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Since the Trial Crystal wasn't fixed in place, that meant it could be seized. And the reason that person just now had been so obsessed with the Trial Crystal was, in all likelihood, that his own had been stolen.
A stolen Trial Crystal meant every last point turning to smoke, the base points lost along with the rest. That could not possibly feel good. Otherwise, he'd hardly have been carrying around a grievance that size.
"Master, an enemy!" The Silver-Crowned Mandrake Queen spoke up without warning, and in the same instant she directed the plants throughout the flower-and-grass domain to intercept the invader with a punishing barrage.
Blade-light flashed. The attacks racing toward the intruder were bisected to the last in a single cut, and yet in the very next moment, the intruder turned away from the flower-and-grass domain as though she had received an order, receding at speed until she vanished from sight.
"She left?" The Silver-Crowned Mandrake Queen, who had fully intended to press the engagement, drew her small face tight with deep suspicion. The tiny queen plainly couldn't fathom why the other party had fled with such decisiveness. Judging by how swiftly that counterstroke had been completed, the invader's strength was absolutely not beneath her own.
"She left?" Hearing the Silver-Crowned Mandrake Queen, Elise blinked as well. "Perhaps it's because you discovered her trail so quickly that she abandoned whatever she'd originally planned."
She said it lightly, but in the quiet of her heart, Elise's guard rose all the same. Especially now that she knew the Trial Crystals could be stolen outright, the trial from this point on was bound to grow far more difficult.
---
"I keep getting the feeling this Luke kid didn't come here to take a trial. He came on a picnic outing." Having watched Luke's showing from start to finish through the light screens, Tobias shook his head, then scooped a handful of popcorn out of the tub in his hands and munched away. "Though his multi-line operation really is being played impossibly smooth. The other new students and Luke genuinely aren't sitting on the same tier."
"Well, obviously!" Selene nodded right along, taking a small sip of the milk tea in her hands, her voice coming out faintly muffled around the straw. "And I have an intuition. This iteration of the Trial Road may well end far earlier than any that came before it."
You two absolute scoundrels, would you kindly mind your image?! Yes, it's only the few of us in here, but one of you is the Academy's Head, and the other is Lilith's own student!
Staring at the popcorn in Tobias's hands and the milk tea in Selene's, Moira no longer even knew where to begin her complaints. Where in the world had these two conjured popcorn and milk tea from?
In that moment, Moira was seized by a powerful conviction: these two had absolutely come prepared. What sort of person just carries popcorn and milk tea around on them!
"Moira girl, want some?" Registering the direction of her stare, Tobias inquired warmly, producing a brand-new box of popcorn from who knew where and holding it out to her.
Say what one would, the stuff had no nutritional value whatsoever, but it genuinely did suit spectacles like this one.
As for Selene, she simply waved a hand and gave the milk tea in her grip a little jiggle. She was already provisioned.
"...Fine. I suppose I'll have some too, then." Moira tugged at the corner of her mouth, and in the end accepted the popcorn and started munching.
Don't get angry. It isn't worth it!
Two mouthfuls of popcorn later, Moira had more or less leveled back out, chiefly because neither her strength nor her standing gave her the slightest advantage over these two. Absolutely wretched!
Her inner venting complete, Moira turned her gaze back to the light screens before her. "Setting Luke aside, there are perhaps ten-odd students holding relatively stable at the moment. The overwhelming majority are naturally our own Eastern new students, though a few from the other three Regions can't be underestimated either."
The showings and choices of the crowd landed differently on each of the three watchers, but all of them wore the same relative calm.
Everyone participating in the Trial Road was, after all, a rookie who had only just stepped onto the Card Master's path, a beginner at the very start of the climb. Meanwhile, the weakest among the three of them already stood at the Sovereign Realm. Watching this naturally carried the flavor of elders watching children play house.
Moira's gaze lingered a few minutes on Elise's screen, and she gave a small, satisfied nod. Elise wasn't the single best performer out there, but she trailed only Luke, holding her place firmly in the front rank.
"Beyond them, Dragon's Valley's two new students likewise can't be taken lightly." With that, Moira's eyes settled on Violet's and Viola's screens.
---
"A Dragon's Valley new student!" Gazing at the girl before him, and at the colossal dragon-family card spirit looming at her back, Conrad Sykes's eyes filled with gravity and dread.
The dragon race, whether counted among fierce beasts or among card spirits, stood as one of the most supreme races in existence. The races whose species-value exceeded the dragons' could be counted on scant fingers.
Card Masters out of Dragon's Valley, whether Violet or Viola, naturally held dragon-family cards, and the dragon-family spirits the two sisters carried each bore their own corresponding attribute besides.
With dragon-card strength underwriting them, both sisters' power ranked comfortably at the front of this cohort. And Conrad's opponent this round was, of the pair of sisters, the younger one, Viola, holder of the Earthring Dragon.
In contrast to Conrad's caution and dread, Viola's face remained perfectly serene throughout. She merely lifted a hand, and the Earthring Dragon advanced.
The weak were prey to the strong. Dragon's Valley held to the natural law of survival of the fittest even more rigidly than the Ancient Kingdom did, and it was precisely that which had forged it into a power second only to the three great empires.
"Move!" Watching the enemy come, Conrad, however deeply he dreaded a dragon-kind's might, still ordered his own card spirits into the attack.
Whatever else was said, he was a new student of this Eastern exam whose strength stood level with Elise Hargrove's and Iris Dawnford's, second only to Luke himself. In his own power, he still held a certain measure of confidence.
Four limbs devouring the ground, the Abyssal Nether Tiger took the lead, blurring across the distance in a breath, giant claws flashing with black light as a single strike hammered down on the great dragon's body.
Though its frame ran far smaller than the dragon's, the Abyssal Nether Tiger's agility outstripped it by leagues, and in the same moment, Conrad's remaining card spirits, trailing the tiger by half a step, converged on the dragon from every side.
Facing the incoming storm, the speed-disadvantaged dragon loosed a low, resonant roar from deep in its life, and a jade-green protective barrier surfaced across the whole of its body, folding even the Abyssal Nether Tiger's strike inside itself, every attack that landed upon the barrier raising nothing but ring after ring of ripples.
"It can't break the defense?" Watching the scene, Conrad's expression shifted by a shade. Those hadn't been his card spirits' strongest attacks, true, but a Seven-Star-grade card spirit he'd always trusted absolutely should not have simply bounced off, either.
And yet, against every expectation, the dragon's defense had swallowed the entire round without so much as a crack.
Earth Dragon Trample!
The great dragon's forelimbs reared high, and its whole upper body came crashing down against the ground. Centered on where the dragon stood, a colossal shockwave tore outward in every direction, and even the card spirits farthest from the impact were caught in it, toppling one after another, while the Abyssal Nether Tiger at the very center of it all was hurled bodily through the air, fresh blood seeping across the great tiger's frame.
Earth Purgatory!
Amid the dragon's bellowing roar, countless colossal spikes of stone erupted up through the shattered soil, grinding down upon every enemy left standing on the field.