"Holy cow!" The livestream erupted the instant Luke closed his eyes.
"He did NOT just go AFK in the middle of the unified exam."
"This is the single most disrespectful thing I've ever seen a candidate do. I love it."
"It's not the college entrance exam, sure, but it's still the unified exam. And this guy just... he's napping? Is he napping?!"
The Westbridge students didn't care about the optics. They were electric.
"Who else could pull this off? Not Marcus. Not Hailey. Our boy Luke is built different."
"He's literally letting his Card Spirit solo the exam while he takes a break. That's not confidence, that's dominance."
"Westbridge! Westbridge! WESTBRIDGE!"
The Crestfall and Ironvale students, predictably, weren't having it.
"Enjoy it while it lasts, Westbridge. He's going to choke in the later rounds and you'll all look like idiots."
"Exactly. Don't get capsized in a ditch. That'd be hilarious."
The comment section devolved into a warzone. But beneath the trash talk, a quiet truth was settling in: nobody could deny that what Luke was doing was impressive. Marcus and Hailey were still actively commanding their Card Spirits, issuing orders, making tactical adjustments. Luke had just... checked out. And his Card Spirit was handling everything on her own without breaking a sweat.
That gap said more than any argument could.
"The advantage of a high-intelligence Card Spirit on full display," Victor Ashford remarked, watching from the City Lord's Mansion.
As a Sovereign Realm Card Master, Victor wasn't a stranger to powerful Card Spirits. He had high-intelligence cards of his own. But creating one on your very first attempt? At the student level? That was something else entirely.
Victor himself hadn't crafted his first Perfect-quality, high-intelligence Card Spirit until the late Monarch Realm, hundreds of years into his career.
By comparison, both Marcus's Inferno Knight and Hailey's Water Azure Beast were solidly in the Intermediate bracket with average intelligence. They needed their masters actively calling the shots. Mana didn't.
"Agreed," Grant Harlow said, nodding. "But it's still the unified exam. He shouldn't be this casual about it."
A beat.
"Once this exam wraps up, I'll sit him down and remind him of the basics. Even a lion uses its full strength to catch a rabbit."
The words were stern. Harlow's expression was anything but. The man looked like he'd just won the lottery and was trying very hard to pretend he was upset about the tax implications.
God, this feels good.
Across the table, Townsend and Brandt's eyelids twitched in unison. If they weren't sitting in the City Lord's Mansion, if Victor Ashford weren't three feet away, the restraint they were showing right now would've evaporated entirely.
If Luke had been here, he'd have instantly recognized the energy. It was straight out of a classic meme. I just love seeing that expression on your face. That look of pure, undiluted jealousy.
A perfect match.
Behind closed eyelids, Luke cleared his mind and activated Simulated Crafting.
「 Simulated Crafting activated. Please select target for simulation. 」
He'd been turning this over in his head since the moment he summoned Mana. The Yu-Gi-Oh worldview wasn't just Monster Cards. It was a three-pillar system. Monsters, Spells, and Traps. Take away any one pillar and the whole thing was incomplete.
If this world's Magic Card Civilization had only ever built the equivalent of Monster Cards, that meant two entire categories of cards were sitting there, unbuilt, waiting for someone to try.
Luke intended to be that someone.
Spell Tome, he decided. The most basic, most generic equip-type Spell Card he could think of. If anything was going to work as a proof of concept, it was this.
「 Simulated Crafting target selected: Spell Tome. Simulation initiated. 」
The confirmation came instantly, and Luke felt his mental energy begin its slow, steady drain. Like a faucet left running at low pressure. Not painful, not even uncomfortable. Just a constant, gentle pull.
A grin flickered across his face.
The simulation had started. That alone was proof enough. If Spell Cards were fundamentally impossible in this world, the system would've rejected the input outright. The fact that it was actively simulating meant the concept was viable.
Spell Cards and Trap Cards could be built here. Nobody had ever tried, but they could.
