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A wholly new class of unit, born from the anthropomorphization of warships. Shipgirls possessed a female appearance while simultaneously carrying a warship's destructive power, mobility, and transport capacity, more than enough to adapt to and excel at combat on the open sea.
Under ordinary circumstances, shipgirls appeared in the form of women, scarcely different from any normal woman. But their essence was that of various classes of warship. In an actual fight, even a shipgirl in human form could sweep aside tens of thousands.
A shipgirl's small fist, after all, carried the weight of tens of thousands of tons with a single casual swing. Never mind ordinary people and Card Masters, even a slightly weaker card spirit couldn't withstand a shipgirl's flurry of dainty little punches.
Of course, in selecting shipgirls as his first choice for water-combat cards, Luke also had his eye on their ability to transform into warships. Standing aboard a warship displacing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of tons, the sense of security would be absolutely off the charts.
But shipgirls belonged to neither the Yu-Gi-Oh worldview nor the Digital World. They belonged to an entirely new worldview, the Warship World. Realizing them would require Luke to conceive of a new worldview, and to think through the shipgirls' subsequent progression as well. It wasn't something he could complete in a short span of time.
His mana surged, and at his summons, Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon descended into Crescent Moon Land, boundless mana currents scattering outward with every beat of its enormous wings.
"Easy. This isn't a combat trip." Luke gave the dragon a helpless pat, then climbed onto its back and flew toward the towering tree at the lake's center.
The journey was entirely safe, without incident of any kind. As Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon set down on the small island at the lake's heart, Luke leapt off its back, gazed up at the towering tree, and couldn't suppress another gasp of astonishment.
At a distance, he had already felt himself standing within the tree's shadow. Now, at this close range, the verdant giant's sheer scale struck him all over again.
He'd assumed that, while Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon's bulk couldn't match the towering tree, the gap would amount to something like the difference between a child and an adult. The reality, it turned out, was far more extreme than he'd imagined.
Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon wasn't the largest among dragon-class spirits, but against ordinary card spirits, it held an absolute advantage in size. Standing before this towering tree, however, it resembled nothing so much as an ant. Luke's sense of scale had been thoroughly recalibrated.
Beyond that, from the sensory feedback Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon relayed, Luke also detected the dragon's wariness toward the towering tree.
Clearly, the verdant giant was no ordinary thing.
「 Ancient Spirit Tree 」 Race: World Tree Note: Level disparity too great. Further information cannot be displayed.
"Ancient Spirit Tree?" The information on the towering tree flickered across Luke's awareness, and he raised an eyebrow. "Its race is listed as World Tree, which means the World Tree isn't a singular entity, but a species? So beyond this Ancient Spirit Tree, there are other World Trees as well?"
The Digital World had a World Tree too, and it served as the Digital World's host server, the equivalent of the Digital World's deity. There was clearly a distinction between the two.
Level disparity too great, further information cannot be displayed. This was the first time Luke had ever encountered that response. But it was enough to confirm that the Ancient Spirit Tree before him was genuinely extraordinary. He simply didn't know whether it was the only living thing in this Crescent Moon Land.
So far, beyond the Ancient Spirit Tree, Luke hadn't sensed the breath of any other life in Crescent Moon Land. Then again, perhaps the life force the Ancient Spirit Tree radiated was simply so dense that it masked the presence of all other living things.
Soon enough, Luke felt the mana within him recovering at an incredible speed, and the source of that recovery was the wondrous aura drifting out from the Ancient Spirit Tree before him.
Even while continuously sustaining Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon's presence, his mana recovery rate vastly outpaced his expenditure.
In fact, Luke had a strong intuition that even if he brought Mana and Sistermon Blanc out as well, without using a single Mana Crystal, the rate of his mana consumption still wouldn't catch up to this terrifying rate of recovery.
"If I could just move this Ancient Spirit Tree somewhere, would I ever have to worry about mana consumption again?" Luke murmured, gazing at the tree.
Mana Crystals had their limits, after all. And in Luke's view, the crystals' real value lay more in granting his card spirits the ability to act independently. They satisfied his mana needs for the moment, but if he could solve the problem permanently, in one stroke, that would naturally be far better.
As if it had heard Luke's quiet murmur, the dormant Ancient Spirit Tree abruptly stirred without any wind, its emerald foliage, which nearly blanketed half the sky, rustling. And then, beneath Luke's startled gaze, a figure slowly drifted up from deep within the tree.
Snow-white skin paired with a flawless figure. She wore what appeared to be some manner of priestess vestments, a plant-woven ornament resting in her hair, her smooth golden hair cascading nearly to the ground. Her clear emerald eyes seemed to contain the whole of nature within them, along with an infinite gentleness.
A single glance, and no one alive could summon any hostility toward the woman before him.
But what most caught Luke's attention were the long, pointed ears, so unlike a human's. They marked the woman before him as something other than human, resembling, more than anything, the elves of Luke's memory.
On looks alone, the elf before him was not even outdone by Lilith Crescent. The only difference between the two lay in their style.
Lilith was pure allure and enchantment. This elf carried sanctity threaded with seduction. The two stood on entirely even footing.
Then again, she'd emerged from within the World Tree itself. By any measure, the scene looked nothing like an ordinary human appearing.
Instinctively, Luke moved to examine her information. The elf before him had drifted out from inside the Ancient Spirit Tree; her identity was assuredly anything but ordinary.
「 Celestine Lucullus 」 Race: Ancient Tree Sprite, Reincarnated Goddess Note: Level disparity too great. Further information cannot be displayed.
Just as with the Ancient Spirit Tree, the disparity in level was too great, and Luke had no way to examine the detailed information of the woman named Celestine.
The information in her race column, however, made Luke raise an eyebrow.
Ancient Tree Sprite. That meant Celestine was the dryad-spirit of the Ancient Spirit Tree, which was easy enough to explain, and accounted for why her ears were long and pointed like the elves of his memory. But a Reincarnated Goddess? The Celestine before him was also a reincarnated goddess?
He'd guessed her identity wouldn't be ordinary, but he hadn't expected her to be a reincarnated deity.
Come to think of it, he recalled that the Magic Card Civilization didn't seem to have any concept of gods at all. He simply didn't know how strong a reincarnated goddess might be.