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Back at the Capital Association plaza, Audrey Langford materialized on the teleportation pad and immediately looked up at the monitoring screens.
The Ruin Guards she'd been fleeing, the ten Five-Star constructs that had chased her across a quarter of the Relic, were scattered across the ground in smoking wreckage. The Dark Magic Burst she'd barely escaped had reduced them to slag.
If I'd been one second slower activating the Teleportation Card…
The blood drained from her face.
Then she noticed the stares.
Every eliminated competitor in the plaza was looking at her. The expressions ranged from pity to amusement to open mockery. She'd been hunted by Ruin Guards, tried to dump them on someone else, gotten counterattacked instantly, and teleported out in a panic. The entire sequence had played out on the monitoring screens for everyone to see.
Even her own Crestbrook City teammates were looking at her with the particular brand of secondhand embarrassment reserved for someone who'd made their entire delegation look bad.
Trying to divert wasn't the shameful part. Everyone in the Relic was an enemy. Tactical manipulation was fair game. The shameful part was that she'd run straight into one of the strongest competitors in the field and gotten swatted away like an insect. It looked less like a cunning strategy and more like she'd hand-delivered her Voucher to Luke Mercer on a silver platter.
Audrey's vision darkened at the edges. Her legs buckled. She hit the plaza stones face-first and didn't move.
The surrounding competitors stepped back in unison. Nobody wanted to be the one accused of being involved.
Nearly a full minute passed before staff members arrived and carried her off. The entire episode radiated secondhand embarrassment thick enough to cut with a knife.
On the main stage, Harrison wore the expression of a man who'd just been served his favorite dessert. "See?" he said pleasantly to Dorian Webb. "Didn't I warn you about capsizing?"
Webb's jaw was clenched so tight his teeth creaked. Between Audrey's catastrophic performance, her fainting spell, and the fact that her own teammates hadn't even moved to help her, Crestbrook City's reputation had taken more damage in three minutes than it had in the last three years. And Harrison was enjoying it. Visibly.
-----
"Current elimination rate?" Edmund asked.
"Seventy percent," Roland reported, scrolling through the data feeds. "Within expected parameters. Most eliminations are mid-tier competitors overwhelmed by Ruin Guard Combinations or caught by stronger opponents."
"The survivors?"
"Five competitors stand out as the clear first tier. They're the furthest advanced toward the core, and they've dealt with every obstacle efficiently." Roland highlighted five feeds on the monitoring array. "Elise Hargrove. Vance Ashton. Luke Mercer. Lily Fairchild. Serena Frost."
"All five are this year's entrance exam candidates," Edmund noted.
"Correct. And it looks like they're about to run into each other."
-----
Deep in the Relic, the fog thinned just enough for Lily Fairchild to spot a familiar silhouette emerging from the mist ahead.
"Of course it's you." Lily pressed two fingers to her temple and breathed out. She'd been eliminating opponents and collecting Vouchers steadily, picking off mid-tier competitors who'd made the mistake of engaging her, but Serena Frost was the last person she needed to run into right now. They were too evenly matched. A fight between them would be long, exhausting, and drain resources Lily might need for whatever waited closer to the core.
"Perfect." Serena's reaction was the opposite. Her pale eyes brightened, and the competitive hunger that lived beneath her cold exterior surfaced immediately. "Saves me the trouble of looking for you."
No more conversation. The fight started in the next breath.
Serena raised her hand, and the temperature around her position dropped thirty degrees in an instant. Hoarfrost crackled across the Relic floor, radiating outward from her boots in a spreading lattice.
Ice Sky Sprite and Frost Archer materialized simultaneously at her flanks. Frost Archer nocked an arrow the moment she appeared, her silver-blue bow drawing back with mechanical precision. The Ice Sky Sprite lifted into the air, her translucent wings spreading, a halo of subzero mist coiling around her.
Lily's response was already in motion. Her fingers traced a sigil in the air, and moonlight bloomed around her in a circular expansion.
"Silver Moon, come forth. Nebula, watch the sky."
Silver Moon Fox stepped from the shadows, nine silver tails fanning behind her. Nebula Rainbow Butterfly took to the air in a spiral of prismatic light, her wings scattering crystallized moonbeams that hung suspended in the mist like a protective lattice.
Four card spirits. Two Card Masters. The auras pressed against each other, elemental frost meeting lunar radiance, and the mist between them began to spiral into visible patterns of conflict.
"Frost Lance!" Serena's voice cut sharp and clear.