As the simulation ran, experience and insight flooded into Luke's mind. Not abstract theory, but practical crafting knowledge. The kind of intuitive understanding that normally took years of trial and error to develop.
A progress indicator ticked upward in the corner of his awareness. Every percentage point represented one step closer to a guaranteed successful construction in reality. When it hit one hundred, he'd be able to build a Spell Tome with zero risk of failure.
All without spending a single material.
This changes everything.
Time passed.
The exam ground on, and the elimination rate accelerated. Candidates who'd barely scraped through Phase One with low-star cards were getting chewed up and spat out by the escalating beast waves.
"What round did you make it to? My Card Spirit went down in Round Five."
"Seven for me. Not bad, but not great. Wonder what my final score'll be."
"Forget about that. Get to the livestream! It's match point."
The newly eliminated students blinked. "Match point? What? This is an exam, not..."
But one explanation later, they understood, and the stampede to the remaining livestreams began.
"Four-Star Legacy Inferno Knight. That's Marcus Ward for you! Crestfall represent!"
"Only Four-Star Legacy? Hailey North built a Four-Star Collectible Water Azure Beast. Ironvale's taking this."
"What Inferno Knight? What Water Azure Beast?" The Westbridge contingent was insufferable and they knew it. "Luke's Card Spirit wipes the floor with both of them. They're not even in the same conversation."
The audience had consolidated. As beast levels climbed past Four Stars, every candidate except three had been knocked out. Luke, Marcus, and Hailey were the last ones standing, and the entire student population of Ashenvale City was crammed into their feeds.
The rivalry between the three schools had crystallized into something personal. Comments flew like artillery fire.
"Round Twelve beasts incoming. Oh my god, Five Stars?!"
"Five-Star fierce beasts. This is it. Even those three are going to have problems now."
The room, metaphorically speaking, held its breath.
In his exam space, Luke's mind was elsewhere.
The Simulated Crafting had been running in the background throughout the exam, quietly consuming mental energy while Mana handled the beast waves on her own. She hadn't needed a single order from Luke. Not one.
The simulation wasn't building a card. It couldn't. There were no real materials involved, no Card Editor open, no actual construction happening. What it was doing was mapping out the process. Testing whether the concept of a Spell Tome could even exist within this world's rules, and if so, cataloging every step required to build one for real later.
Think of it as memorizing a recipe without ever touching a stove.
「 Simulated Crafting: Spell Tome. Blueprint progress: 97%... 98%... 99%... 」
「 Simulation complete. Spell Tome blueprint: 100%. Construction will succeed when performed with real materials. 」
Luke's lips curved.
The blueprint was locked in. He now knew exactly how to build a Spell Tome: every material requirement, every step in the crafting sequence, every potential failure point. The knowledge was sitting in his head like a perfect instruction manual, ready to be executed whenever he had the right materials in hand.
But the blueprint alone didn't produce a card. That would require actual materials, actual construction, and actual time. The simulation was a cheat sheet, not a shortcut.
What mattered right now wasn't the Spell Tome itself. It was what the simulation proved.
The system had accepted the input. It hadn't rejected "Spell Tome" as an impossible concept. It had processed the entire construction blueprint from start to finish without a single error flag.
Spell Cards could be built in this world. Nobody had ever tried, but they could. And if Spell Cards worked, Trap Cards almost certainly would too.
That was the real prize. Not a card, but confirmation that two entirely new categories of cards were waiting to be introduced into Magic Card Civilization. Support infrastructure that could multiply a Card Spirit's effectiveness without needing to build a stronger monster.
If the Original Card had been a bombshell, this discovery was a nuclear warhead. He just needed materials, time, and the good sense to keep it quiet until the moment was right.
Luke filed the knowledge away and let the simulation wind down, conserving what remained of his mental energy. He'd build the real thing after the exam, once he had proper materials to work with.
Now. Time to see what the exam had been up to while he was gone.
Plz Throw Powerstones.