Chapter 10: How the Hell Do We Fight That?!
"This guy is unreal. Look at his face. He literally does not care."
"I thought the eyes-closed thing was just for show, but he actually let his Card Spirit run the entire exam on autopilot."
"Built different. The man is simply built different."
"Does he seriously not worry about losing at all?" Marcus and Hailey read the comments scrolling past their screens, and both felt the same twist in their stomachs.
From the chatter, it was clear Luke hadn't been directing his Card Spirit for a long time. Maybe not since the early rounds. He'd just... let her handle it.
Neither Marcus nor Hailey could've done that. Not in an exam that mattered. Not even with a card they trusted completely. The sheer nerve it took to sit back and close your eyes while your entire score was in someone else's hands?
That alone put Luke in a category they couldn't reach.
And when you combined that unshakable confidence with the raw power his Card Spirit had been demonstrating all day...
It was hard not to feel a little defeated.
Luke hadn't just beaten them. He'd never even acknowledged the competition. From the very beginning, this unified exam hadn't been a challenge to him. It had been a testing ground.
That realization stung more than any loss on the scoreboard.
"If I'm not mistaken," Richard Townsend said slowly, breaking the silence in the City Lord's Mansion, "the maximum beast level programmed into Phase Two is Six-Star. Which means the final wave is coming up."
The outcome had been decided the moment Marcus and Hailey were eliminated. Even Townsend and Brandt, much as they hated to admit it, understood the gap between their students' cards and Luke's.
As Emperor Realm Card Masters, their assessment was sharper than the students'. From watching Mana dismantle the Wood Spirit Vine and dominate the Fury Tiger, they could tell her star level was already at or above Five-Star. Almost certainly Six.
A first-time Card Master building a Six-Star Original Card on his debut construction. The kind of talent that would turn heads even in the Capital.
And now they were about to watch that talent face the exam's final boss.
"There might be trouble, though." Douglas Brandt frowned, thinking it through. "The Six-Star beast for this round is a Storm Sparrow. Flying type."
The room shifted.
"Storm Sparrow's quality isn't the highest among Six-Star beasts," Brandt continued, "but flight gives it an inherent tactical advantage that's difficult to overcome. Even against a spellcaster-type Card Spirit, the question is whether the attack range can actually reach it."
Flying enemies fought from the sky. They chose their angles, controlled engagement distance, and could disengage at will. For ground-bound Card Spirits, no matter how much raw power they had, hitting something you couldn't reach was a serious problem.
"Don't forget," Grant Harlow interjected, "Luke's card is an Original. There's still a lot we don't know about what it can do."
"Let's see." Victor Ashford leaned forward, and there was a glint of anticipation in his eyes that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Maybe he'll surprise us again."
"Master, you're awake?"
Mana noticed Luke stir and immediately scooped up the last batch of dropped materials before trotting over to his side.
The area around Luke looked like a particularly organized loot pile. Materials from a dozen rounds of beast kills were stacked in neat clusters, sorted by type. Mana had been collecting them between fights with the diligence of a squirrel preparing for winter.
"Mm." Luke nodded, his eyes scanning the haul. "I've worked out some of the framework for your new equipment."
He was halfway through a more detailed explanation when his gaze snagged on something in the material pile.
He stopped.
Looked again.
Among the drops from the mid-tier beast rounds, buried between a stack of grey fangs and a bundle of green-grade pelts, were materials that he recognized instantly. Materials that were exactly what he needed to construct a Spell Tome.
Luke grabbed Mana, pulled her in, and kissed her on the cheek.
"You're my lucky star, Mana."
"Ah!" Mana's pale skin flushed pink from the base of her neck to the tips of her ears. She didn't pull away, not even close, but the surprise turned her wide emerald eyes even wider. A tiny, shy smile crept onto her face.
Outside the exam space, the comment section detonated.
"MY GODDESS! HE JUST... HE CAN'T DO THAT!"
"LUKE MERCER. COME OUTSIDE. I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL."
The Westbridge students, who had been firmly in Luke's corner all day, instantly turned on him with the fury of a betrayed fanbase. The crime: touching their shared goddess without permission from the collective.
Meanwhile, the Crestfall and Ironvale students experienced a sudden and unexpected rush of satisfaction. Serves you right, Westbridge. He's your school's student, sure. But she doesn't belong to you.
The schadenfreude was brief.
Because in the next second, a sound tore through the exam space that made everyone's blood run cold.
"SKREEEEE!"
A shriek of pure, concentrated violence ripped across the arena, drowning out everything. It wasn't just loud. It was aggressive, a sound that carried physical weight, rattling the dimensional walls of the exam space like a fist pounding on glass.
"What the..."
"Oh no."
"You have GOT to be kidding me."
A shadow fell across the arena. Something enormous was descending from above, wings spread wide enough to blot out the artificial sky of the exam space. Feathers the color of bruised thunderclouds. Talons like curved swords. Eyes that burned with Six-Star malice.
「 Storm Sparrow 」
Race: Avian
Quality: Rare
Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star)
Skills: Cloud Shift, Wind Surge, Wing Slash, Chaos Sound
"Six-Star Rare beast. Storm Sparrow." Marcus read the stat display that appeared on the livestream, and his voice came out flat. Hollow. The kind of tone people used when they were processing information that their brain didn't want to accept.
Because of its flight capability, Storm Sparrow's effective combat power was significantly higher than its base stats suggested. With the permanent sky advantage factored in, it fought at a level equivalent to a Six-Star Legacy beast. Maybe higher.
Some people called it the specialized ceiling of Six-Star beasts. A counter-pick nightmare designed to punish anyone who didn't have flight or extreme range.
Most of the teachers at all three academies would struggle against this thing. Teaching was the primary job. Combat power was secondary. A flying Six-Star Rare with a sonic attack skill set was the kind of opponent that required specific tools to handle.
"This is a joke, right? The final boss is a flyer?"
"Unless her Card Spirit has ridiculous range or can fly, this is over."
"Strongest attack power in the exam means nothing if she can't land a hit."
The Westbridge students deflated. After an entire exam of riding the high of Luke's dominance, this felt like a gut punch. A flying boss was the one matchup that raw power alone couldn't solve.
Even Vice Principal Graves and Mr. Tanner exchanged uneasy glances back at Westbridge. They could handle a Storm Sparrow with their own cards. But they weren't the ones in the arena.
"Storm Sparrow. Six-Star flying beast." Luke read the notification calmly as the massive bird circled overhead, its wingspan casting shifting shadows across the arena floor.
His expression didn't change.
Flying beasts were a pain. That was undeniable. The sky advantage made them harder to pin down than any ground-based opponent, and Storm Sparrow in particular had a skill set designed to exploit altitude and distance.
But harder didn't mean impossible. And it didn't mean Mana couldn't handle it.
"SKREEEEE!"
Storm Sparrow made the first move. Its eyes locked onto Mana, and the air around its throat vibrated with concentrated mana.
Chaos Sound.
A wall of sonic force erupted from the beast's beak, tearing through the air in a visible shockwave. The attack didn't just travel toward Mana. It expanded, filling the arena with a concussive blast that turned sound itself into a weapon. The penetrating force was so intense that even people watching through the livestream instinctively flinched and covered their ears.
"I feel like that sound wave could strip the skin off my bones." One student shuddered.
The sonic blast slammed into Mana's position.
Or rather, into where Mana had been standing half a second ago.
Plz Throw Powerstones.