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"How is this possible?" Her tone thick with disbelief and unsettled alarm, Celestine's emerald eyes brimmed with shock. Even after witnessing countless geniuses over the years, even after witnessing the collapse of worlds, Celestine had never lost her composure quite like this.
Then her expression abruptly shifted. The Crescent Moon Blessing was obtained by drawing memory fragments, but the essence of those memory fragments was incomplete World Rules, a fact that Celestine, as the tree-spirit of the Ancient Spirit Tree, understood far better than Luke.
There was one more thing. World Rules were also the secret to a Card Master stepping into the Immortal Realm.
Even if the memory fragments held World Rules that were not whole, but fragmentary and incomplete, they were still among the most top-tier powers in existence, the kind that only a Card Master at the Immortal Realm could gradually learn to control.
But not even an Immortal could swallow them down whole the way Luke was, gulping them like a whale draining the sea. Attempting that would mean a body bursting apart in moments.
Only a stronger Undying Realm Card Master could absorb so recklessly.
In the normal process, a Card Master drew the memory fragments, then used the Ancient Spirit Tree as an intermediary, stripping away the sliver of violent rule-power within the fragments before the purified remainder was passed to the Card Master to absorb, finally forming the Crescent Moon Blessing.
Celestine hadn't expected the process to deviate this dramatically once it reached Luke, so much so that she hadn't even reacted in time. He was, quite simply, throwing every convention out the window.
Or rather, this time around, not a single thing Luke had done followed convention.
First, the fragments he'd drawn were all the highest tier. A single gold memory fragment held ten times the quantity and quality of fragmentary World Rules that a purple fragment did, a hundred times that of a blue fragment. Otherwise it couldn't have formed a top-tier Crescent Moon Blessing in the first place.
Next came the fact that, where a Card Master was meant to select only a single fragment, Luke had absorbed all of them into his body. This was power that even an Immortal needed an immense span of time to absorb, steadily and cautiously. Luke was devouring it so violently that Celestine wouldn't have harbored the slightest doubt if his body had burst apart the very next moment.
"No. I have to put a stop to this anomaly before it goes any further." As Celestine saw it, an anomaly like this arising had something to do with her, at least in part, and she had no desire to watch this young Card Master who'd caught her attention die just like that.
But the strange turns were far from over. Before Celestine could act, a silver ribbon abruptly shot out from the center of the golden storm. Before she could react, it wound directly around the seven-colored Spirit Core within her body, an object nearly identical in appearance to the memory fragments. The other end of that silver ribbon tangled itself around the area of Luke's heart.
The instant her Spirit Core was bound, Celestine's expression changed drastically, and she immediately channeled her power, intending to sever the silver ribbon coiled around it.
If Celestine was the tree-spirit of the Ancient Spirit Tree, the core of the Ancient Spirit Tree, then the seven-colored Spirit Core within her body was her core. Whether the Spirit Core was safe bore directly on whether Celestine lived or died, and even on whether the Ancient Spirit Tree itself survived.
Yet Celestine discovered, to her astonishment, that her power couldn't inflict any damage on the silver ribbon at all. Worse, the silver ribbon was converting itself into runes, one after another, carving themselves onto her Spirit Core. At the same moment, three pieces of information flashed through Celestine's mind.
"This is...!" Noticing it, Celestine's pupils contracted sharply. The move she'd been about to make to intervene a second time came to a halt, and she looked toward Luke at the center of the storm. "I didn't expect this visit to bring quite so many surprises."
「 Conversion successful. Gained 10,000 EXP. 」
「 Congratulations to the host. Second Authority, Rewrite and Reorganize, proficiency increased. Mana cost for rewriting materials reduced by 50 percent. Hidden effect unlocked: Multiple Fusion. 」
Absorbing and converting the memory fragments filling the entire space took a stretch of time that was not short. In the end, every drawn fragment within Crescent Moon Land had been absorbed and converted, the golden ocean vanished, and only then did the suction force gradually fade. Luke had successfully raised his Second Authority's proficiency and unlocked its hidden effect.
At the same time, because the memory fragments had been absorbed and converted through Luke's own body, his spiritual power and physical constitution had both improved enormously over the course of the process. His spiritual strength, for one, had now risen a full tier, leaving him no weaker than a King Realm Card Master in that respect.
As for the improvement to his physical strength, he hadn't tested it yet, but Luke estimated that going toe-to-toe with a same-tier Card Master, however many came at him, would be like serving up easy meals.
Then again, very few Card Masters personally took up arms and fought on the front line. Even after ascending to the King Realm and gaining the ability of Source Sync, a Card Master's role was, more than anything, that of a support.
"Halving the mana cost for rewriting materials is genuinely good news. But what does this Multiple Fusion mean?" Luke quietly opened the system interface, and a series of updated information laid itself out before him.
「 Luke 」 Level: Eight-Star Leader First Authority: Fantasy Forge · Simulated Construction Second Authority: Rewrite and Reorganize · Multiple Fusion Multiple Fusion: Consume mana to fuse multiple designated materials together, raising the tier of the fused material. Items: Card Editor, Card Codex, D-Ark Materials: Light Sword, Holy Dragon Furnace Heart... Skill: Extract First Card: Dark Magician Girl Second Card: Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon Third Card: Sistermon Blanc Special Cards: Spell Tome, Magical Hats, Magic Cylinder, Eye of Timaeus, Hyper Evolution Unit S, Blue Card
"Damn. I've become a material-fusion master?" Reading the description of Multiple Fusion, Luke went momentarily blank.
Being able to rewrite materials had already been impressive enough. The rewritten material's quality matched the original, with one minor catch, a tiny flaw. But now, with the hidden effect unlocked, even that tiny flaw was resolved.
Not only could he fuse multiple materials together, but more importantly, the fused material's quality would rise as well. That meant he could synthesize using low-quality materials and obtain high-quality materials more easily than other Card Masters. Compared to the First Authority, the Second Authority's effect was anything but weak.
"This really does save me a lot of effort. I just don't know how much mana the material fusion costs." Once he left Crescent Moon Land, Luke would need to find time to properly test the Second Authority's effects.
For now, though, the priority was still handling the matter of Crescent Moon Land.