"Spirit Cards and Special Cards?"
Selene Dawnford repeated the new categorization, eyes wide. She'd been raised within Lilith's tutelage, and she'd assumed her foundational knowledge of Magic Card Civilization was reasonably complete. The Ancient Era's Special Card system was apparently a subject Lilith hadn't shared with her before.
"Did Luke just construct a Special Card?"
The question carried more weight than its surface phrasing suggested. The information Lilith had just shared was, by Selene's evaluation, comparable in importance to the Original Card revelation, possibly more important. Even Lilith, an Undying Realm Card Master with centuries of experience, had only managed a handful of Special Card creations across her entire career.
If Luke had just produced one as a casual mid-exam construction, his talent floor was even higher than Selene's mental model had been tracking.
"He might be a reincarnated master from the Ancient Era," Selene murmured, only partially joking. The implication that Luke's accomplishments were more easily explained by literal reincarnation than by talent had moved from absurd to seriously discussable in the past few hours.
Aldric was experiencing a similar mental adjustment. He'd known Luke was talented. He'd known Luke was likely the Millennial Sovereign of this era. He had not been prepared for the additional possibility that Luke was, on top of all that, a craftsman in a card category that had been functionally extinct for thousands of years.
"It's only a possibility," Lilith said, gently dampening the enthusiasm. "Special Cards don't produce visible signatures during construction. Even the Original variant, which is what Luke would presumably be making, completes silently. We can't confirm it from here."
She paused, brow furrowing slightly.
"Though there's something unusual about the timing."
Aldric and Selene both turned to her again.
"Special Cards are normally crafted after the Spirit Cards they support. The conceptual logic is that you build the spirit first, then design Special Cards to enhance the spirit's existing capabilities. Without a target spirit, a Special Card's design parameters have nothing to anchor against."
"Luke just constructed his second Original Worldview, then jumped straight into what looks like Special Card construction, before producing any Spirit Cards within that worldview."
She tapped her fingers against the armrest of her chair, considering.
"It's the wrong order. If he did craft a Special Card, he did it without a corresponding Original Spirit Card to anchor the Special Card's design framework. That's an additional layer of difficulty, on top of an already extremely difficult creation category."
The thought hung in the chamber for a long moment.
"Luke," Lilith concluded, "is doing something that, from a craftsmanship standpoint, simply shouldn't be working."
-----
*Inside the exam space.*
Luke had returned the Card Editor's input field to ready, the D-Ark's data structure now sitting in his completed inventory. He drew a deep breath and started building Sistermon.
He pulled up the design notes he'd been refining for weeks. The character had been one of his earliest design priorities, the centerpiece around which the rest of the Digimon roster would orbit.
*「 Sistermon: female-pattern Digimon clad in doll-style attire. Three forms: Blanc (white), Noir (black), and Ciel (light blue). 」*
*「 Sistermon Noir is cheerful, sunny, the playful twin of the trio. Sistermon Ciel is composed, gentle, inwardly tough, and operates as Noir's twin counterpart. Sistermon Blanc, by contrast, is introverted and reserved, the quiet third sister of the set. 」*
*「 Through Network Evolution, a Sistermon may shift between her three forms in real time. She also possesses an ability designated Awakening, a state that briefly amplifies her power output to substantially elevated levels. 」*
*「 Each form has its own evolution path leading to higher-tier Digimon. The chosen evolution path determines which combat-environment specializations the evolved form is suited for. 」*
The information cascade flowed cleanly. Luke had been refining Sistermon's character design and worldview integration for so long that the construction process moved with practiced efficiency. Compared to Mana, who had taken weeks of developmental work, and compared to Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon, which had been even more intensive, Sistermon's construction was significantly faster. It was even faster than the D-Ark, despite the D-Ark having no Spirit Card complexity to manage.
Sistermon's initial tier was, by Luke's design, lower than Mana or Red-Eyes Black Star Dragon at base level. The Sistermon line was meant to be a foundation tier, not a flagship tier. Her power would come from evolution rather than from raw initial stats.
*「 Card background accepted. Please complete the card image and add materials. 」*
Sistermon's image rendered into the Card Editor: a young female humanoid figure in elaborate doll-themed clothing, the white-and-cream colorway of her Blanc form, her face partially shadowed beneath a doll-like hood.
Luke began adding materials. The Doll's Heart, a rare item he'd specifically prepared for Sistermon's foundational core. The Holy Trident, a light-element weapon component intended to anchor her evolution path. Other components followed in sequence, each one slotting into the Card Editor and dissolving into the construction pattern.
*「 Construction successful. Mana backflow received. 」*
The notification arrived.
And this time, it was accompanied by a column of light.
A pillar of creation light erupted from Luke's crafting position, punching upward through the exam space's ceiling and continuing into the dimensional volume above. The light was bright enough to illuminate a meaningful fraction of the entire exam zone, golden-white and intense, the unmistakable signature of an Original Card's birth.
