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"The new students still taking the Trial Road's assessment probably don't even number ten by now, so there's no point wasting everyone's time. The earlier this ends, the earlier we can all formally enroll." Catching the subtle look on Elise's face, Luke gave a shrug. "Though I'll admit, I didn't expect the first one I found to be you. Seems the two of us really do share some fate."
"This kid!" Hearing Luke's words, even Tobias couldn't hold back a sucking hiss through his teeth, and the others were left simply speechless.
"Well then, thank you ever so much!" Elise shot back without a shred of good grace, and then, to Luke's bafflement, she turned and jogged off toward her Trial Crystal. "Wait for me a moment."
What is she up to? Luke watched her go, thoroughly mystified.
A short while later, Elise, having packed her Trial Crystal away and even recalled the Lethe Spider Lily to card form within her body, came bouncing back to Raidramon's side in the highest of spirits and stretched a fair, slender hand up toward Luke. "Come on. Pull me up."
"And what exactly are you planning?" It was Luke's turn now to look at Elise with a decidedly subtle expression. He could never quite seem to keep up with the circuitry of this girl's brain.
"I'm hardly a match for a great monster like you," Elise said with a roll of her eyes. "So I'd do far better to stick close by your side, wait for you to clear away everyone else, and then withdraw from the Trial Road's assessment on my own initiative. Played right, I might even coast my way straight into second place!"
"Besides, we're all old acquaintances here. No need to waste time marching through the formalities."
"Well now. So you're planning to go full freeloader, are you?" Hearing Elise's plan, and above all catching that shrewd, worldly-auntie gleam settling over her face, Luke finally understood exactly what this girl was angling at.
"Freeloader? Excuse you. Our Capital's new students taking the top two spots of this entire Celestial entrance trial. Doesn't that sound absolutely delightful?" Elise gave a coquettish little huff. "And besides, I'm saving you no small amount of time here!"
"Yes, yes. You're always the one with the reason." Luke lobbed the retort back at her, though he knew perfectly well she wasn't wrong, and so he simply caught her small hand in his and pulled her up into his arms, his other arm hooking around her slim waist. "Though for what it's worth, if we genuinely did fight, I don't think it would have taken all that long either."
"Could you not spare me even one single shred of face?" A flush of red climbed Elise's fair little cheeks, and she shot Luke a glare, shrinking back an inch.
"Sit tight." Luke gave her small cheek a pinch amid her indignant huffing, and commanded Raidramon onward once more.
---
"No. Something is wrong. I keep feeling this iteration of the Trial Road drifting further and further off course." Watching the byplay between Luke and Elise from outside, Moira felt her heart seize up in a way no trial had ever managed before.
Everything Elise had shown until now had left her thoroughly satisfied, certain that agreeing to Roland's request had been the right call. So how was it that the instant the girl crossed paths with Luke, her entire manner went careening this far off the rails?
Is this genuinely a Card Master of the Hargrove family? That temperament resembles neither Edmund's nor Roland's in the slightest. Did she take after her mother, then?
And that scene just now carried the gravest suspicion of flagrant sweetness-flaunting! Roland never breathed one word of this when he came to me! They haven't even formally enrolled and it's already come to this. What in the world happens after enrollment?
And worst of all, I am still single, while my own student-to-be already has a partner. That puts me in an extremely awkward position!
As for Selene, her thoughts had drifted back to Ashenvale, and to the words Lilith had once let fall. "What, am I not enough for you?"
Selene knew perfectly well that Lilith hadn't meant it in the way it sounded, but watching the scene before her now, she still couldn't hold back the inner commentary. Isn't this little junior brother's luck with women running just a bit too hot?
"I rather think this is all quite fine. And besides, knowing how to read the moment is exactly what raises one's odds of survival." Tobias saw nothing improper in the scene at all, and if anything, the gossip in him stirred awake.
Strength aside, Luke was Lilith's student, and Edmund, that deathless old relic, had certainly known as much, which was precisely why he'd been at ease leaving his own granddaughter at Luke's side.
A pity. This old man has a granddaughter of his own, but she's rather difficult to put forward. At the thought, a faint regret touched Tobias, though the corner of his eye kept flicking toward Drake all the while. Well. Still better than letting the prize water flow into someone else's field entirely.
"Old Wren. What exactly is that look supposed to mean?" Tobias's little sidelong motions escaped none of Drake's notice. Old foxes both, one glance was all it took for him to guess what this old man was chewing on.
It was only that Drake had never expected Luke and Edmund's granddaughter to stand this close! As one of the lines nearest to Lilith, Drake's attention had naturally never rested on Tobias alone.
Still. So long as no relationship stood confirmed, then Dragon's Valley yet had its chance.
While the two old men squared off in silence, Selene let out a small sound of surprise. "Oh? Someone else has left their stronghold. Is he planning to do the same as Luke?"
"That would be Ansel Renshaw, out of the Southern Region. His strength runs a notch below even Elise's and Iris's. I'm honestly surprised he's held on this long." Moira came back to herself and flipped through the files in her hands, then paused. "And that heading. If I'm not mistaken, that's the stronghold where Dragon's Valley's other new student is positioned. Rather a pity for him."
Viola's strength stood level with Violet's. For Renshaw to go charging at her was, without question, walking himself to his own delivery. Not everyone carried Luke's strength, or Luke's nerve.
Hearing the two women, Drake left off his silent contest with Tobias and turned his eyes to Viola's screen instead.
Violet had already been eliminated at Luke's hands. If Viola fell as well, then Dragon's Valley would have well and truly lost its face this time.
Though going by what Moira had just said, the odds of that were low indeed.
---
"Found you at last." Gazing at the Viola before him, a thread of something bloodthirsty seeped faintly through Renshaw's eyes.
"Do we know each other?" Doubt flickered through the vertical pupils unique to Dragon's Valley's people. Her memory held not a single record concerning this man, and yet something about him prickled at her senses all the same.
"Of course we don't. But that matters not in the slightest, because after today, our paths will never cross again." A flash of open madness crossed Renshaw's face, and from within his robes he drew out a key whose surface bled an eerie, creeping purple light.
The instant her eyes landed on the key in Renshaw's hand, Viola's pupils contracted hard, her whole body beginning to tremble, a revulsion rising up from somewhere far beneath thought.
As though sensing its master's distress, the Earthring Dragon loosed a roar of pure fury and charged Renshaw head-on. The card spirit, too, had sensed that the object in this man's hand was anything but ordinary.
"Too late. And in what comes next, it will not be only the two of you. Everyone else on this Trial Road will be buried alongside you." Madness brimming over in his eyes, Renshaw drove the key into the empty air before him and twisted. "If you must blame someone, blame your own kind, you relics of Dragon's Valley! The great Dragon of Chaos will, in the end, seize back everything that belongs to Dragon's Valley."
"You... you're the Dragon Renegades?!" Viola's face transformed utterly. In the space of a breath she understood everything, her vertical eyes flooding with disbelief, and hard on its heels, fury.
WHOOOM!
Gust upon gust of dark, keening wind spread outward from where Renshaw stood, and in the very instant the dark wind appeared, Renshaw's body detonated where he stood, never granted so much as the chance to hear out Viola's rage.
And in the next breath, every last new student within the Trial Road was brushed by a presence beyond all naming, and then, one and all, they vanished from the world.