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"Forget it. Whatever the reason behind it, since Ciel's been teleported back anyway, once this forced battle wraps up, I can also test whether my earlier idea holds water, and see if the Trial Crystals she recovered can go on accruing points once they're set inside a stronghold again."
In the end, Luke didn't dwell on it further, simply raising his head toward his opponent for this round. "A new student of the Eastern Region? Not necessarily, come to think of it. After all, Celestial Academy's new students are hardly drawn from the East alone."
"Tamer, this is one of the targets I marked earlier." Sistermon Ciel had already handed over the full haul of Trial Crystals she'd collected across the past two hours.
"Which would mean the opponent still has his Trial Crystal on him?" Taking the crystals she passed over, Luke finally connected the dots. If Ciel kept marking and raiding targets at that pace, then odds were good that in these forced battles, he'd soon find himself matched against opponents who'd already been robbed of their bases.
"Well, I'll take that as it comes." Luke shook his head and glanced back at the card spirits behind him. "This battle. Which of you wants it?"
"No way!" In stark contrast to Luke's calm, Evan Sherman stood frozen on the spot, scarcely daring to believe his own eyes. Of all the people he could have drawn in the very first round, it had to be this walking calamity, Luke.
As an examinee of the Eastern Region, Sherman might not have hailed from the Capital, but he too had watched Luke's performance in the exam, and above all, that final battle between Luke and Iris Dawnford for first place remained carved deep into his memory even now.
In that fight, even a Seven-Star-grade card had gone down with ease. Sherman held no illusions that his own strength would make him a match for Luke. In this moment, Sherman genuinely felt the Trial Road harbored a deep and personal malice toward him. Celestial Academy's new students truly couldn't be measured by any normal standard.
"I'd hoped to walk away with a halfway decent result. Instead, it turns out to be a first-round bye." Sherman let out a bitter laugh, then chose, of his own accord, to concede.
Putting up a cornered fight might have scraped back a little face, but Sherman saw no need for it. The gap between them was plain as day. And most important of all, this was merely the Academy's entrance trial, not some life-and-death grudge match between himself and Luke. There was no call to make things hard on himself.
With that thought settled, Sherman was teleported out of the battle area, delivered to join the other new students eliminated in the first round of forced battles.
"Ai. My points are probably sitting at the bottom of the barrel now." Voluntary concession or not, Sherman still sighed.
"Don't be so quick to mope. Your points might not even have been zeroed out." Beside him, a new student from Mistral by the name of Felix Harmon spoke up, his tone carrying a distinct note of dark amusement.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sherman's face filled with confusion. He'd conceded, sure, but he'd kept his base points and everything he'd earned from the earlier beast waves. How would his points possibly be zeroed?
"Couldn't tell you the details. But whether those points of yours get to stay is genuinely hard to say." Felix tipped his chin toward a handful of new students not far off, every one of them wearing a face like the sky had fallen. "Word is, those few over there had their Trial Crystals carried off outright."
"WHAT?! The Trial Crystals can be stolen?!" Sherman's jaw all but hit the floor. Only now did he grasp what being robbed of one's base actually meant, and why scores of zero could exist at all. "Hold on. Which twisted genius even came up with that?"
"Who knows?" Felix gave a shrug. "All I can tell you is that it wasn't me."
"...Fair enough." On reflection, Sherman found his mood improving considerably. So long as somebody out there had posted a worse result than his, then the one left standing in the awkward spot wasn't him.
Even so, deep down, Sherman quietly wondered exactly who had managed to pull that off in such a short window of time.
---
*「 Your opponent has chosen to forfeit. Congratulations on winning the first round of forced battles. 100 additional points obtained! 」*
"He forfeited?" Luke, who'd finally settled on who would take the field, abruptly received the notice of Sherman's concession, and it left him standing there at a loss.
By the time his senses settled, he and his card spirits had been teleported back to his stronghold once more, and the Trial Crystal now carried an additional hundred points.
"Well, a forfeit's a forfeit." Luke didn't waste thought on Sherman's reasons. Instead, he set the Trial Crystals in his hands onto the elevated platform, and the next moment, every crystal Sistermon Ciel had carried back began to change before his eyes.
The points within his Trial Crystal surged upward at a ferocious pace, smashing clean through the six-hundred-point mark and charging on toward seven hundred.
"So the guess was right on the money. And the points gained are nothing to sneeze at, either. With the base hundred from each one secured, I should have opened up a solid lead over the rest of the new students by now." Watching that climbing figure, Luke nodded in deep satisfaction. "Ciel, carry on with your earlier operation."
"Leave it to me, Tamer." With that, Sistermon Ciel's figure melted away once more.
Running both lines at once was the way to squeeze the most out of the point system. The Trial Road's whole purpose came down to points, so points were exactly the goal he'd set his march toward.
"Then this side had better get started too." Even as Luke spoke, a fresh batch of mimic fierce beasts deployed around his stronghold, and compared to the earlier waves, their strength had climbed by a visible margin.
"Right. The Academy never admitted that many new students to begin with, and this one round of forced battles just cut the field clean in half."
"At this rate, a few more rounds and there won't be more than a handful of people left standing. The mimic beasts deployed from here on are hardly going to be pushovers either."
As the beasts grew stronger and more numerous, Guilmon, who had already evolved into its X Form back during the first stretch of waves, was reaching its limit. Mere Four-Star strength would no longer be enough to handle what was coming.
"Time to raise Guilmon's strength another step, then." The D-Ark appeared in Luke's hand.
Card Slash! Hyper Evolution Unit S!
A colossal volume of data poured out and enveloped Guilmon X's body, wrapping it like a cocoon mid-molt. Guilmon X's hide and frame dissolved wholesale into streaming data, the entire silhouette swelling larger and larger within, and when the data at last sloughed away, the body that emerged had been dyed a deep, burning crimson.
"Guilmon X, evolve! Growlmon X!"
Because Guilmon had undergone the evolution while in its X Form, what stood there now was not the ordinary Growlmon, but the stronger form built upon it, Growlmon X.
*「 Guilmon X evolution successful. Growlmon X's Digimon information has been updated. Mana backflow obtained. Level raised: Two-Star Monarch! 」*