*「 Original Card construction complete. 」*
Luke exhaled.
Sistermon was now part of his roster.
-----
*Ashenvale City Lord's Mansion.*
Geoffrey Falk and the other principals had been mid-conversation about Luke's mental fortitude when the pillar of creation light bloomed across their monitoring screens. Every single conversation in the chamber stopped immediately.
"Success."
Geoffrey's exhalation carried the relief of a man who had just been pulled back from the edge of a cliff. His shoulders dropped visibly. The tightness that had crept into the back of his neck over the past hour released.
He hadn't realized how much pressure he'd been carrying until the moment it lifted.
Victor and Harrison shared similar quiet exhalations. The worry of watching a promising candidate fail mid-exam, watching the talent they'd invested in crash on a single bad attempt, had been weighing on them more than any of them had been willing to admit.
None of them wanted to see Luke crash.
"What level is the card at, do you think?" Geoffrey asked, the relief making him talkative. "I know we can't see the parameters from here, but the pillar's intensity should give us a rough estimate."
"Six-Star at minimum," Bianca Daly said, voice steadier now that the worry had dissolved. "Possibly Seven-Star. Hard to say from the pillar alone. The dispersal pattern suggests upper-tier."
"Won't be lower than Six-Star," Harrison agreed. He was watching the pillar's slow dissipation with thoughtful attention. "The Eye of Timaeus produced a similar manifestation pattern, and I'm reasonably certain that one is Eight-Star. I think this one is in the Seven-or-Eight-Star range. Could even be Eight."
The principals exchanged looks. Bianca Daly's expression flickered with something that was almost concern.
Past entrance examinations, going back across multiple decades of records, had never produced an Eight-Star card. Never. The mid-tier-to-high-tier transition was a development milestone that Card Masters typically achieved years after their entrance exam, often in their early career as graduates. A Card Master producing an Eight-Star during their entrance exam itself was, by historical standard, anomalous.
Luke producing an Eight-Star Original Card during his entrance exam was beyond anomalous.
"If that estimate is right," Lawrence Cromwell said slowly, "then even if Luke crafts the most basic One-Star common card to satisfy Phase One's official passing requirement, his exam score is already locked into the top tier of the Eastern Region. That one Original Spirit is enough to anchor the entire result."
The atmosphere in the chamber had shifted yet again. The earlier worry was gone, replaced by something closer to giddy anticipation. Luke wasn't just going to pass Phase One. He was going to deliver a performance that would feature in entrance exam case studies for the next century.
The Mansion's senior figures collectively exhaled.
-----
*Capital City Lord's Mansion.*
"He succeeded."
Lilith Crescent's confirmation was quiet but definitive. As an Original Card crafter herself, she could assess the construction's success without needing to wait for follow-up signals. The pillar's presentation pattern matched the parameters of a high-quality Original Spirit Card birth.
Aldric leaned back into his chair, exhaling himself. The relief was uncharacteristically visible on his Immortal Realm features.
"The last time you took this much interest in an entrance exam candidate," Aldric remarked, voice still carrying the residue of his own tension, "was the year you accepted Selene as your student."
The observation was accurate. Across the years, Lilith had observed hundreds of entrance exams without showing meaningful personal interest in any specific candidate. Selene's exam had been the one notable exception. And now, years later, Luke was the second.
For a Region Governor at Lilith's level to single out individual candidates was historically rare. To have multiple senior figures across two Mansions, plus the Capital Card Master Association, all watching the same candidate at the same time, was a convergence that hadn't occurred in living memory.
Lilith turned a faint, ambiguous smile toward Aldric.
"Isn't this exactly what you wanted?"
Aldric's expression flickered briefly with the discomfort of a senior administrator whose strategic maneuver had been recognized.
He had, indeed, used Selene as a deliberate message-relay to bait Lilith's curiosity. The choice to route information through Selene rather than directly to Lilith had been calculated to draw Lilith's personal attention to Luke's case, on the theory that direct elevation to a Region Governor's notice would benefit Ashenmere's standing relative to the other capitals.
The maneuver had worked. Lilith had come personally. Luke's profile within the Region Governor's awareness was now established at the highest possible level.
The cost of the maneuver was that Lilith now knew the maneuver had occurred, and she wasn't above commenting on it.
"For Ashenmere, the outcome was worth the indirection." Aldric's recovery was diplomatic.
"For Ashenmere," Lilith agreed mildly.
The implication that other parties might evaluate the cost-benefit calculation differently was left politely unstated.
Author: hii guys It will be helpfull if you guys can give some Powerstones to Tom Goes To Hogwarts my new Fic as it's a new fic I know you guys will help me so I will upload an extra chapter today.