Half an hour later, with the sun rising in the sky, Noah looked at the cards he had collected as he sat on the sleeping bag he had spread out, eating some spam from a container George had provided with a steel spoon.

He ate on the other side of the road from the burned tree, just in case.

Noah had two Origin Rattletail cards—which were slightly different than the overland monster version, which he found interesting.

Origin Rattletail

Common Tier-1 Beast [Rattletail, Rabbit]

1 Beast Power [Available]

Health: 4

Attack: 3

Defense: 2

Magical Attack: N/A

Magical Defense: 2

Special: Thorns [Physical 3]: Anyone attacking this creature with a brawl or melee attack takes 3 true damage.

Special: Chain Cast: When this creature is played, any number of copies may be played from the deck, but each one after the first costs as much additional power as the previous number played.

“The region you’re in appears to have a rattletail infestation. That probably means all the nearby ones do as well.”

He had also gained as commons a Sexy Spawn, an Undead type, vampire subtype card that was useless to him and pretty weak in general, and a Loyal Guard Dog, a Beast card also useless to him. But his fifth common card had been another Scavenged Battle Bot card.

Lastly, he had gained an uncommon card from the tree’s death. Thankfully, that one was also something he could use, a Golem-type equipment card. He assumed the two Golem scavenged cards were from RED’s ability, since it seemed unlikely he would have gotten much he could use otherwise.

Hopefully we get our shit back together as a species enough to get a decent secondary market in cards going soon, or we’re all likely to end up with piles of useless cards.

He glanced at the card in his hand.

Scrap Flechette Gun

Uncommon Tier-1 Golem [Scavenged] Equipment

1 Golem Power

May sacrifice a scrap token to deal 5 Golem true damage to up to three creatures once per 15 seconds. This ability gains true damage at a 1:1 rate for every attack stat gained or that would be gained by a Golem or Scavenged creature. This attack is ranged.

“Do you think any of this is worth adding to the deck, my faithful robot companion?”

“Never call me that again. Also, I despise you.”

Noah laughed and waved at RED. “Enough of the compliments already, just answer the question.”

“You could simply put the Scrap Flechette Gun into my side deck, the one I draw equipment from. Since you add one attack to scavenged keyword cards with your perk, it would make three separate six-damage attacks with any Scrap Tokens. That’s not to be sneered at, even though it would cost you an extra power when summoning me, or after the fact, I suppose, if you gave me the gun later.”

“I have very little power at the moment, just three. Is it really worth it?” Noah asked. “I mean, the gun does require an existing Scrap Token to use.”

Noah briefly wondered if his decision earlier, to skip harvesting the Scrap Tokens at the abandoned gas station, had been a good idea.

RED ignored his musings. “If you’re worried about your power, or your other pathetic stats, you could just level. Mechos only knows why you’re just sitting on those levels, and he had to think about it.”

Noah blinked. Why haven’t I been doing that?

“A good point,” Noah said. “I made four levels from that Firefang we killed, and gained another off those stupid spike bunnies. Tell me about leveling.”

“As you command,” RED said, his sarcasm on overdrive. “Anything to keep you from getting us all killed. Leveling is done by spending the pips you gain—one pip is gained every level—on your deckbearer stats.”

“Like perks?” Noah asked.

“No. Perks can only be gained every twenty-five levels, as well as extremely rarely from the most powerful dungeon bosses and some rare competitive quests,” RED said, then held up his metal hand and ticked off items. “The six Deckbearer stats are, in order, cards in deck, cards in hand, cards on field, length of play, power, and…”—RED made a fist—“specialty cards.”

“How much do each of those stats cost to level?” Noah asked as he opened up the sleeping bag and lay down in it.

“It costs one leveling pip to increase cards in deck by five, cards in hand or field by one, length of play by five minutes, or power by one. However, every time any stat is increased after the first, it costs that much times the number of times increased before plus one.”

“And specialty cards?” Noah asked.

“Enhancer and Minions cost one pip, Companion and Building cards five pips, and Realm cards ten pips. Each multiplied by the previous amount purchased except that no one may ever have more than one realm.”

Enhancer cards sound interesting, I’ll need to ask about them later. I wonder what the others do?

