「 Worldview approved. 」
Inside the exam space, Luke exhaled slowly as the Card Editor accepted the final thread of the Duel Spirits worldview. The confirmation pulsed through his mind like a lock clicking open. Clean, definitive, satisfying.
Step one: done.
Now came the fun part.
Luke shifted gears immediately, pouring his focus into the Card Spirit itself. The worldview was the foundation, the stage. Now it was time to put someone on it.
And if he was building from the Yu-Gi-Oh worldview, there was really only one choice for his first card.
Dark Magician Girl.
Setting aside every tactical argument, every meta-tier analysis, every min-max calculation... at the end of the day, she was the OG. The original waifu. The character who'd kickstarted an entire generation's taste in fictional women and never once apologized for it. She and his other 2D loves had carried him through countless late nights, bad days, and empty weekends back on Earth.
If he was going to bring someone into this world first, it was going to be her.
But Luke wasn't planning to build a vanilla Dark Magician Girl. Not a straight copy. She was one of his waifu cards, which meant she deserved the full treatment. Patched, upgraded, and optimized until she was something uniquely his.
What he wanted was his exclusive version of Dark Magician Girl.
His fingers moved through the Card Editor with the confidence of someone who'd been rehearsing this in his head for weeks.
「 Within the Duel Spirit Realm, there exists a race of extraordinary beings who command the power of dark magic, known as the Spellcasters. 」
「 Dark Magician Girl, Mana, is among the most gifted of her kind. She trained under the legendary Dark Magician himself, and in time, mastered power equal to his own. 」
「 Afterward, Mana set out to travel the world, driven to grow stronger. Along the way, she befriended Silent Magician and many others, learning new spells and techniques from each encounter. 」
The background wasn't a straight lift from canon. Luke had woven in additional threads: extra training arcs, expanded relationships, borrowed abilities. All carefully chosen to push the final card toward the version he'd envisioned.
Every addition served a purpose. Every line of backstory would translate into real power once the card took shape.
「 Card Spirit background approved. Please complete the card art and add materials. 」
Luke's spiritual energy shifted, reshaping itself into a brush. He didn't hesitate. The image of Dark Magician Girl flowed from his mind onto the Card Editor like he was tracing a photograph. Every curve, every detail, every strand of hair exactly where it belonged.
She was one of his childhood goddesses. He knew her inside and out.
Literally.
「 Starter Pack opened successfully! Congratulations: acquired Dark Magician Girl crafting materials × 1. 」
Luke fed every last material from the Starter Pack into the Card Editor without a second's hesitation.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The materials dissolved on contact, consumed by a force that burned through them like invisible fire. The raw energy flooded into the card art, saturating every line, every pixel of color. Dark Magician Girl's image drank it in. The blue of her hat deepened. The gold of her hair caught light that didn't exist. The emerald of her eyes sharpened until they looked ready to blink.
The entire card blazed with color, and then...
Luke felt it.
A tidal wave of energy slammed into him from inside, crashing through his body like a dam breaking. His level surged. One-Star Soldier to Two-Star. Two-Star to Three-Star. The jumps stacked on top of each other so fast it felt less like climbing a staircase and more like being launched out of a cannon.
Around his body, a pillar of light erupted from the ground, punching skyward through the ceiling of the exam space like it didn't exist. The raw power radiating from it made the air itself vibrate.
A grin split Luke's face.
Success.
Card Masters leveled up by constructing Magic Cards. When construction succeeded, the resulting energy feedback, a phenomenon called Mana Surge, flooded back into the Card Master's body, forcibly raising their level. The stronger the card, the bigger the surge.
And Luke's surge was massive.
The exam space around him, a pocket dimension built and maintained by the City Lord's Mansion itself, started showing hairline fractures. Fissures of white light spiderwebbed across the walls and floor, the dimensional fabric groaning under the pressure.
