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"True enough." Watching the dragon-grudge fierce beasts cresting up without end, Luke nodded, and with a sweep of his hand, he summoned out Dark Magician Girl and Angewomon.
The grudge-beasts carried the Anti-Dragon Trait among their skills, able to shave down incoming attacks from dragon-kind while amplifying the harm they dealt to dragon-kind in turn, and so Luke summoned neither Red-Eyes Black Dragon nor the projection body of Timaeus.
Granted, with those two's strength, layered further with the attack-boosting blessing of the Libra Holy Sword Core, the grudge-beasts' anti-dragon trait would likely still have failed to fully blunt their assault. But there was no need whatsoever to take on that kind of thankless, uphill work, all the more when he was hardly short of cards from outside the dragon family.
As for Angewomon, Blanc had already completed the self-evolution within the dimensional plane, which was why Luke could finish the summons in a single instant. Such was the benefit of having a Digimon's information registered within the D-Ark.
There was no need for Luke to issue any command at all. The moment the two women were summoned into being, they had already launched their attacks.
"Dark Magic Inheritance! Magic Formula! Open!"
Dark Burning Attack!
Dark Magician Girl stood level with these grudge-beasts in grade, and her attribute formed no counter against theirs. But her quality ran higher, and with the Libra Holy Sword Core's blessing layered on, and the Dark Magic Inheritance and the Magic Formula both thrown open, her attack power climbed soaring. A single Dark Burning Attack hammered down into a field of scattered wreckage, and a follow-up spell swept up the remainder. The grudge-beasts had barely finished cresting from the earth before the whole wave of them was flipped outright.
Heaven's Charge!
Compared to Dark Magician Girl, Angewomon regarded these beasts, ridden as they were by the grudges of dragons, with open loathing, and when she killed, her hands held back nothing at all.
The cross-shaped blaze of Heaven's Charge detonated, clearing a vast swath of dragon-grudge fierce beasts in a single stroke, and the beasts caught along its path could not manage so much as a block before that power of light snuffed them out where they stood.
Heaven's Charge carried a purifying effect within it, one that not only scattered every strengthening effect off any target it struck, but, more crucial by far, dealt doubled damage against enemies of the darkness attribute.
The grudge-beasts were not merely attribute-countered to death against Angewomon; they were eating the full weight of that doubled-damage effect besides, while their own anti-dragon trait accomplished exactly nothing here, and Mistform shaved down physical damage alone. One could fairly say they stood buried beneath a full stack of debuffs.
"Ssss!" Watching it unfold, Elise sucked down a breath of cold air despite herself. "Goodness gracious! I already thought that Angewomon of yours was outrageous back during the exam, but isn't this a little beyond all reason? You're the absolute king of monsters, you know that?!"
And it was not Elise alone. Even the Lethe Spider Lily, a plant-system card spirit of the full Seven-Star grade, stood frozen in this moment, the maiden in her red wedding gown gaping blankly at Angewomon. Is that genuinely a card spirit of the same grade as me? Attribute counter or no attribute counter, isn't that destructive power simply defying the heavens?
And Dark Magician Girl over there. You're supposed to be a Six-Star card spirit! Why does your destruction read like something past the Seven-Star line?
In this moment, the Lethe Spider Lily finally understood why the Silver-Crowned Mandrake Queen and the others would shiver despite themselves whenever Luke came up in conversation. She was even beginning to harbor doubts as to whether she herself might be a counterfeit Seven-Star card spirit.
As for the Eternal Crystal Orchid, that mature beauty of a card spirit hazily recalled the scene from the training match of days past, when the Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl had blasted her apart outright, and parasol in hand, she quietly drifted a few more steps away from the two monsters.
Her assigned role might well be that of a defensive plant card, but that hardly meant she harbored some fondness for taking beatings.
"Standard operations. Nothing worth all the gawking." Called a monster yet again, Luke's expression stayed serene as ever, though the hand at the end of his arm never paused for a moment, both sides working in concert as he took Elise's little round face in a fresh two-handed pinch.
And say what one would, set against Lyra's, the feel of this face genuinely belonged to another world entirely. If Luke were ever forced to choose, he would pick Elise's without a heartbeat's hesitation. The plush, rounded texture of this little face was, in a word, unmatched.
Set upon by Luke once more, Elise could do nothing but endure it in silence, because she had made the miserable discovery that in her current position, she was nothing more than a lamb laid out on the board, without one shred of the chance or the capacity to resist, and it left her wanting to weep with no tears to shed.
Why in the world was I such a towering genius back then?
That said, Luke didn't push it far, stopping the moment the craving passed.
"Scoundrel!" Rubbing her pinch-reddened little face, Elise ground her pearly teeth at him. Were it not for the position and the setting both being so thoroughly wrong for it, she would genuinely have liked to give Luke one good, hard bite.
A pity that, upon seeing Luke's hand drift upward again with entirely deliberate carelessness, Elise very tactfully sheathed her little tiger-fangs away.
While the green hills still stand, there's no fear of running out of firewood! I refuse to believe I'll be bullied by you forever!
These two best friends truly never do learn. Watching her, Luke laughed without an ounce of charity, and then he turned and flung an Extract at one of the grudge-beast corpses.
As mutated beasts, perhaps something special could be stripped from the dragon-grudge fierce beasts' remains.
And while the two of them had been trading blows, Dark Magician Girl, Angewomon, and the Lethe Spider Lily had already resolved every last grudge-beast on the field, while the Eternal Crystal Orchid held the defensive face, sealing out the stray attacks that slipped the net, and swallowing one such strike whole without so much as swaying.
*「 Extraction successful. Obtained: Chaos Aura ×1! 」*
*「 Chaos Aura: A special material produced only by dragon-grudge fierce beasts that have long survived within the Dark Purgatory, having absorbed the aura of dragon-kind, the aura of fierce beasts, and the power of the extra-domain's dimensional chaos-currents. Should too much of it be gathered, signs of chaotification will begin to emerge. 」*
"Chaos Aura?" Studying the wisp of strange, drifting aura in his hand, Luke rubbed at his chin. "Rather interesting, this. Perhaps it could serve in crafting the cards of the Chaos Ritual."
Granted, he could always derive suitable materials himself through the ability to rewrite and reorganize, but with ready-made stock sitting right here, that spared him no small measure of effort all the same.
"Oh? That material does look rather special." Elise found her attention drawn by the Chaos Aura as well, leaning in close against Luke's side, a thread of open curiosity flickering through her pretty eyes.
"Special indeed." Several more Extracts went flying out, and the count of Chaos Aura in Luke's hand swelled considerably. "Though it seems these grudge-beasts yield nothing beyond Chaos Aura. Rather a one-note table of materials."
Storing the Chaos Aura away into the Card Editor, Luke glanced down at her, tone turning to a tease. "What's this, then? Done being angry?"
"Hmph! I happen to be an extremely magnanimous person. This once, I'll forgive you." Elise ground her teeth as she said it, choosing in the end to follow the wisdom of her heart, though deep down she quietly marked the account. Sooner or later, there will come a day when I ride on YOUR head and collect justice back with interest.
"Is that so?" And at that, beneath Elise's helpless, glaring protest, Luke reached out once more and took her plump little cheeks in both hands, pinching to his heart's content before, a long moment later, withdrawing in deep satisfaction.
"Right. Time we were moving." Ignoring the enormous white roll of her eyes, Luke dropped a pat on her head, then gathered her close as Raidramon surged into motion, the rest of the card spirits falling in behind them.
"Don't you treat me like a child!" From the place where Raidramon's figure had vanished, Elise's faintly indignant protest came drifting back.