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"Crescent Moon Land, the World Seed, the dimensional plane. The gains from after the exam are finally more or less squared away. Which means it's time to get back to the matter of card crafting." Returned to the real world, Luke turned his thoughts once more to his plans and direction from here.
"At the current simulation rate, getting Kisara's card-construction progress up to one hundred percent, and then actually crafting the card successfully, is probably going to take quite a while yet." The higher a card's level, the more terrifying the time its conception and crafting demanded.
Both belonged to the high-tier bracket, and Seven-Star and Eight-Star cards stood only a single star apart, yet whether in the difficulty of conception or the difficulty of crafting, an Eight-Star card devoured far more time than a Seven-Star ever would.
"Under normal circumstances, the time spent crafting one Eight-Star card would be enough to produce several Seven-Star cards. Compressing it down to roughly what a Seven-Star takes is already astonishing in its own right." Running a rough mental tally of Kisara's situation, Luke shifted his attention to the Digimon cards.
"Materials are no longer an issue there, and I've already got the general shape of the X-evolution cards worked out. It's the DNA-evolution cards that still need more thought."
"By recording the Digimon's data into the D-Ark ahead of time, then, when a DNA evolution is needed, transmitting the material Digimon's data directly into the core of the Digimon serving as the evolution's main body, the evolution itself gets pushed through."
"The method still can't skip conceiving the background and design for the material Digimon, but since it works by transmitting records and data, it bypasses the card-crafting step entirely, which saves a considerable amount of time and materials."
"The Digimon serving as the main body, though, still needs to be made into a finished card." As he spoke, Luke drew out the D-Ark, the ring of digital script upon it radiating a mysterious charm. "And I'll need to test whether the idea even works."
"Good thing there's plenty of time ahead for testing. And besides Sistermon, it's about time to consider the choice of a second Digimon."
"Blanc has the Angewomon, LadyDevimon, and Eosmon evolution routes, representing the three characteristics of light, darkness, and space. So the new Digimon card might as well consider some other attribute."
It wasn't just the Digimon deck, either. The same held for the Yu-Gi-Oh deck. Luke had noticed that the card spirits in his hands leaned badly to one side in their attributes. Mana was dark-attribute. Red-Eyes Black Dragon was a fire-and-dark dual attribute. And Kisara, whom he planned to craft down the line, was in all likelihood light-attribute.
"Light and dark attributes may not be countered by enemies of other attributes, but by the same token, they can't produce a countering effect against other attributes either." As he mulled it over, the silhouettes of countless Digimon streaked through Luke's mind. "Blanc's eventual Megas mostly run along those same three lines of light, darkness, and space too. Though through the properties of mesh evolution, Blanc's routes also include the Plant Queen, Rosemon, the Miracle Flower, Rafflesimon, and even final forms among the Olympos Twelve like Junomon, Queen of Heaven, and Venusmon, Goddess of Beauty."
"Which means there's no particular urgency in crafting Digimon of that attribute class for now." In the end, Luke's gaze locked onto a dinosaur-type Digimon, its whole body a deep red slashed with black markings. "In that case, the second Digimon card is you. Guilmon!"
Guilmon, one of the protagonist partner Digimon of Tamers, the third generation, and a Digimon ranked alongside Calumon and Terriermon as one of the three great cuties. What was more, Guilmon was also the Digimon originally bound to the D-Ark that Luke now held, back in the anime.
But this was the Magic Card Civilization, and the D-Ark in the hands of Luke, a Card Master, was hardly limited to binding a single Digimon. It bound all of them.
"Guilmon's standard evolution route runs Growlmon, then WarGrowlmon, and at Mega it can evolve into Gallantmon, one of the thirteen Royal Knights, or Megidramon, one of the Four Great Dragons. Strength-wise, it's more than sufficient."
In Luke's memory, the raw individual quality of the Guilmon line ranked near the front among the protagonist Digimon of every generation. A Rookie taking down Champions, a Champion taking down Ultimates. That capacity for fighting above its level was no ordinary thing.
"Beyond the direct line, mesh evolution gives Guilmon no shortage of choices besides, the likes of Veedramon, Raidramon, Agunimon, GeoGreymon, and more. Put together, crafting Guilmon essentially wraps up the Mega routes of the protagonist Digimon from the first generation through the fifth."
"And at the Ultimate stage, taking the AeroVeedramon route, it can even evolve toward Jesmon."
"On top of that, under the right conditions it can walk the Raptordramon evolution route, and the Mega on that path is none other than Alphamon, the head honcho of the Royal Knights himself."
"Which means that by the Mega stage, the big three of Omegamon, Alphamon, and Gallantmon, plus Jesmon, would all be gathered in one place. Whether you measure it by raw strength or by value for the effort, that's the needle pushed all the way to the top."
Having settled on Guilmon as the target for his second Digimon card, Luke turned his thoughts to the final item on the list. "The shipgirl cards deserve some proper thought on their conception too."
Information on shipgirls flickered through his mind, and Luke murmured to himself, "Use the Wisdom Cube as the core module, then mount different shipgirl cores on top of it, gaining different riggings to handle different environments?"
For Luke, crafting shipgirl cards wasn't only about covering aquatic combat environments. He set equal store by the shipgirls' formidable computational power.
By Luke's reckoning, as his level rose and his card-summoning slots multiplied down the line, if the battlefield held a card spirit filling something like a secretary's role, one who could coordinate his various card spirits into fighting in concert, his combat strength would climb another step higher.
And among the candidates for that, shipgirl cards, with their extraordinary computational power, were without question the first choice, all the more so a shipgirl of the secretary-ship class.
"That line of thinking actually seems pretty workable." Weighing the design in his heart against the shipgirl games of his past life, Luke ultimately chose to blend the various shipgirl games together as his reference, giving the shipgirl cards' background and design a certain degree of creative modification.
With the general framework in hand, everything that followed would be far easier to manage.
In Luke's conception, the heart of the shipgirl card lay in the Wisdom Cube module. So long as the Wisdom Cube module could be crafted, then whether it was big-gun battleships, carriers and destroyers, or even star destroyers, all of those amounted to something closer to the shipgirl's external equipment.
"Looking at it that way, the Wisdom Cube is a bit like a Core Gundam, isn't it? Does that mean I could hang other external gear off it later and produce mecha girls, Gundam girls, that sort of form?" The more Luke thought about it, the more excited he grew. This was, for crying out loud, one gigantic dress-up action figure.
"Forget it. That can wait for later." But soon enough, Luke shook his head with a wry smile. "The card crafting itself hasn't even gotten off the ground yet. One step at a time."