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The funds, Luke set aside for review later. The numbers were substantial, but currency was rarely his bottleneck.
The materials, however, made him stop.
Numerically, the materials inventory wasn't large. The Storage Card contained fewer items than what he'd received from either the Youth Training Competition or the standardized exam. By raw count, this was actually a smaller package than what the satellite city's branch Association had distributed.
By quality, it was something else entirely.
The lowest-grade material in the package was Blue Tier. Purple Tier components, the kind that the Card Master Association's public trading platform didn't see often, made up a substantial portion of the inventory. And folded into the deeper layers of the Storage Card's organization, Luke found several Orange Tier materials.
Orange Tier.
Orange Tier materials were the ingredients used to construct Nine-Star cards. They sat at the absolute peak of the high-tier classification system. Outside of senior Card Master families and the Association's restricted vaults, they essentially didn't exist on the open market.
"Whoever picked these knew exactly what they were doing," Luke murmured. The Capital City Lord's Mansion hadn't just dumped a pile of generic high-grade components into the Storage Card. They'd curated. The selection process had clearly considered card category, elemental affinity, and crafting compatibility, and the result was a hand-picked package whose total value rivaled the Holy Dragon Furnace Heart and the Doll Key in concentrated rarity.
Several of the items, on inspection, were directly applicable to Luke's planned card construction projects. The Mansion had either consulted with someone who knew Luke's craft direction, or they'd guessed correctly based on his demonstrated capabilities. Either way, they'd saved him weeks of material hunting.
"Saves me time and effort," he summarized. "I'll take it."
He continued sorting through the inventory.
-----
His attention caught on something near the Storage Card's interior boundary.
A floating card, suspended in the middle of the Storage Card's spatial volume rather than slotted into a conventional storage compartment. It pulsed with a gentle, distinctive energy signature that didn't match the rest of the contents.
"This must be the third reward Victor mentioned." Luke focused on it with mild curiosity. He guided the floating card out of the Storage Card and into his hand.
Card information flooded his perception.
*「 Crystallization Technique 」*
Type: Skill Card
Effect: Upon use, condenses internal mana to form a Mana Crystal. When the user's mana is fully depleted, the user may consume a stored Mana Crystal to refill their mana pool. The number of crystals that can be stored, and the storage capacity per crystal, scale upward with the user's realm advancement.
Description: A specialized card created in ancient times by an exceptional young Card Master with an unconventional concept. Functions only on Card Masters; cannot be applied to card spirits. Each Card Master may absorb only one Crystallization Technique card. Existing copies in circulation are extraordinarily rare.
"Crystallization Technique. Reminds me of the mana stone mechanics from old fantasy RPGs."
Luke's mouth had quirked into a small grin. The mechanic was startlingly similar to a fantasy novel trope he'd read in dozens of stories before transmigrating. Compress your spiritual energy into a stable internal artifact, then draw on the artifact when your normal reserves ran low. The Magic Card Civilization's version was repackaged with different terminology and presentation, but the underlying logic was familiar.
He started thinking through the implications, and his grin widened.
Mana was the foundation of everything a Card Master did. Without sufficient mana, even a card spirit capable of leveling cities couldn't be summoned, much less sustained. Mana exhaustion was the actual constraint that defined a Card Master's combat duration and tactical flexibility, not card spirit count or quality.
Lower-tier Card Masters, in particular, were fundamentally limited by their mana pools. A Commander Realm Card Master couldn't hold a Six-Star spirit in continuous deployment for very long, and a Seven-Star spirit was even more demanding. Luke's recent fight had ended with Mana fully empty, and that had been only minutes of sustained Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl deployment.
The Crystallization Technique card was, in effect, a long-term solution to the mana ceiling problem. A growth-type Skill Card, scaling with realm. Whatever its current capacity, by the time he reached Leader Realm, Monarch Realm, and higher, the card's stored capacity would grow alongside him.
He turned the card over in his fingers. There was something else worth noting.
"This is the first non-traditional Magic Card I've seen. Closest analog would be a Counter Card or Equipment Card, but those work on card spirits. This works on the Card Master directly."
He'd seen exactly zero examples of cards that interacted with the Card Master's body during his entire time in Magic Card Civilization. The standard categories were all spirit-side: Spirit Cards (the card spirits themselves), Equipment Cards (worn or wielded by spirits), Counter Cards (defensive responses controlled by spirits), and Skill Cards (typically taught to spirits or imprinted on their loadouts).
