Daniel tentatively picked up the golden card laying on the drifter’s chest. It shimmered like a small sun in his hand and the blood that soaked it burnt away as the seconds passed. This card in his hands was confirmation that the monster wasn’t cursed by the Blood Moon, which presented another slew of problems.

It showing up at the start of a Blood Moon couldn’t be coincidence. The fact it dropped its card though was either a direct factor of luck or a hint towards the fact that it’d once been human. Daniel didn’t know for certain if that was the case for this particular drifter, but humans dropped their cards upon death and monsters only rarely dropped theirs. The odds of a legendary card dropping their card was roughly one in a thousand if he remembered right. Which meant that drifters were probably a case similar to the draconians. The one that Alexander had cut the arm off of had dropped his card easily enough, just like any human would.

Which meant that that all drifters probably dropped their cards upon death, and further raised the question of where the rest of the things cards were. Daniel thought as he flipped the card around and studied the art on its surface.

It was beautiful in a sense, invoking a melancholic feeling of dread through its depiction. Two men stood amongst a sea of bodies. Not metaphorically, but literally. The corpses around them writhed and roiled, struggling to pull the two men under, to have them join them. And yet despite it all they persevered. One was being pulled under, hands clawing and tearing away at him, but the other had grasped him firmly by the arm. They were fighting for their lives, and despite it all, they were losing.

The man being pulled under was a lost cause, and yet the other still refused to let him go. Grasping him tight enough that he hadn’t lost his grip, and instead was being pulled under with him.

If he'd let him go then the man may have lived, but Daniel could tell from the complicated expression carved on the man’s face that it was the farthest thing from his mind. So there the two were, frozen in time. Destined to be pulled under beneath a sea of living corpses. Not alone in anguish, but together in defiance.

Daniel flipped the card back over and read the description.

Split the Deck

Legendary

Wildcard

The user of this card can designate an entity of their choice to share decks with. The shared decks will treat cards in either entity's deck as if it were their own.

If one entity affected by this card dies, then the other does as well.

‘Oh, this is a whole nother kind of bullshit,’ Daniel thought, reading the card with a surprised expression. From what he could tell one of the main limiting factors for a deck was the small number of cards each person could have. The last line in the description, alongside the art, was foreboding, but that almost became a nonissue with the sheer advantage the card provided.

Daniel hastily added the card to his deck with shaking and bloody hands, placing it on his inner thigh in an attempt to keep the tattoo somewhat hidden. Though, while he was quick to add the card to his deck, he still needed to carefully consider who to use it on.

The drifter had clearly used it on the other drifter leader, and for whatever reason it had worked for their subordinates as well. Whether that was thanks to an addendum or a quirk of drifter biology Daniel didn’t know, but either way its base effect was more than enough for him. The card would still be disgustingly potent.

Getting a hold of himself Daniel calmed his thoughts before retreating back into Limbo and beginning to make his way back down the hall. He no longer needed to use the dimension sparingly as the stone roof had stopped melting when the miniature sun had disappeared. It was a weakness he’d need to deal with at some point, but now wasn’t the time to think of that. The night was far from over and he needed to stay focused.

Still though, the walk down the hall gave him time to think about more immediate issues. Things that he desperately needed to consider. His hands throbbed in pain, trying to consume all his attention, but he refused to let them as he considered his next steps.

If the drifters had made it inside the city so easily, and more importantly uncontestably, then surely other monsters had as well and considering that nobody had come to help with the drifter outbreak it likely meant that the city was fully under siege and was unable to send the manpower to help deal with one group of monsters when there was already a legendary user at the scene.

Still, the whole situation felt odd. While the past Blood Moons had been described as disastrous, and Anton had warned that the city struggled through them nowadays, this was far worse than anyone had implied.

The fact that most citizens downplayed the Blood Moons meant that few, if any monsters ever actually made it inside the city. Which made sense considering they were all busy fighting one another. Content to simply kill each other for the goddess of blood, all save for Alexander. Though even he faltered in his refusal of the goddess from what he could tell. Her influence was simply too strong.

Daniel still remembered the look in the goddess’ eyes when he’d seen her. She wasn’t someone easily refused.

The more important problem right now though was right in front of him as he rounded the corner. A smokey figure lay leaned against the rocky wall of the hall, lumps of chitinous mass strewn around him.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

With a thought Daniel left Limbo and found a peculiar sight. Jonathan, or more accurately a ghostly form resembling Jonathan standing amongst dozens of drifter corpses. Cards sprouted from the various bodies, and blood absolutely coated the hall, but what caught Daniel’s eye near instantly was the ghostly form of Jonathan holding a blade to the catatonic version of himself’s throat, which was wreathed in a pale aura that covered his real body and was freezing it in place.

His frozen body looked to be in bad shape, his head bleeding with a crack going down his forehead like someone had taken a bat to it. Though it looked like it wasn’t getting any worse, not yet at least. The flow of time for his body was seemingly halted, and while Daniel didn’t think it was a wound that would kill him in its current state, it certainly would if it got much worse.

