Anime Magic Card Era

Chapter 112: Chapter 111: Sweet Face, Killer Instinct

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"The City Lord’s right," Harrison Cole agreed with Victor’s earlier assessment. "Phase Two doesn’t restrict candidates to cards crafted during Phase One. Luke can deploy his entire roster if he chooses. With his Spellcaster and both of his dragons already on his roster, even if the new nun-themed card stays at average performance, he still has a strong chance at the Eastern Region’s first-place finish."

The other senior figures in the chamber nodded along. The reasoning was straightforward, and the new card’s underwhelming first impression didn’t actually threaten Luke’s overall trajectory.

The ten-minute rest interval was almost over. The conversation drifted, and the senior figures returned their attention to the monitoring feeds as the rest counter approached zero.

Inside the exam space.

"This round’s opponent is a candidate?"

Luke stepped through the new portal and immediately registered the figure standing on the opposite side of the arena. A girl, roughly his own age, dressed in a different school’s uniform. Basic identification information surfaced in his awareness alongside her image.

「 Mara Crawford 」 「 Affiliation: Ashenmere, Crestbrook City 」

Simple data. Name and city of origin, nothing else. For Luke, it was sufficient. He wasn’t taking the entrance exam to find a date; he just needed to know whether the opponent in front of him was a threat or an obstacle.

But the city of origin caught his attention. Crestbrook. The same satellite city that Audrey Langford had come from. Audrey, who had tried to use him as bait against a pack of Ruin Guards during the Youth Training Competition’s Mist Relic stage.

Audrey’s attempt hadn’t succeeded, and at the time she and Luke had been on opposing sides anyway. Holding a grudge against her specifically would have been petty.

But Crestbrook as a city hadn’t earned much goodwill from him. The Crestbrook branch president, Dorian Webb, had bet against him during the tournament. And now a Crestbrook candidate was standing in his Round Two arena, in active opposition.

Sistermon Blanc seemed to sense his mood. She stepped forward half a pace, and the Cross Barbie’s tip rose to point directly at Mara Crawford. The body language carried an immediate undercurrent of we’re proceeding without further conversation.

"Crestbrook? Luke Mercer?"

Mara had recognized him the moment the arena resolved. The realization registered as a small, immediate sinking sensation in her stomach. Drawing another candidate in Round Two was already worse than drawing a beast: candidates were unpredictable, and a strong candidate could end an exam early.

Drawing this specific candidate was actively catastrophic. Luke’s tournament performance had been the central topic of cross-capital speculation for weeks. Card Masters in Crestbrook had been quietly grateful that he was from a different satellite city.

Then she saw his card spirit step forward, trident raised, no opening salutation offered. The aggressive posture from a small frail-looking nun-themed figure was almost insulting in its bluntness.

Mara’s irritation surged past her self-preservation. Are you really treating me as that beneath your attention?

She threw caution aside and gave the order.

"Earth Bear, engage!"

A massive bear materialized from her summoning circle. Easily three meters at the shoulder, with thick brown fur streaked with iron-gray, slate-gray plates of natural armor along its spine and flanks. Its eyes were small and intelligent, and its musculature suggested it could shrug off attacks that would shred lesser beasts.

「 Earth Bear 」 Race: Beast (Earth-element) Quality: Collectible Level: ★★★ (Three-Star)

The Earth Bear was the same tier as Sistermon Blanc, with one defining specialization. Its defense was top-of-tier within its bracket. Against most Three-Star opponents, breaking through the Earth Bear’s natural armor required either sustained pressure or a tactical opening. One-shot kills against an Earth Bear were not a documented scenario in Card Master records.

The bear roared and charged forward, the arena floor cracking under its weight with every stride. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

Divine Judgment Pierce!

Sistermon Blanc moved with practiced economy. A small sidestep took her out of the bear’s direct charge line. The Cross Barbie spun in her hand into reverse-grip configuration, and she pivoted her stance into a precision thrust.

The trident’s point connected with the Earth Bear’s chest at the precise vector where its natural armor met its sternum. The defensive plates should have absorbed the strike. They didn’t.

The penetration effect of Divine Judgment Pierce wasn’t a strength check against armor; it was a structural-attack-vector exploit that ignored defensive parameters entirely. The trident punched through plate, fur, muscle, and bone in a single fluid motion, lodging in the Earth Bear’s heart.

Light-element energy detonated.

The Earth Bear’s massive body convulsed once, light-aligned damage spreading outward through its internal structure. Then the bear dissolved back into card form, returning to Mara’s storage.

The arena was silent.

"That’s not possible."

Mara stared at the spot where her Earth Bear had been, her brain refusing to accept what she’d just witnessed. The Earth Bear had been her flagship card spirit. The defining defensive piece of her entire roster. The card she’d specifically prepared for adversarial Phase Two engagements.

It had been killed in a single strike.

By a Card spirit of the same tier and quality as itself.

Luke watched the dissolution without much surprise. Same-tier same-quality cards had genuine output variance based on design specifics. Beyond that, Blanc still had Awakening in reserve, which would let her temporarily punch up into Four-Star territory if needed. She didn’t currently need to.

He concluded that he wouldn’t need to deploy his evolution cards or rotate to other card spirits in this round. The baseline form had handled the encounter.

Mara recovered from her shock and immediately moved to summon her second card spirit.

