youth Training Competition from Old Cole," Victor said as they took seats. He wasn't bothering with extended pleasantries. "You did Ashenvale proud. More than proud. You gave us bragging rights we haven't had in years."
The compliment was sincere. Victor's reaction, when Harrison Cole had first briefed him, had been a quiet, restrained moment of holy hell. Beating Elise Hargrove, the heir of a family backed by an Immortal Realm Card Master who was Edmund Hargrove personally, was not something Victor had been prepared to hear about a Commander Realm student from a satellite city.
The Hargrove family's resources were extraordinary. Edmund's standing within the Eastern Region was on par with Aldric Ashford's, give or take a small margin in Aldric's favor. Elise had grown up with training, mentorship, and material support that produced exceptional Card Masters by default.
Luke had defeated her without his trump card, then defeated her with his trump card so comprehensively that the fight had ended in seconds. Harrison Cole had also passed along his suspicion that Luke's Original Card, the Eye of Timaeus, was an Eight-Star piece. That suspicion alone had nearly knocked Victor out of his chair.
No wonder the kid won. He didn't beat her. He erased her.
But after the initial shock, Victor's strategic instincts had taken over. Harrison Cole and the Ashenvale Card Master Association were the most direct beneficiaries of Luke's success. But Ashenvale itself, the city, had been elevated in the eyes of the Capital and the eleven other satellite cities. That elevation reflected on House Ashford, on Victor personally, and through him, on his grandfather Aldric.
The branch Association and the City Lord's Mansion ran on a symbiotic relationship. When one rose, the other rose with it. Luke's tournament victory had quietly increased Ashenvale's regional standing, and Victor was here to make sure Luke understood that the City Lord's Mansion had noticed.
"Thank you, City Lord." Luke's response was polite but unembellished. The tournament was over. He didn't see much value in dwelling on past performance.
His attention was on what Victor had actually come to say.
-----
"I'm here today for two reasons." Victor moved past the preliminary acknowledgments efficiently. "First. The reward for your handling of the Black Gate."
The Black Gate.
Luke's expression shifted into recognition. Between the entrance exam preparation, the Youth Training Competition, and the Capital trip, he'd genuinely lost track of the Spirit Home incident. Independent destruction of a Black Gate was a documented event that filtered up through the Card Master Association's reporting hierarchy, and Harrison Cole had told him a reward would eventually be forthcoming. Luke had simply forgotten about it in the chaos of the past few months.
Now Victor was sitting in his living room, which meant the report had reached the Capital City Lord's Mansion in Ashenmere. The Capital City Lord's Mansion was the political peer of the Capital Card Master Association. Both were Ashenmere-level institutions. Reports that reached either of them got serious attention.
"Here." Victor produced a Storage Card and set it on the table between them. "This contains the rewards approved by the Capital City Lord's Mansion. Funds and materials make up the bulk of it. Money and crafting components are the resources Card Masters always need most, and even the City Lord's Mansion sticks to that pattern when distributing rewards."
He paused.
"But there's a third reward in there. And, in my opinion, it's better suited to you than the funds or materials."
Luke caught the shift in Victor's tone. There was a note of something underneath the diplomatic language. Subtle, but present.
Envy.
Victor was a Sovereign Realm Card Master. He had access to resources that most Card Masters would never see in a lifetime. For something to make him sound envious meant it was, by Sovereign standards, genuinely rare.
Luke's interest in the third reward jumped several levels.
He picked up the Storage Card from the table and tucked it into his own storage without opening it. The funds and materials were standard. He could check those later. The third item, whatever it was, deserved a more deliberate examination than a casual peek in front of the City Lord. With his Rewrite and Reorganize ability, Luke wasn't short on funds or materials anyway. Time was his real bottleneck.
What he wanted to know, right now, was what Victor had come here to say next.
Victor watched Luke pocket the Storage Card without examining it and felt a small internal nod of approval. He wouldn't have minded if Luke had checked the contents on the spot, that was a normal enough reaction, but the deliberate self-control suggested a level of composure that most young Card Masters hadn't developed yet. It was one more data point in a growing collection.
"The second matter." Victor refocused. "The upcoming entrance exam. Specifically, the reward attached to placing first in the Eastern Region's exam standings."