I stepped into the room of balls (that, nevertheless, wasn’t a ballroom) and called out for my little farmable slut.
“Oi, Warden!” I called, feeling oxymoron unravel through my flesh, shivers running down my spine.
The Warden stopped reading his PlayToy magazine and rushed to me in all fours, worry settling in his face. His long metallic claws touched my forehead briefly. I was not afraid, given I was slowly warming up to the idea of playing T.E.G.
“No, you have no fever. Were you bitten by a Curly-coated Retriever?”
“No…” I asked in short, raising an eyebrow.
“I knew it! They do not exist! I have no proof of their existence.”
From a door behind the Warden a black, curly coated retriever entered the room and traversed it from end to end without saying a word.
I took my hands to my hips and grinned smugly.
“What are you smiling about?”
“A Curly coated retriever just crossed the room.”
“No, it didn’t.” The Warden engaged with a phenomenon well known to card game players: systematic denial of reality.
“He hasn’t turned through the halls yet, look.” I pointed at the dog as he attended ball licking business.
“Are you ChatGPT? Because boy, you surely are hallucinating.”
“I am not ChatGPT.”
“That sounds exactly like what ChatGPT would say.”
I needed to test a new approach. I decided to follow my instincts, dodge the subject of the current conversation like it was a Terraria boss and I was doing a hardcore run, and pull out my thick deck.
“I got this one today, what do you think?” I flaunted my new acquisition, still inside its box.
“… you bought a control-combo deck with your hard-earned money? Are you clinically retarded, Mauro?” He asked, tilting his head as he scratched it.
Stolen story; please report.
“No, not clinically. “I answered, feeling my lower eyelid twitching.
“Listen, moron, if you want to survive, and not fall in a slow spiral of death where due to a caloric deficit you play less and less each day and worsen you condition, you need to farm me efficiently. Control decks are slow as snails made of molasses, their runs take thrice the time of an aggro, tempo or midrange run. Furthermore, you should aim to get the mulligan! mulligans save games, and so they save your fucking life!” when he finished his tirade, he grunted and went back to his spot, shaking his jackalesque head. “I like you, I want you to hang around here for a long while.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “But if you don’t take this seriously, that won’t be the case.”
“It was an easy way to get two food items, and…”
He showed his teeth. “You could have bought some packs and use their contents to refine your pug deck.”
“But… I wanted a competitive deck… for pvp. I cannot farm you forever. I want to test myself against fellow players and—“ Blacky bit my ass without warning. It didn’t break the skin, but made me give a kick jump and turn ready to beat him up.
“I thought you were hallucinating for real. My bad.” Blacky excused himself and then returned to his card.
The Warden approached the card, carefully produced an steak form beneath the plates of his body, and then subtly stuffed it into Blacky’s card. All of this procedure was about as silent as a rocket launch at 5 a.m. on a hot and humid Christmas morning where there was a blackout and thus everybody is trying to sleep despite it being near forty smoldering degrees outside. (Anyone who complains that Christmas is in winter and that 40 degrees are not that much, please remember that there exist lands south of Mexico. They are wild, they are wondrous, they are violent and poor, and they are full of people praising obscure local deities, like for example Goku or Vegeta dressed in a local sports team shirt, but this mythical place exists nonetheless. And yes, we do have capybaras.)
“Was it your intention for me to not realize this corruption scheme to bite my ass?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.”
“No. It’s just funnier this way. Like, what can you do anyway, go to the pocket-dimensional-police department?”
I grunted and kicked a ball that had rolled out of line. “Listen, I don’t care , okay? I want to know if you can help me test this deck. Maybe give me a quest that helps me learn the ropes of using it?”
“Do you think I am a quest giving machine?”
I blinked twice. “Most certainly.”
The warden returned to his spot, dedicated me a long stare, then flipped the bird, and then spoke: “Okay, but the reward will be small. A hundred GBP?”
“Can’t you raise it a bit more.”
“How many billions do you think I have in my account, from beating motherfuckers like you?” he made a long pause. “Listen, I am not counting the zeroes anymore. But that doesn’t mean I can just gift you a whole collection worth of points. A hundred, or nothing.”
“Fine.” I conceded. “A hundred.”
QUEST ACQUIRED: YOU ANNOYING LITTLE SHIT.
THE WARDEN HAS ACCEPTED TO HELP YOU TEST THE DECK YOU BOUGHT. WIN A GAME AGAINST HIM TO PROVE YOU HAVE DOMINATED MARIANA’S DECK.
GAMES WON: 0/1
REWARD: 100 GBP