Shouren thought as he felt an invisible click inside his heart once the [Rare] spell card settled. He wondered what his grandma would have to say if she knew her grandson had a priceless [Rare] card equipped. The Dimensional Vault card alone was worth more than their house and all their belongings.
“Open.”
The boy whispered eagerly, activating the spell card for the first time.
A beam of white light flashed in his mind’s eye, and 3x3 meters alabaster room expanded before Shouren. The porcelain walls were reminiscent of an aged ivory marble.
Donkey’s balls, this is huge!
The boy stared in awe. He could fit his entire room in there. To test a few things, Shouren deactivated the ability and opened his status. Since the spell card was slotted in his heart, the whole process was smooth and effortless.
Status
Name: Shouren
Tier: 0 [Synchronization: 1%]
Class: Cardsmith [Common]
Spell Card Slots: 1/1 - Dimensional Vault [Rare]
Lumen: 3/10 (-5)
Strength: F
Agility: F
Constitution: F
Intelligence: F
Class Abilities
1 - Card Forge
2 - Sharding
3 - Card Sacrifice
Traits:
1 - Corrupted Cardsmith [Unique]
2 - Locked
3 - Locked
“My lumen is didn’t budge. So with the permanent 5 lumen deduction, I can use it for an unlimited number of times. Okay, that’s not a bad deal.”
Shouren mumbled with satisfaction. If he had to pay an additional lumen for each activation of the vault, it would drain him in seconds.
“Did my synchronization go up?”
He just noticed the subtle change in his evolution bar. He was 1% closer to Tier 1. Shouren furrowed his eyes in contemplation. Was it because of using the Sharding ability?
No, he’d used his other class abilities like Card Sacrifice before and that never budged his synchronization bar. What was the reason?
“Is it because I finally decided to think like a Cardsmith?”
Shouren’s hazel eyes lit up with revelation. That had to be it. Even after awakening with the Cardsmith class card, he’d been fighting his battles like a warrior, contrary to his class. Only now, he’d changed his approach and decided to fully utilize the versatile capabilities unique to his class.
I need to find someone to tell me the basics about the synchronization.
The boy put that to the back of his mind and resumed his experimentation with the [Rare] spell card.
“Let’s try putting something inside.”
Shouren tottered over to the closest stick on the ground and picked it up, willing it to go inside in the vault. It vanished without a trace from his hand, and instantly appeared in the white room.
With a grin, Shouren tried to summon it and un-summon it multiple times. There was no loss of time. It was instantaneous. This time, Shouren flung the stick a few meters away from him and tried to put it into his vault.
It didn’t work.
He walked closer to the stick while repeatedly trying to store it. The stick remained on the ground. Only when his feet finally touched the wood, did the stick vanish into his vault.
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Alright, some contact needs to be made to store anything inside the Dimensional Vault. I can’t put things I’m not touching inside.
Shouren nodded his head. He was understanding the limitations of the spell card the more he got familiar with it.
For the next part, the boy tried to summon the stick away from him. Until now, Shouren had been visualizing the stick to appear on his hand. Could he make it appear away from him?
Plop.
The stick appeared mid-air a few feet away from Shouren and dropped to the ground.
“It works! I need to touch something to store it, but I can pull it out without touching the same object.”
Shouren bounced with joy and tried to summon the stick very far away from him. It didn’t work.
Hmm.
The boy tried to summon the stick 2 meters away from him. It worked.
Then he tried 3 meters and it worked once again, but when he attempted to summon it 4 meters away from him, the spell card didn’t trigger.
“3 meters is the maximum limit. It’s the same as the size of the Dimensional Vault.”
Shouren made a note to remember it. He repeated this a few more times, summoning it above him, behind him, and to the sides. The stick appeared as long as it was within a 3 meter radius from his center.
“Last test then.”
Putting the stick back in the vault, Shouren unequipped Dimensional Vault from his spell slot. He watched as the incandescent ball of lumen trailed from his heart and towards his palm, illuminating his hand as the blue card coalesced there.
Without wasting a breath, Shouren equipped the [Rare] spell card again.
The alabaster 3x3 room was back… but there was no stick inside.
“I figured. The room gets destroyed if I un-equip the card and I’ll lose anything I stored inside.”
Shouren pouted. He couldn’t un-equip the spell card mid-battle to regain his 5 lumen. He already had an inkling of this outcome but it was best to confirm it as well. He was curious where the stick went. It didn’t drop to the ground. It was simply gone. Was it in the void?
“That should be enough experiments. Time for the final touches.”
Shouren slapped his cheeks in excitement and dashed toward the rocky shore. His preparations were now complete, and the traps were set in motion.
This was Shouren’s first true battle as a Cardsmith.
“Oh, that’s the spot.”
Sitting alone in the forest glade, a small human figure was hunched over a small crude campfire with skewers of meat poked into the grass around it. The delectable aroma of cooked meat wafted in the area, along with the smoke from the fire.
