"A weapon-nullifying effect? Isn't that the power of the Major Sin Armament, the Honored Body, out of Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere?"
Dark frowned a little, then raised the "Yearning for Lust" and pointed it lightly at DemiDevimon.
A pink beam shot from the war hammer's head at once and washed over DemiDevimon.
As anyone could have predicted, nothing whatsoever happened.
DemiDevimon stared at Dark, utterly lost. "What're ya doin'?"
"Just shining it on you to see," Dark said breezily.
DemiDevimon's face went flat.
The weapon nullification power of "Yearning for Lust" honestly didn't need much testing. What Dark wanted to test was the armament disassembly effect.
The trouble was that the only armament he actually had to suit up with was "Godhood Armament - Moon God", and since the two were merely two forms of the same armament card, trying it on himself was out of the question.
"No, wait. There's one more who can show me the disassembly effect."
The thought struck him, and he had the freshly summoned Sylveon put on the "Moonlight Dress".
"Bui?"
Sylveon looked a touch puzzled, but she obediently fetched the armament card out of her little wardrobe and held it up to Dark in both paws.
Dark activated the "Moonlight Dress" with a Normal Summon.
A ring of pink light welled up around Sylveon's waist and gradually took shape as an adorable little dress.
Sylveon reared up on her hind legs, rose onto her toes and spun once around, and the little dress threw off a charming shimmer that made her cuter than ever.
"Here it comes," Dark said softly.
Sylveon tilted her head. "Bui?"
Dark aimed the "Yearning for Lust" at her, and Sylveon was bathed in the light of Lust. The "Moonlight Dress" on her came apart on the spot, dissolving into starlight of pure magic that rushed back into the Magic Guide Card in one stream.
Dark looked down at the "Moonlight Dress" card in his hand and found it had already turned the ashen grey of a card drained of magic. Clearly it wouldn't be usable again for some time.
"So this is armament disassembly. If it weren't a Magic Guide Card the magic probably wouldn't flow back into a card, but the armament would still come off the body, and it would lose its power for a while."
"For any deck built around weapons and armaments, that's an absolute nightmare."
Dark came back to himself and turned it over in his mind.
"The question is whether it works on high-tier weapons and armaments."
"It is a God Card, after all. Its authority shouldn't be low."
"And there doesn't seem to be any cooldown?"
Right as he was thinking it, the pink glow along the "Yearning for Lust" dimmed and went out.
He was quiet for a moment, then looked up quickly at the clock and worked it out. "Roughly three minutes of duration. Still terrifying. And during those three minutes it doesn't drain my own magic at all, though I can distinctly feel the power of 'Lust' pulsing. That probably limits who's able to use this card."
Dark's gaze shifted, an idea taking shape.
But midnight was almost on him and he'd had a long day. He had no appetite left for more.
Besides, the God Card was already in hand. There was no need to rush.
"So all that's left is to funnel the Moon God's 'Lust' into the Insect Tree for storage."
…
Once everything was done, Dark burrowed into his blankets, thoroughly comfortable.
The haul from this trip through the secret passage was far richer than he'd hoped for. The Forging of "Moon God Spirit I" especially was a surprise on top of a surprise.
With "Moon God Spirit I" in hand, the "Flower Cards" had a source now. If he could one day work out the "Magic Circle of Love" completely, he'd be able to make his own "Flower Cards" and never worry about them running dry.
Best of all, neither of the two armament forms of "Moon God Spirit I" made any demand on the wearer's own magic. The Armament Evolution of "Godhood Armament - Moon God" carried its own energy core, and "Major Sin Armament - Lust" burned psychic power instead, which meant a Magic Guide Spirit could suit up with either one perfectly well.
"Armament Evolution" also seemed to place no requirement on the wearer's body type - which made sense, since what it produced was a Digimon.
The one limitation was probably that only Magic Guide Spirits Forged from "Lust" could suit up.
But Dark's deck was hardly short of Magic Guide Spirits Forged with "Lust".
A quick count gave him "Drifloon", "Miltank", "Sylveon" and "Vampire Young Lady".
