Finally past the starting area, Kiba heads straight for the card shop. If there was one thing that going into a boss fight immediately had told him, it was that he couldn’t rely on random drops for every card. He was going to have to shell out for the premium attacks, or at least for the special attacks that didn’t drop from common enemies.

If he had something that inflicted blind during that match, there was no way it would have been his loss. Instead of focusing on preventing attacks from happening the whole time, or reflecting the sure hit instant kill attack that he couldn’t prevent, he could have spent his cards on damaging combinations. Status afflictions were clearly no joke, if it was enough to make that battle winnable. Clearly he had skipped a few starting missions by going straight into the faction quest, but stamping out the end-boss before they could become the end-boss was a tall order even for someone who had adequate power for the level. He’d even gone grinding for the higher level cards!

At least the basic things wouldn’t be that expensive, he reasoned, before opening the door and having his expectations demolished.

Apparently he had forgotten that the further along the story you go, the more expensive the things in the shops got. Want one of those cheap potions? Nope, they only have high now. The single card slots sold in this place were copies of what he already ground up to max in the forest, stab, slash, slam, poison, but nothing new. The best he could do was try his luck on the booster packs, which might have a rare card in them. Those were expensive though, twice the price of a single rare version of the commons on the shelf.

Looking down the list of prices, Kiba was pretty sure he should have been looking for random money drops.

Fifty gold for an uncommon card, and he’d only gotten four hundred for completing the demon king quest. Granted, he’d ‘completed’ it by reporting that he wasn’t able to defeat him and he’d escaped somewhere, but that was still an abysmally low amount of currency. A stay at an inn cost forty gold, and these cards were way more than that. Fortunately, he’d gotten about two hundred from the sidequests he’d taken in the village before the forest and mountain, and he’d ground in the forest long enough to get another copy of spin, along with finding some sort of plot thing that went into his key item inventory, so he had a unique ‘Twister’ now and probably wouldn’t ever need to backtrack to that place again.

Though it would cost most of his money, Kiba bought a five card booster pack for five hundred gold. A rare cost two hundred and fifty, so depending on his luck, this might be worth the money.

Slash Uncommon Cooldown: 10 Seconds Basic slashing attack. Some bleed chance. Blind Common Cooldown: 30 Seconds Basic blinding attack. Some blind chance. Amplify Common Cooldown: 5 Minutes Basic mental attack. Some empowerment chance. Confuse Common Cooldown: 1 Minute Basic mental attack. Some confuse chance. Amplify Uncommon Cooldown: 5 Seconds Advanced poison attack. Some disease chance.

That was nice, he got three new cards from this pull. Maybe that would increase the drop rate, now that he had a copy of the things. Slotting the cards into his deck, in case that had any affect on luck, Kiba looked over his assortment of cards.

Cards in Deck

Peek

1

Pierce

4

Slam

4

Slash

5

Poison

5

Confuse

5

Befuddling Cloud

1

Deadly Cloud

1

Petrify

1

Steal

5

Air Mana

5

Air Blast

4

Reflect

4

Air Jet

4

Blind (Common)

1

Disease (Uncommon)

1

Amplify (Common)

1 Unused Cards

Peek

13

Deadly Cloud

3

Space Cutter

7

Air Mana

61

Status Effect Vulnerability

3

Find Weakness

4

Confuse (Common)

1

Slash (Uncommon)

1

He might need to slot a ‘Find Weakness’ or ‘Status Effect Vulnerability’ into the deck before he next went out to grind, if only to check on the local monsters, but his current active deck was probably enough to do work on any random encounters or plot bits that he would run into while wandering around the town. There were probably mugger encounters in alleys, or rats in the sewer, or something along those lines, and in a plot related match that was actually important, he’d have the opportunity to switch around his cards before the fight anyway.

Rats would probably be immune to poison, but muggers would be vulnerable to any status ailments, by Kiba’s intuition. A couple of clouds on a group would probably be enough to win any given fight, given that he was adequate at running away, and some extra money would be great, particularly since these booster packs were so expensive. Given that he got three new cards in a five card pack, there were probably a variety of attacks that he wasn’t able to just buy in bulk at this point. Blind might actually be a rare card this early in the story, in that he was probably not supposed to have too many copies. If he’d gotten the card during the initial tutorial quests in the starting area, he’d have an easy time with the Demon King faction quest, which would probably have gotten him more quest money to buy more cards and snowball further.

