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"Elise's fight is over too."
Across the Mist Relic, the three-way clash had resolved. Lily and Serena had been forced to team up against Elise's overwhelming presence, and even their combined effort had crumbled against the Silver Crown Mandragora Queen and Eternal Crystal Orchid working in concert. The Queen's paralytic fragrance and thorn swarms provided ceaseless pressure while the Orchid's crystal lattice wall absorbed everything Silver Moon Fox and Frost Archer could throw at it.
Neither of Elise's cards went down. Both Lily and Serena lost their card spirits and teleported out with the grim resignation of experienced Card Masters recognizing an unwinnable fight.
"Called it." The eliminated competitors at the plaza watched the monitoring feeds with the resigned satisfaction of people whose predictions had come true. "The gap between Elise and the rest of them is bigger than people wanted to admit."
"Honestly, I'm more curious about what happens when Elise and Luke actually meet. That fight is going to be interesting."
Someone had already opened an unofficial betting pool on the outcome. Money was flowing, odds were shifting, and the eliminated competitors had transformed into spectators with stakes. The final fight of the Youth Training Competition had become the most anticipated match in years, primarily because nobody had expected a satellite city representative to make it this far.
Ashenvale had always been a mid-tier city. Solid, competent, unremarkable. And now Luke Mercer was threatening to upend that entire ranking with a single tournament run.
-----
"That's enough Vouchers." Luke tucked the new Voucher alongside the others in his inventory. Ten total. Enough to enter the Relic's core. He glanced at Mana, who was floating beside him with a slightly flushed expression. "How'd Magic Cylinder feel? First time you've really used it in a fight."
"Incredible." Mana's green eyes were bright. The afterglow of combat hadn't faded yet. "If it didn't cost so much mana per activation, I'd want to use it for every fight."
"It's a limited tool. That's part of what makes it valuable."
"Master." Mana leaned closer, her voice dropping conspiratorially. "I noticed something during the fight. Magic Cylinder's effect isn't quite what we planned for."
"How so?"
"The attack it absorbs. I can choose where to send it when I fire it back." Her fingers traced a small circle in the air as she explained. "It doesn't have to go back to the original attacker. I can redirect to any target I want."
Luke went still.
"And there's more." Mana was practically bouncing with enthusiasm. "The absorbed energy doesn't have to come out all at once. I can split it, release it in smaller reflections of different strengths, fire multiple weaker counters from a single absorbed attack. Or save some of it for later."
"You're joking."
"I tested it. Mid-fight. The Centaur's Final Burst came out at full strength because I wanted the maximum effect, but I could have fired back three medium-strength blasts from different angles if I'd wanted to."
Luke processed this.
The real game version of Magic Cylinder had been a one-shot reflection trap. The Magic Card Civilization version, after passing through his card design and background implementation, had evolved into something considerably more versatile. Target selection. Energy splitting. Variable-strength reflections.
"Reality isn't the game," he murmured. "The background and concept transformation changes the final effect. Card Masters probably can't fully predict how their cards will behave until they're actually used in combat."
"Which also means…" Mana's enthusiasm dimmed slightly. "I found the limitation too. The card has to fully release the absorbed attack before it can absorb another one. If I'm storing energy from one shot, the Cylinder can't eat a second shot mid-absorption."
"Makes sense. Otherwise it'd be broken at a fundamental level." Luke rubbed his chin, thinking. "If we ever find a way around that limitation… Barrel Behind the Door could stack reflections and open up real multi-hit reflection plays."
"Master, you're already planning the upgrade?"
"Always." Luke grinned. "Let's move. Core's that way."
Mana's face lit up, and she looped her arm through his as they walked into the fog, the Indicator's compass needle pulling them toward the Relic's center. Their shoulders bumped companionably with each step.
-----
At the plaza, Vance Ashton had just recovered enough to look up at the monitors again. He watched Luke and Mana walk off into the fog in that casual, affectionate posture, and his face twisted in exquisite frustration.
I lost to a guy who then did a victory stroll with his card spirit like the rest of the tournament doesn't exist.
The other eliminated competitors shared his pain. They'd all tuned in to watch a high-level battle. They were being subjected to a public display of affection between Luke and a card spirit whose beauty was already legendary across the competition.
Card spirits at Mana's level of visual appeal tended to make their masters extremely popular with the opposite sex. Not because their masters necessarily wanted the attention, but because the proximity effect was unavoidable. And Luke seemed to have zero interest in discouraging it.
-----
The core chamber.
Luke fed ten Vouchers into the core's authentication interface, and the sealing mists peeled back to reveal the Relic's central sanctum. He and Mana stepped through, and the fog behind them closed like a curtain.
The sanctum was a circular platform, unadorned, lit by a diffuse glow that seemed to come from no particular direction. At the platform's center, suspended in mid-air above a pedestal of polished stone, hovered the Youth Training Competition's final prize.
It was a heart.
A massive, crystallized heart, roughly the size of a small chair, pulsing with a faint internal light that shifted through pale gold, silver, and white in slow cycles. The organ was clearly not of any normal creature. Its aura, visible even to the naked eye as faint wisps of luminous energy rising from its surface, radiated divine-adjacent power.
*「 Holy Dragon Furnace Heart 」*
Description: The sole remnant of a Holy Dragon who commanded the power of light. It is said to contain the entirety of the Dragon's accumulated light-essence from its lifetime. When used correctly, can catalyze and awaken hidden light-aligned potential.
Luke's eyes widened involuntarily.
On the monitoring deck, every branch president in the chamber made a similar face. Several audible intakes of breath echoed across the plaza.
"That's a heart."
