For 40 advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/AutumnXd
A card spirit with Eight-Star combat strength was enough, on its own, to place Luke among Celestial's most elite students.
Even Selene, even Tobias himself, had managed nothing of the sort at that age. However great the genius, growth demanded time.
But Luke seemed to have broken the very time-limit that governed every Card Master's growth. And Tobias could sense not one shred of anxiety on him. As though everything, all of it, sat firmly in his grasp.
Strength gave him that calm, naturally. Without the strength, no one carried themselves that steadily.
But the harder thing by far was the temperament.
With a temperament like that, however fast the power climbs, there's no fear of it turning on him, Tobias noted in the quiet of his heart. Perhaps that's exactly why his strength rises this terrifyingly fast. Past what anyone imagined.
And the original cards are a factor too. No. The root of all of it. Without cards this singular, cards that evolve and climb without end, perhaps Luke's group doesn't hold out to this moment at all.
A pity. If Lilith hadn't beaten me to the door, this old man would have wedged a foot in, whatever it took. The sigh ran through him and settled. Then again, only that speed had made Luke her student. And the boy was still Celestial's own, which recovered his mood considerably. In which case, the Four Great Academies' exchange tournament may yet hold some unexpected surprises.
Unlike the other three, Drake, elder of Dragon's Valley, had been startled by the Eight-Star angel too, but his eyes had gone elsewhere: to the three dragon-family spirits. The knight-girl astride her dragon. The great black dragon. The crimson machine-dragon.
"Ssss! This many dragon-kind. Don't tell me this Luke is our Valley's own blood, scattered abroad!" Feeling how those three ran stronger than the Skywing and the Earthring at the same grade, the words escaped Drake before he could stop them.
In this moment, he genuinely felt that, set beside the sisters themselves, Luke looked MORE like a clansman of Dragon's Valley.
"What absolute rot!" Tobias fired back without a heartbeat's pause. "Luke is Kingdom-born to the marrow. 'Scattered blood' my foot."
I KNEW this scoundrel was harboring no good intentions!
"Is all that tension strictly necessary, old Wren?" Drake very nearly slapped him. Had this old man skipped his medicine today?
He'd simply been startled into the thought, that was all. Ask anyone: watch an outsider carry more of your clan's near-exclusive spirits than your own clansmen do, and carry them stronger, and see what thought arrives first.
"Heaven knows what you're plotting, you deathless relic." On the subject of Luke, Tobias yielded exactly nothing, and a vaccine given early beat a cure given late. "So hear me plainly. Don't you dare set designs on Luke."
Even if Luke weren't Lilith's student, Tobias would permit no other power to angle for him. No. If Luke weren't her student, he'd permit it even less. The prize water stays in one's own field!
Drake sighed inwardly. He knew perfectly well Luke couldn't be Valley blood. And even if he were, the boy had lived his whole life in the Kingdom, and the Kingdom would hardly release potential of that size in any case.
But that didn't mean there were no other ways.
Mid-thought, Drake's gaze drifted to Viola, and the silent arithmetic began.
Violet and Viola were this generation's treasures of Dragon's Valley. Daughters of Dragon Lord Violante herself, talent beyond question, or they'd never have been sent to Celestial at all. Top-tier gifts. Extraordinary lineage. And looks that ranked first-line anywhere, to the point that inside the Valley itself, the sisters stood as goddesses in no few clansmen's eyes, yielding to no one in the Kingdom.
If something were to develop between the two girls and Luke, well. The operations available multiplied endlessly from there. And it was all for Dragon's Valley, when one came down to it. Surely Dragon Lord Violante would appreciate this old man's painstaking devotion.
At the thought, Drake's face finally improved.
Beside the two of them, Selene and Moira had run out of words entirely, and neither could be bothered refereeing the old men's fencing, because the battlefield had shifted again.
Under every gaze, Angewomon X reached her fair right hand into the Saint Air ring itself, and drew out a Celestial Arrow woven through with the power of the dragon-grudge. Grudge purified by light clung along the shaft, and the pure-white arrow carried, faint but unmistakable, a dragon's majesty.
The glove on her left hand unfolded, reshaping into a longbow of feathered wings, gold light flowing across it, thick with sanctity.
She nocked and drew. The arrow, brimming with light and dragon-force both, settled its aim on the Abyss Devourer, and in the perception of everyone present, the powers of wind, fire, water, and earth poured into it one after another, stacking its destruction higher, layering effect upon effect, until at the arrowhead, space itself was collapsing and shattering in a continuous quiet ruin.
Grand Celestial Arrow!
Amid the very different thoughts of everyone watching, Angewomon X released the string. The arrow, woven of so many powers at once, split the sky in a breath and nailed itself into the Abyss Devourer.
Then everything stored inside it erupted, and before Silas's disbelieving eyes, the Abyss Devourer dissolved entire, scattering away as drifting dust.
The sight of the great beast breaking into particles landed on Iris with an inexplicable familiarity, and her stomach gave a sudden, distinct ache. Her Polaris Star Whale had once enjoyed exactly this treatment.
But then the present reasserted itself. Without Luke, without those impossible cards of his, the three of them would likely have been resolved already. This trial hadn't washed out her old defeat at all. If anything, she'd been saved by the very person who dealt it. The look Iris turned on Luke went deeply, deeply complicated.
"It's dead!" Elise and Viola carried none of that freight. The two girls traded a glance as the Devourer scattered, and the relief on them was plain, Viola's most of all.
She was Dragon's Valley's blood, and she held not one warm feeling for the Renegades. And Angewomon X's kill had done more than win a battle. It had freed the heroic souls of her tormented clanskin bound inside that grudge. The gratitude she turned on Luke ran deeper for it.
Where the Abyss Devourer had dissolved, a gate of space unfolded slowly open. Silas had told the truth after all. Slay the Devourer, and the road out of the Dark Purgatory revealed itself.
"Your turn next." With the Devourer resolved, only the author of all of it remained on the field, and even as Luke's gaze settled on Silas, Angewomon X had already nocked again, the arrow's point resting on the man.
No dragon-grudge rode this one. The Grand Celestial Arrow's own base power was more than enough to erase a Card Master who had lost everything he owned.