"You have wind powers?" Someone exclaimed as Lexie's teammates and opponents picked themselves off the floor.

"No," she responded.

"Then how on Earth did you do that?"

"With a card I–" Lexie caught herself before she made the gruesome mistake of exposing that she made the card, because then she'd probably be asked to show the card. She couldn't show anyone <True Windbreaker>. What if someone here realized that the card was way more powerful than it was supposed to be? So far, there were no card experts in this school–due to there not being any card-based [Heroes]–but what if they got one to confirm that Lexie's card was outrageously overpowered?

No, they wouldn't go that far. She hadn't done anything wrong yet, at least nothing close to what she'd done in the AFC. Plus, she'd only borrowed a little bit of Eldritch mana. In total, the mana required to activate that combination, including the waste mana, was just over 400 MP, which was still under her MP ceiling. She'd only needed the extra Eldritch mana to replace the mana she had already spent activating <All-Around Protection>. All in all, it wasn't too much mana for her to convincingly use.

Lexie made all the justifications in her head, convincing herself that what she'd done wasn't really out of the ordinary. That didn't stop her classmates from staring at her as though she'd sprouted two heads, though.

"Well, baby Sparrowfoot." Bonds looked like she wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. "I have to say I expected to be impressed, but not quite like that."

Lexie blushed. "Yeah, sorry. Maybe I went a little overboard."

"No worries." She was fully grinning now. "I'll give that one an eighty percent pass. You managed to eliminate the other targets without killing them, and you saved both hostages. In the real world, though, you might want to avoid attacking your allies as well."

"Yeah, you're right." Lexie blushed. She turned to her teammates. "Sorry, guys."

"It's okay," Anais said. "We won and that's what matters."

"Yeah." Thankfully, no one on her team, save one or two people, looked annoyed. They were mostly still staring at her in shock.

"Now, Tommy," Bonds gave the speedster an arched look. "You completely forgot that the point of this exercise was saving hostages, not antagonizing Gunther. That's not really heroic behaviour, but you managed to be a significant challenge for the other team, so…that's something, I suppose."

Tommy shrugged. "I figured since they weren't letting me get at the mannequin and Gunther was on my butt constantly, I might as well make his life hell too. That way, no one wins."

"Interesting choice." She brushed her chin. "You would make an excellent [Villain], Tommy."

"Thank you." Tommy laid a hand on his chest and responded genuinely, like she'd given him a legitimate compliment and not an underhanded insult. She rolled her eyes.

"Did you do all that with card magic?" Bonds asked Lexie again.

"Yeah," Lexie answered.

"Well, those must be some cards," she said. "Do you mind if I take a look at them after class? I'm not a card mage, or any mage for that matter, but I'm curious about this whole thing of using cards for combat. I've never seen that before."

Lexie internally gulped. This was what she was afraid of, but it would probably be fine. She had a Party Planner Deck card combination in mind, which could kinda sorta mimic that Windbreaker effect. So she should be in the clear.

"Sure. I don't use my cards as they're supposed to be used, though. I make tweaks here and there depending on what I want."

"I thought cards were supposed to be inflexible."

"They are," Lexie said, and after a moment of silence, Bond's grin widened.

"Alright. Stay after class and show me the cards. Everyone else, good job. No notes, just work on your reflexes and get better at, well, everything. Alright?"

"Yes, Bonds." They chorused as they walked off the field

Anais instantly stuck herself to Lexie's side, her eyes bright as she asked, "Did you use cards to do all that?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Can I see?" she asked. "Also, can I borrow them?"

"Um…" That might be problematic. Not only would it blow her cover, but it would also mean risking Anais's life by letting her use a card with no safeguards. "I don't know. I don't really use them conventionally, so I doubt they would be much use to you. It's mostly about mana control."

Lexie was sure she probably sounded like she was bragging and gatekeeping, but she'd rather be that than be someone who knowingly endangered someone's life.

"Oh, I see." Anais's light didn't dim much, and she followed up with, "Well, can you make me a card that does something similar that I can actually use? I swear I'll pay you five hundred credits for it."

Lexie was poised to say no, but the amount suggested had her going, "Seriously?"

"Yup."

"Her family's loaded," someone from the other team said.

"Buzz off, Munir."

He snickered as he walked away, and Anais turned back to Lexie. Lexie was still about to turn her down, but the combination of Anais's hopeful gaze and the potential money she could make from this had her saying, "I'll think about it."

"Yay."

Lexie shrugged. It might not be possible to make a safe card for Anais that had the same ability as <True Windbreaker>, but she could try. At worst, if it didn't work, she would just let her know. Or maybe she could make and sell Anais another card that helped her telekinesis.

A telekinetic card, Lexie mused as she sat back down. That might be useful for me too.

"That was really good, Lexie," Henrietta said.

"Thanks, Henrietta."

"Show off," Xena said, although she looked proud.

"Takes one to know one," Lexie responded. Dewie was quiet, and when she called his name, he only gave her a mild smile. He was probably still thinking about his performance, poor kid. Jace, who was sitting with a crew a little bit away from them, gave her a thumbs-up.

