With a flicker of anticipation, Dark used Normal Summoning to call forth the Drifloon.
Then, quick as lightning, he snatched it right out of the air!
Unlike Gastly, Drifloon wasn't a gaseous Pokémon — but its body was just as weightless, like clutching a tuft of cotton. The texture was absolutely delightful.
"Yomi—"
This Drifloon, refined from a full seven points of [Lust], lived up to its pedigree — the moment it was summoned, it opened its wide eyes and launched itself straight at him.
Dark caught it and held it up high, studying the string of Fear Gems hanging around its neck with careful eyes.
Those mana-storing beads, if properly utilized, would give Drifloon's strength a terrifying boost — there was no question about that.
Just from the Ultimate Move's description alone, it was clear that the beam of mana released by the Fear Gems scaled directly with how much mana was stored — the more, the stronger.
The only question was: what was the storage cap on the Fear Gems?
Could that stored mana be converted into Drifloon's own?
And what exactly was that upper limit?
If the cap sat somewhere around ten to twenty thousand mana, and it could be converted into Drifloon's own reserves — even at a conversion rate of just three points per second, Drifloon could sustain itself indefinitely outside through a combination of Dream Eater and Astonish.
In short: this was a Magic Guide Spirit that could be left to roam on its own.
...
On top of that, with Psywave as an Ultimate Move, Drifloon could use psychic power in place of hands and feet — making everyday life extraordinarily convenient.
As for Dream Eater — beyond nocturnal ambushes, it could be paired with DemiDevimon's [Demonic Hypnosis] for some interesting combinations.
But what Dark was more curious about was whether Drifloon could do what a true nightmare does — use Dream Eater to actually invade and control another person's dreams.
If it really could manipulate dreamscapes, Drifloon's utility would run far deeper than it appeared on the surface.
...
"Yomi—"
Drifloon twisted its tiny body with all its might, desperately trying to fling itself at Dark's face.
Dark slapped a [Pride I] card onto it to calm it down, and at the same time took the opportunity to activate its intelligence.
Then he tucked Drifloon under his arm, turned it around, and started teasing it with a waggling finger.
"Come on — try pulling that thing over here," he said, pointing at DemiDevimon perched on the bird stand.
Drifloon obediently widened its eyes. A burst of red light erupted from both pupils.
DemiDevimon, who had been hanging upside down from the stand watching the whole show, immediately went rigid — red ripples shimmering across its surface — and then it was yanked helplessly down out of the air.
"Just as I thought. Mana consumption is negligible, and casual everyday use won't trigger any cooldown."
"Genuinely enviable."
"With an Ultimate Move like Psywave, I'll never have to drag myself out of bed just to grab something ever again."
Dark scratched Drifloon under the chin. It immediately broke into a fit of "kekeke" giggles, its concentration dissolving.
DemiDevimon finally broke free of the psychic grip and rounded on Drifloon with a flurry of flailing claws and gnashing teeth.
But Drifloon quietly stuck out its little pink tongue and blew a long, drawn-out raspberry right back at it.
A mischievous streak — unmistakably revealed.
...
After testing Psywave, Dark immediately turned his thoughts to the possibility of evolving Drifloon.
As for the other three Ultimate Moves, none of them had the conditions for immediate testing. Those would have to wait for further research down the line.
Dark thought it over, then first made the rounds introducing Drifloon to the other Magic Guide Spirits.
Aside from DemiDevimon — still nursing its fresh humiliation — nobody gave it a cold reception. Then again, nobody was exactly rolling out the welcome mat either.
Once the introductions were done, Dark set Drifloon down in front of him and with great ceremony drew out [Lust III].
Now — it was time to witness a miracle.
...
Drifloon was a Pokémon with evolution potential. With a Dusk Stone, it could evolve from Drifloon into Drifblim.
Although the base stat difference between Drifloon and Drifblim was only sixty points, an evolution was an evolution. Drifblim was like Drifloon's adult form — a more composed temperament, more powerful moves.
Unlike Drifloon, which used nothing but its cries as a tool for fright, Drifblim could produce a voice like an incantation.
Those who heard it were said to suffer agonizing headaches and vivid hallucinations.
But hidden within that voice was another effect — one that occasionally left the listener feeling their chest open wide, awash with inexplicable happiness.
And beyond that…
A powerful Drifblim also possessed the ability to warp space itself and conjure illusions — within those illusions, anything that could never happen in reality could be made to happen.
