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Watching Luke answer as though it were nothing at all, Violet's face flushed hot all over again. That bearing of his made it look for all the world as though the Monarch Realm counted for little, something to be broken through whenever the mood took him.
But Violet knew with perfect clarity: if the Monarch Realm were truly that easy to reach, then she and her younger sister Viola wouldn't still be stuck fast at the Leader Realm to this very day!
More than that, not one clansman of Dragon's Valley's entire current cohort had yet broken through to the Monarch Realm! And that was with their talents raised by the Dragon Transformation Pool!
In this moment, Violet's whole frame of mind toward Luke had transformed completely, her face turning grave and solemn. If the battle ahead showed a single flaw, the one eliminated might very well be her.
The Luke standing before her was an existence who ranked above her, above Viola, above every last new student Dragon's Valley had sent this cohort!
---
"So it's true. Head, you had it exactly right. Luke is already a Monarch Realm Card Master." At the trial plaza, watching the four card spirits arrayed on Luke's side of the field, Moira let out a long breath of feeling. "Reaching the Monarch Realm when he's only just enrolling. Strength like that has already overtaken a good number of the upperclassmen."
The students who tested into Celestial Academy never lacked for talent, but that hardly meant just anyone could break through to the Monarch Realm at will. Even now, plenty of the Academy's upperclassmen remained stuck at the Leader Realm, still striving toward that threshold.
"One can only say that someone like Luke, breaking through on the very heels of his card spirits' evolutions, counts as the freak of nature and the sole exception."
Even Luke summoning a second dragon-kind stirred no great waves in her now. With Growlmon X as precedent, in Moira's eyes, the black dragon's appearance carried less impact than the plain fact of Luke standing at the Monarch Realm.
"Isn't that all the better?" A pleased smile spread over Tobias's face. "I'd hope every year's incoming students outshine the cohorts before them. That way, each new class that enrolls pours fresh blood and vitality into the Academy~!"
Only, that old man Edmund told me the dragon-kind Luke held was a blue-green one, didn't he? How has it turned into a black dragon now?
Tobias gazed at the tyrannically imposing black dragon within the light screen, doubt flickering through the bottom of his heart.
Edmund had even made a particular point of it back then: that Timaeus of Luke's could fuse with Dark Magician Girl and become the Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl, lifting the girl's level to the Seven-Star grade.
The black dragon before him now, though likewise a Seven-Star dragon-kind, was in Tobias's eyes a thoroughly ordinary dragon-family card spirit as such things went. Set beside it, he far preferred laying eyes on card spirits that carried special abilities, the likes of the evolution-capable Sistermon Ciel and Guilmon. The Digimon cards, if anything, drew him more.
Though this black dragon really does look magnificently imposing! Despite the faint disappointment in the depths of his heart, when the corner of Tobias's eye caught Drake's expression, his mouth still curled up into a sly little smile.
"Head, that smile of yours right now is looking quite sleazy." Catching that curl at the corner of Tobias's mouth, Selene couldn't hold back the jab. Toward the black dragon itself she held some impression, in fact. It had been precisely through that occasion, back then, that Luke had become her junior brother.
As for Moira, she kept silently munching her popcorn. There was no way she could be as free and easy with the Head as Selene was. But gazing at the black dragon's crimson eyes, her own gaze still filled with threads of longing. The pull that dragon-family cards exerted on man and woman, old and young alike, was very nearly universal!
"Ahem. Girl, I am at the very least your elder. Spare me a little face, would you." The smile on Tobias's face stiffened, and he shot Selene a glare without any real heat behind it.
If this girl didn't have Lilith standing at her back, Tobias would absolutely have taught her what the words thick-skinned truly meant!
"What lineage of dragon-kind is this? The clan's records hold no trace of it." Drake's brows had drawn into a hard knot.
One Growlmon X had been tolerable enough, but now with this black dragon appearing on top of it, Drake couldn't help sitting up straight. He held not the slightest impression of either of the two dragons, yet judging by presence and bearing alone, the newly arrived black dragon gave up nothing whatsoever to the Skywing Dragon.
If it weren't for Dark Magician Girl and Sistermon Ciel standing on Luke's field as well, Drake would very nearly have suspected the boy was some junior of the clan who'd slipped away from home.
In that moment, a thread of ominous premonition rose in Drake without warning.
"Well then? Old Drake. The first-place examinee of our East's exam this cohort. The caliber's not half bad, wouldn't you say?" It was exactly then that Tobias leaned in beside Drake, chin lifted, wearing his smugness openly. "Ascending to the Monarch Realm at this age. Even within your own clan, I doubt any of the young generation has reached that step."
Damn this man!
Drake had already been stewing over his inability to see through what lineage the two dragon-kinds in Luke's hands came from, and now with Tobias's needling poured on top of it, Drake genuinely felt his own self-restraint deserved commendation for not flinging a card into the man's face on the spot.
"Decent enough, decent enough." Drake's eyes turned once, and then he opened his mouth. "If I've guessed right, the reason Luke could take first place in this Eastern exam is precisely that he holds dragon-kind cards, no?"
"Looked at that way, dragon-kind cards still hold the advantage over every other line of card there is." Having said that much, a smile even climbed onto Drake's face. "As for the young generation, every path of development follows its own design. A momentary gap between them is no great harm at all."
In Drake's telling, Luke's taking of this Eastern exam's first place was absolutely inseparable from that black dragon, which made it, whichever way one turned it, a victory delivered by dragon-kind. And didn't that prove the strength of dragon-family card spirits? Didn't that prove Dragon's Valley's chosen road was the correct one all along?
?! You can even spin it back around like that?
Tobias rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. Then kindly find me another Card Master who ascended to the Monarch Realm at this age! "A momentary gap is no great harm," my foot!
Watching the exchange, Selene and Moira traded a glance, made a great show of having seen nothing, and carried on sipping milk tea and munching popcorn respectively.
Saddled with a Head like this one, life was genuinely, thoroughly hard to bear.
---
"ROAR!"
Dragon-cries shook the very heavens. Within the battle space, Red-Eyes Black Dragon and the Skywing Dragon, the two dragon-kinds, had already thrown themselves into open war, the entire field utterly consumed by the auras and clashing of two Seven-Star dragon-kinds, so completely that even Dark Magician Girl and the others had no way of cutting in.
And compared to Dark Magician Girl and Sistermon Ciel, Growlmon X gazed up at the giant dragons' battle overhead with its whole body brimming over with naked thirst. This demon dragon's hunger for battle ran far, far past the two girls' own.
"No need to be so eager. Your turn on the field will come sooner or later." Sensing the battle-thirst rolling off Growlmon X, Luke gave it a settling pat, and then his eyes lifted once more toward the war of the two dragons raging across the sky.