Too late for regrets now though, it’s not like he could just start over.

While he was here in the card shop, he might as well check it over for loot and secrets. Maybe even quests.

“Hey, anything going on around here?” he asks the shopkeeper, now that he’s spent an obscene amount of money on cards that would for most people be completely useless.

“Young master,” the man begins, “the weapon shop owner has been using my roof as a waste receptacle. If you can stop him from doing that, I can offer you a rare card.”

That could be a rare card, as in one that he didn’t already have ten copies of, or just one of the cards that he already had in the rare variety. Knowing quest rewards, it was probably the second one, but the sheer possibility of the first one meant he was going to be spending the effort to complete the quest anyway. Checking the weapon shop would probably be his next stop anyway; this starting weapon was pretty terrible actually. It was way too heavy for him to use when he wasn’t using a card to make the thing do actions, and while the calculations were hidden from his view, he was fairly certain that the functionality of the weapon acted as a multiplier for the effectiveness of the cards. Maybe if he had a stronger rapier, he would have been able to finish off the Demon King with that last attack.

As he started to leave the shop, Kiba stopped in his tracks as a cutscene started, and a small child ran in and smashed into him. He fell over, and the kid continued up to the shopkeeper.

“Daaaad, a bully beat me up and stole my rare card!”

“What have I told you about slacking off on your training? You should be able to defeat anyone your age if you work hard!”

“She was older than me though!”

“Well, that changes things. Young Master, if I were to beat up a child, I would have no face left. However, if you were to do so in my stead, I’d allow you to keep my son’s card.”

Regaining control of his body, Kiba stands up. He hated cutscenes.

That was one more item on the quest list though; same reward as the weapon shop owner, but it would probably have negative social consequences. It would probably be better to do the non-morally questionable quest first and see what the reward actually was before investing time and energy into pummeling a child.

Without a word, he leaves the card shop. It looked like restorative potions were in the next shop, and the weapon shop to the right of it. For some reason, a wooden beam was connecting the two buildings. Actually, now that he’d gotten a quest, it was fairly obvious that the reason for the beam was that the weapon shop owner was using it to cross over and dump their junk onto the card shop owner’s roof. It would probably be easiest to complete the quest by destroying the beam.

Not even bothering to look for any other possible completion criteria, Kiba drew his five cards from the deck; he had fifty two cards, and most of them were attack based.

Pierce Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Basic piercing attack. Ignores some defense. Steal Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Chance to obtain item of target. Defaults to card. Air Blast Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Air element crushing attack. Knockback effect. Air Jet Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Air element piercing attack. Ignores armor. Blind Common Cooldown: 30 Seconds Basic blinding attack. Some blind chance.

Air Blast would be the best for this. Knockback on a plank, precariously balanced across two rooftops? That was a surefire method of eliminating the pathway. Just because he could, and it was fancy, he played Air Jet first to blast up to where the plank hung above the street, rapier stabbing into the wood from below. Comboing instantly into Air Blast, all the wind generated during his rush blasted into the plank, launching the wooden panel up into the air.

It probably wouldn’t hit anything important.

Floating down gently into the street, Kiba brushes the sawdust off of his robes. It wouldn’t do to be covered in dust while trying to solve sidequests, there was some sort of respectability mechanic that affected the rewards. Brushing off wasn’t very effective, considering how much dust was kicked up from using Air Jet to propel himself up, but it was the thought that counted. Probably.

Standing still for a few moments to let the dust settle, Kiba checks over his hand. Four attacks and one utility, and a fairly decent array at that. He had the brand new status move he needed to test out, two of his powerful combination cards, and steal. It was probably worth discarding Pierce though.

Petrify Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Basic petrification attack. Some petrification chance.

Yeah, that was better. Petrification was basically an instant win if it actually applied. Monsters usually didn’t have any ability to remove status ailments, and if someone was trying to mug him they weren’t going to be using items and sinking more cost into an attempt to steal from a much harder target than they originally thought.

As the dust cleared, Kiba felt himself lock in place again. Why were these sidequests so cutscene happy? It was extremely annoying. The beam fell from the sky, two halves of the wooden plank coming directly down toward him.

Well, if it wasn’t the consequences of his own actions.

Unable to look away or move out of the path, Kiba could only watch as one half of the log smashes into the card shop roof, collapsing the giant pile of metal and caving the entire building in, and the other half rockets directly down onto his own head. He closes his eyes and waits for the inevitable.

