While Niko recovered, Jaden looked through his deck thinking about what skills he could learn from the warriors contained within. Acquiring the blood magic skill had been a huge multiplier to his own power, and Jaden wasn’t one to overlook a potential source of growth. Inhaling in surprise, Jaden found the Enraged Wererat Knight card, which had surprisingly not returned to its constituent parts after the battle in which he had initially created it through fusion. Concerned about losing part of his limited card stock, Jaden focused his will on the card until it emitted a bright white flare. Jaden sighed in relief when the Charging Berserker, fusion, and Rat Knight cards fluttered to the ground.

Picking up the newly separated cards, Jaden located a fusion card from his deck, and re-fused them. Tapping his chin with an index finger, Jaden pondered whether he could even learn the wererat’s regeneration ability before shrugging. “It only hurts a little to try.” Jaden muttered. Pumping a hundred mana into the card, Jaden summoned the Enraged Wererat Knight. Letting out an anticipatory breath, Jaden summoned a knife from raw imagination, and drew it across part of his hand; leaving a small gash with a pained grunt.

“Alright, Wererat Knight, cut your hand with your sword.” Jaden instructed.

With no hesitation, the wererat obliged; nearly separating the part from its body.

“Not quite what I had in mind.” Jaden muttered, studying the rat’s wound as its hand quickly healed back into place. Jaden held the image of the regenerating part in his mind as he stared at his own hand. He thought he saw the dripping blood vibrate as he focused, but the wound itself failed to regenerate. After another minute of staring at his hand futilely, Jaden looked up to his summoned warrior.

“Alright, do it again.” He instructed his summon.

Once again, the wererat knight nearly separated its hand from its body, and Jaden studied the wound as the part reattached itself. Staring down at his own wound, Jaden tried to channel the same effect into his own hand. This time, he watched as his blood flow slowed to a crawl, small droplets here and there actually being sucked back into the wound. Still it didn’t truly heal. It took three more attempts before a notification finally appeared in the corner of his vision. Jaden almost didn’t notice over his own feeling of triumph as he watched the wound slowly closing without even leaving a scar. Excited by his success, Jaden turned his hand over, finding a faded old scar from his time in the wilderness with his father. Focusing his will, he watched the scar fade from existence; replaced by unbroken skin. Jaden began laughing maniacally, toppling over after several seconds as he was felled by a wave of fatigue. Blinking in disorientation, Jaden opened his stat page.

*************************************

Jaden Harris

Max MP: 507

Free MP: -2/254 (50%)

Stats

Strength: 10 (0%)

Agility: 10 (0%)

Fortitude: 60 (10%)

Endurance: 10 (0%)

Charisma: 10 (0%)

Intelligence: 240 (40%)

Magic Resistance: 10 (0%)

*all stats are rounded to the nearest whole number

Jobs:

King of Games Level 6

Skills:

Blood Magic Level 4

Regeneration 2

Mimic 1

Titles:

Fop Level 1

Originator Level 2

Creator Level 1

Status effects:

None

*************************************

“Negative mana? You can do that?” Jaden muttered, wheezing as if he had just run a marathon. With a feeble wave of his hand, Jaden de-summoned the Wererat Knight, feeling better almost instantly as he reabsorbed the mana it held. With his newfound clarity, Jaden remembered his notifications, and pulled them up.

*************************************

New Skill Gained:

Regeneration

Don’t make the pasty white boy angry. You won’t like him when he’s angry. Mostly because your hands will eventually sting from beating him up. In all seriousness though, this skill will get better with use. It may be expensive now, but keep at it, and eventually you’ll be the best at what you do. By which I mean getting beat up a lot.

Passive: passively increases your physical regeneration a little bit at no cost to you. This even counts toward skill XP. Passive regeneration gets better, and faster with skill levels.

Active: Channel your mana actively to quickly regenerate damage. Mana efficiency gets better with skill levels.

*************************************

*************************************

New Skill Gained:

Mimic

Have you ever had the urge to sit around in dungeons pretending to be a treasure chest? No? Are you sure? Steve Irwin would want you to. “Oh croikey, it’s a 4 footer, what a beaut.” But I digress. This skill helps you learn skills you’ve seen more easily. The actual numbers vary from skill to skill, but suffice to say, the higher your skill level in mimic, the easier it is to learn skills you see.

Passive: if your skill level in mimic is high enough, you can learn skills you see without even intending to.

Active: If you have time to sit down and think about it, you can try to figure out the mechanics behind a given skill. Higher mimic skill makes this easier.

*************************************

Jaden snorted, trying not to break into genuine laughter at the idea of Steve Irwin wrestling with a mimic. As he collected himself, Jaden checked on Niko, who lay on the ground next to him. He had already had to change her bandages twice over the past two hours as her wounds drained mana from them in order to recuperate.

Her bandages sat at just over half mana, so Jaden turned his attention back to his deck. “If only I had more cards.” Jaden muttered, finding that the number of cards with effects he could copy were few and far between. Already he had tried and failed to learn the invulnerability effect from his Majestic Spearman, so Jaden knew not every skill could be learned.

“I believe that’s my cue.” A feminine voice said from behind him.

Jaden turned, and found Chance standing nonchalantly next to a tree as if she had just stepped out from behind it.

“Hey, long time no see. What’s up?” Jaden said, waving his card-filled hand in greeting.

“As a goddess attached to your card game, I felt it only appropriate that I provide services related to it. Therefore, I have created a card shop which you may access at any time.”

“Oh awesome, I’ve been really wanting this one card I remembered-” Jaden began before being cut off by Chance waving him down.

