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Elise Hargrove. The Hargrove family's sole heir. Leader Realm before the entrance exam. The tournament's undisputed top seed.
Every competitor who'd already advanced was watching. If they progressed far enough, they'd face her eventually. Intel was survival.
Even Luke set aside his Sistermon notes. Elise was one of the few people here who genuinely interested him.
,Her opponent was a Moonvale representative named Callum Ward. The moment he saw who he'd drawn, his face went through a complicated journey from shock to resignation to grim acceptance.
First round. Against the favorite. Did I run over a fortune teller's cat or something?
Callum summoned his cards regardless. Two Five-Star spirits materialized at his flanks, one melee, one ranged. Solid picks. Competent.
It didn't matter.
Elise raised one hand, fingers extended like she was conducting an orchestra.
The arena filled with fragrance.
It came from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. A sweet, floral scent that settled over the battlefield like a silk curtain, gentle and invasive and completely inescapable. It seeped into lungs. It crept into minds. It whispered that everything was fine, that there was no danger, that it was safe to relax.
"Smells amazing…" Several spectators near the arena's edge went glassy-eyed, swaying slightly.
Callum felt it too. His thoughts went soft at the edges. His eyelids grew heavy. The urgency of combat faded into a pleasant fog.
Then his card spirits disconnected.
The mental links severed simultaneously. Both spirits reverted to card form and returned to his body. The shock of it snapped Callum out of his trance like a slap. His eyes flew open.
His card spirits were gone. Both of them. He hadn't recalled them. They hadn't timed out. There was only one other explanation.
They'd been killed. While he was standing there smelling flowers.
What just happened?! I zoned out for THREE SECONDS!
From the arena floor, Luke had seen everything.
The fragrance was the weapon. It hadn't just affected Callum. It had hit his card spirits too, paralyzing them in place, stripping their ability to move, fight, or resist. While everything on Callum's side of the field was frozen in a perfumed stupor, vines and thorns had erupted from the ground beneath his spirits. Silent. Swift. Lethal. They'd wrapped around both card spirits, constricted, and crushed them before Callum's glazed eyes could register the movement.
One card. That was all Elise had used. Every other competitor in the tournament had fielded at least two.
The card spirit responsible revealed itself as the thorns retracted. A tiny figure emerged from the ground beside Elise, assembling itself from coiling vines and blooming flowers.
It was a little girl.
A small, round-cheeked child wearing a miniature silver crown on her head, with vine-like hair and petal-soft skin. She stood at about waist height on Elise, blinked owlishly at the crowd, and radiated an aura of complete innocence.
*「 Silver Crown Mandragora Queen 」*
Quality: Perfect
Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star)
Type: Plant / Poison
The spectators stared. Then stared harder.
"Wait." Someone in the crowd voiced what everyone was thinking. "Isn't the Mandragora Queen supposed to be… you know… an adult? With the figure? And the…"
They weren't wrong. In every documented instance, the Silver Crown Mandragora Queen manifested as a mature, statuesque woman with curves that had inspired more than a few Card Masters to pursue plant-type specialization for entirely non-botanical reasons.
Elise's version was a toddler with a crown.
Nobody could explain it. Nobody tried. The card was unmistakably Six-Star Perfect, and its combat performance had just annihilated two opponents in the time it took most people to sneeze. Whether it looked like a child or a supermodel was, in the end, irrelevant.
"Would you like to continue?" Elise stood in the center of the arena, hands folded, glasses glinting. Her voice was polite. Her expression was pleasant. The little Mandragora Queen stood beside her, blinking up at Callum with the guileless eyes of a puppy.
A puppy that had just strangled two card spirits with poison vines without breaking a sweat.
"I forfeit!" Callum raised both hands instantly. Continuing against this was suicide dressed in a flower crown.
"Good choice!" Elise beamed, took the Mandragora Queen's tiny hand, and walked off the arena floor.
Cut her open and she'd be black inside. The thought crossed Luke's mind before he could stop it. That sweet, bespectacled face hid a tactical ruthlessness that would make seasoned veterans flinch. Cute on the outside, merciless underneath.
He filed the observation away and stood up.
The clock dial had already spun. His name was on it.
-----
On the main stage, Harrison Cole straightened in his seat.
Grant Whitfield noticed. He'd heard about Luke from Helena Drake's post-exchange-match debriefing. The City Lord of Moonvale had spoken about the Ashenvale student with a mixture of fury and grudging respect that Grant had found deeply entertaining.
He wanted to see for himself what had rattled Helena so badly.
Miles Thornton, Everhold City's branch president, caught Harrison and Grant both zeroing in on the same competitor. His eyes narrowed. When two branch presidents simultaneously paid attention to a single rookie, it meant something.
At the front of the stage, Edmund Hargrove and Roland exchanged a glance.
All eyes on Luke Mercer.