Arriving at the store, the bell sounded and the Clerk rose from behind the counter once more. He saw me, then his gaze wandered to Blacky, and, last but not least, he de-rose again, disappearing behind the Counter.
“Why do you react as if you didn’t expect us?”
He peeked out his hideout and hissed.
“I have the undying hope that you will somehow manage to farmsend yourself and a new face will come across the door. A cuter, less stupid face.”
“Well, fuck you too. I have come for my milestone rewards.”
The Clerk somersaulted over the counter, extending hiss long arm and stabbing Blacky’s card straight down the middle. Blacky plucked his head out of the card by a side.
“Shit man, I live here.”
With the card still impaled in his claw. The clerk began shaking his hand as if he had something disgusting stuck on it. “Get off! I wanted to k-word you!”
“Well, that is a valid excuse, but I still live here, so pay me the repairs of the card!”
“It gets repaired automatically when you die!” the Clerk extended his hand away from him and carefully peeled the card with the other one, all under the close observation of Blacky, king of torticollis.
Finally, the card fell to the Floor and Blacky squeezed out of it, avoiding the hole as he did.
“Are we good now?”
“We are dogs, we are always good,” The Clerk said, and immediately after, started retching.
He vomited a couple of boosters over the floor planks (remember, made of card-dust)
I scooped the oily things up, because I was no stranger to lubricant oil, which seemed to be what was covering the packs. It at least smelled like a mechanic’s workshop. When I turned back to look at the dogs, they were sitting at a round table, playing Deck of Dogs. There was something weird about the board state. Of course…
“How the fuck are you two deep into a grindy control game already?”
“Cheating,” they admitted in unison. “Bold of you to think we read the cards, ha!”
Blacky drew from his deck and, with his mouth, placed the card on the table.
“Very fuckable,” he commented.
“Absolute top bitch, my esteemed.”
I decided to sit on another table and begin the pack opening ritual, including using my shirt to remove the oil. But as soon as the Clerk caught a glimpse of my fingers on the thermal sealing, he was over me.
“No opening packs in the store. Do it outside.”
I raised an eyebrow “Why?”
“Someone once accumulated a thousand packs and flooded the store with companions, food and even rooms. It smelled to unwashed waifu ass and curry for months afterwards, months!”
Well, that confirmed a thing: there were months in this world. How they were decided, however, was still a mystery.
I let the dogs do their thing and drool over cardboard pieces and went outside, under the spotless sky. I stared hard at it, squinting, trying to see if there was a roof high above. Nothing.
Sitting on the unsually cleanmn floor outside the store, I opened the first of the packs. A bowl with fruit jumped out of it. Apples, pears, bananas.
“Sugar! Wooh!” I proclaimed my love for carbohydrates.
I took an apple and gave it a sniff. It smelled like an apple. Which was unusual to me, because the ones back home often smelled like rat urine. Our greengrocer was a man of cheap prices and cheaper practices. A legend.
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I rotated the apple in my hand. Back on Earth, I would have eaten an apple without major hesitation. But here… well, they could be just fruit. Or they could bet a curse given form. Apples were symbols, apples were biblical. Snow White was poisoned with an apple, and being poisoned was not among my hobbies, to be honest? Like, if you are into that, I guess it’s fine, but, I don’t know, man.
I decided apples were not safe, and proceeded to grab a pear. This universe was very fond of puns. I had to think of the possibilities. Maybe it was a pear of dispear, or one that would make whoever eats it pearish. Furthermore, it was a bit hard still, not mature enough.
Finally, I decided the Bananas would be. At worst, I would trip on the peel if I weren’t careful, and I could make sure that didn’t happen if I casted the thing into the void. I had never heard of poisoned bananas, and the name was an unusual combination of sounds, so puns were mostly out of question. I decided, that, yes, bananas were mostly safe, and carelessly, I prepared and shoved the first of them into my mouth.