Lexie hung back as people started leaving class. She was approached by even more people asking about her cards.

A girl with dyed green hair came up and whispered, "Hey, did you use cards for your fight? I mean, I saw them shatter in your hands, but I wasn't sure."

"Yeah, I did."

"That's so cool. I'm a spell user, but I can't think of any spells that can do what you did, especially none within my specialty. Even then, it would use a ton of mana. But you're a C-Rank, so you have less mana than I do, which means I should be able to use cards like you. How did you do that? What Starter Deck did you use?"

"Um…" Spell users, like card users, often had to specialize in a starter spellbook that covered the same general field.

"I don't have a starter deck yet," Lexie said. "And to be honest, I'm not sure if I can teach you what I do. It's more than a little complicated."

"Oh. I get it." The girl looked disappointed and more than a little resentful. She probably didn't believe Lexie either. Maybe she thought Lexie was intentionally brushing her off, because she didn't say anything else as she slouched off to join her friends.

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Lexie felt bad, but she was being honest. Even if it were safe, she couldn't teach anyone to use magic the way she did. It had taken a lot of time and effort to get where she was, not to mention special help from her dad and Naem. It would take ages to coach someone up to her level, and they might still never get there.

Jeez, I sound like an absolute tool right now.

"I feel bad," she told Xena, who had decided to wait with her while Dewie left with Jace and his friends.

"Don't," Xena said. "You worked really hard for your skills. You're not obligated to spoon-feed it to people."

"It's not that," Lexie told Xena. "I would have taught her if I could. I don't believe in gatekeeping these things." Especially since her goal was to have mundanes use cards anyway.

If she could somehow make powerful cards while offsetting the magic involved, maybe using wells and land cards as a source of magic, then why not–

Something hit her then, right at that moment. It filtered through her brain as she realized that there was something she hadn't considered, a way to make cards that might not require her to be in a dungeon or an Eldritch enclave.

A land card.

Of course. Why hasn't she thought about it before?

"Earth to Lexie," Xena said, "Did you lose your train of thought again?"

"Um, no…" Lexie said, coughing. "It was just something I realized. Anyway, as I was saying, if I could actually teach her, I would. I just can't."

"Yeah, I get that," Xena said.

Lexie waited for Bonds to finish up with another student she was talking to, and in that time, two more spell-users approached Lexie to see if they could use or buy her card deck.

They were an A and a B Ranker, and they saw Lexie's deck as a way to elevate their skill with less mana used. The B Ranker even offered her two thousand credits for <True Windkiller>.

Lexie once again felt like shit turning them down.

Finally, it was her turn to meet Bonds, who said to Lexie, "Alright, Baby Sparrowfoot. Let's see those cards."

Lexie materialized the Party Planner deck and handed it over. "I used four of the cards from this deck, but I combined the pathways to create a special effect. I can show you the exact process on a notepad." She was bluffing with that last sentence, but Bonds bought it.

"No, that's fine," she said, flipping through the deck. "This looks like a standard deck."

"It is," Lexie said."I just use it in a nonstandard way."

"Hmm. You know, I was going to pick on you a little during class today, simply to get back at your dad for all the shit he pulled when I was in his class. But alas, it looks like I won't get to do that."

Lexie was alarmed. "Pick on me, how?"

"Oh, nothing bad." Bonds waved her hand. "Just the usual, 'you can do better than that,' 'you're not applying yourself,' comments. That's the schtick he used to feed me all the time in his Unbound magic class."

"You took Unbound magic? But you said you're not a mage."

"I'm not. I gave it up after my third year and transformed my free mana to physical stats instead. So now I'm the strongest and fastest I've ever been and don't have to use magic for anything. Isn't it great?"

"Yeah," Lexie said slowly. She had never heard of any unbound user affixing their magic in such a way before. Typically, only bound magic users did that. Unbound magic users usually had too much free mana to turn purely physical. "What were you? A B-Rank?"

"An A-Rank," she said.

"I didn't know A-Ranks could transform free mana into physical mana."

"It was hard, but I didn't have an affinity towards any magic type, so it was easier for me to affix it to my strength instead."

Lexie nodded, and Bonds handed her back the card. "You did well. I'll see you around. Tell your father I said hi."

"Okay," Lexie said, and then she left with Xena, who was waiting for her at the door.

"I think I'm going to tone it down for the next gym class," Lexie murmured to Xena. The last thing she needed was any more attention on her. She didn't want them to start asking questions and digging deeper into her background, maybe requesting more testing to see if she's truly just a level 7 C-Rank Mage.

Yeah, if that ever happened, it would be her cue to tell her dad to get her the heck out of here.

For now, everything was calm. She organized her mind into a series of tasks and listed all the things she needed to research.

First, she needed to look into her theory of using a land card connected to the Eldritch Realm to somehow create powerful non-system limited cards in the human realm.

The second was to figure out how to use a card to extract or suppress the demon inside a boy.

And the third was to make cards that would be able to take down Weiss Wavelost and her Shadowsbane friend, just in case she needed to fight them again.

