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Tending Wounds
(Rune Cost: 2 Warrior)
-Spell-
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Effect: Select a Warrior you control with half or more of
its hearts remaining: Heal all of its hearts.
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Lore: Wounds are a given; scars are a privilege.
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✪ (Common)
#1,814
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“If you will not yield,” said Kaya, “then you will die!” The elf swung her fist, aiming for the creature that was harassing her. “Orcspit, that hurt!” Her attack connected with a body made of solid stone; it didn’t budge, but she took damage all the same.
[-1♡ (7/10)]
The boulder she’d punched started to move again. Ridges of rock shifted and scraped against one another—one of them formed a mineral-striated brow furrowed in anger, while square, shadowed eyes glared up at her. It grew stalagmite arms. Cubes of interlocking stone formed a mouth that opened to let out a low, rumbling, gravelly growl.
[Ogrock – LV2 (♡3/3)]
It took a swipe at her bare leg—she was thrown off kilter for a moment, but otherwise she was unharmed. Her total hearts didn’t decrease.
She scrutinized the beast. Ogrock. “You withstood my attack somehow? It will not happen a second time!” The warrior princess leaped into the air to deliver a punishing flying kick against its head.
No good. The force of the kick vibrated sharply through her leg. She fell backwards on her butt, hard.
[-1♡ (6/10)]
[Ogrock – LV2 (♡3/3)]
Two failed attacks in and she was starting to feel the pain. The bites inflicted by that Wood Mimic were easy to walk off on their own, but now her accumulated battle injuries were beginning to throb. The Ogrock smashed a fist on her vulnerable ankle but once again did no damage.
It attacks me and does me no harm. Yet when I attack it, somehow I’m the only one who takes damage? Where is the sense in that?
She glared at her foe, determined to figure out a way to hurt it. Was there a soft spot vulnerable to attack? A joint that she could exploit? Maybe this rock was even splitting in parts and a well-placed strike could cleave it in half. Everything had a weakness. Everything.
Time to find yours.
She leaped into the air, doing a handstand on the Ogrock’s head. Her nimble frame swung smoothly into a front-flip. On the way down, she brought her heel down hard on the back of the Ogrock’s neckless head-body.
Orcspit! A crunch. A bolt of hot pain up her leg. She landed in the grass, stumbling a few steps before regaining her footing. The injury was so bad it forced her to limp at first.
[-1♡ (5/10)]
Kaya had lost half her hearts already. She’d been bloodied and bruised by battle before, and this was no different. The problem was that she’d never met a foe that was so impervious to everything she threw at it.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Her strength had never failed her before.
This has to be some kind of trick, she mused. It’s toying with me somehow. Or maybe this is all just an illusion brought on by the magic of this forest. Is that it? The Ogrock laboriously turned around on its stubby stalactite legs and waddled after her.
Then she had an idea.
The elf sprang into the air on her athletic legs and took refuge in a tree branch. It was thin, the wood still young and green, but it would hold her light weight just fine. Wrapping her legs around the branch for stability, she dug around in her belt for her collected cards.
Wood Mimic... Whipvines... There it was. Ogrock. She already had the card version of this creature in her possession, one of the cards she found in the first chest. This card must hold the answers I seek!
[Ogrock (Rune Cost: 2 Rock) -Creature-
STR: 7 | DEF: 11 | ♡3
Lore: Dense but brittle, it has never been seen smiling.
Rarity: ◾Common]
Its Defensive power is 11. That’s even higher than mine! Wait... How else does it compare to me? Wondering about her own power values summoned the information in her mind’s eye, another glowing magical message.
[KAYA – LV1 (♡5/10)] [Warrior]
[STRENGTH: 10] [DEFENSE: 7]
[RUNE POWER: 1/1 (REGEN: 1/hour)]
[Cards: 54 (Unique: 53/10,000)]
[Runes Unlocked: 4/100]
I have greater Strength than the Ogrock! Then why can’t I defeat it in battle? Think, Kaya. Remember your training... Her Strength was greater, but its Defense was greater than hers. Battle involved both offensive and defensive power—swords and spears met resistance in the form of shields and armor.
