Even if Townsend and Brandt were seething, there wasn't a damn thing they could say.
Forget about the card's star level. Forget about quality, combat power, any of it. The simple fact that Luke had successfully crafted an Original Card was enough to blow Marcus Ward and Hailey North out of the water, and it wouldn't even be close.
This wasn't about who had the stronger card.
It was about what crafting an Original Card meant.
A successful Original Card meant that Luke's worldview had been recognized by Magic Card Civilization itself, stamped and approved by the fundamental laws of the world. It meant his talent as a Card Master operated on a completely different axis than everyone else's. It meant that with a fully original worldview in his back pocket, crafting higher-level Original Cards in the future was just a matter of time and effort.
Marcus's Four-Star Legacy Inferno Knight? Hailey's Four-Star Collectible Water Azure Beast?
Respectable. Genuinely impressive for students their age.
And completely irrelevant now.
"I never expected this." Victor Ashford leaned back in his chair, but the calm pose couldn't hide the energy in his eyes. The City Lord of Ashenvale was excited, the kind of excited that a thousand-year-old Sovereign Realm master had no business being. "This unified exam just handed me the biggest surprise of the century."
He'd walked the Card Master's path for nearly a millennium. In all that time, he had never, not once, personally witnessed someone craft an Original Card.
And the person who'd finally pulled it off wasn't some legendary hermit or a once-in-a-generation prodigy groomed by one of the Four Great Academies.
It was a student from Ashenvale City. His city. Taking a mock exam.
"With the talent Luke has demonstrated," Victor said, his voice carrying the weight of absolute conviction, "as long as he's properly nurtured, reaching the Sovereign Realm within a hundred years is entirely within reach."
The room went still.
History backed him up. Every Card Master on record who'd ever successfully constructed a new worldview and crafted an Original Card had gone on to reach the Sovereign Realm at minimum. It was documented fact. Original Card creators advanced faster than ordinary Card Masters, as if the act of building something truly new had permanently widened the road ahead of them.
It had taken Victor Ashford himself a thousand years to reach Sovereign. That was considered fast.
And here was this kid getting a casual projection of a hundred.
Townsend and Brandt exchanged a look. Neither spoke. There wasn't much to say. Both of them were Emperor Realm, a full tier below Victor, and it had taken them centuries to get there. Hearing that some exam-taking teenager had just been evaluated as a future Sovereign who'd outpace them by a factor of ten was... a lot.
If Luke had been one of their students, they'd have been over the moon. But he wasn't. He was Harlow's.
And Harlow, that smug, insufferable, retired-war-hero-turned-principal, was grinning so hard his face looked like it might split in half.
Completely oblivious to the earthquake he'd just set off in the City Lord's Mansion, Luke was examining the card in his hand.
( IMAGE HERE )
「 Dark Magician Girl 」
Race: Spellcaster
Quality: Collectible
Level: ★★★★★★ (Six-Star)
Skills:
› Dark Magic Inheritance ~ Inherited from Dark Magician. This card can be deployed as Dark Magician. When activated: +30% combat power for 30 minutes. Cooldown: 6 hours.
› Dark Magic Attack ~ Channels dark-attribute magic through the staff to deliver a powerful spell attack against a single target.
› Silence Seal ~ Designates an area of effect. Enemy units within the zone are silenced and cannot activate skills.
› Execution Skill · Dark Magic Burst ~ Gathers power, locks onto a target, and releases a concentrated explosive blast dealing massive damage. Instantly destroys any enemy unit weaker than Dark Magician Girl.
"Six-Star Collectible quality." Luke's grin was practically ear-to-ear. "That's my girl."
Even among Intermediate Cards, the Four-to-Six-Star bracket, a Six-Star Collectible was top-tier. Not just strong. Dominant. The kind of card that would bully anything at the same level and give Advanced Cards a serious headache.
The modified backstory had paid off exactly the way he'd hoped. By writing Dark Magician Girl as someone who'd inherited Dark Magician's legacy and learned from Silent Magician, the Card Editor had translated those narrative threads into concrete skills.
Dark Magic Inheritance came from the mentorship under Dark Magician. It was a straight-up disguise skill. Mana could be used as Dark Magician, complete with a 30% combat boost. That wasn't just a power spike; it opened up an entire tree of combo potential.