She had a feeling that the last one would be the hardest.

After she got to her lab, she instantly began the work.

Her theory with the land cards was this: land cards were used during a time when Earth had no external or ambient mana, and so they siphoned that mana from magic wells in the Fae Planet.

But mana generation wasn't all they did; if not, a generator would be able to do the same thing.

The thing with land cards, as she had studied them, was that they didn't just source power from a well, but they also gave the proper dimensional environment possible for the card to work, but only localized it within the card. That was to say, they presented the ambient mana needed for magic to work, but that ambient mana environment only existed within the card itself.

So Lexie's question was, what if she made a land card that was connected to the Eldritch Realm, hence whatever she linked it to would then be imbued with those same environmental properties. So if she could connect that land card with the creation of another card, the created card would assume properties from the Eldritch realm, and it would be practically the same thing as creating a card in an Eldritch realm itself.

She could then use her ambassadorial key to activate and incorporate it on Earth.

Was that possible? Would that work?

She didn't know, but she would check in with Naem. If it didn't work, it would mean that she would have to move her tools, one by one, into the dream world and bring them out, which would get tedious after some time.

If it did work, though, it would basically mean she could create any card she wanted from the comfort of her lab. Of course, she wouldn't make too many cards this way, so as not to speed up her Eldritch metamorphosis. Most of her cards, she would try to make the Fae way, with Fae intent, even though she hadn't gotten a single Fae intent since she began making cards. But she would keep trying.

But for her defense deck and cards like the one she was making for Jett, she would need more power and more flexibility than what the Fae system provided. In the end, it would work in her favor, too, if she managed to create a card that could maybe suppress her Eldritchness.

But she was getting ahead of herself. First, she needed to figure out a way to somehow buy or create a land card and link it to the Eldritch Realm in her dreams.

Land cards were created on the Fae planet, so there wasn't that much information on their creation in Earth textbooks. Luckily, the few sources that Lexie found were in Fae Script IV, and Lexie was fluent enough in it to understand. Through the long-winded sentences and cross-referencing with other sources, Lexie figured out that land cards' pathway sequences were made from a combination of a siphoning pathway, a trapping pathway, and a transcendent pathway. It looked easy enough to make, and the good thing was that she needed a trapping pathway anyway.

Two birds with one stone. What a nice coincidence.

While she worked that one out, she also tried to figure out if she could get an intent for a card that would trap an Eldritch.

That sent her back on the Undernet.

After searching for hours and getting a mixture of superstition and fact, she finally got curious enough to text her father, asking, Is it possible to trap an Eldritch creature in a card?

He answered instantly by calling her. "Lexie, don't do that. You don't know how it would affect your soul."

"It's not for me," she told him. "It's for my friend." She explained his situation briefly, and Aiden sighed.

"That's a shame. But don't try to extract the Eldritch spirit out of him. You don't know how that would impact him, especially given that the relevant authorities have decided to keep it in."

"I think it's because they want to use him as a Hulk."

"A who?"

Oh shoot. Wrong Earth. "He's an action figure from Earth 2. Kind of like Ma'alu from that show we watched that one time."

"Oh, I see. I still don't think you should disturb the creature without knowing more." He paused. "Maybe try to suppress the adverse effect first."

"Alright. Do you think the Eldritch is combined with his soul like with me?"

"I doubt it. It took a lot to combine with your soul, and it's not something that can be done by accident. Just run it by me first before you use any card on him."

"Okay." Lexie was quiet for a few more seconds and then said, "I wanted to tell Xena about me. About what I am."

Aiden's silence spoke of his conflict. He probably wanted to tell her not to, but he swallowed it down and said, "That's your prerogative, honeybee."

"But you don't want me to."

He sighed. "There's no way to know how she would react. There's a reason I haven't told Max or Emma or anyone else. It puts you in danger."

"I get it. I just don't like keeping a secret from her."

"I understand that, honey. And I'm sorry you have to."

Lexie sighed, and after she hung up with her dad, she moved on to the next thing on her agenda, trying to figure out a card that worked against the two elementals she'd met.

The problem was that she wasn't even entirely sure how their powers worked. She suspected they were probably made of water and darkness, respectively, but she needed to get a feel of their pathways to understand the exact mechanism of action, and she needed the intent for it. It should have come to her when she was fighting them. It was always easier for her to sense intent when she was in battle, but nothing had popped up.

She closed her eyes and tried to put herself back in that mindspace. Maybe if she could induce fear and adrenaline, it would work. She envisioned how irate she was when Shadowsbane muffled her mouth, and how mad she was to see Jett cry. Then she took it a step further, remembering her dream with the V'Sala, the anger she felt, combined with the self-loathing for all the sadistic things it had put in her head.

Did it put it in your head, or was it already there?

Unbidden, an image of Xena flashed in her mind, expressing that very same loathing when Lexie told her about what she was.

"You're a monster," imaginary Xena whispered, and the disgust on her face hurt.

Just then, an intent floated in her mind, sensed by a stray thought cementing in her psyche.

Kill The Light.

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