"Not just any heart. A Holy Dragon's heart."
"The Dragon must have been at least Emperor Realm equivalent for its heart to be this intact, and that's a conservative estimate."
Luke stared at the artifact for a long moment. A Holy Dragon's heart. Top-tier light-aligned material. Exactly what he needed for multiple card spirits on his design roadmap.
"This would be perfect for Digimon." The thought surfaced automatically. Sistermon White's upper evolution paths, light-aligned protectors, holy-element constructs. An artifact of this quality would solve material requirements for half a dozen planned cards in one go.
"Wonder how I'm supposed to actually take it, though." He studied the setup. "No security. No locks. Just sitting there. That's suspicious."
"I had a feeling the final opponent would be you." The voice came from the other side of the sanctum.
Elise Hargrove stepped out of the fog, glasses catching the diffuse light, her expression warm and composed. Behind her, the Silver Crown Mandragora Queen and Eternal Crystal Orchid emerged into view as well, taking positions at her flanks.
She'd entered through a different access point, feeding her own ten Vouchers into the core. They'd arrived from opposite sides of the sanctum at essentially the same moment.
Her gaze shifted to the Holy Dragon Furnace Heart, and genuine surprise crossed her face.
Even I didn't know the prize was a dragon's heart.
The Hargrove family had privileged access to most of the competition's internal workings, but the final artifact had been sealed even from them. It was the Capital Association's way of maintaining the competition's authenticity, and given what Elise was looking at, the Association had decided to deposit a genuinely spectacular prize.
Either the Association trusted that a Capital team member would win and keep the artifact within their circle, or they were willing to risk losing a top-tier material to whoever came out on top. Either way, the stakes had just become clear.
Elise's eyes returned to Luke, and the warmth cooled into focused combat readiness.
Her grandfather had called him a prodigy. So had Grant, and Miles, and Harrison. All of them had watched his matches with an attention reserved for generational talents.
And Elise was also a prodigy. A Hargrove. Direct lineage from Edmund. Leader Realm before the entrance exam, with the resources and training of Ashenmere's most powerful family poured into her since childhood.
This fight wasn't just about the Holy Dragon Furnace Heart. It was about proving that her status wasn't inherited. That she deserved her ranking by her own merit.
"Sorry, Luke. That artifact's mine."
She raised her hand, and three summoning circles ignited simultaneously.
The Silver Crown Mandragora Queen strode forward. The Eternal Crystal Orchid unfurled her silver parasol. And between them, a third circle bloomed into a figure Luke hadn't seen before.
A tall, graceful humanoid with skin the color of pale jade and hair that trailed like climbing vines. Her eyes were reptilian, slit-pupiled, glowing faintly gold. A crown of living blossoms sat atop her head, and every step she took left a trail of verdant energy that sank into the sanctum floor and caused flowers to bloom in her wake.
*「 Dragon Maiden Flower 」*
Quality: Perfect
Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star)
Type: Plant / Dragon-infused
"Three Six-Star Perfects." Luke's voice was even, but his eyes had sharpened. "You weren't playing around."
"I never was." Elise smiled, thin and focused.
She gestured, and the three plant-type spirits moved in perfect coordination. The Mandragora Queen raised her tiny arms and sang a single high note. The Crystal Orchid lowered her parasol to the ground. The Dragon Maiden pressed both palms against the sanctum stone.
The floor responded.
Green energy pulsed outward from each of the three spirits in expanding concentric rings, and where the rings passed, the sanctum transformed. Vines erupted from the polished stone. Flowers bloomed in riotous profusion across every surface. Roots dug into the ground and anchored a new ecosystem. Within seconds, the entire core chamber had been overtaken by dense, verdant life, a living jungle that climbed the walls, coiled around the pedestal, and created a canopy of interwoven foliage overhead.
*「 Flower Field Domain 」*
The domain stretched to fill the entire sanctum. Even the Holy Dragon Furnace Heart's light-aura was visibly suppressed by the overwhelming density of life energy saturating the space. The Heart still pulsed, still radiated, but its luminosity had dimmed beneath the domain's verdant authority.
Elise stood at the center of her creation like a queen in her throne room. The three plant spirits flanked her, radiating coordinated presence that pressed down on Luke's position from three distinct vectors.
"Flower Field Domain." Lily Fairchild, watching from the plaza, rubbed her forehead. "So she's going all-out for the final. I knew she would, but still."
Lily had a better understanding of Elise's full capabilities than almost anyone else. And even her, watching now, felt a chill at the sight of the completed Domain. What she and Serena had faced earlier had been only two-thirds of this formation. The Mandragora-Orchid pairing alone had nearly broken them. With the Dragon Maiden Flower added to the combination, the Domain's destructive output was on another level entirely.
"He can't win." Serena Frost, standing nearby, bit her lip. Even her cold composure had cracked. Her own fight with Elise had been brief and brutal. She couldn't imagine beating the completed three-card formation, and she knew Lily couldn't either.
Mandragora Queen for control. Eternal Crystal Orchid for defense that could tank attacks from high-tier Six-Stars. Dragon Maiden Flower for offense, infused with actual dragon blood, with raw destructive output that supposedly exceeded the Mandragora Queen's.
Three cards. Three roles. Interlocking coverage. No weaknesses.
"Looks like the competition's going to end soon." The other branch presidents settled into spectator mode. Most had already reached the same conclusion. Elise's formation was overwhelming. Luke was a generational talent, but he was still a Commander Realm Card Master with two summon slots against a Leader Realm Card Master with three slots filled by Perfect-quality plant spirits.
Harrison said nothing. His face was unreadable.