Anyone drawn into Drifblim's illusory space would find it nearly impossible to tell the real from the false, and would be all too easily lost within it.
In short: tremendously powerful.
But all of that depended on whether one of the [Major Sin III] cards could actually trigger Drifloon's evolution.
In theory, [Lust III] should be able to do it.
But until the experiment was run, nothing was confirmed.
...
"Swipe — evolve!"
As the radiance of [Lust III] flooded the entire dormitory, Drifloon was bathed in a wash of rosy pink light.
It seemed bewildered at first — and then it began greedily drinking in that power, which resonated perfectly with its very core.
As the light poured steadily into its body, the small, adorable frame began to swell and expand.
A crest symbolizing [Lust] slowly surfaced at the center of its brow — growing brighter and brighter, until it blazed like a beacon, releasing light that draped over its body like a mantle of pink dawn.
And then, before the watching eyes of every Magic Guide Spirit, Drifloon's very life-form underwent a transformation that shook the heavens and overturned the earth.
Its color shifted from a warm moss-green to a far colder, deeper violet.
The shape of its head changed to resemble a wizard's pointed hat, with four horn-like protrusions jutting out from either side.
Its body became more slender, more distinctly humanoid — like a figure draped in a noble mage's robes.
The strand of beads that once hung from its neck had evolved into three red gemstones set directly into its body, radiating a powerful aura.
The newly evolved Drifblim.
Mysterious as a sorcerer.
Profound as a sage.
...
[Card Name: Drifblim]
[Type: Spirit Card]
[Grade: ?????]
[Species: Undead Species]
[Attribute: Ghost-type]
[Mana: 2700]
[Attack: 2500]
[Defense: 1600]
[Ultimate Moves: Fear Gem, Share Pain, Shared Fate, Nightmare Space.]
...
Dark immediately channeled mana into the Magic Guide Card, which had now become Drifblim, and received a detailed readout in return.
"Five stars?!"
The gold card he had expected — but five stars he had not.
"A three-star Drifloon, after being used with [Lust III], leaped all the way to five stars!"
"Does this mean that if Meowth uses [Greed III], it could also evolve into a five-star Persian?"
"It looks like crafting [Greed III] is an absolute must!"
Dark's thoughts raced as he extrapolated further.
Then his eyes landed on Drifblim's three core stats.
The peak value for a five-star spirit was 2500.
But Drifblim's mana had blown past that ceiling by a full two hundred points.
Its attack had also hit the maximum.
Its defense was slightly behind — but standing next to those mana and attack figures, it barely mattered.
Stats this far above the threshold — one could argue it deserved to be called a six-star Magic Guide Spirit without exaggeration.
It seemed that only after evolving did Drifblim finally unlock the potential inherited from Vampire Vlad — unleashed in full.
So much so that its four Ultimate Moves had also undergone a complete and utter transformation.
Utterly unlike Drifloon, which leaned toward the "nightmare" archetype, Drifblim was a demon through and through.
Of its four Ultimate Moves, only the Fear Gem from its Drifloon days had been carried over.
The other three — while lacking the terrifying "Perish Song" — were all ferociously powerful in their own unsettling ways.
...
First: Share Pain!
[Share Pain: Adds together the remaining mana of the user and a target, then splits it evenly between them.]
"Hiss—"
The true horror of this Ultimate Move lay in its capacity for a last-ditch reversal from the brink of death — dragging the opponent's life force down to the same level as yours.
For Magic Guide Spirits, life force was mana — which made this, in effect, a forced mana equalization.
"If you paired this with Shuckle's [Power Split] and [Guard Split], wouldn't that be a true 'all creatures are equal' situation?"
"Level the opponent down to your level first — then use superior experience to finish them off?"
The corner of Dark's mouth tugged into a faint, involuntary smile.
Then he moved on to the next Ultimate Move — Shared Fate!
[Shared Fate: Mutual destruction — going down together! After activating Shared Fate, whenever the user suffers a serious injury or is brought near death by an opponent's attack, the opponent takes nearly identical damage in return (mana-limited).]
The wording of this Shared Fate diverged somewhat from the Pokémon game mechanics Dark knew — but the description still knocked the breath out of him!
"'Mana-limited' likely refers to its limitation against mana-based constructs like Magic Guide Spirits, as well as the restriction of mana damage against non-mana beings. After all, a Magic Guide Spirit's life is made of mana, so what Shared Fate drains is naturally mana. The same logic should apply to Share Pain."
