The plaza buzzed with nervous energy, hundreds of students clustered in anxious little groups, their voices tangling into a wall of noise that Luke rcer could feel in his teeth.
"I heard this exam's gonna be the sa difficulty as last year's college entrance test. That one was brutal."
"I just need a decent score, man. Sothing to build on before the real thing."
"I've been grinding for a solid month. Locked in. No social life. This is my ti."
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 co to love about this world.
Because this wasn't his world. Not originally, anyway.
Luke rcer had transmigrated here years ago, and by now, the mories 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 lifeti away. Literally.
This world ran on Magic Cards.
Not the flimsy cardboard kind he used to sleeve up for tournants back ho. 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 governnt job with lifeti 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 ti to make her."
In Luke's professional opinion and he considered himself very professional when it ca 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 sothing special.
Lucky for him, his head was a walking encyclopedia of ani and gaming characters. Years of binging shows, grinding gacha gas, and arguing tier lists on forums had finally, finally beco a marketable skill. Every character he rembered was a potential Card Spirit, and nearly every one of them ca pre-packaged with a worldview detailed enough to build on.
He pulled up his status panel a ntal interface that every awakened Card Master could see, visible to no one else.
「 Luke rcer 」
Level: One-Star Soldier
First Authority · Fantasy Forge: Enhances mories 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 ani protagonist. Every overpowered final boss. Every waifu he'd ever saved a wallpaper of.
All of them were fair ga.
The Starter Pack in his material slot was the system's welco 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 developnt, 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 rembered.
Yu-Gi-Oh. Digimon. Fate/Grand Order. Kantai Collection. The list went on and on, and every franchise ca 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 co 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.
Ti 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 sa mont. Across the entire city, every single candidate blinked out of existence and reappeared sowhere else entirely.
The exam wasn't held in the real world. It took place in a dedicated Dinsional Plane — a pocket dinsion 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 ti. There are no restrictions on card level or quantity. 」
「 Candidates who successfully construct a Magic Card within the ti limit will advance to Phase Two. Failure to do so will result in disqualification and imdiate 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 sa rules was doing the exact sa thing — cracking open their Card Editors and getting to work.
The ti limit for Phase One was generous on paper, but constructing a Magic Card especially a high-star one ate through ti 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 elental 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 frawork.
Sothing 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 frawork was thorough enough, future cards within the sa worldview would be exponentially easier to create.
That was why Luke was willing to pour so much ti 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.
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