The plaza buzzed with nervous energy, hundreds of students clustered in anxious little groups, their voices tangling into a wall of noise that Luke Mercer could feel in his teeth.
"I heard this exam's gonna be the same difficulty as last year's college entrance test. That one was brutal."
"I just need a decent score, man. Something to build on before the real thing."
"I've been grinding for a solid month. Locked in. No social life. This is my time."
Luke couldn't help the grin tugging at his lips. The air practically crackled with adrenaline and barely-contained panic the exact kind of chaotic energy he'd come to love about this world.
Because this wasn't his world. Not originally, anyway.
Luke Mercer had transmigrated here years ago, and by now, the memories of his old life felt more like a particularly vivid dream than anything real. Earth or as people here would never know to call it was a lifetime away. Literally.
This world ran on Magic Cards.
Not the flimsy cardboard kind he used to sleeve up for tournaments back home. Here, Magic Cards were everything. The foundation of civilization. The backbone of military power. The difference between a comfortable life and scraping by in obscurity.
Card Masters people who'd awakened the ability to construct and wield Magic Cards sat at the top of the food chain. Getting your awakening was basically landing a six-figure government job with lifetime benefits. Instant respect, instant security. The kind of iron-clad career path that parents back on Earth would've killed for.
Right now, Luke stood in the middle of Ashenvale City's unified exam a citywide mock test that pulled students from all three academies. Think of it as the one and only practice round before the real college entrance exam. Back on Earth, schools ran mock exams like they were going out of style. Here? You got exactly one shot to test yourself before the real thing.
No pressure.
"Alright," Luke murmured, pulling his thoughts back to the present. A spark of anticipation flickered in his chest. "I've been waiting long enough. It's time to make her."
In Luke's professional opinion and he considered himself very professional when it came to waifus the two most important things about constructing a Magic Card were the worldview and the character's background. The worldview determined the Card Spirit's potential and ceiling. The background determined its raw power. Get both right, and you had something special.
Lucky for him, his head was a walking encyclopedia of anime and gaming characters. Years of binging shows, grinding gacha games, and arguing tier lists on forums had finally, finally become a marketable skill. Every character he remembered was a potential Card Spirit, and nearly every one of them came pre-packaged with a worldview detailed enough to build on.
He pulled up his status panel a mental interface that every awakened Card Master could see, visible to no one else.
「 Luke Mercer 」
Level: One-Star Soldier
First Authority · Fantasy Forge: Enhances memories from past life and materializes them within Magic Card Civilization.
Item: Card Editor
Skill: Extract
Material: Starter Pack × 1
Magic Cards: None
Extract was pretty straightforward it could strip usable materials from a target. Think killing monsters and looting their drops. What you actually got was down to luck, but hey, free loot was free loot.
The Card Editor was the bread and butter of any Card Master the tool you used to actually build your cards. Standard issue upon awakening.
And then there was Fantasy Forge.
That one wasn't standard issue. That was the system a little bonus that had activated alongside his awakening, like the universe had decided to throw him a bone. Fantasy Forge was its flagship ability: it took the characters living rent-free in his head and turned them into real, functional Magic Cards.
Every anime protagonist. Every overpowered final boss. Every waifu he'd ever saved a wallpaper of.
All of them were fair game.
The Starter Pack in his material slot was the system's welcome gift. Crack it open, and he'd get a complete set of crafting materials for one specific card. It was the safety net that guaranteed his first creation would actually work.
Now, the question was: which card?
After years of development, Magic Card Continent had accumulated an insane variety of card types. But with Fantasy Forge in his pocket, Luke wasn't limited to what this world already had. He could pull from anything he remembered.
Yu-Gi-Oh. Digimon. Fate/Grand Order. Kantai Collection. The list went on and on, and every franchise came loaded with candidates that could work as Card Spirits.
Honestly? The hardest part was choosing.
He'd agonized over it for weeks. Too many waifu cards, not enough Starter Packs. But eventually, he'd made his decision.
Only kids choose. Adults want them all.
But since he could only pick one for now well, he'd just have to come back for the rest later.
With the Starter Pack backing him up, Luke was confident he could pull this off right here in the unified exam. Everything was in place.
Time ticked by. The nervous chatter around him crescendoed, voices overlapping in one final surge of pre-exam jitters
And then silence.
Every student in the Westbridge Academy plaza vanished, teleported individually into the unified exam space. The massive courtyard sat empty, as if no one had ever been there.
It wasn't just Westbridge Academy, either. Crestfall and Ironvale cleared out at the exact same moment. Across the entire city, every single candidate blinked out of existence and reappeared somewhere else entirely.
The exam wasn't held in the real world. It took place in a dedicated Dimensional Plane — a pocket dimension purpose-built for absolute fairness. No outside help. No cheating. No advantages except what you brought in your own head.
"So this is the exam space."
Luke looked around. The area was stark and empty just him and a whole lot of nothing. No other candidates in sight. Complete isolation.
"Gotta say, if Earth had exam rooms like this, cheating would've been extinct overnight." He let out a low whistle, then paused as a stream of information flowed directly into his mind.
「 This unified exam consists of two phases. The current phase is Phase One: Card Creation. 」
「 All candidates must complete Magic Card construction within the allotted time. There are no restrictions on card level or quantity. 」
「 Candidates who successfully construct a Magic Card within the time limit will advance to Phase Two. Failure to do so will result in disqualification and immediate removal from the exam space. 」
Short. Simple. Brutal.
"Straightforward enough," Luke muttered, already pulling up his Card Editor. "Build a card or get out. Classic."
He wasn't the only one moving fast. Across thousands of individual exam spaces, every candidate who'd received the same rules was doing the exact same thing — cracking open their Card Editors and getting to work.
The time limit for Phase One was generous on paper, but constructing a Magic Card especially a high-star one ate through time like nobody's business. Every second counted.
The strategy was obvious: build the strongest card you could within the window. A low-star card would get you past Phase One, sure. But nobody knew what Phase Two would throw at them. Going in with a weak hand was asking for trouble.
Luke's fingers moved with practiced confidence as he began feeding the first lines of a worldview into the Card Editor.
「 In the distant super-ancient era, there once existed a kingdom known as the Duel Spirit Realm. 」
「 Within the Duel Spirit Realm lived spirits of countless races, forms, and elemental attributes. 」
「 Each species possessed unique abilities. Over millennia of evolution and expansion, they spread across the entire world. 」
Line by line, a new worldview took shape inside the Card Editor. Not borrowed from this world's existing catalog. Not copied from any known framework.
Something entirely original.
The worldview was the foundation of everything. The more complete and detailed it was, the stronger every card built on top of it would be. And if the initial framework was thorough enough, future cards within the same worldview would be exponentially easier to create.
That was why Luke was willing to pour so much time into getting this right. Cut corners on the worldview, and every card you ever made from it would pay the price.
For this unified exam, the card Luke intended to build was a Duel Spirit.
From Yu-Gi-Oh.