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"Finally decided to send someone?" Levi Sharpe watched Luke approach the arena with the same bored superiority he'd worn since round one. "Judging by how excited your cheerleading squad got, you must be their golden boy. Hope you can at least make this entertaining."
The disdain in his eyes wasn't subtle. The Ashenvale side had sent their supposed strongest on round two. In Levi's mind, that meant their roster was even thinner than Sunridge's had been.
"You'll find out." Luke didn't take the bait. Verbal sparring was a waste of breath when you had no intention of letting the other person stay conscious long enough to hear the punchline.
He flicked Mana's card into the air.
The dark magic circle bloomed, and Dark Magician Girl rose from its center. Staff in hand, hat slightly tilted, emerald eyes scanning the arena with the alert curiosity of someone arriving at a party.
"Wow!" The Moonvale students, seeing Mana for the first time, couldn't help themselves. "That Card Spirit is gorgeous!"
More than a few gazes bounced back and forth between Mana and Lily Everhart, silently running a comparison that nobody was brave enough to vocalize.
"Pretty doesn't win fights." Several Moonvale students caught themselves and looked away, embarrassed. Mana was the enemy's card. Getting starstruck by her was not a good look.
Lily, for her part, didn't bother hiding her reaction. Her eyes rested on Mana with an appreciation that was almost soft. The Card Spirit's combination of innocence and beauty was genuinely affecting. Gender, age, allegiance, none of it mattered. Mana's charm was indiscriminate.
But beneath the appreciation, Lily felt a faint, unmistakable thread of danger radiating from the Card Spirit's presence. Subtle enough that most people in the arena wouldn't notice it. But Lily did.
She hadn't felt anything like this during the Sunridge exchange.
On the observation platform, Helena Frost and Edwin Pace noticed it too. The energy coming off Mana was... different. Not quite like any Card Spirit in their experience. And neither of them, despite their vast knowledge of the Card Compendium, could identify what card she was.
An unknown Card Spirit with an unreadable aura. For high-level Card Masters, that combination triggered caution on a primal level.
Still. Levi was only Moonvale's fifth strongest. And Luke was reportedly Ashenvale's best. Even if the unknown card was a surprise, the gap between fifth and first should limit the damage.
"So this is their secret weapon?" Helena glanced at Victor and Harlow, noting how composed they looked. "Interesting. But not enough."
Even she couldn't gauge Mana's full capability from aura alone. That said, Moonvale had four fighters above Levi's level, including Lily. One surprise card from a mid-tier city wasn't going to flip the entire exchange.
Probably.
"Handle it, Mana."
Luke gave the order without ceremony. No dramatic buildup, no strategic deliberation. Just a clean, simple command.
"With pleasure, Master!" Mana's playful demeanor vanished the instant Luke spoke. Her eyes locked onto Levi's Inferno Knight, and her staff came up in one fluid motion. "This one's been rude to you. I don't like that."
"Dark Magic Attack!"
The dark-attribute spell erupted from the staff's tip. It wasn't a subtle attack. The energy was so dense that the air along its path buckled and warped, the arena floor cracking in a line beneath the trajectory like the ground itself was flinching away from the spell.
"Inferno Knight!" Levi's smirk evaporated the instant he felt the pressure wave. This wasn't a Four-Star attack. This wasn't even close.
Flame Shield!
Flame Tornado!
Levi's knight responded on pure trained instinct. Defense and offense, simultaneously. The same combination that had dismantled Marcus's Inferno Knight minutes ago. The knight became a spinning pillar of fire, shield blazing, lance whirling, looking every inch the flame war god it had been designed to be.
The Dark Magic Attack hit the Flame Tornado head-on.
For less than a second, the two forces contested. Fire against dark magic. Orange light against purple-black energy.
Then the Flame Tornado came apart. Not gradually, not in stages. It simply ceased to exist, shredded from the inside out like tissue paper thrown into a jet engine. The Dark Magic Attack punched straight through, hit the Flame Shield, and dissolved it so fast the light hadn't even finished flaring before the spell reached the knight itself.
Inferno Knight didn't scream. Didn't stagger. Didn't get a dramatic last stand. One instant it was there, wreathed in defensive fire. The next, it was particles. The bond between Levi and his card severed so abruptly it was like someone had yanked a plug from a socket.
Silence.
Then chaos.
"How is that POSSIBLE?!" Levi staggered backward, the color draining from his face. His Inferno Knight was Collectible quality. Against Five-Star opponents, it could hold its own. Against the other top-four fighters in Moonvale, excluding Lily, it could last multiple rounds. It had never gone down in a single hit.
"THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" The Ashenvale side detonated. Marcus, Hailey, every student from every school. For this one moment, Crestfall, Ironvale, and Westbridge were one.
"I TOLD you! I TOLD ALL OF YOU!"
"Shocked? Good! Now you know what Ashenvale's got!"
"And hey," someone from Westbridge called out toward the Moonvale side, voice dripping with sweet, poisonous helpfulness, "didn't one of you promise to do a handstand and take a dump if Luke won in under a minute? Clock's ticking, buddy."
The Moonvale student in question had turned a shade of green that suggested the handstand might not be necessary for the second part of the promise.
If he actually went through with it in public, his school career was over. If he didn't, he'd never live down the broken bet. Either way, the Ashenvale students were going to make sure he remembered this day for the rest of his natural life.
Marcus watched the replay of Mana's attack in his mind and felt a complex cocktail of emotions. Satisfaction that the guy who'd beaten him just got obliterated? Absolutely. But the way Levi's Inferno Knight had been destroyed, by a single spell, through Flame Shield and Flame Tornado at the same time...
Marcus's knight had been killed by the exact same combination. Different context, same result. The déjà vu was uncomfortably strong.
Plz Throw Powerstones.