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"I knew I couldn't sneak past you, Grandfather." A voice like warm silk filled the office. Elise Hargrove's smile was equal parts affection and quiet mischief.
"You're the only person who visits at this hour." Edmund Hargrove shook his head. "Your parents sent you?"
"Mom and Dad noticed you hadn't come home. They were worried." Elise settled into the chair across from his desk, her movements unhurried and comfortable, the ease of someone who'd grown up in this office. "I waited outside for a bit. It sounded like you were on a call."
She'd caught fragments of the conversation through the door. Not enough to piece together the details, but enough to know her grandfather had been discussing something significant.
Hargrove waved it off. "Nothing dramatic. Ashenvale produced a prodigy this year. I was discussing it with their branch president."
Prodigy. The word caught Elise's attention like a fishhook.
Edmund Hargrove did not use that word casually. In the years Elise had spent as his granddaughter, she could count on one hand the number of Card Masters he'd called prodigies. She herself was one of them. It was a distinction earned through talent that went beyond ordinary genius, a label reserved for those who could reshape the expectations of an entire generation.
And Elise had the credentials to justify it. As this year's top exam candidate from the Capital, she'd already broken through to Leader Realm before the entrance exam even began. In all of Ashenmere's satellite cities and the Capital itself, she was the only pre-exam student to reach that level. The strongest candidate of her generation, bar none.
But her grandfather had just applied the same word to someone from Ashenvale. A satellite city. One of the smallest in the region.
"The Youth Training Competition is coming up in a few days," Hargrove continued, watching Elise's curiosity sharpen. "He'll be representing Ashenvale. You might want to introduce yourself."
Internally, Hargrove's reasoning was simple. His granddaughter meeting an Original Card crafter was an opportunity that came along once in a millennium. Literally. The last confirmed Original Card crafter had appeared nearly a thousand years ago. Whether as a professional connection or a personal acquaintance, exposing Elise to someone operating at that level could only benefit her.
He didn't share the Original Card detail. Even his own granddaughter didn't have the clearance for Immortal Realm intelligence. But he could point her in the right direction.
"Then I'll keep my eyes open." Elise's interest was fully engaged now. A prodigy from a satellite city who'd attracted her grandfather's attention enough to warrant a personal call and a recommendation. She wanted to see for herself what made this person special.
-----
Ashenvale. Evening.
Luke sat at the kitchen table, listening to Mana hum as she washed dishes, when his communication tablet pinged with a notification from the Association.
"That was fast." He opened the message. "Harrison wasn't kidding."
The elite membership confirmation had arrived. The opening was the standard corporate-speak welcome that every organization in every world apparently insisted on writing. Luke skipped past it to the substance.
Elite membership perks: material purchases at a discounted rate. Priority access to mission boards. Monthly resource stipend from the Association. Priority entry to Dimensional Planes.
Useful. Not life-changing, but useful. Every percentage point saved on materials was money he could redirect toward his next card construction. And the monthly stipend was essentially free income for as long as he held the rank.
But one feature buried deeper in the notification caught his attention and held it.
*Card Realm.*
A special Dimensional Plane embedded within the Association's system infrastructure. Access restricted to elite members and above. No exceptions.
Luke read the description twice, then a third time.
The Card Realm had been created by the Ancient Kingdom's Founding Supreme. Not the current Supreme, and not any of the historical Supremes Luke had heard of. The Founding Supreme, the Card Master who had established the Ancient Kingdom itself, tens of thousands of years ago.
This person had taken a collapsed world, a dead Dimensional Plane with no remaining life or civilization, and fused it with something else. Something that turned it into a space so vast and so dense with hidden power that tens of thousands of years of continuous exploration hadn't mapped it completely.
Card Masters had been entering the Card Realm since its creation. Soldiers, Commanders, Leaders, Monarchs, Emperors, Sovereigns, Immortals, Undying, and even subsequent Supremes. Generations upon generations of the most powerful Card Masters in the Ancient Kingdom's history had ventured into the Card Realm.
None of them had reached the end.
If even Supreme-level Card Masters can't fully explore this place, Luke thought, then whatever created it was operating on a scale beyond Supreme.
The rumor that circulated among Card Masters was straightforward: the Card Realm contained the Founding Supreme's lifetime collection. Find it, and the path to Undying was guaranteed. Find enough of it, and even Supreme Realm was within reach.
Whether or not the rumor was true, it had driven millions of Card Masters into the Card Realm across the millennia. Which, Luke suspected, was probably the point. The best way to motivate an organization's members was to dangle the possibility of transcendence in front of them.
This feels like the Grand Line from One Piece. Luke couldn't suppress the comparison. A legendary treasure hidden in an unexplored world, driving an entire civilization's worth of ambitious people to spend their lives searching for it. The parallel was almost too perfect.
The entry fee wasn't trivial, either. Access required a significant payment each time. Essentially a ticket price that the Association collected from every Card Master who wanted to try their luck. A steady revenue stream built on hope and curiosity.
Definitely Grand Line energy. "Come explore! Maybe you'll find the treasure! …Admission is twelve hundred credits."
But Luke would be lying if he said he wasn't interested. The Founding Supreme was a figure who transcended history. Supreme Realm was the highest confirmed rank in Magic Card Civilization, and currently, only three Supremes existed across the entire world. The Ancient Kingdom had one. That meant two others lived in foreign nations. Three people, total, standing at the absolute peak of a civilization spanning billions.
And the Founding Supreme might have surpassed even that.
Some Card Masters theorized that the reason the Card Realm remained unexplored after all this time was because its creator had stepped beyond Supreme Realm entirely. Beyond the known limits of what a Card Master could become. Into a theoretical realm that the historical records only referred to by one word.
God.
"God, huh." Luke stared at the screen for a long moment. The word hung in the air, heavy with implication.
He closed the notification, filed the Card Realm information away for future reference, and went back to work.
He had a Youth Training Competition to prepare for. Godhood could wait.