“I will not allow you to escape my wrath so easily,” appears on his eyelids, as harsh syllables enter his ears.

Opening his eyes, Kiba sees the log stopped just above his head. Turning his gaze, the Demon King stands in the middle of the street, a clear, clean patch of ground around him. In his left hand, a bottle marked ‘death’, and a staff in the right, he points the staff at the log, waving it off to the side. In the absence of defeat, the Demon has clearly grown more powerful. Kiba would draw more cards to frantically get to Steal Info and his other information gathering cards, but he was stuck in a cutscene, and also hadn’t put those back into the deck. What an incredibly poor choice.

“My full power has not been unlocked, and you are yet a helpless worm. It is not yet time for you to die, make your preparations before this world meets its end.”

What the hell, why was the Demon King already offering him the end battle? Kiba felt the cutscene end as the spear of board moved away from his face and set itself down next to the weapon shop. He had a couple of options here, namely ‘walk away quickly’ and ‘continue into the weapon shop’. It was a good thing the shopkeeper had given him the quest before the card place imploded; Kiba could tell from the fact the quest hadn’t failed that the two people inside weren’t dead. It would be a bit more efficient to go into the weapon shop first, make sure they weren’t going to dump the metal on the roof that didn’t exist anymore, and then return for the reward, rather than just going in and having the dialog tree stuck with ‘well they can’t dump metal on your roof anymore’.

Before fleeing though, he used his ‘Steal’ card to loot the demon king. The death bottle syphoned into his inventory, and Kiba ran as quickly as possible into the weapon shop as the demon started yelling.

“You dare steal from me, you worthless weakling!”

Scene transitions would almost always deaggro encounters, so Kiba decided to take his time on checking out the weaponry upgrade potential. He couldn’t actually afford anything, nor could he have even before spending all his money on one single booster pack, but theoretically he could come back later, assuming he didn’t accidentally destroy every single shop. There was probably no possible situation where taking credit for smashing in the card shop was a good idea, so he was just going to blame the weapon shop owner for that.

Going through the standard dialog bits, Kiba starts off with a “The card shop owner tells me you’re dumping metal on his roof”, which gets a response of “I’m not changing anything unless I have proof that specifically my activities are going to cause harm”.

Checking the sell tab, apparently the starting rapier would go for three hundred and fifty gold, which was almost enough for one booster pack, when combined with the rest of his money. Fortunately, he would still be a few gold short, so he wasn’t even tempted to sell his only weapon that was required to actually use any of the cards in the first place.

Kiba stepped out of the shop to reset the area, grabbed the spear that was sitting next to the door, and walked back in.

“I have evidence that your junk pile is dangerous,” he stated.

“Oh?” questioned the weapon shop owner.

“The card shop collapsed under its weight.”

“I’ll stop putting more metal onto the roof then.”

With that out of the way, Kiba sold the spear for three hundred fifty gold, and left to check on the card shop.

The owner and the child were standing outside of the shop, and judging from the wall-colored rocks poking out of the door, it wasn’t possible to enter and buy cards anymore.

“Hey, I got the weapon shop owner to promise to stop putting junk on your roof.”

“A bit late now.”

“What’s the rare card you’re offering?”

“Fine, take it.”

The man gave him a rare version of Amplify.

Amplify Rare Cooldown: 30 Seconds Basic mental attack. Some empowerment chance.

Well, that was certainly worth the trouble. Maybe he’d beat up that child after all. One more of those, and he’d have a unique base buff, and if he could spam that throughout a fight there was a chance he could use melee to take out the Demon King in this rematch.

He switched out the card for the common one instantly.

Starting Hand

Petrify

1

Steal

1

Air Blast

1

Air Jet

1

Blind (Common)

1 Top Deck Amplify (Rare) Twister Disease (Uncommon) Befuddling Cloud Reflect

Cards in Deck

Peek

1

Pierce

4

Slam

4

Slash

5

Poison

5

Confuse

5

Befuddling Cloud

1

Deadly Cloud

1

Petrify

1

Steal

5

Air Mana

5

Air Blast

4

Reflect

4

Air Jet

4

Blind (Common)

1

Disease (Uncommon)

1

Amplify (Rare)

1 Unused Cards

Peek

13

Deadly Cloud

3

Space Cutter

7

Air Mana

61

Status Effect Vulnerability

3

Find Weakness

4

Confuse (Common)

1

Slash (Uncommon)

1

Amplify (Common)

1