Anime Magic Card Era

Chapter 139: Chapter 138: Turns Out Cards Are the Real Sweethearts

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A Card Master is the creator of their card spirits. The line was domineering in the extreme, and at the same time it articulated the essential relationship between a Card Master and their card spirits.

Paired with everything Luke had demonstrated up to now, the declaration didn’t strike Lilith as arrogant in the slightest. If anything, it made her feel that Luke embodied the idea to perfection.

More than that, Luke’s words had affected even her. Not to the point of letting her immediately construct a new card, but they had undeniably elevated her inspiration to a higher plane, sharpening her creative approach to conceiving a new card considerably.

At the thought, Lilith couldn’t help studying Luke closely once more.

She’d had a premonition from the start that she would gain inspiration for a new card from this new student of hers. She simply hadn’t expected it to come this fast, or to arrive as such a singular idea.

Lilith’s talent was extraordinarily high, unmatched among her entire generation, which was precisely why she’d been able to ascend to the Undying Realm. But for that same reason, there had never been anyone who could offer her help with card crafting. From the very beginning, she had walked the road alone.

"What an unexpected gain." Lilith murmured the words under her breath, an unfamiliar flavor stirring somewhere in her chest, a sensation she’d never known before.

"Master, what are you saying?" Subjected once again to Lilith’s intent scrutiny, Luke registered considerable pressure, especially given that she was his teacher.

"Nothing." Lilith brushed back a stray strand of hair near her ear, her cherry lips parting, the vivid red curving into a lovely arc. "I simply think you’re rather cute."

"Master, please stop teasing me." At her words, Luke could only manage a wry laugh. Lilith was practically his natural nemesis, and the critical detail was that she was so very, very good at flirting.

"All right." Having had her fun at Luke’s expense, Lilith was thoroughly satisfied. "Since you have ideas of your own, I won’t interfere too much with your decisions. As for how far you’ll grow in the future, I’ll be watching with anticipation."

"I won’t disappoint you, Master." On that point, Luke had no shortage of confidence.

After the meal, the two of them were in no rush to head back, instead wandering through Ashenvale at leisure. Perhaps because she’d come away with such fine inspiration for a new card, Lilith had proposed the idea on another impulse.

"Come to think of it, it’s been a very long time since I last strolled a night market like this." Gazing at Ashenvale, grown more vibrant still beneath the lamplight, Lilith couldn’t help a wistful pang.

The wistfulness faded quickly, though. A different position meant different scenery, naturally. It was something many Card Masters encountered. After becoming a Card Master, you and ordinary people came to inhabit two different worlds, and the ties between you gradually thinned.

A Card Master’s lifespan, in particular, far outstripped that of an ordinary person. In the end, the ones who could keep you company through the long years weren’t those ordinary people, but fellow Card Masters who shared your identity, and the card spirits who would never betray you.

It was one of the reasons so many Card Masters ultimately chose partners who were also Card Masters, or simply chose card spirits as their partners outright.

"Honestly, I rarely stroll night markets either," Luke said, picking up where her wistfulness left off. "But walking around like this once in a while is nice."

"After all, a Card Master is still fundamentally human. Even becoming The Supreme couldn’t change that essence of ours." The minds of powerhouses in a transcendent world weren’t so easily shaken, but Luke had lived two lives, and in his previous one he’d been nothing more than an ordinary person, so he had a perspective of his own. "A person can’t forget their roots."

"A person can’t forget their roots." Lilith repeated the line under her breath, and a flicker of surprise and delight crossed her eyes again before she tucked it away, laughing instead. "If The Supreme heard what you just said, I wonder what they’d make of it."

"Ahem. Master, there’s really no need to drag The Supreme into this." Luke coughed. With Lilith’s status, even The Supreme wasn’t all that distant a figure.

Then Luke noticed the slight upward curve at the corner of her mouth and understood at once that she was teasing him again. The vast gulf between her status and her manner left him momentarily frozen.

He hadn’t expected the Region Governor Lilith to behave, this evening, like nothing so much as a young girl, without a trace of a top-tier figure’s gravitas.

But he recovered quickly.

Just as he’d said himself, a person couldn’t forget their roots. However split the worlds had become, a Card Master remained, at the core, a member of the human race, and Lilith was no exception. An Undying Realm powerhouse, a Governor of an entire Region, and yet none of it changed the fact that Lilith was also, fundamentally, a human being.

Viewed from that angle, Lilith’s behavior was perfectly natural.

"Then it’ll depend on your performance." With that, Lilith strolled onward with elegant steps. She’d discovered that she rather enjoyed teasing this newly acquired student, a curious feeling she’d never had with Selene.

And it wasn’t a feeling she disliked.

"The before-and-after shift in Master is honestly pretty drastic." Watching her graceful retreating figure, Luke shook his head. "No wonder they say a woman’s heart is harder to fathom than the bottom of the sea. Turns out, in the end, it’s card spirits who are the real sweethearts."

"City Lord, after dinner, Lady Lilith and Luke went to stroll the night market." At the Ashenvale City Lord’s Mansion, the steward was reporting on the pair to Victor at intervals of roughly every half hour.

"Strolling the night market?" Victor frowned. "Are there any concerns on the security front?"

The night market was one of Ashenvale’s primary sources of income, opening nearly every evening, drawing the heaviest foot traffic of the day. But that massive flow of people also meant the night market grew exceedingly chaotic. Still, Victor was confident that after last night’s sweep, even any stragglers who’d slipped the net wouldn’t dare jump out.

A Region Governor, and a future top-tier card-crafting prodigy. If anything happens to either of them in Ashenvale, I may as well lie down and accept my fate. Victor’s head was pounding. Just eat your meal and go home. There’s nothing worth seeing at the night market!

"After confirming Lady Lilith and Luke’s destination, we immediately arranged personnel to sweep it again at speed, stamping out every hidden danger." The steward nodded, then a conflicted look crossed his face.

As long as Lilith and Luke came to no harm, nothing else was a problem. With that thought, Victor reached for the water cup beside him.

"What is it?" Noticing the steward’s expression, Victor prompted, "Out with it."

"According to our people’s reports, Lady Lilith and Luke appeared rather intimate." Having weighed it, the steward reported the matter faithfully. "They gave outsiders the impression of being a couple."

"Furthermore, the informant we’d placed inside the restaurant reported as well. The two of them dined in a couples’ private room." The steward naturally couldn’t expose Lilith’s identity, so the Card Masters who’d been assigned the tail had no idea that one of the targets they were following was, in fact, the single strongest existence in the entire Eastern Region.