“Not so fast. Since I am also a goddess of luck, I decided I won’t just sell specific cards. Instead, you can purchase card packs. One hundred mana will get you a fate token, with each card pack costing a set number of tokens. Also, every card pack is guaranteed to hold at least one rare or better card. Over time, I will add more things to spend your tokens on, but this is it for now.”

Jaden groaned. “So now you’re the goddess of microtransactions, and loot-boxes”

Chance smiled slyly as if she had won some form of victory. “Not at all. Card packs are entirely different.”

“How? I like the feeling of opening up a card pack as much as the next guy, but this is a life or death situation here.” Jaden whined.

Chances eyes flashed in a visual display of irritation. “Because I say so, that’s why. If you don’t want access to my services as your god, you need only say so. I am sure one of the Jeffs would love to be my priest.”

Jaden lifted his hands in defeat. “No, it’s fine, I’ll take it.”

Chance smiled again, mood changing as if she had never been angry. “Good. Since you are my prophet, I will give you a free token just this once.”

“You just want someone to try out your store huh?” Jaden asked, smirking.

Chance shrugged. “The thought had crossed my mind. Just focus on opening the storefront, and it should integrate itself into your interface.”

Jaden smiled, and did as she instructed. It only took a second before the window opened, displaying a dizzying array of possible purchases arranged in a grid. There was even a search-bar, and different tabs for different sections of the store.

“What is the ultra omega pack? A thousand tokens seems a bit steep.” Jaden asked out loud.

“I did a bit of experimentation with different fusions. The ultra omega pack is a collection of the absolute best fusions I found. Some of them even required three or four tiers of fusion to achieve. Believe me, if you were to purchase these cards from a nexus, they would be far, far more expensive to even acquire one card.”

“You can buy cards from a nexus?” Jaden asked, eyes wide.

Chance snorted. “Indeed, if you want to spend thousands of mana to get even a single card with more than marginal use. Since I have the freedom to set my own prices, and access to the entire library of cards from your former world, I am able to make them far cheaper than what the nexus provides. Trust me, you’d be better off making a card directly from your own memory than paying the outrageous prices the nexus charges.”

Jaden tapped his chin in thought. “Is there actually anything stopping me from doing that?”

Chance shrugged. “If they’re imperfect, they may explode when you channel mana through them. Also, there are likely to be fluctuations and imperfections in the image on the card that interfere with their physical form when summoned. If you ever decide to take that route, I recommend channeling as much mana into intelligence as possible to reduce the likelihood of… issues.”

Jaden shivered. “Alright, probably never doing that. I’d rather not have cards explode on me.”

Chance nodded. “Good, now I’d appreciate if you bought your first card pack before I leave. I want to make sure the system works as intended.”

Jaden nodded, and sorted through the list of card packs to see what interested him. “Hm, should I go for Sorcerer’s Revenge, or Machine Apocalypse?” Jaden muttered to himself, narrowing down the list. Glancing at the fate token in his hands, Jaden looked at Chance. “Heads, I pick sorcerers, tails I pick machines.”

Chance nodded solemnly. “Witnessed.”

Slightly disturbed by how ritualistically she had interpreted his words, Jaden launched the coin into the air with his thumb. It seemed to stay at the top of its arc for a second longer than it should have, spinning in place before falling back down into his palm.

Jaden glanced at Chance. “Did you?...”

Chance held up her hands as if fending off his suggestion. “I merely gave you my blessing. As a goddess of luck, coin-flips fall in my domain, so I blessed the flip. The coin chose the most beneficial result, but I had no knowledge or control over what that would be.”

Jaden nodded wordlessly, and selected the Machine Apocalypse card pack from his storefront. Blue light flickered as the token morphed into a commonplace trading card pack; complete with foil wrapping, and well-drawn cover art.

“Cool.” Jaden said casually as he tore open the foil.

“Careful with that. It could very well become a holy relic years from now.” Chance chastised him.

Jaden looked at her with a deadpan expression before pulling out the five cards from the pack.

The first card read:

Name: Metal Knight

Effect: Personal Shield. Has a shield which acts like extra HP. Worth 500 HP. Refreshes every turn.

Attack: 2700

Defense: 1600

Hp: 1500

Jaden smacked his head as he placed the card into his deck. “I’m an idiot. Why didn’t I think to make a magical shield before?”

Chance snickered, but said nothing.

The next two cards were spell cards. One was a laser which in the original game dealt damage directly to the opponent’s life-points. Jaden debated for a moment before deciding it would be nice to have a direct damage spell in his arsenal. Nonchalantly, he slipped the card into his deck. The other was called “Nano-Restoration” which healed a chosen monster. Jaden glanced at Niko, and used all of his remaining mana to cast Nano-Restore on her. He couldn’t tell if it was working under the mummy-like bandage wrappings, but he added the card to his deck nonetheless. The next two cards were monster cards, which he quickly skimmed.

Name: Robot Worker

Effect: Doubles the enhancement value of any battlefield cards on your side of the field.

Attack: 1000

Defense: 800

Hp: 1200

Name: Robo-Insect Swarm

Effect: Bypasses half of the enemies defense when attacking.

Attack: 1500

Defense: 2000

Hp: 2500

Jaden left these two cards out of his deck, sticking them in his pocket instead to avoid deck bloat.

“I know I was whining earlier, but thank you Chance. I really do appreciate the help.”

Chance nodded, and smiled softly. “You are my prophet. Our fates are directly entwined. Even if you are not the most… traditional prophet, you are important to me.”

Jaden felt his heart twinge slightly at her tone, but before he could say anything else, she faded from view.