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The moment the D-Ark and the X-Antibody evolution card appeared in Luke's hand, Elise's and Iris's eyes both went razor-sharp. In the same breath, both of them flashed back to what he had shown in the exam.
They traded a glance and read the other's thought whole. Their eyelids began to jump.
"It can't actually be that. Can it?" Iris asked it under her breath. Of everyone here, the one who knew Luke best was Elise.
Because if it truly was what they thought, then everything explained itself, including why this man had stayed so infuriatingly calm from the start. And that was a problem the word "monster" no longer stretched to cover!
"No idea. Though I'd put it at nine parts in ten." Elise rubbed her temples, and then, watching Luke's back, felt herself settle without meaning to. Apparently this feeling wasn't half bad.
If only the scoundrel would stop pinching my face all the time. And the head-pats, like I'm some child. Absolutely rotten, she added silently, to no one.
"What are you two talking about?" Beside them, Viola wore the face of the entirely lost. From the moment Luke had produced the X-Antibody card, she'd felt the shift in both girls, felt their strung-tight bodies go soft.
Which meant the Abyss Devourer's pressure on them had just dropped through the floor. And that was precisely what she couldn't fathom. That thing was an Eight-Star extra-domain beast, hello?!
"Did you see Raidramon evolve into WarGrowlmon just now?" The two girls traded one more look, and in the end it was Elise who spoke.
"I... did." Viola blinked, then nodded. "A very singular way of raising a card spirit's combat power. And it works on dragon-family spirits, no less. It's the first time I've ever seen so particular a Card Master."
"So Mother had it right after all. Beyond Dragon's Valley lies a wider sky." The words trailed into a sigh.
If Luke were Valley-born, a method like that might have lifted the whole of Dragon's Valley another full storey.
"Evolution was never some dragon-exclusive gift. And the first spirit Luke ever used it on wasn't that crimson dragon down there, either. It was Angewomon." Iris shook her head. "Keep watching. You'll understand."
Neither girl tried to explain further. A thing like this, unseen with one's own eyes, no one alive would believe. No, wrong. Even having SEEN it, you'd still call it outrageous!
Even now, the mere shape of the guess set both of them faintly trembling. What Luke was about to do was put a crack through the ceiling of the Magic Card Civilization's own rules.
"Ssss! Don't tell me...!" Viola was no fool. Iris's words had barely landed before she caught the thread, and the lovely vertical eyes she turned on Luke filled with disbelief, and beneath the disbelief, a thin, growing thread of hope.
Because if it was true, then perhaps, this time, the road out of death was real.
"Let me do it, Master." Angewomon stepped forward, and her voice left no room at all. "I will not permit anyone who dares set designs upon you."
She had risen out of the Sistermon line, but Angewomon carried a will entirely her own, and she had long since given herself, heart and all, into Luke's keeping. No one laid hands on her master. No one.
As for WarGrowlmon, it wanted the stage badly. But the big sister had spoken, and this once, it could only yield the floor.
"Enough of your mystic posturing!" The only soul present who understood nothing, reduced to a bystander at what was meant to be his own execution, was Silas, and the last of his patience burned off as he watched. "I am DONE wasting time on you!"
The Writ sat in his hand, yes, but the Writ was not bottomless. The moment its power ran dry, every extra-domain beast under his command would turn on him instead. His time was running short.
"Exactly what I wanted." The X-Antibody card slashed through the D-Ark, and torrents of data poured out once more, sheathing Angewomon's body.
Card swap! X-Antibody!
*「 Angewomon, X-Evolution! Angewomon X! 」*
Amid her ringing cry, energy erupted off Angewomon in a terrifying wave, and a pillar of pure white light, brimming over with the power of radiance, punched through heaven and earth alike. The impact of this X-ing, the sheer wake of it, ran far, far past every Champion-stage X-ing that had come before.
Even Luke's brow climbed. Apparently an Ultimate-stage X-evolution outdid even his imagination.
"Impossible!" Silas felt the power flooding out of that pillar, and his face twisted another full turn, disbelief written across every line of it. What spilled from the light was enough to set his whole body shuddering.
Even the Abyss Devourer and the Predators, bound as they were under the Writ's control, grew restless in the same moment, as if the thing gestating inside the light posed a threat to them.
Instinctive terror won. Silas flung the command, and the controlled beasts hurled their attacks at the pillar.
And every last one of those attacks, the Abyss Devourer's included, struck the light and bounced away. No mark. No effect. Nothing.
Silas's eyes very nearly fell out of his skull.
That was an Eight-Star Devourer's strike, with several Seven-Star Predators' layered on top. Casual attacks or not, that was not a volley one simply shrugged aside. And the pillar had taken none of it.
"So it IS that!" Elise and Iris traded a glance, and both knew their guess had landed square. Which meant, in large part, that the crisis before them had just been solved. It also meant their understanding of Luke had been torn down and rebuilt one more time.
Is this genuinely a student of our own cohort? Never mind catching him. Never mind overtaking him. Will we even keep his taillights in view?
Viola's eyes had gone wide as well. If the PILLAR defended like that, then the being gestating within it, how strong was that going to be?
And in this moment, the dragon-maiden finally understood where the two girls' calm had come from.
These Ancient Kingdom Card Masters. What manner of monsters ARE they?!
---
"That presence!" In the far distance, the fast-closing Tobias, Drake, Selene, and Moira saw it too, the pillar of light joining heaven to earth, and all four of them shook.
This was not the energy fluctuation Pegasus had first sensed. But its presence gave that one nothing. If anything, it ran a full measure stronger.
"Eight-Star!" Moira didn't hesitate for a breath. "That light-force absolutely reaches the Eight-Star grade. And it runs extraordinarily pure, which means whatever card spirit holds this power, its quality is anything but low!"
"The power of light. I wonder. Could it have something to do with my little junior brother?" The sudden Eight-Star presence had Selene's curiosity fully awake. Of everyone teleported into the Dark Purgatory, only Luke's card spirits fit that attribute profile.
But if it truly was Luke's, then that crossed clean out of reason and kept going.
"Faster. Friend or foe, that light proves one thing at least. Our heading was never wrong." Not present, not seeing, Tobias and Drake knew no more than the women did.
And between one word and the next, Pegasus, the Windsoar Dragon, and the Simurgh all surged forward another gear faster.