For 40 advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/AutumnXd
ROAR!
The sound was dragon and not dragon, beast and not beast. Three ambushers showed themselves at last, and they looked much like dragon-grudge fierce beasts, except larger. Their presence ran a full measure stronger too. Not one inch beneath the Earthring Dragon's.
They cried out like victors. Enormous vertical pupils held the reflection of Viola and her fallen dragon, and through them flashed greed, and the appetite for blood. Around their bodies, too, wound the threads that led back to the Machina Puppet Dragon.
So even ambushers of this strength had no way to resist its control.
"Seven-Star dragon-grudge hunter-beasts!" Viola bit down hard on her lip, her face full of everything she refused to accept.
One moment of slackness. That was all it had taken for the ambush to land. Given time to raise its guard, the Earthring Dragon would never have been taken this cheaply, Seven-Stars or no Seven-Stars.
Kek-kek! ROAR!
The grudge-hunters caught the look on her face, and something almost human crossed theirs. Mockery. On those warped, alien features, it was disgusting past words.
Then the three of them howled skyward again, and before Viola's disbelieving eyes, grudge-beasts came surging up in fresh masses, ringing her and the Earthring Dragon in on every side.
And hidden among the newcomers were two more Seven-Star grudge-hunters.
Five. Even without the swarm of Six-Star fodder, she was facing five Seven-Star hunters at once. Despair poured into Viola's mind and filled it.
At her absolute peak she could not have handled this many Seven-Star enemies together, and her main cards were dead or crippled where they lay.
If her sister were here, there might have been a road out of this dead board. The Skywing Dragon's speed was something even grudge-hunters might fail to run down.
She had never imagined it. An entrance trial for Celestial Academy, turned into a journey to her own death. And the author of all of it was Dragon's Valley's oldest enemy. The Dragon Renegades.
"Do you see it now? This is the purgatory I prepared for you!" The despair on Viola's face made Silas's expression bloom with pleasure, then twist with it. "To see you hypocrites wear that look. Do you have any idea how long I endured for this?"
"And once you've been resolved, your sister's turn comes next!" Then a flicker of puzzlement crossed his face, and something like regret. "A pity. The only Dragon's Valley aura I've sensed in the whole Purgatory is yours. Which means your sister was eliminated somewhere in the trial. This Celestial cohort truly is something."
"No matter. Whoever eliminated her, anyone who came to the Dark Purgatory has lost every chance of leaving it. All who dare disturb my plan die here."
He was a Monarch Realm Card Master, one of the most promising the Dragon Renegades possessed. He would never have been sent on this mission otherwise. Even if his true age ran a full two rounds older than the girl in front of him.
The Renegades had been Dragon's Valley's people once. Losing the Dragon Transformation Pool's baptism had cost their descendants' talent dearly, generation after generation.
At the thought, fury filled Silas's face. With the Pool's baptism, he would have long since ascended to the King Realm. What Monarch? What waiting?
"Celestial's strength runs far past anything you imagine. Don't you dare dream of touching my sister!" Viola had been drowning, but hearing that Violet had never been sent here, relief slipped through the shock before she could stop it.
"Heh. You wouldn't happen to think she's SAFE in there, would you?" Silas read her face and sneered. "Has it never once occurred to you why I dared to strike during the trial itself? Even inside Celestial, we have our people."
The Renegades had no way of entering Celestial themselves. Nothing said they couldn't cultivate pawns. The Renshaw who had teleported this whole batch into the Dark Purgatory was exactly that, one of the pawns the Renegades had raised and rewritten.
Brainwashing Celestial's own people ran beyond their reach, true. But cooperation didn't. Wherever there were people, there were desires, and desires could be bought. That was precisely what the Renegades traded in.
And as insurance, even if this strike failed to net both sisters in one cast, the inside agents within Celestial could still move against Violet. The moles would be purged afterward, most likely. It made no difference. By then the goal would be done, and their value spent with it.
"Enough. I've said more than you were ever worth. Time to send you on your way." His venting finished, Silas had no interest in wasting further breath. Resolve the girl, then leave.
As for the Celestial students swept in alongside her, the Dark Purgatory itself would teach them what this place was. None of them were leaving it alive.
ROAR!
His restraint lifted, and every grudge-beast on the field came howling down on Viola and her dragon. Fastest of all, tearing along at the front of the tide, ran the five Seven-Star grudge-hunters, their eyes brimming with bloodlust and the pure urge to kill.
The Dragon's Valley blood in her veins drew their hatred all on its own. Of everyone in the Purgatory, she was the target they wanted first.
ROAR!
The mauled Earthring Dragon struggled up and answered, loosing one more Earth Purgatory. But this casting fell far, far short of the one that had annihilated the first wave, in strength and in reach alike.
The five hunters charged straight into it. The opening pits and rising strikes held them for seconds, no more, before they broke through whole.
Amid their shrieking, five sets of claws swept down, and the Earthring Dragon was cut apart where it stood.
A grief-cry rang out. The great dragon followed the Bramble Dragon and the Flower Dragon before it, reverting to card form and streaking back into Viola's body.
With its anchor gone, the Earth Purgatory dissolved in an instant, and the beasts it had held at bay came flooding in. The five hunters came faster still. Sharp claws filled the girl's eyes, and Viola's mind went white and empty.
Crystal Cluster!
Sheet upon sheet of crystal-orchid blossoms unfolded out of the empty air, folding Viola away inside them. And on their heels, attacks came screaming in from the far distance, hammering into the beast-horde.
Celestial Arrow!
An arrow of pure light split the long sky, punched clean through a Seven-Star grudge-hunter, and killed it on the spot.