And if he stretched the definition, "Popplio" carried a "Lust" factor inside it too.
On top of that, "[Magic Beast (Eevee)]", "Curse Cage: DemiDevimon" and "Magic Beast: Ditto" could all evolve or gain a star through a "Lust" [Major Sin Card], which should count them as incarnations of "Lust" afterward.
In short, this "Moon God Spirit I" was extraordinarily versatile.
…
The next day was Monday.
After a full day of classes, Dark hurried straight back to his dormitory to pick out Magic Guide Spirits for "Armament Evolution" trials.
"Let's start with Popplio!"
After weighing it carefully, he beckoned to Popplio.
"Momo!"
Popplio's eyes lit up and it bounded out of the inflatable pool.
The droplets it dragged into the air gathered into an enormous ball of water before they could scatter, and it balanced the thing on top of its head.
Among Dark's Magic Guide Spirits these days, even Trash Slime - once the sorriest of the lot - had gotten its chance to shine.
That left Popplio, a basic two-star Magic Guide Spirit, looking less and less remarkable, something it had been quietly moping over for a long while.
The recent Forging of "Greed III" had nothing to do with it either, which had privately hurt for days. Now that a new chance had finally come, of course it wanted to seize it.
Dark caught the pouncing Popplio in his arms, then lifted the water ball down and set it in the basin on his workbench. "Now then," he told it with a smile, "I'm going to test whether 'Armament Evolution' works on you. Give it your best."
Popplio nodded hard.
Dark set it back on the floor and used a Normal Summon to activate the Godhood Armament form of "Moon God Spirit I".
In a heartbeat the afterimage of the Moon God Spirit rose behind Popplio and spread both arms to enfold it.
"Popplio, Armament Evolution!"
Popplio's body floated up, and inside the wrapping of the Moon God's power it turned into a shape of pure light.
Under the shroud of Moonlight its body changed violently, with unmistakable signs of evolution.
That settled Dark's nerves a little.
Popplio's "Armament Evolution" was the most important test of all, because when Dark Forged it he had used only two leftover root stems of the [Fruit of Lust], and even "Lust III" hadn't been enough to evolve it fully.
Its true affinity was most likely "Envy", with "Lust" making up only a small share.
If even Popplio could pull off "Armament Evolution", then every other Magic Guide Spirit carrying a "Lust" factor should manage it as well.
After that he'd only need to run the same test on spirits with no "Lust" factor at all to reach a rough conclusion.
In the time it took him to think it through, Popplio's "Armament Evolution" was already finished.
The "Moon God", sheathed head to toe in silver armor, stood proud within the Moonlight.
Dark checked the Magic Guide Card at once and found that the "Moon God" produced by Popplio's Armament Evolution and the "Moon God" produced by his own showed almost no difference in the data.
Even under close inspection, the only variance was cosmetic.
Popplio's "Moon God", for instance, bore a faintly blue pattern on the face, and the lower half of the face left bare beneath the mask was noticeably more feminine.
But that was the extent of it.
"Very good."
Dark gave Popplio's "Armament Evolution" his full approval.
Popplio launched itself at him in delight - and slammed him flat on the floor!
…
A Popplio trying "evolution" for the first time clearly had no grasp of its own newly explosive strength.
Dark lay sprawled on the floor with one vivid hickey planted on him, every trace of will to live gone.
…
An hour later.
Dark switched test subjects, called DemiDevimon over in front of him, and used "Godhood Armament - Moon God".
The light reached it and the afterimage of the Moon God Spirit surfaced behind DemiDevimon - but DemiDevimon didn't change in the slightest.
Dark checked the Magic Guide Card and found that "Moon God Spirit I" had gone into cooldown.
Another hour on, he first evolved DemiDevimon into "BlackGatomon", then used the "Godhood Armament - Moon God" of "Moon God Spirit I" on it again.
BlackGatomon evolved into the "Moon God" without the slightest hitch!
At that point the results were perfectly clear.
Dark wrote everything down carefully in his notebook, then ran another attempt every hour until every Magic Guide Spirit carrying a "Lust" factor had experienced "Armament Evolution".
