( BONUS CHAPTER )
"Tch. Noisy little thing." Luke winced as the sonic shockwave scattered across the arena, rattling the dimensional walls. The Chaos Sound hadn't hit Mana, but the residual vibrations still clawed at his eardrums. "Mana!"
"Silence Seal!"
Mana was already in motion. Her staff swept upward, mana pulsing from the tip in concentric rings, and a massive sigil of stillness materialized in the air above the Storm Sparrow. It dropped over the beast like a net, locking into place around its body.
The Chaos Sound died instantly. The mana driving the sonic assault fractured and dispersed, the attack collapsing in on itself like a song cut mid-note. The oppressive wall of noise that had been shaking the entire exam space simply... stopped.
"Ah." Luke nodded, the tension leaving his shoulders. "Much better."
In the livestream, recognition flickered through the comments almost immediately.
"Wait, that's the same thing she used against the Fury Tiger! The zone attack that shut down its abilities!"
"It cancels skills? So it works on sonic attacks too?"
"That's gotta be some kind of anti-magic technique. She silenced the Fury Tiger's roar, and now she just killed Storm Sparrow's Chaos Sound the same way."
"Yeah, definitely anti-magic. Whatever's inside that zone can't activate skills. That's insane against a beast that relies on sound-based attacks."
In the City Lord's Mansion, the implications were sinking in deeper.
"So that zone ability she used against the Fury Tiger is a genuine anti-magic spell." Victor Ashford's fingers tightened around the armrest of his chair. They'd seen the skill before, but against the Fury Tiger it had seemed like an offensive setup. Against Storm Sparrow's Chaos Sound, its true nature was becoming clearer.
"A spellcaster-type Card Spirit that also possesses anti-magic techniques." Douglas Brandt's expression was complicated, and for once it wasn't jealousy driving it. His own card roster leaned heavily on spellcasting. He understood better than anyone in the room how devastating an anti-magic ability was. "In the right matchup, that's practically a hard counter to any magic user."
"Agreed," Richard Townsend said, nodding reluctantly. "But even with anti-magic, it doesn't solve the flight problem. Storm Sparrow still owns the sky."
He had a point. Silence Seal could shut down the sonic attacks, but Storm Sparrow was still a bird. It could simply fly out of range, reposition, and re-engage with physical attacks from above. Anti-magic was a tool, not a win condition. Not against a flyer.
Inside the exam space, Townsend's analysis proved half-right within seconds.
The silenced Storm Sparrow lost its mind. Stripped of its signature ability, the beast thrashed and shrieked, soundlessly, its beak opening and closing on muted fury. Then its wings snapped open and it rocketed upward, climbing out of the Silence Seal's effective zone in three brutal wingbeats.
Free of the suppression field, the Sparrow's power surged back. Demonic wind erupted from its wings, filling the arena with howling gales that tore at everything below. Two massive Wing Slash attacks formed in the turbulence, crescent-shaped blades of compressed air screaming toward Mana at terrifying speed.
"Not bad." Luke watched the slashes close in on Mana's position. He wasn't worried. "But you're not the only one who can fly."
Mana's staff flicked sideways, and her feet left the ground.
She rose smoothly into the air, body tilting into an elegant backbend that carried her between the two Wing Slashes with inches to spare. The wind blades crossed behind her and detonated against the arena floor, carving deep gouges into the dimensional surface.
Mana hung in the air above the impact zone, legs crossed, staff resting against her shoulder, floating with the lazy grace of someone who'd been doing this her entire life.
It wasn't true flight. Not in the biological sense. She was channeling the ambient mana in the atmosphere, using it as an invisible platform, creating a levitation effect that mimicked flight so closely the difference was academic.
The livestream audience collectively forgot how to breathe.
"SHE CAN FLY?!"
"Who said this was over? WHO SAID THIS WAS OVER?"
"A spellcaster with anti-magic AND flight capabilities? What kind of cheat-code Card Spirit is this?!"
"Luke's Card Spirit is the MAGIC QUEEN. She can do EVERYTHING."
Marcus and Hailey stared at their screens, mouths slightly open.
Devastating attack power was one thing. Anti-magic was another. But flight? On top of everything else? This wasn't a Card Spirit operating within normal parameters anymore. This was something that had left the category of "student-level" so far behind it was barely visible in the rearview mirror.