“This is the best meat ever!”
Shouren yelled into the empty air, singing praises for the roasted badger meat as he bit into it.
Yuck! It doesn’t taste any better after being cooked as well.
The boy gagged inwardly at the rancid flavor. Outwardly, he was putting on a show. For the traps to work, the monsters had to be focused on him and not pay close attention to why the branches were all laid out on the forest floor when the trees were a bit further away.
Shouren had to play the ignorant role to lure the monsters out. If they thought his guard was down, the more likely they’d be to get closer to him without much vigilance.
It was a burdensome task to start the fire, as the boy had never done it before. However, after much trial and error, he used the friction of a sturdy stick and some ground wood dust to start the ember.
“Look at that fat dripping over the fire!”
The boy continued to advertise the foul meat.
There was no fat dripping.
This is a bit embarrassing.
Shouren blushed inside. He felt like a street seller on the market, but he was selling to no one. There weren’t even any customers around. But he had to do this because his F ranked attributes wouldn’t be able to detect the monsters unless he came much closer. This was an act for the monsters that were already stalking him after he lit the fire.
The four shards on the reinforced pits sparkled under the skylight.
Despite not sensing any monsters nearby, Shouren continued to make noise. After what seemed like an hour of ‘Ooh’ing and ‘Ahh’ing after the meat, he heard the faintest rustle of a leaf being moved.
Something’s there.
Shouren didn’t raise his head or turned around, and kept his eyes on the meat cooking over the fire. He wouldn’t have heard the leaf if it wasn’t for his intense concentration on the surroundings. Whatever it was, it made no noise while moving over the branches in the vicinity.
It was a monster with stealth.
“The salt really brings out the flavor of this succulent meat.”
The boy raised the skewer and munched on it with relish.
There was no salt.
A pair of reptilian eyes bore into the back of the small human.
The human was busy eating, as he didn’t notice the mighty snake and its beautiful, dark-violet scales. The snake silently hissed with annoyance. How rude of the human to not admire its sheen. It didn’t matter. It was a merciful monster and it would break the human’s neck with its fangs before devouring him. But it needed to collect the shard first.
The 2 meter long snake noiselessly slithered to the shard, its reptilian eyes flushed with greed. For a brief moment, it turned its head to glance at the human. The dumb human was still busy eating. Good.
Hmm. The snake sensed more shards around. Its scales vibrated with glee and rushed to the first shard. It would be closer to evolution after consuming these shards.
Thud.
Right as the quarter of the snake’s body was over the covered pit, it abruptly fell inside the trap along with the shard. The monster panicked for a second but hissed with irritation when it saw there was nothing else in the pit. It was just a hole. It could easily climb out of it.
Out of nowhere, the small human appeared over the pit with a stupid grin on his face. The boy had a sharp wooden stick in his hand.
The snake snorted in derision, its scales relaxing from tension. The human was a dim-wit if he thought he could penetrate the snake’s scales with that poor toothpick of a weapon. Just as the snake was about to coil up and launch itself at the human, the boy did something unexpected.
He tossed a handful of dirt over the snake’s eyes.
The monster was amused by the small human. It didn’t need to hunt with its eyes. It had other senses it could use to track the boy. Its forked tongue tracked the direction of the boy as the monster once again attempted to strike.
Suddenly, the snake smelled… saltwater?
Before the monster could gather its sight, it felt all the shadows bloom around the pit. The sky was turning dark.
No, the pit was turning dark.
In that fraction of a second, the snake’s vision cleared, but it had no time to escape as the massive boulder hit its body.
And then it knew no more.
“Sweet peaches, it worked!”
Shouren ardently touched the top of the huge boulder and summoned it back into his vault, revealing the flattened snake monster on the bottom of the pit.
His crazy plan had worked.
Back when he initially he saw the rocks and boulders near the river, a plan had started to formulate within his mind. With the snake trapped inside the pit, Shouren momentarily blinded the monster and then swiftly summoned the large boulder 3 meters above the pit.
The snake was crushed under the gravelly pressure.
“It didn’t get the shard.”
Shouren sighed with relief. He’d killed the snake before it could eat his precious shard. It was then the boy’s attention was captivated by the glow hovering over the flattened snake.
It was 5 cards.
Two green and three gray cards.
It was Shouren’s biggest haul from any monster. However, that wasn’t the end of the surprises.
[Attribute upgraded. Intelligence F —> E]
Status
Name: Shouren
Tier: 0 [Synchronization: 1%]
Class: Cardsmith [Common]
Spell Card Slots: 1/1 - Dimensional Vault [Rare]
Lumen: 15/20 (-5)
Strength: F
Agility: F
Constitution: F
Intelligence: E
Class Abilities
1 - Card Forge
2 - Sharding
3 - Card Sacrifice
Traits:
1 - Corrupted Cardsmith [Unique]
2 - Locked
3 - Locked
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