The moment the sweet fruit touched my lips, the store’s door flew open, and the Clerk pointed at me while holding a wooden sign up. It just had two letters: Lowercase x, and uppercase D. It lasted like that for a solid three seconds, and when I began chewing on the banana, he swiftly retreated.
Who cared, I had gotten food, and it wasn’t terrible nor lethal.
With the problem of starvation solved for the day, I grabbed the Card pack and extracted its remaining contents. It seemed that the food had taken the place of only a card, contrary to Vacatrola, that had taken the place of five. So I revealed the first of the four cards. It was a not common spell, cost 4, of the non-dog category: Parvovirus.
Give all units in the field -3/-3 for this turn. If their attack becomes 0 or less, send them to the Rainbow Bridge.
It couldn’t be cast in the enemy turn, but, otherwise, it was an excellent control tool. It sapping away three health meant it checked in any unit with low health in addition to units with low attack. Only dogs 4/4 and bigger would survive this thing. The illustration of a puppy laying on the floor with an almost empty hourglass over his head, however… that was a bit cruel, even for my cowgirl-labbying moral standards.
With some careful planning, this could be the seed of my control deck, the card from which I build upwards. It gave me a category to start building outwards from. Control probably wanted to play three categories at most, so to have a health cushion against aggro and midrange. Furthermore, a properly played and built control deck could have a non-linear gameplay, which could be helpful against some of the Warden decks. Now, shifting the crafting focus before getting the Pug deck to a workable state could be extremely harmful to my economy. Control decks were known for having flashy and expensive win conditions and survival tools. Their consistency often depended on pieces that couldn’t really get replaced for slightly suboptimal choices, as you could do in an Aggro pile. Of course, there was bound to be a control deck cheaper than all the other alternatives, but I had no way to find the recipe that I knew of.
It was time to pass the card, anyway.
The second one I don’t remember what it was, I just remember not feeling excited about it. The third was a kibble card, for a change, It dealt one damage to its user when played. This meant that out there was some sort of masochistic deck that cared about hitting its user to gain advantage. One that took the “the only health point that matters is the last” philosophy to the extreme.
I passed the card, and, who would guess it, the last one was a copy of Yorkbatero. Maybe there was a control deck hidden somewhere in there.
The second pack was in my arms, and I considered opening it. But, before that, I summoned The Manual. I had some questions I wanted answered.
“What happens when the deck runs out?”
The answer to my question surfaced in the paw-shaped item.
You fall off the ship, silly UwU.
“What happens when the main deck, composed of cards, in the game Deck of Dogs, runs out?”
If the deck of a player runs out, that player loses when he needs to draw at the end of his turn. Other draw effects don’t cause a loss, unless they specify they do so. By the way, card text is king when it conflicts with the base rules. If a card says it would do something that breaks the rules, that card can do that something.
“Do you, the Goddess of this universe, narrate these things as I question, or do you have a gigantic and stupidly specific set of default answers?”
Of course I don’t narrate these as people question the manual! I just had several million timeless units of no-time to put it together. Then I created time and… well, all went downhill since then. No, wait, that was when I made gravity up. AnyOwOy, go play your mill decks, you non-drink monster.
Yes, she narrated them on the fly. I had to try one more thing.
“Send nudes,” I solemnly recited.
Every other player asks this eventually. Congratulations. Sadly, I need you alive and my nudes are undescriptibly unfathomable. They would melt your brain and make it drip out your nostrils, they would curve your pocket dimension upon itself destroying it and your dead, brainless body in the process.
I carefully considered her words.
“Send nudes,” I insisted. If they killed me, they surely were worth dying for.
…one of these days, I will open an Onlyfans and cause the apocalypse.
“Send. Nudes.”
…You are doing this to annoy me, aren’t you?
I nodded. The manual snorted and disappeared. Congratulations, Mauro, you managed to offend a deity. You may soon learn the fine art of concealing your secret objective.
I swiftly ate the remaining bananas and opened the second pack, that had nothing of use, save for a not-common 1 drop pug.