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(Bonus chapter)
For Edmund Hargrove and Roland, the Youth Training Competition was little more than children playing house. Even Elise's performance, impressive as it was by the field's standards, barely registered as noteworthy to an Immortal and a Sovereign who'd seen centuries of combat.
But the Original Card crafter stepping onto the arena floor? That was different. That had their full attention.
They weren't the only ones. In the advancement section, Lily and Elise both watched Luke walk to his position. Serena Frost's pale cyan eyes tracked him too, remembering the instinctive warning her senses had fired during dinner.
Luke's opponent was a Capital team representative named Jasper Holt. Jasper surveyed his draw with visible satisfaction.
Ashenvale. Mid-tier city. Consistently average in every competition for as long as anyone can remember. He wasn't worried.
The Capital team had a perfect record so far. Every representative had advanced. It was the same story every year: the Capital's baseline roster quality simply outclassed the satellite cities. Jasper didn't intend to be the one who broke that streak.
He summoned immediately. Two circles erupted.
Five-Star Perfect, Thunderbird. Five-Star Perfect, Water Control Beast.
Not bad. Two Perfect-quality Five-Stars was a strong hand by any standard.
Then he looked across the arena and realized Luke had summoned exactly one card.
"Hiya!" Mana materialized at Luke's side, staff in hand, smile in place.
The crowd erupted.
"She's gorgeous!"
"What card is that? I've never seen one like her!"
"That smile. I'm done. I'm finished."
Mana's entrance was a spectacle in itself. But Jasper's attention skipped past the aesthetics and landed on the problem: Luke had only summoned one card. Every other competitor in the tournament had fielded two. Summoning a single card against two Five-Star Perfects was either supreme confidence or supreme arrogance.
"Just one card?" Jasper's expression cooled. "You're not taking this seriously."
"She's enough." Luke said it the same way someone might say "the sky is blue." Not a boast. An observation.
The Capital team members in the stands bristled. Who does this nobody think he is? Does he think he's Elise Hargrove?
"Then let me show you what serious looks like." Jasper's hand slashed forward. "Go!"
The Water Control Beast, a creature resembling an oversized buffalo made of living water, stamped its foreleg. Liquid erupted from the ground, spreading outward until the entire arena floor was submerged in three inches of rushing current.
Above, the Thunderbird's wings crackled. Storm clouds gathered over the arena in seconds, and lightning began raining down, bolt after bolt hammering into the flooded field. Water and electricity merged into a continuous killing zone.
Thunder Prison.
The combination technique flooded the battlefield and then electrified it. Anyone standing in the water took constant lightning damage. Anyone in the air faced targeted strikes from the Thunderbird. Every square inch of the arena became lethal.
In the stands, Lily and Serena both frowned. Thunder Prison was genuinely dangerous. The water-lightning synergy was strong enough to threaten Six-Star cards like Silver Moon Fox or Frost Archer. Dealing with it wasn't impossible, but it would be annoying.
Elise was unbothered. Her Mandragora Queen's poison was physical, not magical. Thunder Prison wouldn't scratch it. But she was curious to see what Luke would do.
"Scared yet?" Jasper's confidence swelled. The arena was his domain now. "You should have summoned your second card when you had the chance. It's too late now."
"No." Luke shook his head once. He looked at Mana. "Handle them."
Silence Seal.
Mana's staff swept upward. The emerald orb at its tip blazed white, and a magic circle exploded outward beneath her feet, spinning with layered rings of arcane script that pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat. The circle expanded in an instant, stretching across the entire flooded arena, its glowing runes burning through the water's surface like brands pressed into glass.
Where the circle passed, sound died. The crackling of lightning choked off mid-arc. The roar of rushing water fell to nothing. The Thunderbird's shriek cut out like someone had hit a mute button on reality itself.
The bolts of lightning froze mid-descent, suspended in the air like cracks in a photograph, then shattered into particles of inert light. The storm clouds overhead unraveled, their magical cohesion stripped away. The electrified water lost its charge and went flat and still.
The entire Thunder Prison, a combination technique that had threatened Six-Star card spirits, was nullified in an instant.
Dark Magic Burst.
Before Jasper could process what had happened, Mana was already casting. The concentrated sphere of dark magic crossed the arena in a blur and detonated between the Thunderbird and Water Control Beast. The explosion consumed them both. When the flash cleared, the arena was empty. No Thunderbird. No Water Control Beast. No traces.
Two Five-Star Perfects. Gone. One spell.
"That's… not…" Jasper's eyes were glassed over. "Where did… my…"
"Spell nullification?!" The realization rippled through the stands like wildfire. Mana had stripped the Thunder Prison of its magic, rendering both card spirits defenseless, and then deleted them with a single attack.
Every competitor who relied on spell-based combat felt a chill run down their spine simultaneously. If Mana could nullify magic at will, then every spell-type card spirit in this competition had just become significantly less effective.
Silence Seal on a Spellcaster-type card. A spell-canceling ability housed inside a spell-casting card. The concept was paradoxical. The execution was devastating.
Luke recalled Mana and walked off the arena floor.