“Man, people that didn’t get a talking Companion card would be screwed on all this,” Noah muttered. Then he looked up at RED Seven. “What would you suggest for leveling?”

“Power, my ignorant meat bag leader. At least for your early levels,” RED said. “You’ll need to be able to play more powerful cards if you want to be of use to anyone.”

Noah nodded, and brought up his status chart. “Just add power?”

“Obviously you need to add to the specific power you want,” RED said. “Use your blood-logged brain. But, keep in mind that all additions count toward multiplying the cost for the next power you gain. So if you purchase a Lightning power first with one pip, you’ll still need two pips to purchase a point of Mortal power.”

“What are each of them good at?” Noah asked.

“Must you bug me for everything?” RED asked with exasperation in his synthesized voice.

“Just answer the question, you irritable hunk-of-junk,” Noah said.

RED gave a long sigh—obviously an affectation since he didn’t breathe. “Whatever, tyrant. Fine. Here you go.”

Noah rolled his eyes.

RED finally answered. “The Mortal type tends to have a lot of cards, and they appear often from monsters. Especially dual-type cards, like the first one you got from the snake, that ranger card. The Mortal type tends to have stronger low-power cards, and it has a huge number of synergies with keywords. It has okay match-ups against other card types, but not great.”

“And the others?”

“I’m getting there. Golem tends to have more high-power cards, and frequently good ones. But the Golem type tends to have slower play, with few cards to fast cast, and few tricky cards. It has weaker or less useful low-power cards, and it generally has less synergies, although there are exceptions. But it also has very solid match-ups against other types for the most part.”

“And Lightning?”

Stolen story; please report.

“Lightning is one of the energy types. It tends to have decent synergy with Golem and a lot of immediate cards as opposed to creatures or persistents on the field. It also tends toward a decent number of status ailments and multi-attacks over raw damage.”

“Do cards often require more of one power? My Giant Scrap Bot requires two Golem and four of any power.”

“Usually, the more of a specific type of power required, the stronger the card.”

“Can I add power of any type or energy? Or just the ones I have?”

“Any type if you wish, but that’s foolish unless you have a serious and specific plan in mind. The more types you have, the harder it is to get more powerful cards, as well as card synergies. Three types are probably as much as you can handle.”

“Are there any real powerful types or energies?”

“Meta, maybe, but it also has very few cards,” RED responded. “And you have no way to get those cards.”

Noah gave some serious thought to his build. For the moment, he would run what he had going, since a lot of it already had synergies. “Hmm… alright, for now, I’ll just add one to cards on field, and one each to Golem and Lightning power.”

“A good choice. I’m surprised.”

“Heh. Give me a few minutes to finish eating and drinking, then we’ll bike on. I still have to save Hope, obviously.”

A few minutes later, when he was full, Noah rubbed his eyes in the bright daylight, struggling to stay awake. With only four hours of rest, sitting down had made him sleepy, despite the time of day. Four hours was enough to function on, but not enough to be happy with. And he knew he couldn’t do it multiple days running.

Noah again stared up at the ring around the world. On any other day, that might be weird, Noah thought to himself with a tired chuckle.

Without warning or fanfare, words appeared across his vision.

As spokesbeing for the gods, I am excited to announce the start of the first competitive quests, which will begin in one hour, thirty-one minutes, and fourteen seconds by your time measurements.

Every zone will have a separate competitive quest, and the winner of each will gain one of the first realm cards in the game. The realm card will be different depending on who wins, matching their deck—and if by some freak chance they don’t have a deck, the winner will gain ten cards as well and become a deckbearer.

As an additional, and amazingly good, prize, the winner will gain a perk allowing them to have one free realm card in their deck! This prize is not something normally obtainable, and will save the winner the equivalent of ten levels in pips.

However, no one will be able to leave the zone they are in once the quest starts, and will be trapped there until the quest has been completed. And no zone may be entered by an outsider until its quest is done.

Make your species proud!

Noah turned to RED. “Did you see that?”

“The quest announcement? Yes.”

“What should I do?” Noah whispered. “I have to get to Hope, and everything seems to be getting in the way.”

