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One strike, and all three of my Seven-Stars are gone?
Wesley's body shook before he could stop it. He stared at Luke, disbelief brimming over. Was that something a fresh enrollee could do?
He'd been called the freak of his own year. It turned out Luke was a freak of another order entirely.
The dust thinned, and only WarGrowlmon still stood on the road, proud and untouched. The green and yellow phantoms at its flanks had already faded to nothing.
Trinity Burst's output jumped clean past the Eight-Star grade. The strike was worth a Nine-Star card's, and even an ordinary Nine-Star blow was nothing three Seven-Star spirits could hope to block. Caught under it, not even scraps of them would be left.
"Sweet mercy!"
With only the crimson dragon left standing, the whole road sucked in a breath, then burst into noise like a kicked hornet's nest.
"Am I dreaming right now? One strike for three Seven-Stars?"
"If I hadn't watched every second of it, I'd be asking whether Wesley threw the match."
"Is that really a freshman from this year's intake? Exam first or not, there are limits!"
"You know what, I finally get why he said he wasn't interested. It was never about nerve. With strength like that, what exactly is he supposed to be afraid of?"
"Careful with that talk. Wesley's strong, but plenty of people stand above him. And the Student Council and the Discipline Committee are nobody's pushovers either."
"Who cares? The fact is Luke beat him. Barely enrolled, strength like that. He'll stack credits and climb the rankings fast."
"Wonderful. One more untouchable inside Celestial. The days ahead just got harder."
"True. Though he's fresh through the gate and he's already crossed the Magus Society. His days won't be easy either."
"Is this really someone who sat the same exam as us?" Conrad didn't know what his own face was doing anymore. Minutes ago, he'd folded under Wesley's pressure and joined. Luke had simply flattened the man. He had no idea how to put what he felt into words.
The gap between them was wide enough to teach a man despair.
"Anything else? No? Then I'll stop wasting time keeping you all company." Luke dusted his hands off and recalled WarGrowlmon.
Trinity Burst left WarGrowlmon in a weakened state afterward, though its combat strength only sank to the Six-Star grade, and its foundation being what it was, no ordinary Six-Star spirit or fierce beast could touch it even then.
The whole exchange had been a whim. He'd wanted to test Trinity Burst's output, and three Seven-Star spirits made a slightly undersized target for it, but the results left him thoroughly satisfied.
More to the point, the display had a second purpose. Every senior nursing designs on him had just watched what happened to the last one. He was not easy pickings, and by tonight the whole academy would know it.
As examples went, Wesley made an excellent one, all the more since the man had walked up and volunteered. Luke felt exactly zero weight on his conscience.
"You're strong. I never imagined a freshman would be the one to wreck me." Wesley looked at Luke, and whatever was on his face had stopped being hostility. "But Celestial's waters run deeper than you think. I'll still say it: join the Magus Society. It spares you a world of unnecessary trouble. If nothing else, inside these walls, not many dare scheme against a Society member."
"No need to trouble yourself over me." Luke tossed it off without a second thought and walked on through the crowd.
Deep water. If they wanted to talk deep water, what stood behind him was the open ocean, and one look at it would scare everyone on this road out of their wits.
---
"Now this is a setup no ordinary university could match." Luke stood in front of his assigned quarters, took one long look, and sighed in appreciation.
Student housing or not, every enrollee at Celestial received an independent residence, and the luxury of it gave nothing away to the villa the Card Association had housed him in during the Youth Training Competition. That alone was reason enough for every cohort to fight tooth and nail to test in.
"The residence carries a ward. Once it's active, no one gets in without the owner's say-so. They can't even scry inside." Of everything on offer, that was the feature Luke prized most. Crafting original cards was not a quiet business.
With the ward up, everything got simpler.
He raised a hand, and Mana and Blanc surfaced at his side. A pulse of the Spirit-Value Aegis followed, and Celestine stepped out of the void in her Sword Saintess vestments, unhurried.
The three girls swept the residence with bright eyes, and open delight kindled in every face.
"Go on, look around. This is where we live now." Luke waved a hand, and Mana promptly grabbed Blanc and Celestine by a wrist apiece and towed them off through the rooms, small gasps of wonder trailing behind them.
"All right. Time to tally what the Dark Purgatory actually paid." Luke pulled his gaze back and raised a hand again, and nearly ten mana-bearing items surfaced in front of him.
"So the luck came up ordinary this time. All those Abyss Predators, a Devourer on top, and this little pile is everything." His brow creased as he counted.
Back at the Spirit Home, the first Abyss Predator he'd ever resolved had dropped the Doll Key, the Night Veil, and the Worm's Heart, three rare materials from a single body. This time he'd killed the better part of ten extra-domain beasts, and the whole harvest sat in front of him at roughly one drop per kill. He had, in the purest sense, scraped the pity floor.
"Fine. Even the luckiest man alive has his off days." It was a thin consolation, but he took it, and started the inspection.
*「 Sovereign Ring 」*
In the Demon Plane there once arose a Demon Lord of heaven-sent talent. After taking rule of the entire plane, on a whim he forged the Sovereign Ring, tempering and nurturing it with the mana of the whole Demon Plane. The ring holds mana of unmatched density. Use with caution.
"The Sovereign Ring." Luke turned the thing over once and had to laugh. "If this hadn't dropped off an extra-domain beast, I'd be wondering whether I'd taken a detour through The Lord of the Rings."
"Mana of unmatched density. Except I'm linked to the Eternal Sun now, and the Sun already does that job. Which makes this a bit of a white elephant." He rolled the ring between finger and thumb, thought a moment longer, and tossed it into the Eternal Land. "Then again. Maybe there's a play here."
The next moment, the Eternal Sun, which had been breathing mana in and out on its own steady rhythm, erupted with a pull like a whirlpool and swallowed the ring whole.
In Luke's perception the Sun worked like a furnace. It smelted the Sovereign Ring over and over, pass after pass, until cracks spread along the band and the whole ring finally burst apart. The vast mana sealed inside welled up, and all of it poured into the Eternal Sun.
*「 Residual mana of the Sovereign Ring absorbed. The Eternal Sun's total mana has risen. Mana reserve ceiling has risen. Mana conversion efficiency has risen. 」*
EXTRA CHAPTER FOR EVERY 500 POWERSTONES.