Then it all came together in her mind. My Strength is one point lower than its Defense. I take one damage each time I attack it. My Defense is equal to its Strength, and it can never damage me by attacking... This means I can never defeat it! I’ll only injure myself again and again until it finally... She gulped.
...kills me.
There had to be another outcome. She rethought her attack strategy, wondering if maybe there was a different striking angle she hadn’t tried yet, but the more she racked her brain for a solution, the more the truth asserted itself. Her only options were to retreat—a form of cowardice she could never abide, a warrior’s greatest humiliation—or to find a way to make herself stronger.
Forgive me, mother. Forgive me, all of the Sylvan Queendom. Today I use a weapon that is not my own.
Kaya thumbed through her Warrior deck, scanning all of the item cards that depicted weapons. Most of them were forged of base metals like steel, or even worse, pure iron. None of these weapons had been consecrated in a ceremony at the heart of the elven woods; her fate could not be bound to this weapon as a proper extension of a warrior should. Still, desperate times called for desperate measures.
After slaying goblins and orcs her whole life, even staring down a dragon, she would not let herself be driven to retreat by some belligerent little boulder.
If she understood the laws of magic in this world, she would need a card that required only one unit of her magic, her Rune Power, to use. At last, she found the card she needed.
[Primitive Spear (Rune Cost: 1 Warrior) -Item-
Effect: Equipped Warrior gains +5 Strength.
Rarity: ◾Common]
“I call upon the magics of this forest,” she recited solemnly, “to conjure forth the Primitive Spear!”
The card in her hand glowed with green energy, thinning and elongating, vibrating with magical intent.
[RUNE TAPPED (1) | RUNE POWER 0/1]
[Item conjured!]
The card was gone, and in its place was a heavy spear, finely crafted, though the tip was sharpened stone rather than the preferred material of elven smiths, bone. It would have to do. The mere weight of the weapon in her hand filled her with a sense of newfound power. Even without the consecration ceremony, she could feel the spear as an extension of her own strength—strength that she could finally put to good use.
[+5STR (15)]
“Now, as I was saying,” said Kaya, jumping from the tree. “If you will not yield, then you will die!” For added flourish, she twirled the spear overhead before thrusting it down into the Ogrock’s stony body. The spear passed straight through it—impaled it to the ground.
[Ogrock – LV2 (♡0/3)]
The sentient boulder split. Cracks forked across its stony surface like slow-moving lightning bolts until it crumbled into dozens of rock fragments. It was over. Only pebbles and gravel remained, and a puff of gray dust. Soon even these were gone. When the Ogrock vanished, so did the Primitive Spear.
[-5STR (10)]
All that was left in the creature’s wake was a single card. The Ogrock card? I’ve already found this one! Thinking she might still have some use for it in the future, she added it to her collection anyway.
[Cards Discovered: 53/10,000)]
Kaya took note that since she collected a duplicate card, it didn’t update the number of unique cards discovered. The rules of this land’s magic were starting to make some sense to her. One of those rules revolved around her hearts.
She was missing half of them—it felt like it, too. She limped along on her way, cradling her sore right hand, which was riddled with mimic bites and bruised from fighting the Ogrock. Two Ogrock cards. One Wooden Mimic. One Whipvines...
Wait. Something’s amiss.
She recalled another card that she’d been gifted on arrival to this place, one said to be Omni Rare.
She took out her deck and counted each card, one by one, all 50. She counted her collected cards—four of them, just like she thought. But the motion of her belt rattled a card in another pocket, one in the back, and from that pocket, she drew out a card that she’d never seen.
[Omnios Soma (Rune Cost: 1 Mage) -Creature-
STR: 0 | DEF: 0 | ♡1
Rarity: ✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪ (Omni Rare) ]
No Strength and no Defense? Useless! She tucked it back into its slot anyway, reluctant to part with it just yet.
[New card discovered! (Omnios Soma) | Cards Discovered: 54/10,000]
[New RUNE unlocked! (MAGE) | Runes Unlocked: 5/100]
She was a quick learner in this world, but she knew she still had a great deal more to learn.