"Flight capability as well." Victor Ashford's eyes widened fractionally. He'd been watching Luke's face since the Storm Sparrow appeared, and not once had the boy shown a flicker of concern. Now he understood why. "With this, Storm Sparrow's only advantage is gone."
"More than gone." Grant Harlow let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and settled back into his chair with the boneless satisfaction of a man whose bet had just paid off in spectacular fashion. "She can reach the Sparrow, AND she has the firepower to threaten it. This fight is already over."
Across the table, Townsend and Brandt's eyelids resumed their violent twitching. If they had to watch Harlow do the smug lean-back one more time...
"Mana." Luke's voice was calm. The outcome had never been in question. "End it."
"Dark Magic Burst!"
Mana answered with her strongest card. Against a fellow Six-Star opponent, Dark Magic Attack alone might not guarantee a clean kill. But Dark Magic Burst was a different animal entirely.
The execution skill.
Mana's staff pointed skyward at the circling Storm Sparrow. Dark energy gathered at the tip, not a quick pulse like her standard attack, but a slow, deliberate compression. The mana in the atmosphere began to warp around the focal point, drawn inward like water circling a drain. The air pressure in the arena dropped so sharply that Luke's ears popped.
Storm Sparrow felt it coming. The beast let out a silent shriek, and thick clouds of demonic mist erupted from its wings, wrapping around its body like a cocoon of fog. Cloud Shift. A defensive technique that used the Sparrow's own wind mana to create a layered barrier of concealing vapor.
If it couldn't be seen, it couldn't be targeted. That was the logic.
Mana smiled. The kind of smile that said nice try.
"It won't save you."
The Dark Magic Burst fired.
A beam of compressed dark energy, so dense it looked almost solid, punched through the cloud barrier like it wasn't there. The concealing mist didn't slow it, didn't deflect it, didn't even register as an obstacle. The beam hit the Storm Sparrow dead center and the world went white.
BOOM.
The explosion was beautiful.
A perfect sphere of dark energy expanded outward from the point of impact, shredding the cloud cover and replacing it with a mushroom cloud of annihilated mana that rose toward the ceiling of the exam space. The shockwave rattled the dimensional walls hard enough to make the entire pocket dimension groan.
When the light faded and the debris cleared, the Storm Sparrow was gone.
No body. No remains. Just a handful of brilliant azure feathers drifting downward through the settling dust, swaying back and forth like autumn leaves.
Mana caught them one by one, tucking each feather away with the careful attention of someone collecting souvenirs. Then she floated back down to Luke's side, touched down lightly, and rested her staff against her shoulder.
Job done.
The livestream was silent for exactly two seconds.
Then every channel simultaneously exploded.
"She killed a SIX-STAR BOSS with one shot of that finishing move?! THE FIREPOWER IS INSANE."
"Luke definitely has firepower addiction. His Card Spirit's attack stat has to be maxed. MAXED."
"Silence Seal to shut down its abilities, flight to negate its aerial advantage, then a point-blank execution skill to finish it. That's not just power, that's a GAMEPLAN."
"I am looking... at an empty arena... where a Six-Star Storm Sparrow used to be. I need a minute."
The students who'd been debating Mana's star level all day were forced to recalibrate.
"Hold on." Hailey's hands were trembling. She hadn't noticed until now. "A Four-Star card can one-shot Three-Star beasts, but struggles against same-level opponents and loses to Five-Stars. That's normal."
"This Card Spirit has been one-shotting everything. Four-Star, Five-Star, and now a Six-Star with a defensive skill active. The only explanation..."
She didn't want to say it. It sounded insane even in her head.
"Is she actually Seven-Star?"
A Four-Star card dominating Three-Stars was expected. A Six-Star card vaporizing Six-Star beasts in a single hit with her execution skill was within reason since she also had the quality advantage and the beast's defenses had been disrupted by Silence Seal first. But the sheer, overwhelming ease of it all kept pushing people's estimates higher and higher.
Six-Star and Seven-Star were only one tier apart on paper. In practice, the gap between them was a chasm. If Mana was actually operating at Seven-Star power...
Nobody at the student level should be able to build a card like that. It shouldn't be possible.
Over at Crestfall's plaza, Marcus Ward was having an existential crisis of his own.
"You know what?" he muttered to no one in particular. "Repeating a year isn't the worst idea."
A pause.
"...Unless my parents beat me to death first. Mixed doubles. Both of them."
The unified exam was over.
For every 500 Powerstones extra chapter.