Silence Seal came from her time training with Silent Magician. An area-of-effect skill lockdown was brutal in any context, but paired with Mana's raw firepower? It was borderline cruel.
"With Dark Magic Inheritance, Mana hits harder and counts as Dark Magician for card interactions." Luke's mind was already racing three steps ahead. "Which means later, when I get my hands on the right materials... Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon. The female version."
He paused.
"Red Mom."
A beat.
"Absolutely Red Mom."
The fusion of Dark Magician and Red-Eyes Black Dragon was legendary in Yu-Gi-Oh for a reason. Dragoon was an absolute menace of a card. And if Mana could sub in for Dark Magician as a fusion material? The possibilities were disgusting. In the best way.
But Dragoon was just one option on a very long list. Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl had an absurd number of support cards, fusion paths, and upgrade routes.
Chaos Form. Eye of Timaeus. The Magician archetype went deep, and Luke intended to mine every inch of it.
As for Dark Magic Burst, the execution skill, it was exactly the kind of finisher a waifu card deserved. Raw damage plus a conditional instant kill against anything weaker than her. Simple, devastating, and terrifyingly effective against everything from trash mobs to mid-tier threats.
One word: Strong.
「 Congratulations. First Magic Card successfully created. Achievement Package issued. 」
Luke blinked. "There's an Achievement Package?"
He didn't overthink it. "Open."
「 Achievement Package opened. Fantasy Forge proficiency increased. Card construction speed +30%, mental energy consumption -20%. Hidden effect unlocked: Simulated Crafting. 」
「 Simulated Crafting: Consumes mental energy to simulate the card creation process. Allows continuous adjustment and refinement to achieve optimal results before committing real materials. 」
「 Achievement Package opened. Acquired: Card Codex. 」
「 Card Codex: A codex containing special properties. When a Card Spirit is defeated and destroyed in battle, its re-summon cooldown is reduced by 50%. 」
Luke's eyes widened as the implications hit him.
Fantasy Forge's proficiency had jumped. Construction speed up by thirty percent. Energy consumption down by twenty. That meant if he built another Six-Star card right now, it would take roughly a third less time and drain significantly less out of him than Mana had.
That mattered. A lot.
The higher a card's star level, the longer and more exhausting the construction process became. Building a Six-Star card had already eaten a serious chunk of his time and energy. Seven Stars? Eight? Ten and above? The time requirements scaled into genuinely terrifying territory.
And that wasn't just an inconvenience. It was the number one reason high-star constructions failed. Card Masters ran out of gas before the process finished. Their recovery couldn't keep pace with the drain, and the whole thing collapsed.
Fantasy Forge's proficiency boost didn't just make crafting faster. It meaningfully improved his odds of successfully completing high-star cards in the future. Master-level card crafters would weep if they knew this ability existed. Grandmasters would probably commit crimes for it.
Then there was Simulated Crafting, the hidden unlock. The ability to dry-run a card construction using only mental energy, tweaking and refining the process until it hit a hundred percent success rate, before spending a single real material.
In a world where rare crafting materials could take months or years to acquire, an ability that let you practice for free was borderline cheating.
And the Card Codex? That was the cherry on top.
Card Spirits didn't permanently die when defeated in battle. They returned to their card to recover. But the downtime before they could be summoned again was real, and for high-quality, high-star cards, that cooldown could stretch from days to weeks. In a prolonged fight, losing your strongest card meant sitting helpless for ten days to half a month while it recuperated.
The Card Codex slashed that timer in half. Across the board. For every card he'd ever own.
"Divine artifact" wasn't an exaggeration.
Luke checked the exam countdown. Still some time left before Phase One ended.
Good. He wasn't done yet.
He pulled the card from the air and held it up. The card art gleamed, every line and brushstroke radiating a warmth that felt almost alive.
"Come out, Dark Magician Girl."
This was the moment. Everything he'd spent building toward. The worldview, the backstory, the materials, the construction. All of it had been leading here.
A circle of dark magic unfurled beneath the card, spreading outward like ink dropped in water. The symbols within it rotated, pulsing with energy, and from the center, a figure rose.
She floated upward through the circle, weightless and radiant, and touched down lightly in front of Luke.
Dark Magician Girl.
Mana.
She was here.
For every 500 Powerstones Extra Chapter.