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"Her target is the Trial Crystal? Which means the Trial Crystals can be seized?" Once the shock passed, Chandler Reeves very quickly discerned the intruding card spirit's objective, and his face shifted on the spot.
Set character and conduct aside for the moment. No one who had tested into Celestial Academy was a fool.
From the spirit's practiced bearing, this was plainly not her first time doing such a thing, which meant the Trial Crystals genuinely could be stolen. More than that, the points within a stolen crystal very possibly could be stacked onto the thieving spirit's own Card Master.
If that held true, then good grief, nobody had ever said so! No wonder there might be participants walking out of this trial with scores of zero. And if he himself simply clocked through the trial like a working stiff, then even holding out to the very end, he might not walk away with any good result at all.
The Trial Road's rules had been laid out with perfect clarity. The final rankings of the entrance trial would be determined by points.
"Damn it! How did I overlook a hidden mechanic this important?" The moment he thought it through, Chandler barely swallowed a curse, and at the same time, a thread of cold vigilance rose in the depths of his heart.
Anyone who could spot that angle this quickly, and then act on it besides, meant that whether or not they were anything like himself, the master standing behind the card spirit before him was absolutely no fool.
"Dual Six-Star cards, is it? By the look of things, this new student's strength sits at about Lyra's and Serena Frost's tier. Whether he's hiding anything further is the only unknown." Borrowing the effect of the Circuit Link, Luke read the information on Chandler's card spirits straight through Sistermon Ciel's eyes. "Ciel, your read?"
The Chandler before her wasn't a new student of the Capital. He might not even be a new student of the Eastern Region at all. Facing him, Luke felt not the slightest psychological burden about striking.
"Nothing to fear!" Her voice brimmed over with wild confidence, and even as the words landed, Sistermon Ciel had already strode forward, launching the attack herself.
The awakened Sistermon Ciel, exactly like her twin sister Sistermon Noir, had the wild nature dormant within her body fully ignited, and no measure of composure could mask the aggression now radiating off her.
It was only that, compared to Sistermon Noir's specialty in ranged assault, Sistermon Ciel inclined toward close-quarters combat. In pure finesse she ran a shade below her twin, but in raw destruction, she stood a full cut above Sistermon Noir.
And though she faced two same-level enemies at once, Sistermon Ciel held her composure with absolute surety. To say nothing of the fact that, should it ever prove necessary, she could summon her two younger sisters to attack in concert, and even against a Seven-Star opponent, she would still have the strength to make a fight of it.
"Begin!" Chandler couldn't hear a word of the exchange between the spirit and her master, but that declaration before her advance had reached him with crystal clarity, and a flush of anger climbed his face.
His strength, set within this year's Western Region cohort, was more than sufficient to test into Celestial, into Northmarch, even into Brighthall among the Four Great Academies. And unlike Preston Huxley, he hadn't come to the East because he'd offended anyone. He had relinquished his Brighthall slot of his own free will.
The reason he'd forgone Brighthall and traveled all the way to Celestial came down to one thing: avoiding familiar faces, so he could quietly build his strength in the shadows. And instead, he'd run headlong into an Eastern Card Master of this caliber.
Worse still, he'd just discovered that he himself had overlooked the Trial Road's crucial hidden mechanic, and had very possibly been left behind by the other new students because of it. That only soured his mood further.
"Roar!" At their master's command, the Frostflame Demon Lion and the Gale Demon Tiger bellowed and threw themselves into the counterattack. They might be beast-form card spirits, but under Chandler's long drilling, their battle coordination ran seamless, lion and tiger striking in alternating rushes that bore down on Sistermon Ciel, exactly like their opening ambush: even if she slipped the first strike, the second would arrive hard on its heels.
"Useless." Sistermon Ciel's expression didn't so much as flicker. The beloved blade in her hands, the Shirotsume Ichimonji, flashed into a streak of brilliant white light, cleaving straight at the nearest of the two, the Frostflame Demon Lion.
What burns on the Frostflame Demon Lion's body is no ordinary fire. It's cold flame, fire of ultra-low temperature. However strong your weapon's durability, under a temperature shift that extreme, it will absolutely shatter. Watching the spirit's choice of attack, a thread of mockery surfaced in Chandler's heart.
In the past, there had been card spirits wielding weapons who'd attempted exactly this, and the moment their blades met the ultra-low-temperature cold flame sheathing the lion's body, the steel had snapped apart inch by inch. Some had even been thrown into disarray by the sudden turn, their battle rhythm scattered, and had instead been mauled by a single heavy blow from the Frostflame Demon Lion.
To say nothing of the fact that behind the Frostflame Demon Lion lurked the Gale Demon Tiger, whose strength ran a full measure greater. The moment the intruder showed a single lapse, what awaited her would be the frenzied, linked assault of both card spirits at once.
The opening ambush had been dodged, true, but back then the Gale Demon Tiger and the Frostflame Demon Lion had struck in haste. Now, in an open, frontal battle, Chandler refused to believe his cards would lose to this lone intruding spirit.
And yet, before Chandler could so much as savor the thought, the field turned on him like a stage play.
The long blade driving into the Frostflame Demon Lion's body abruptly blazed bright, a light of far higher quality pouring through the steel, scouring away the cold flame that had come creeping up the blade. Under Sistermon Ciel's swing, the blade cut into the Frostflame Demon Lion's body without meeting the slightest resistance, carving a wound deep enough to bare bone from front to back across the spirit's flank.
"AAOOOU!" Struck by that one heavy blow, the Frostflame Demon Lion loosed a scream of agony, and the linked formation between lion and tiger shattered on the instant, the collapse even forcing the Gale Demon Tiger to abort the offensive it had already set in motion.
"White Kill!" Sistermon Ciel murmured low, her freed left hand snapping out toward the Gale Demon Tiger, and blades of light-infused ninja steel flew without a whisper of sound, splitting the air to arrive before the enormous tiger's face. The great beast barely managed to raise a paw in defense before the next second saw it launched bodily through the air, fresh blood streaming from every point where the ninja blades had bitten.
Shirotsume Ichimonji Slash!
Having batted the Gale Demon Tiger away, Sistermon Ciel gave pursuit on the wind of her advantage, the long blade erupting with a light more dazzling still, and under her swing, the biting edge came cleaving down toward the tiger still tumbling backward through the air.
The wild power and heightened senses granted by her Awakening let Sistermon Ciel outpace her target with room to spare. White light flashed once, and the Gale Demon Tiger was cut clean in two by the long blade, the severed faces of the wound smooth as polished glass. The blade itself came away without a single stain of blood upon it, as clean and clear as before the stroke.
The slain Gale Demon Tiger never even managed its final scream before reverting to card form and streaking back to its master's side.
Pivoting into a step, Sistermon Ciel's leg whipped up into a single lashing arc, dragging a howl of wind behind it as it hammered down upon the gravely wounded Frostflame Demon Lion.
CRACK!
Taking the full weight of Sistermon Ciel's whip kick, the Frostflame Demon Lion's massive head was driven straight down into the earth, shattered soil leaping in every direction.
The great beast struggled feebly for a moment, its colossal frame abruptly shuddering, and then it slumped into a boneless heap upon the ground, before, just like the Gale Demon Tiger before it, reverting to card form and returning into Chandler's body.