“It’s almost like the gods are conspiring against you,” RED quipped. “But stop being a tear factory. The only thing you can do, my fleshy boss, is keep going—and then win the contest as hard and fast as you can in whichever zone you get stuck in.”

Noah glanced up at the open, red eyes of RED. “That’s… surprisingly good and useful advice. I expected something closer to ‘kill yourself.’”

“I tend to favor ‘kill them’ as my approach to life,” RED said, then tilted his head and assumed a faux quizzical tone. “I thought you knew that about me.”

Noah did another, more thorough round of stretching. “I’m going to put you back in the deck again,” Noah said. “Then, I’m going to keep biking. As you said, nothing else to do.”

RED just nodded.

***

A little over an hour later, Noah stared ahead of him, shocked. He was on the asphalt, holding his bike, with RED staring alongside him.

There was a massive river cutting across the landscape, nearly a quarter of a mile wide, stretching as far as he could see north-west and south-east. Beyond that was a forest that seemed to stretch into infinity.

The road ahead of him simply stopped a couple hundred feet away. A sharp drop, almost twenty feet, would land him on a bush and grass-filled bank of the river. The drop was awkward, and the plants above and below were different.

“This is a new zone I’ll be crossing into, isn’t it?” Noah asked.

“Astutely reasoned,” came the sardonic rejoinder.

Noah stared again. Intellectually speaking, this wasn’t a surprise. He had read the notifications. And the ring across the sky, and the extra moons, told him they were on another world. Even the horizon was wrong. Never mind the Goliath Firefang, the Rattletails, and RED himself.

But Noah had been biking down the thirty-five, clearly in the Flint Hills of Kansas, the whole time. He had simply expected to follow it all the way to Kansas City. So it hadn’t really hit him, till right now, how different this new world was.

There was a whole-ass new river and forest in front of him. Nothing like that existed anywhere near where Noah was. Or it hadn’t, at any rate.

The gods said they had transported our world to Arena, not just us. Somehow, what that meant didn’t really hit me till right now.

Everything the gods had done implied they had insane power, but this… it was beyond Noah’s ken. They really might be gods—certainly it was close enough to not matter if they could break a world apart and stitch parts of it onto another.

“Are you functioning correctly, Deckbearer?” RED asked. “You look like you were kicked in the face by your Goliath Scrap Bot. Just sayin’.”

“Heh,” Noah said, a near-meaningless noise. “I… I actually have no idea what to do now.”

“We’re still trying to rescue your gravid scientist fleshloaf, right?”

“Yeah, of course we’re still trying to rescue Hope. But this is a new zone—that I’m going to get stuck in, almost certainly.”

“Alright, so, not to be too obvious—although that may be impossible in your case,” RED said, “but the advice is the same as I just gave you. Keep going through the zones till you do get stuck. If you stay here, you’ll just be stuck in a different, further-away zone.”

“This forest and river weren’t here before. The whole world is different. I thought I knew where she was, but I didn’t. Don’t. I have no idea at all, really.”

RED’s voice became even more sardonic. “You know where she is, fool. She’s in Kansas City, as you’ve told me way too many times. Just ask whatever slightly different mortal idiots you run into where she is until one knows where that is now. All while heading in that general direction. Most parts of your world will be placed on Arena in rough correspondence to each other, so, like I said, just keep heading north-east and you’ll get close at least.”

Noah ran his hands through his black hair, still half floored. But RED gave good advice, however dark it was.

“What if we’re trapped in the new zone?”

“We almost certainly will be. But it’s an opportunity as well. Just win the realm.”

“I doubt I’ll be the one to win the realm,” Noah said with a roll of his eyes.

“Well, not with that attitude,” RED responded, his synthesized voice at maximum sarcasm.

Noah went over to the edge and glanced over.

Words flashed in front of his eyes.

Warning! You are about to enter the Ashtae Forest Zone. A zone lock, for a competitive quest, will occur in eleven minutes and nineteen seconds by your time measurement.

He ignored that, staring down at the ground below. Some of the highway had fallen, and it created a slight ramp, reducing the height of the drop down. The top of the broken road was only about ten feet below him.