Frost Archer's arrow released. The shaft wasn't just an arrow, it was a two-meter lance of compressed ice, screaming through the air with a trail of sub-zero vapor. Ice Sky Sprite followed up immediately, her wingbeats launching razor-thin ice blades that fanned out in a wide cone behind the primary shot.
Lily didn't move. Nebula Rainbow Butterfly did.
The Butterfly's wings beat once, and the crystallized moonbeams surrounding Lily's position rearranged themselves into an interlocking shield of prismatic light. The Frost Lance hit the shield and fractured against it, shards of ice skittering across the barrier's surface before being drawn inward and dissolved. The follow-up ice blades splintered against the same defense, each impact producing a ringing chime like struck crystal.
"Moon Veil!" Lily's response was crisp. "Take it from the sides."
Silver Moon Fox split into nine afterimages, each one radiating the same silver moonlight, each one indistinguishable from the real body. The nine Foxes circled outward, fanning around Serena's position at impossible speed, their movements generating streams of lunar essence that began to coil around Frost Archer like a slowly tightening noose.
Serena's eyes narrowed. Frost Archer was her ranged anchor, the card that controlled the battlefield at distance. If the Moon Veil sealed the Archer's mobility, Serena lost her primary offensive pressure.
"Glacier Burst!"
Ice Sky Sprite's wings snapped downward. A thirty-meter radius of the Relic floor exploded upward in jagged spires of ice, each spire tall enough to impale the lunar afterimages mid-step. The real Silver Moon Fox leapt clear at the last second, but three of the afterimages shattered as the spires passed through them, dispersing back into raw moonlight.
The two Card Masters circled, their spirits maneuvering, the fog between them churning with elemental discharge. Neither had landed a decisive hit. Both knew the next exchange would escalate.
Then a third pressure crashed into the space between them.
The surge was overwhelming. A dense, verdant life-essence flooded the fog, pressing outward in every direction, so thick the mist itself began to carry the faint scent of blooming flowers and damp earth. Both Silver Moon Fox and Frost Archer faltered visibly, their postures stiffening as their card spirits' senses registered the newcomer's presence.
Footsteps. Light, unhurried, casual.
Elise Hargrove walked out of the fog with a small girl holding her hand. The Silver Crown Mandragora Queen's silver coronet caught the dim Relic light, and her round, innocent eyes swept the battlefield with the detached curiosity of a child watching ants.
"Looks like I'm interrupting." Elise pushed her glasses up with her free hand. "Should I wait until you two finish?"
Lily barely suppressed an eye roll. Her best friend's ability to sound perfectly reasonable while being maximally provocative was, as always, infuriating.
Serena didn't respond with words. The Frost Archer's bow snapped around in a smooth motion, and an arrow, longer and denser than the ones she'd fired at Lily, streaked through the fog directly at Elise.
"Impatient." Elise didn't flinch. She didn't even raise a hand.
The air in front of her rippled.
A seed of white crystal bloomed into existence between Elise and the incoming arrow, expanding outward at impossible speed. The seed grew into a plate. The plate grew into a spiraling wall. The wall grew into an interlocking lattice of faceted crystal that unfurled like a blossoming flower across a ten-meter arc in front of her.
The ice arrow struck the crystal lattice and shattered. Not chipped. Not dented. Shattered, with a musical note that rang through the fog like a struck tuning fork. The arrow's fragments skittered across the crystal surface and fell away harmlessly, leaving only a faint white scratch where the impact had occurred.
The lattice kept growing.
Crystal formations spiraled outward from the initial shield, climbing and interlocking, each new facet catching and redirecting the ambient moonlight and mist into prismatic spectra. The lattice coalesced into a humanoid outline. Then, with a chime of crystal resonance, a figure stepped forward from the formation.
Tall. Elegant. Her silver-white dress flowed like liquid glass, hemmed with petals of faceted crystal that chimed softly against each other as she moved. A silver parasol rested on her shoulder, its canopy lined with the same crystalline material as her dress. Her face was serene, almost sorrowful, like a statue that had learned how to feel sadness.
*「 Eternal Crystal Orchid 」*
Quality: Perfect
Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star)
Type: Plant / Crystal
The Orchid raised her parasol in an elegant arc, and the crystal lattice around her contracted, forming a rotating halo of defensive plates that orbited her at waist height. Her free hand extended palm-up, and a second crystal seed ignited in it, ready to deploy whatever she chose.
Two Six-Star Perfects. The Silver Crown Mandragora Queen stepped forward to stand at the Orchid's side, her tiny hand releasing Elise's to clasp the Orchid's crystalline fingers. The two plant-type spirits, one a small girl in a silver crown, one a tall woman in a silver dress, radiated a combined aura that made the air itself feel heavier.
