Despite my reluctance to waste resources, I forced myself to turn every corgi card I had acquired to Muncher. Affliction was visible on my face as I fed the Labnyador the cards I had so carefully crafted, the Clerk watching from some steps up the spiral stairs, metallic arms crossed.

“You know you don’t have to labby your cards just because the Warden…” he spun his hand in the air, as if to look for the right words. “…Forgot to take his medication.”

“That’s correct, Master, he has a shameful addiction to Ibuprofen he is trying to quit.”

“Ibuprofen kills dogs,” I said, absent-mindedly, as I fed the twerking corgi to Muncher.

“And fentanyl humans, chap. That’s how we roll regarding drugs,” he tapped the side of his head. “You could ask me for aid in bothering our friend. He cannot kill me; I cannot kill him. Also, while talking about the Warden, he told me to charge him five packs and give them to you, as an apology on his part. He also told me not to tell you and to invent an excuse about you winning a secret draw or some shit. So you won a secret draw and I owe you five packs, bucko,” he exposited in the most terms and conditions at wwwdotfuckyoudotcom way possible.

“You just told me the Warden paid for them.”

Muncher meowed in agreement. Thanks for the support, ominous monstergirl-eating creature.

“No, I didn’t.” The Clerk said, whetting his claws against each other like the psycho he was. “I never would do that.”

I just cast the remainder of my deck into the toothpaste-looking Vortex and watched how Muncher began enthusiastically hunting for it, one of his Labrador ears rising above the surface of the vortex like the dorsal fin of a stalking shark.

I turned and began climbing the stairs back up. “So, I won a draw?” I said, putting all of my willpower into faking a smile.

“That’s right, you won five packs.”

“Is there anything in the packs that is likely to kill me?”

The Clerk joined his hands and rubbed them together. “I hope so.”

“Double-plus-unpoggers on your part, Clerk,” I said, and you could see the metallic plates of the Clerk’s face twitching. Good, as this was war.

I swiftly climber the remainder of the stairs, skipping every other step. I crossed the door that led to the labbying chamber, exiting into the store, and found that the Clerk was already there, drinking dice as he often did.

“How?”

He pulled out his cellphone, and showed it to me. The Uber app was open. “By the way, the latest boosters have new cards. The oldest boosters also have new cards. They are updated in real time. Don’t ask how.”

I was about to ask how when I saw the Clerk going to the front of the counter and begin to pull a couple of pigtails into sight. Blacky’s card was trembling on my shoulder. “Don’t pull out the Texan girl, please. Where do you have her stored, anyway? I am the one behind the counter now.”

“I have phenomenal Looney-toonesque powers, if you haven’t noticed. As long as it is fun for the goddess, I am allowed to do it.”

“Ah, right, you guys can even teleport. Subject change.” I announced, rolling my eyes. “Clerk, do you have a list of the new cards?”

“Nobody does. The Warden, the goddess, The Whiner, and The Janitor often design and balance cards together. Sometimes I help, but it wasn’t the case this time around. The new cards cannot be crafted or seen in a collection until somebody gets a full playset by chance, so I am in the metaphorical dark.”

Blacky’s appropriately-colored head popped out of his card, “Is the metaphoronical dark a place under the sea (below the photic zone, mind you) where the spirits of horseshoe worms go to rest after death?”

The Clerk made a funny face. “The fuck are you on, Risen.”

“Phoronids, I watched a documentary about them. In the Interdimensional Ocean life channel. Shit’s colorless. All grey and white. Some are yellow. None blue.”

“I think some of them are red,” I argued.

“That’s a shade of gray,” Blacky countered, staring at me with his head tilted.

“Enough.” The Clerk vomited five packs over the counter. “Take them and get out of my property.”

“Thank you, Clerk.” I scooped up the pack and headed for the door, casually hopping over the multiple dog skeletons laid out on the floor.

“Those are mine, he likes taking my bones. Not always after killing me.” Blacky clarified, always helpful.