If I hang off the edge and drop, it’ll only be about a four-foot fall, total. Then I can walk the rest of the way down on the broken road. I can have RED lower the bike to me, then he can… wait.

“Can you get down there?” Noah asked, turning to RED.

“You keep thinking like I’m a friend, or some fellow meat puppet. Just unsummon and resummon me when you’re down.”

“Right,” Noah said. “I’ll drop down, then pass the bike down to me, please. And the backpack. Then I’ll summon you across.”

RED shrugged.

Noah shrugged out of the backpack, got on the ground, and then hung himself off the side of the ledge—a ledge that had no business in eastern Kansas, never mind the entire river and forest. He hung for a second and finally dropped. He hit the slanted pavement, lost his balance amid waving arms, fell, and rolled down the forty-five-degree angle slab of pavement till he hit the ground at its base.

He stood, embarrassed, and brushed himself off.

RED was giving off synthesized laughs, obviously fake.

Noah grimaced. “The bike, please?”

RED grabbed it, got down flat and hung it off the side. It was still a good couple feet higher than Noah’s unstretched arms, but when RED dropped it, Noah managed to catch it and lower it to the ground. The backpack followed, and Noah shrugged it on.

After, he unsummoned RED Seven by willing it. The companion card turned into gray motes of light and flowed back into Noah.

Noah hesitated, but touched his chest and summoned his deck again, and then hit his companion card, who reappeared next to him.

“Welcome back,” Noah said. “Now stop laughing at me.”

“It’ll be hard, but I think I can manage it.”

Noah turned to the giant river. “Where do you think we can cross?”

“No idea at all. But, you’re young and strapping,” RED said, reaching out and gently squeezing Noah’s biceps with his thick mechanical fingers. “The river is moving quite languidly. You might be able to swim it. Probably. Assuming there are no monsters, of course.”

Noah frowned, thinking about the Firefang’s description—how they made their homes living in the world river. And the fact that he wouldn’t be taking his bike. “We’ll move up the river for a bit, and if we don’t find anything, I’ll try it then.”

“Of course. No sense in being courageous when you don’t have to.”

This stupid robot.

The two of them set out across the low-lying, bush and grass-filled plains along their side of the river. Noah didn’t get back on the bike—he didn’t think it would handle off-roading well, at least not here.

A few trees dotted the area, although not nearly as thick as on the other side of the river. It was hot, and insects buzzed around, as well as a plethora of beautiful butterflies.

A few minutes later, expected words from the gods flashed across Noah’s vision.

The first ever competitive quest of Arena, the First Realms quest, has begun.

You are in the Ashtae Forest Zone. This zone is divided between three factions. The Ashtae elves, the Zorin Bog goblins, and the human Remnants of Emporia. One rare card, part of the ‘Ashtae Forest Realm set,’ will be given to a deckbearer of each species.

The quest will end once all cards are in the hands of one race. Once that happens, the person holding the most cards will be the winner. All set cards will be removed from the set, replaced by cards specifically made for them. One of the cards will be a Building card if the realm was won by the individual in question. Then they will receive the winning benefits—a realm card. It will be either Fort Gardendale for the Elves, Toklak Warren for the goblins, or Nexus City for the humans. The realm card, and any allies of the winner, may be placed anywhere within the realm upon winning.

Additionally, a 6 Level, Legendary, 1 to 65 dungeon will appear, appropriate to the deck of the winner, and reflecting their god-gifted sponsor if appropriate.

Remember that you may not leave the zone you are in until the quest has been won by someone, or every ‘Ashtae Forest Realm’ set card is lost to monsters.

May luck be with you!

The words faded, and for a second, Noah expected a card to appear in his hand.

But none did.

Guess I’m not the main character, Noah thought to himself with an embarrassed chuckle.

“Did your pie-hole utter something?” RED asked.

“Nothing at all.”

Before their banter could continue, shouts came from in front of them. Noah stared. Half a mile ahead as roughly twenty arrows lifted out of the grass and bushes and came down en masse.

Screams came from the spots they landed, but Noah couldn’t see what, or who, was there.

Then an explosion went off.

“That’s gotta be our people!” Noah yelled. “Let’s go!”

He dropped his bike and ran toward the fighting up ahead.