He still remembered why he’d had to leave Jonathan behind. By all metrics he should have already been dead, and whatever this card's effects were was what had undoubtedly kept him alive.

“Good, you lived,” the ghostly apparition of Jonathan said. “I was worried I’d mess up the timing if I was still turning after my card ended. Did you kill the leader?”

Daniel eyed the apparition curiously, “Yeah, it’s dead. The other one should be too if my hunch is correct.”

“Hunch?” The apparition asked.

“Not saying,” Daniel answered with a shrug. He didn’t see any reason to openly reveal aspects of his new legendary, so Jonathan would just have to take him at his word.

The apparition nodded at the answer and turned back towards his body.

“Do you think them being dead will stop the monsterification process?” Jonathan asked, eerily calm despite the situation.

“Well, what happened to the rest of the drifters when I killed the leader?” Daniel asked.

Jonathan just shook his head at that, “I’d already killed them all by then. I think I did at least. Nothing major about them changed by the time I was done.”

The apparition paused for a moment, as if in thought. “They did seem to have trouble breathing after a certain point, and it persisted until I'd killed them all. I’m not sure if that’s relevant or not though.”

“No, not in the way you're probably thinking,” Daniel replied with a slight frown.

It’d probably divided the effect of Breath of None among all of its subordinates, lowering the effect significantly. He’d felt like something was off there, and this seemed to be the reason.

“My cards going to deactivate here in a second,” Jonathan said flatly. “If I continue to turn into one of them after it does, then I want you to put me down. I’d also like to ask that you leave some of my cards for my family if it comes to that. Don’t worry though, I don’t expect you to leave all of them. Just the ones that you don’t want to add to your own deck if it’s not too much to ask.”

“Wait one second,” Daniel said frantically. “How much longer can you keep your card up? I can go get a healer for you if I have enough time.”

At that Jonathan chuckled selfdepreciently, “If a healer was all it took to fix this then everyone back in that room wouldn’t have become drifters. No this needs a curse breaking card, and those are beyond rare. Most only affect the wielder too, so getting help that way is a dead end. Besides, there's less than forty seconds left before my card deactivates.”

‘A curse breaking card, huh,’ Daniel thought, his stomach dropping in realization. This was a problem he could solve. He could fix him, it might just cost him more than he was willing to give, but he could do it if he really wanted. Was it really too much to give? Jonathan had stayed behind and fought the remaining drifters with the knowledge that he’d likely not live through the fight. That was self-sacrificing behavior that Daniel could respect, and if he was being honest had probably saved his life.

There was no way he’d have been able to kill the leader and remaining drifters all at once. Well, he may have been able to escape into Limbo, but it would’ve been sketchy. Especially if Jonathan hadn’t given him his rare card.

At the same time though, to save him Daniel would need to permanently align himself with Jonathan. His death would be Daniel’s death, and his potential Daniel’s potential. And quite frankly, Jonathan’s potential wasn’t great.

He’d just lost access to his most valuable card, and even if he got it back by combining decks there wasn’t much synergy, and more importantly, power in the man’s deck. No, from the second Daniel had picked up the card he’d had thoughts of someone like Anton or Pavel. Powerhouses in the city, and not just someone with a few rares and a half dozen uncommons to their name.

Which raised the question; would he be willing to just let Jonathan die here if he unfroze himself and continued to turn into a monster. Could he just sit by and watch that? It was a startling question to ask himself, and an even more startling one to answer.

Daniel stepped away, desperately trying to think it through rationally as he picked out a shimmering silver card from a nearby drifter’s chest and held it up to his eyes to read, only for Jonathan to call out that he was wasting his time.

“There's no need to look for a solution in the cards. I already checked all of them and there’s nothing that’ll work. That’s including possibilities with the card I gave you.”

“Damnit,” Daniel cursed, turning back towards Jonathan and tossing the card aside. “Then what should I do?”

Jonathan smiled softly, “Just do what you have to do if it looks like I’m getting worse. Otherwise I’d prefer that you help me out after. Take me to a healer. Vadim should be able to help me if he’s still alive. Either way though, thanks for coming back. I appreciate it. I know we aren’t exactly close, but you’re not a bad man Daniel. Do some good tonight if you can.”

Daniel grit his teeth. Why was he being forced to go through all this? None of it was remotely fair or reasonable.

He found himself growing angry with the city's guards, with its defenders, with Anton, but found that he couldn’t really blame them.

How could he blame them when he’d already decided to let Jonathan die if it came down to it. Regardless of what happened to him, Daniel had made his choice the second the option had entered his mind; and he’d just have to live with it.

‘No,’ Daniel thought bitterly. ‘There is still someone I can blame.’

Navarre, the goddess of blood, the reason nobody had been able to come help. The monster that had tortured Alexander and countless others over the centuries and the madwoman who’d tried to break his own mind for being little more than a passing inconvenience.

She was the reason that monsters were sieging the city, and was responsible for every last death that happened during this Blood Moon and every past and future Blood Moon.

Moments after this realization Jonathan’s card finally came to an end. He smiled softly towards Daniel who watched on with the firm realization that no matter what the outcome was, he’d come to hate a god, and himself if only just a little bit more.