Of the two armament forms of "Moon God Spirit I", "Godhood Armament - Moon God" would surely become his everyday move, while "Major Sin Armament - Lust" would stay tucked away as a dedicated trump card against armaments.
Which made getting the Magic Guide Spirits used to "Armament Evolution" all the more necessary.
…
Through the last few days of April, Dark alternated "Moon God Spirit I" and "Greed III" every day, drilling every Magic Guide Spirit that could evolve until each had its evolved form well in hand.
He himself kept digging into the "Soul-Sucker Spell", and by month's end he'd finally gained some insight.
Then May arrived, and St. Marian's Academy at last entered its hectic end-of-term stretch, with the Academy Cup formally on the calendar.
It seemed to take the calendar turning over to May for students to suddenly remember the "Academy Cup" existed at all. Every student, first-years included, began paying extra attention to the point standings.
First-years couldn't join the Inter-House Tournament to rake in vast sums of temporary credits, but their end-of-term assessment scores would be converted into temporary credits all the same, exerting a small yet real influence on where the Academy Cup ended up.
When two Houses sat close together in credits, that little push could decide everything.
And every year when this month came around, students turned into misers without meaning to.
Some could make their credits breed more credits. Others couldn't.
So all those others could do was cut spending to the bone and hold out until the end-of-month tally.
Of course there were also those who didn't care at all, or who held such a commanding lead that they could spend credits more or less freely.
Which was when students inevitably fell to comparing themselves with one another - fairly entertaining, at least from a bystander's vantage point.
"Same as every other year. The four Houses' actual credit totals are all pretty close, so in the end it comes down to the Inter-House Tournament."
At eight o'clock sharp on the evening of May first, Dark, Diana and Rose sat together in the common room drinking black tea.
From this point on, students could look up all four Houses' credit totals through their Sorting Cards.
And the credit total that served as the final measure for the Academy Cup came in two parts: actual credits and temporary credits.
"Look at this button - it splits each House's credit total into seven parts and shows them as a bar chart." Diana had been flicking through her Sorting Card when her eyes lit up, and she pointed at the card's face.
Dark leaned over for a look, then converted his own display into a bar chart.
Each House's total broke down into seven bars: the actual credits of years one through six, plus the House's overall temporary credits.
Since the Inter-House Tournament hadn't started, temporary credits sat at zero for now.
The other six bars ran roughly from low to high, with first year the shortest and fifth year the tallest.
By comparison, first year's actual credits really were negligible.
Which matched reality perfectly, since first-years had so few ways to earn credits.
As for the sixth-year bar - it only edged out the second and third years by a little.
That was largely because sixth-years were about to graduate and so converted their credits into resources to make full use of them.
All of this, of course, was relative.
In truth no House's actual credit total was all that large.
Students' expenses inside the academy were enormous. Study, daily life, research - all of it devoured credits by the pile.
So the Academy Cup usually came down to who could bring in temporary credits.
Temporary credits themselves split into two parts: those converted from end-of-term assessment scores, and those won in the Inter-House Tournament.
The former was calculated by taking each year group's total score within a House, dividing by that year's headcount, multiplying by one thousand, and adding the results together.
The sum wasn't small - around a hundred thousand overall - but the gaps between Houses were usually slim.
The latter, the Inter-House Tournament, generally came in two parts: dungeon adventures and duel matches, both worth tens of thousands of temporary credits.
"Shame the first years can't take part," Dark said with a trace of regret.
Having just gotten his hands on a new card, he was itching to try it out - the duel matches especially were exciting just to imagine.
But no matter how much he wished otherwise, a first-year could only sit in the stands and watch.
"I wonder how far Senior Pandora has gotten with her research into the 'Fusion' factor? Maybe I'll get to see her Fusion spirit at the Inter-House Tournament."
The thought stirred him, and a little anticipation crept back in.
The dungeon adventures were a team event; the duel matches were solo.
Knowing his Senior's temperament, she'd only represent the fourth-year Magic House in the duel matches.
Though as a member of the Noble House, he could hardly cheer for her.
Once he'd finished his tea, Dark bid the other two goodnight. He still had experiments to run tonight.
____
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