"The original version of Shared Fate only activated at the point of death — this one also triggers on serious injury, which is a significant expansion of its practical range."
"Hypothetically, if the opponent were Vampire Vlad, and it managed to kill a Drifblim in Shared Fate status — would its own mana be instantly wiped to zero?"
"A shame there's no second Vlad to run that experiment on."
Dark couldn't help feeling a pang of regret.
But no matter how you looked at it, Shared Fate was a terrifying Ultimate Move — the kind that could make an opponent's hands tremble in a Magic Guide duel.
Compared to the seemingly harmless Drifloon, Drifblim wore its fangs in plain sight.
"And the last Ultimate Move — Nightmare Space!"
"This one, like Fear Gem, is a derived skill."
Dark had never encountered an ability called "Nightmare Space" in any Pokémon media he'd consumed, and found himself leaning in with added focus.
[Nightmare Space: Unfurls a nightmare space, drawing all within it into a dreamlike state. Inside the nightmare space, Drifblim can warp the fabric of space itself and conjure illusions.]
[Effect ①: Warp space — instant teleportation, swapping the positions of the user and a chosen target.]
[Effect ②: Warp space — the faster one moves, the slower one acts; the slower one moves, the faster one acts. Drifblim's own speed serves as the baseline.]
[Effect ③: Conjure illusions — causes the target to be unable to distinguish real from false, plunging them into [Confusion].]
...
"A field move — it's actually a field move!"
Dark couldn't suppress a jolt of shock.
Possessing a field move was equivalent to possessing a Field Card — the ability to create a personal "domain."
And Drifblim's field move, on a single glance, was clearly a fusion of three distinct abilities: Trick Room, Telekinesis, and Illusion — condensed into one.
One move replacing three. The potency went without saying.
...
By this point, Dark could barely look Drifblim in the eye.
Its power was no longer limited to its star rank or raw stats — it was a precision instrument for cutting down high-star Magic Guide Spirits.
The four Ultimate Moves together were especially terrifying, and even the combinations Dark had thought up in this brief moment were enough to make anyone's blood run cold.
For instance: after entering Shared Fate status, use the position-swap to tank the opponent's Ultimate Move head-on — and use that to one-shot a high-star Magic Guide Spirit.
If it survived as a serious injury rather than a kill, use Share Pain to split the mana reserves right down the middle with the opponent's spirit like old friends…
Or perhaps — after unrolling Nightmare Space — watching a high-speed type Magic Guide Spirit crawl across the floor like a tortoise. That too had a certain wordless appeal.
Drifblim's only real weakness, it seemed, was a lack of direct offensive options.
Fear Gem, as a Ghost-type stand-in for Power Gem, wasn't lacking in raw power — but it required absorbing the emotion of fear to accumulate enough mana.
That wasn't exactly easy to come by inside the academy.
Unless he negotiated with the school administration first, then let Drifloon loose to add a little spice to the students' otherwise painfully dull academy life…
Without missing a beat, Dark ordered Drifblim to unfurl Nightmare Space inside the dormitory.
"Yomi—"
But Drifblim suddenly took flight, and with its robe-like body, promptly smothered his entire head from above, squirming and wriggling energetically.
Dark hastily peeled it off his head and gave it a mild scolding: "Behave."
"Yomi—"
Drifblim tilted its face up and rubbed against his cheek with considerable force — then finally turned around and unleashed Nightmare Space on the open floor.
Violet smoke began to drift slowly upward from beneath it, spreading outward in all directions like wisps of cloud.
But just as Dark and the Magic Guide Spirits were drawn in by the spreading mist — the Nightmare Space had already unfurled in perfect silence.
As a field effect, it produced no rejection against [Paradise]. If anything, there was a peculiar sense of harmony between the two.
As the smoke continued to rise, Dark felt a sudden flash blur his vision — and Drifblim vanished.
In its place stood a magical girl in violet mage's robes, wearing a round-topped wizard's hat and holding an ornate staff.
Glasses perched on her nose. Skin fair as snow. Slender frame. Quiet and self-possessed.
A figure concealed within those robes that was, frankly, quite impressive.
Precisely Dark's type.
But then a Shuckle moving at full speed came hurtling past like a runaway train — and Dark was yanked unceremoniously back from the illusion into reality.
____
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