A Skill Card that imprinted on the Card Master's body and modified the Card Master's own mana economy was, categorically, something he hadn't encountered before. The fact that the inventory description noted only one card per Card Master, and that existing copies were extremely rare, suggested the unconventional nature was acknowledged within the industry.
He brought the card to his chest and pressed it against the area over his heart, in roughly the same gesture Mana had used when she'd absorbed the Spell Tome and the other Skill Cards into her own loadout.
The Crystallization Technique card glowed softly. Then it began sinking into his body. Edges first, then the central pattern, dissolving inward through his skin like a printed image absorbing into water.
-----
The reaction was immediate.
His internal mana pool, which had been at near-full capacity, began draining at an alarming rate. Not through external use. Not through any spell or summon he'd activated. The mana was simply pulling itself toward the absorption point at his chest, drawn by some interaction Luke couldn't directly see.
He held still and let it happen.
The drain accelerated. Within seconds, his mana pool was at half. Within twenty seconds, it was nearing the warning threshold most Card Masters maintained as a safety buffer. Within thirty seconds, his mana reached zero.
A new sensation took shape in his chest, just beneath the absorption point.
A Mana Crystal materialized. Small, roughly the size of a pebble, suspended in his internal energy circulation pattern. It glowed with a warm, opalescent light.
The shape and texture of it caught Luke off guard.
"Wait."
He examined the crystal more closely.
The Mana Crystal looked almost identical to the Saint Quartz from FGO. The premium-currency gem from his previous life's mobile gacha game, the one that had absorbed unconscionable amounts of his disposable income during a phase he preferred not to think about. The same prismatic structure. The same internal light pattern. The same general shape.
He stared at it, mentally flatlining.
The Crystallization Technique was apparently designed by someone with an inappropriate sense of humor. Or my brain is mapping fantasy RPG logic onto FGO aesthetics, which is somehow worse.
He shelved the unsettling visual association and started cataloging the actual properties of what he'd just produced.
-----
*Test results:*
Forming a single Mana Crystal had consumed his entire current mana pool. Not a percentage. Not a fixed cost. Everything. Whatever mana he had at the moment of activation determined the crystal's storage capacity.
The crystal stored same-source mana. When he reabsorbed it, the energy would integrate seamlessly into his pool with no rejection or compatibility issues.
The single crystal hadn't reached the storage cap. He could feel additional capacity available, which meant his current realm allowed more than one. The exact upper limit needed empirical testing.
He let his mana begin recovering naturally and noted two more properties as he waited.
When a crystal's stored mana was fully depleted, the crystal didn't disappear. Instead, it collapsed into a smaller object, what the card description hadn't named but Luke immediately mentally labeled a Mana Seed. The seed was a recoverable structure that would automatically absorb ambient mana from the environment to refill itself, even without active input from him.
He could also actively channel his own mana into a depleted seed to accelerate the refill. Both methods worked.
The drained sensation in his chest, the empty feeling of having his entire mana pool emptied at once, was uncomfortable. Not painful, but distinctly unpleasant. Most Card Masters never let their mana drop this low, precisely because the empty feeling was unsettling enough to push you back toward conservative spending. Luke understood now why mana exhaustion was treated as a serious operational concern rather than just a depletion timer.
His mana began to recover.
"Wait." He paused his internal observation. "The recovery rate seems faster than usual."
He couldn't be certain. The difference was small, on the edge of what he could distinguish from his normal baseline. It might just be his attention focusing on something he didn't usually monitor closely. Or it might be a real effect.
He decided to defer judgment until he had more data points.
-----
While his mana refilled, he returned to the project he'd been working on before Victor's visit, the Digimon evolution worldview integration. Two hours of focused work passed quickly. By the end of it, his internal mana pool had returned to full.
He triggered the Crystallization Technique again.
The familiar cascade resumed. Mana drained downward. The empty sensation returned. A second Mana Crystal materialized in his chest, settling alongside the first.
"Two crystals," he murmured. "Capacity hasn't capped yet."
His mana began recovering.
This time, focused specifically on monitoring it, he confirmed the observation he'd been uncertain about.
"The recovery rate is faster. It's not my imagination."