She was Soldier Realm. The realm below Commander, with only one card-spirit deployment slot available. Her Earth Bear had occupied that slot, and now that the bear was dead, the slot had opened back up.

She raised her hand to call her second spirit.

She felt cold pressure descend on her shoulder.

Mara froze.

Sistermon Blanc had crossed the arena in the time Mara had spent processing her loss. The Cross Barbie’s tip now rested gently against the side of Mara’s neck, the bladed prongs angled in a way that suggested fatal commitment would require minimal additional effort.

She’s attacking the Card Master directly. That’s allowed?

The thought came with a note of disbelieving outrage. Targeting the Card Master rather than the deployed spirit was within exam rules, just culturally rare. Most candidates instinctively engaged spirit-versus-spirit, treating the Card Masters themselves as off-limits.

Also, I’m a pretty girl. Couldn’t you at least give me the courtesy of facing my card spirit instead of putting a trident to my throat?

Mara glanced sideways and met Sistermon Blanc’s gaze.

The small nun-themed figure’s expression hadn’t changed. The soft, slightly hesitant face was identical to what Mara had seen before the engagement started. Gentle. Almost shy. The face of someone who would apologize for stepping on your foot.

Except the trident at Mara’s neck wasn’t shaking. The grip was steady. The pressure was professionally calibrated to communicate exactly how much commitment the strike would require.

Mara’s understanding clicked into focus.

Pink on the outside. Black on the inside. Sweet face, killer instinct.

The figure standing in front of her, dressed in white nun’s clothing with a cute rabbit-eared coif, was not what the visual presentation suggested. Underneath the soft visual aesthetic was a combat-optimized operator who would have her on the ground in three seconds if the order came.

"I forfeit."

Mara’s voice came out steady, mostly because she didn’t dare let it shake.

The arena’s teleport system registered the forfeit and dissolved her form into white light. But she didn’t reappear at her home school.

She rematerialized in a much larger chamber, dimly lit, with rows of seating arranged in arena-style tiers. Several other young Card Masters were already seated, watching what appeared to be live monitoring displays showing various ongoing Phase Two engagements.

Mara blinked.

System information surfaced in her awareness.

「 Phase Two eliminated candidates may remain in the Observation Hall and select feeds for candidates they personally know, to view ongoing matches. 」

Eliminated candidates weren’t immediately ejected from the exam dimension. They were given the option to spectate, picking specific candidates they wanted to track through subsequent rounds.

Mara’s eyes lit up. She immediately selected Luke’s feed and pulled it up to her viewing slot.

If she was going to lose, she at least wanted to confirm that Luke went on to dominate the rest of the exam. The further he advanced, the better her own loss would look in comparison. Better to lose to someone who topped the Eastern Region than to someone who washed out in Round Three.

Don’t make me look bad. Carry me on your back to first place.

She settled into her seat and started watching.

Back in the arena, Sistermon Blanc retracted the Cross Barbie smoothly the moment the forfeit registered. Her stance relaxed back into the small, soft posture of her resting form. She took two quick steps backward, ending up behind Luke, and looked up at him with a slightly anxious expression, as if seeking reassurance that she’d performed acceptably.

Luke patted her head.

A faint pink flush rose in Blanc’s cheeks, and she pressed slightly against his hand, allowing the gesture without protesting it.

The duality didn’t bother Luke at all. If anything, the contrast was endearing. Combat-mode Blanc was professionally competent. Resting-mode Blanc was sweet and warm. The two modes coexisted in the same card spirit without conflict, just different aspects of her personality activating in different contexts.

Capital City Lord’s Mansion.

"That card spirit is genuinely deceptive." freewёbnoνel.com

Aldric Ashford was watching the monitoring feed with bemused appreciation. The contrast between the small figure’s resting visual and her combat performance was sharp enough to feel almost dishonest, in the best possible sense.

"She looks like a frail girl. The moment a fight starts, she’s a professional. That’s misdirection that wins matches."

He almost said the ancient proverb out loud, the one about how the softest-looking exteriors often concealed the hardest interiors. He decided against it. The proverb was a folksy saying, and saying anything folksy in Lilith Crescent’s presence felt subtly inappropriate. The Night Empress radiated an atmosphere of refined gravity that made casual idioms feel out of place.

"I like this performance," Selene Dawnford remarked. "I hope Luke draws stronger opponents soon. I want to see more of his actual abilities."

Internally, her hope was more specific. She wanted to see Luke deploy more of the Special Cards he’d presumably crafted during Phase One. The handheld device he’d manifested earlier was, to her, the most intriguing visible element of his portfolio. The implied existence of additional Special Cards behind it was a tantalizing prospect she wanted to verify in real combat.

After encountering the concept of Special Cards for the first time today, Selene had quietly developed a higher level of interest in them than in Original Spirit Cards. Spirit Cards were what every Card Master made. Special Cards were the lost technology that had survived only in Lilith’s private repertoire and a handful of legacy artifacts. The novelty of seeing Special Cards deployed in real combat would, by her current estimation, be educational beyond anything else the entrance exam could offer.

Lilith Crescent watched the feed with her usual composed neutrality. Whatever conclusions she was drawing, she kept entirely to herself. Aldric and Selene both glanced at her several times during the exchange, hoping for some hint of her current evaluation, and both came away with nothing.

The Night Empress was patient. Her game played out on a longer timeline than any single round of the entrance exam.