The Silver Moon Fox took an involuntary step back. Frost Archer lowered her bow a fraction.
In the stands of spectators watching on the monitors, every person who understood what they were seeing reached the same conclusion at the same time:
Elise Hargrove was not someone you challenged lightly.
-----
At the same moment, elsewhere in the Relic, Luke was facing a very different opponent.
"You." The young man standing across the fog-thinned clearing had already summoned his cards. Two imposing constructs flanked him, their metallic bodies radiating waves of heat that pushed back the Relic's perpetual chill in a visible bubble of clarity.
*「 Blazing Marksman 」*
Race: Mechanical
Quality: Legacy
Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star)
Skills: Precision Shot, Ranged Tactics, Plasma Shield, Link
*「 Blazing War Horse 」*
Race: Mechanical
Quality: Legacy
Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star)
Skills: Maximum Burst, Trample, Charge, Link
The Marksman stood a full head taller than any human, its torso bristling with modular weapon mounts, each one idling with a faint orange glow. Its right arm terminated in a long-barreled cannon longer than its own body, currently cycling through a pre-targeting sequence with soft mechanical clicks. The War Horse was massive, six legs instead of four, plated in layered heat-resistant armor, its shoulder cannons already rotating into firing position. Steam vented from exhaust ports along its spine in rhythmic pulses.
Dual Six-Stars. Legacy quality. Mechanical type. Heat shimmered off their chassis like mirages in a desert.
"Have we met?" Luke genuinely didn't recognize the guy.
"No." The young man, Vance Ashton, shook his head. The Marksman's head rotated slightly, its optical array locking onto Mana with an audible targeting click. "But you beat Jasper Holt in the first stage. He's my friend."
"So this is a revenge match."
"Partly." Vance's voice was calm, unemotional, the measured tone of a Card Master who had already run the numbers and liked what he'd found. "Mostly, your performance gave me a feeling I don't enjoy. That card spirit of yours." His eyes, locked on Mana, narrowed. "My spirits are reading her as a Category Alpha threat. Even at my tier. That's not something I can ignore."
The Blazing Marksman and War Horse were feeding threat assessments back to Vance through the Link skill. Mana's readings on their internal scanners were registering in the top percentile, even when matched against dual Six-Star Legacy constructs. Vance's spirits, coldly mechanical as they were, didn't bluff.
But Vance also had an advantage. Mechanical-type card spirits didn't rely on magic for their primary offense. Their plasma cannons fired physical superheated projectiles. Their Charge skills were kinetic impacts. Their Precision Shot was a ballistic weapon, not a spell. Silence Seal, the ability that had undone Jasper's Thunder Prison, would have minimal effect on constructs that didn't cast spells in the first place.
And he had his trump card. The one he hadn't shown yet. The card he'd been saving for exactly this kind of encounter. With it in reserve, Vance was confident that nobody in the competition except Elise could beat him.
"Let's find out if your feeling is justified." Luke's tone was neutral. He glanced at Mana. "Dark Magic Attack. Pressure test."
"Yes, Master." Mana's staff rose.
The emerald orb flared. A magic circle bloomed beneath her feet, smaller than her earlier spells, quick-cast. A sphere of violet-black mana condensed at her staff tip in under a second, edged with crackling ribbons of energy, and screamed across the clearing toward the Marksman.
Vance's response was already queued. "Precision Shot."
The Blazing Marksman's cannon fired. A lance of superheated plasma, concentrated into a column barely thicker than a finger but dense enough to punch through armor plating, tore from the cannon's muzzle with a sound like ripping silk.
The two attacks met at the exact midpoint of the clearing.
Dark mana met superheated plasma, and the impact flash was white-hot. Both projectiles detonated on contact, canceling each other in a concussion that pushed the fog outward in a visible ring. Sparks and dark energy residue rained down across the clearing floor, hissing as they hit the damp stone.
Luke's eyes narrowed. That cannon had output comparable to Mana's attack. Same tier, same relative power. Exactly as the stats had suggested.
Behind the cover of the explosion flash, the Blazing War Horse was already moving. Its mechanical legs hammered the ground in a full Charge, and the sound was less "horse galloping" and more "siege engine accelerating." Every cannon port on its body cycled to ready status in rapid sequence, each one glowing with loaded plasma. It wasn't just charging Mana. It was charging through her, with enough firepower loaded to saturate whatever remained after the impact.
Three tons of armored construct. Every weapon mount loaded. Coming in at full speed.
Mana's staff came up in a ready stance, and behind Luke, her second magic circle was already beginning to unfurl.