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"My first time in the Corridor of Time, I lasted nine days myself. On the tenth, I had no choice but to leave." At last the Night Empress gave up her own history, doting in the telling, though a note of something wistful crept in beneath it.
A single day's difference. But that one day marked the distance between one talent and another, one soul and another.
The student I picked really is something else. And when Lilith recalled how her conception of the new card had broken open after her talk with Luke not long ago, a lovely smile rose to her face.
"Sss." Selene's eyes went round. "Doesn't that make my junior brother more impressive than you, Teacher?"
"Girl. Is your skin itching for a beating?" Lilith shot her student a look. "You've gone slack lately. Careful, or Luke will overtake you and have you pinned under him."
Of course she hoped her students would one day outgrow her. But having Selene say it straight to her face like that? She had a little pride of her own to keep, surely.
"Teacher, what kind of talk is that?" Selene gave an awkward laugh. She probably shouldn't have said that in front of Lilith. Still, phrasing like that begged to be misread, and Selene had to get one small jab in.
"I have a feeling Luke will be leaving the Corridor before long. I'll stay here with you a few days." Lilith ruffled Selene's hair with easy affection and sat down. "Come, tell me. Has anything happened this past while?"
She had spent the recent weeks in seclusion, conceiving her card, and paid little mind to the outside world. Ordinary matters, after all, could be handled by the three Capital Governors of the East, by the branch president of the Card Association, and by the Head of Celestial. Her days were nowhere near as busy as people imagined.
Oh, if THAT'S what you want to hear, I'm wide awake now!
Her eyes brightening, Selene poured out the whole business of the Trial Road and the Dark Purgatory in one long breath.
"The Dark Purgatory. Dragon Renegades." The peach-blossom eyes had already narrowed, and Lilith's tone had cooled by several degrees. "Bold of them. Coming to the East to stir trouble, and daring to lay hands on my people besides. Very good."
The East was her domain, and Celestial was the East's foremost academy, the one that raised and supplied its talent. For the Renegades to operate here at all meant they plainly held the Eastern Governor in no regard whatsoever.
But what angered her most was that these Renegades had dared set their sights on Luke. Had anything happened to him, it would have meant more than the loss of one disciple. The Ancient Kingdom itself might well have lost this era's once-in-ten-thousand-years power, and that she could never accept.
And yet she also marveled at how far Luke had come. She trusted that Selene wouldn't lie to her, which meant his growth in this short time went well beyond anything she'd imagined.
As for the appearance of an Eight-Star card, that left Lilith briefly lost in thought. Even she hadn't expected that the card Luke crafted back at the exam could push its combat strength up another step.
"Just how much can you grow, Luke?" She said it softly, and a faint anticipation colored the words.
Two more days went by. In between, Lilith paid Tobias Wren a visit to deal with the Renegade business. Unfortunately, Luke showed no sign of leaving his room in all that time, which meant he was still inside the Corridor.
"Teacher, could something have happened to my junior brother?" A note of worry touched Selene's voice.
With her own strength, she could sit in the Corridor of Time for a full month without trouble. But then, she was peak Emperor. Luke had gone in as a Monarch and stayed nearly half a month already, and to Selene's eye that had begun to look a little wrong.
Even her teacher, after all, had managed no more than nine days her first time in. Small wonder she'd begun to fear an accident.
"Wait a little longer." Lilith was far steadier than her student. To her senses, nothing about Luke's body had changed, which meant the soul he'd sent into the Corridor was still stable.
Even so, a quiet alarm stirred in Lilith too. This showing of Luke's was, frankly, a little absurd.
In the midst of their thoughts, both women felt a surge of space-time power flood the whole villa. Their eyes met. Luke was coming back from the Corridor of Time.
...
"Soul and body apart too long, and sure enough, they've come back out of step." Returning from the Corridor, Luke found his command of his own body considerably rustier than before.
"Still, the harvest wasn't bad at all." Moving was awkward for the moment, so instead of forcing it, he took stock of what the Corridor had earned him.
The conceptions for the Chaos Ritual, the Loaded Cylinder Drum, and the Metalized Magic Reflection Armor had gone off without a hitch, and every one of them was finished.
But what Luke counted as this trip's real gain was that he'd found the key points for both the Ultimate Evolution card and the ship-girl worldview.
Key points only. Fully conceiving either one would still take a while yet. For Luke, though, that was already enough.
The rustiness faded by degrees, and after roughly half an hour he was back to his old self, everything in order.
"Better wash up first. I can't go out looking like this." He rose and headed for the bathroom.
A short while later, refreshed and clear-headed, Luke finally left the room, and the sight of the Night Empress stopped him a beat. "Teacher? You're here?"
"I've been here a few days now. I didn't expect you to hold out this long on your very first trip into the Corridor." Lilith crossed to him with elegant steps and tapped a pale jade finger against his forehead, and an invisible pulse flickered through him. "Mm. No rejection between soul and body. Your soul is far stronger than an ordinary Monarch's."
The check-up done, and Luke plainly no worse for wear, she finally set her mind at ease.
"The monthly hunt's only a few days out, and I still want to get the cards I've conceived crafted before then, so I had to come back from the Corridor early." A drift of fragrance played at the tip of his nose, and Luke stood a little straighter for it.
Back in the Crescent Moon Land, the baptism of that sea of Memory Fragments had raised the strength of Luke's soul to something close to terrifying. He'd barely entered Monarch realm, but his soul already matched a King's, and that was precisely why he'd endured the Corridor as long as he had.
Even after close to two weeks inside, all Luke had felt was a touch of discomfort, with his limit still a long way off.
"Junior brother, you're making this very hard on me." It was plain from Luke's tone that the Corridor's pressure hadn't forced him out at all; he'd simply chosen to leave. Selene rolled her eyes until they nearly stuck. Was he even human?
Even Lilith favored Luke with a look of grand, bewitching exasperation, but she caught the important part of what he'd said regardless. "You're going to craft new cards?"
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