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"When you make your moves, put your own safety above everything. As for which targets to choose, you may decide that for yourself." After several seconds of deliberation, Luke gave one final instruction.
He might be a Card Master out of the Capital himself, but everyone who'd come to Celestial Academy now stood at the same starting line. Even if he met Capital Card Masters in the forced battles held every two hours, he wouldn't stay his hand. And that went double for everyone else.
In Luke's view, every last new student participating in the trial could be treated as an enemy, and toward enemies, there was naturally no need for the slightest psychological burden.
"Understood!" A flamboyant, almost wild grin surfaced on Sistermon Ciel's face. She possessed not only the ability to investigate under concealment and relay what she found, but the ability to hunt down and seize intelligence outright. Or rather, it was precisely the existence of the latter that guaranteed the former could ever proceed smoothly.
For that reason, compared to Noir and Blanc, her two younger sisters, whether in combat strength or in combat awareness, Ciel stood a full level above them both.
Her figure turned, and Sistermon Ciel advanced with an uncanny, weaving gait, accelerating through a few sharp turns before swiftly locating a fresh trial stronghold. Borrowing the power of light upon her body, Sistermon Ciel's figure melted completely into the sunlight, slipping deep into the stronghold's interior with ease.
The time of the hunt had come!
---
"So this is the Celestial Academy Trial Road, famous enough to be spoken of alongside our Northern Region's Northmarch? Genuinely dull enough." Preston Huxley gazed in boredom at everything within his stronghold, a flicker of disdain crossing his face. "If I hadn't offended the main family's people, I would absolutely have tested into Northmarch by now. Why on earth would I run all the way out to the Eastern Region's Celestial Academy?"
As a Northern Region native, Preston had indeed tested into Celestial Academy, one of the Ancient Kingdom's Four Great Academies the same as Northmarch. But that owed only to the fact that he'd offended someone back in the North and had no choice but to leave the Northern Region for a time. Otherwise, with the results he'd posted in the exam, his choice would never have been Celestial. It would have been Northmarch.
Deep in his bones, Preston, a Northern Card Master through and through, still held that among the Ancient Kingdom's Four Great Academies, Northmarch's strength outstripped Celestial's. Or rather, that Northmarch stood a cut above the other three academies altogether.
"They say Celestial ranks by credits. More credits, higher rank, more resources~." Muttering to himself, Preston settled on his goal for what lay ahead. "In that case, no one had better dream of taking this trial's first place out of my hands."
"Once I've formally entered Celestial, I'll make these Eastern Region Card Masters understand that we Card Masters of the North are the strongest of all, and Celestial is merely where I begin my rise." Having said that much, Preston had already drifted into fantasies of a glorious future. "Hmph. As for the main family, just give me a few years. I'll make you understand that the decision you made back then was a mistake of historic proportions!"
Not far from Preston, Sistermon Ciel stood quietly atop the elevated platform where his Trial Crystal sat, listening in silence to his running monologue, a flicker of disdain passing through her eyes.
Even at a distance this close, neither Preston nor his card spirits had discovered her presence. And he was still fantasizing about seizing the Trial Road's first place? He truly had no idea how far out of his depth he was.
How does one person have this much inner theater going on? Not a word of Preston's monologue escaped Sistermon Ciel's ears, and all of it, carried through the Circuit Link, reached Luke with perfect clarity as well. And by the sound of it, our Eastern Region's Celestial is being rather looked down upon here.
It also gave Luke a front-row view of just how professional Sistermon Ciel's infiltration truly was. Granted, charging in and wrecking everything in sight technically counted as one way of getting inside too, but this was infiltration in the genuine sense of the word.
"Forget it. Make your move, Ciel. Take this stronghold's Trial Crystal, then head for the next target." Luke suspected that if they lingered, he might hear even juicier material out of Preston's mouth, but he wasn't especially interested.
As for the East and the North, Celestial and Northmarch, the rivalry between them ran long indeed, and it wasn't something a few sentences could untangle.
Still, whatever Preston's reasons, his words had managed to spark Luke's displeasure all the same. Luke was, at the very least, an Eastern Card Master, and at present the two of them stood as direct competitors besides. He certainly wasn't going to let Preston off, but neither was there any need to waste much time on him.
"Understood." Even as she answered Luke in her heart, Sistermon Ciel had already reached out and claimed the stronghold's Trial Crystal, the entire motion without sound or trace. She even slipped clean out of the stronghold afterward, and Preston never reacted at all to the fact that he'd just been robbed of his base.
It was only when yet another wave of mimic fierce beasts came surging in and was cut down that Preston instinctively glanced toward where his Trial Crystal ought to have been, and discovered, to his creeping horror, that the crystal had vanished.
"How is this possible? My Trial Crystal?!" The Preston who'd been brimming with confidence a moment ago blanched on the spot.
The Trial Crystal was the sole avenue for accruing and holding points. With it gone, even if he resolved every last mimic beast that came at him from here on, he'd have no way of earning a single point. He'd even lose the one hundred points that formed his base.
Put another way, unless he could hunt the crystal down and reclaim it, then with the Trial Road barely underway, he had, in a very real sense, already been eliminated from the running.
He couldn't even safeguard the one item the whole assessment revolved around. How was he supposed to keep playing at all?
"Who? WHO WAS IT?! Don't you dare let me find out, or I swear I will make your life worse than death! AHHHH!" Preston tore around his stronghold in a frenzy of searching.
And while he raged, Sistermon Ciel had already locked onto her second target, and borrowing the chaos of that target's battle against the deployed mimic beasts, she successfully claimed the second Trial Crystal as well, swaggering off in search of the next. Like a dancer moving through the night, lethal, and elegant with it.
---
"Luke certainly doesn't hesitate when he decides to move." Having watched Sistermon Ciel's performance from beginning to end, a trace of surprise showed on Moira's face. "And that card spirit of his is quite something as well. She seems extraordinarily skilled at concealment, and her sense of timing is impeccable. Several times now, she's claimed a Trial Crystal at point-blank range without being discovered in the slightest."
"But of course!" Pride bloomed openly across Selene's face, for all the world as though the Sistermon Ciel out there working weren't Luke's card spirit at all, but her very own.
"Why do I get the feeling you're awfully proud of all this? If I hadn't been watching from the start, I'd half believe this Sistermon Ciel was your card spirit." Moira fixed Selene with a long, strange stare. From the moment of her appearance until now, she kept sensing that Selene's behavior was decidedly off, above all where anything involving Luke was concerned. The woman seemed far, far too invested.
Didn't you say you came to look after your precious niece? Then why have your eyes been glued to Luke this entire time?! Even if your heart isn't in it, you could at least put on a show. If it were Iris watching this, she would absolutely burst into tears.