These spaces were engineered for stability. Even split into hundreds of individual chambers, each one was tougher than most natural environments. The fact that Luke's Creation Pillar was threatening to tear his apart said everything about the card he'd just built.
The pillar lasted only a few seconds before dissolving into motes of light that spiraled inward, sinking into Luke's body and vanishing.
「 Construction successful. Mana Surge acquired. Level increased to Two-Star Soldier. 」
「 Construction successful. Mana Surge acquired. Level increased to Three-Star Soldier. 」
「 Construction successful. Mana Surge acquired. Level increased to Four-Star Soldier. 」
The notifications stacked like a slot machine hitting jackpot after jackpot.
「 Construction successful. Mana Surge acquired. Level increased to Nine-Star Soldier. 」
Eight consecutive level-ups. One-Star to Nine-Star in a single breath.
His lifespan had jumped alongside it. As long as he didn't do anything monumentally stupid, Luke Mercer would comfortably live to three hundred.
「 Mana Surge acquired. Next authority unlock progress: 40%. 」
Luke's eyebrows shot up. "Mana Surge also pushes authority unlock progress?"
That was new. According to the system, every successful card construction generated Mana Surge that served double duty. It raised his Card Master level and ticked the progress bar toward unlocking his next system authority.
Two birds, one stone. He could work with that.
Back at the City Lord's Mansion, the room had gone very, very quiet.
"He succeeded." Victor Ashford's voice was barely above a whisper. The City Lord of Ashenvale, a man who'd walked the Card Master's path for nearly a thousand years, was staring at his display like he'd just watched someone walk on water. "He actually succeeded."
In the long history of Magic Card Civilization, every Magic Card in existence had once been an Original, the first of its kind, born from a worldview that no one had ever conceived before. One Original Card after another had gradually become common knowledge, copied and refined and mass-produced until the sheer accumulation of them built the civilization they all lived in today.
But that was ancient history.
As the centuries passed and the rules of Magic Card Civilization solidified, constructing new worldviews had become exponentially harder. The low-hanging fruit was long gone. Even Emperor and Sovereign Realm masters, people who'd spent lifetimes mastering the craft, had never managed to build an original worldview from scratch.
Original Cards weren't just rare. They were functionally extinct.
Until now.
A student, a kid taking his very first exam, had just done what none of them had ever accomplished in their entire careers.
Luke Mercer hadn't just built a card. He'd constructed an entirely new worldview, had it recognized by Magic Card Civilization itself, and successfully crafted an Original Card from it.
In terms of raw Card Master talent, Luke had just lapped every person in this room. Including Victor Ashford.
Because not a single one of them, not the Emperor Realm principals, not the Sovereign Realm City Lord, had ever crafted an Original Card. Not once. Not ever. In fact, none of them could even recall hearing about another Card Master who had, not in their lifetimes.
In the current era, an Original Card creator wasn't just talented.
They were a national treasure.
"The Creation Pillar." Grant Harlow's face had cracked into an uncontrollable grin, the kind that came from trying very hard not to laugh out of sheer disbelief. "That's the celestial phenomenon that only appears after successfully crafting an Original Card."
He turned to the other two principals, savoring every microsecond of their expressions.
"As expected of my student," he added, with absolutely zero shame. "I just wonder what star level his Original Card reached."
Common cards were well-documented. You could look up their star level just by knowing the name. But Original Cards were uncharted territory. Unless the Card Master chose to reveal the card's attributes publicly, outsiders could only guess based on what they saw.
Townsend's face had gone through every shade of envy in the human color palette. Brandt looked like he'd bitten into something sour enough to strip paint.
And Grant Harlow? Grant Harlow was having the time of his goddamn life.
You two were so smug five minutes ago. How's it feel now?
If looks could kill, the glares Townsend and Brandt were drilling into Harlow's skull would've vaporized him twice over.
If you'd known about a student like this, they both thought in perfect, furious unison, you wouldn't have kept it hidden this long, you shameless old bastard.