“Okay. Let’s go to the room, open the packs, and hope I get something useful against the flaming dogs from them.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

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I laid the five packs in front of me, over the playmats that covered my hospital bed of a bed, and, with my legs crossed, I sat to contemplate them. What did I want the most? Good cards, or at least some high rarity ones, yes, I needed that. Food was always welcome, of course. But I was being hunted and Blacky wanted some holidays, which meant he was conspiring against me, or at least pretending to. I didn’t know if I had a friend in this dimension. The Warden was the closest thing, and he had threatened me just because I was behaving like an annoying type of player. He even called me a corgist slur.

The packs were already in my hands. Their contents wouldn’t change in the short term. Postponing their opening further would not help me at all. So I took the first one, and after sniffing the sweet perfume of plastic and motor oil exuded by the package I pulled onto the thermal seal, pointing away from me in case some sort of coffee-shitting entity of the female persuasion decided to come out.

To my fortune, nothing living and visible popped out of the first pack. I was working under the following assumptions: Invisible women only exist in superhero media, chameleon girls are not that good at camouflage, and microbe girls are nobody’s fetish. I knew the last one went against scientific consensus but, for the sake of my sanity, I had to deny any possibility of Escheri-chan coli being a thing.

I shook the pack a bit, just in case, and then emptied its contents over my hand. I quicly passed the cards. Pure trash, including a copy of Retrievaid (The 0/4 golden retriever with the syringe). There was a card I had never seen, it was a no-cost card called Rabies Outbreak, and it depicted a couple of brown curs staring whale eyed at a glass of water. Its text was the following:

Rabies outbreak is played automatically when drawn. Deal 2 damage to all players in the current duel, then draw a card from your main deck. This card never goes to the Rainbow bridge: it returns to the deck instead (Shuffle afterwards, you uncivilized savage).

It was good to see they were learning about the need to tell players EVERYTHING. This card seemed like a deck thinner for aggro. Running four copies meant you could effectively have a 46 card deck with some incidental burn, aiding your gameplan. And if you were playing control, a 46 card deck was also pretty good as long as you failed to kill yourself by drawing (Count on me to succeed at it at every turn).

“Blacky, this card is most likely fucking broken. In the unexciting, unfun way.”

As it was customary, he popped his big mustached head out of his card. “If they come with little tears or a missing corner they will get repaired after being added to the collection, Master.”

“One of these days I will shave you, you little cheeky shit.”

Glocky returned, holding the gun with his paw, somehow. “I have bullets this time.”

I promptly slapped my guide and used the distraction to seize the gun. Blacky didn’t struggle for it: the benefits of being able to respawn. Soon I noticed the gun lacked some parts. “You sold the trigger mechanism to buy the bullets?”

“Astute observation, Master. Yes, yes I did.”

I hammered his snout with the grip of the gun, sending him whining back inside the card. “You moron.”

I proceeded to open the next pack, with the anti-monstergirl measures described above, and I was met with a copy of Yorkbatero, as it was protocol to kill my hopes and dreams on arrival. I dodged the bullet, metaphorically speaking this time around, and I got another golden card. A room!

New room unlocked: Aquarium!

Now you can open aquatic Companions from packs!

“No! Fuck!”

Yes, you can fuck them.

“Can I breed normal fish there?”

You are discouraged from fucking local fauna, but never forbidden from doing so.

“Can I raise fish and make them have babies with other fish so I can eat them?” I asked in the tone one would use with a stupid child.

You are discouraged from exploiting the system in unfun ways. Make the fish sex funny.

I thought about telling the system that most fish don’t have sex and just release everything (eggs, sperm, hopes, dreams, tax returns, etc) into the water, but then I remembered who (or what) I was dealing with, and answered accordingly.

“Send nudes.”

The announcement popped away, freeing my sight from those ugly bold letters. “This whole dimension needs Jesus.”

Blacky cleared his throat. “The Christian messiah or your neighborhood’s dealer?”

“Either or. How do you know about Jesus?”

“Bible.”

I gestured by spinning my finger in the air. “The other Jesus.”

“Statistical certainty.”

I began browsing the cards of the pack, looking for new ones. Nothing in this pack. Opened the next one, and no unpleasant surprises came out. I was on a roll.

Passing the cards, I noticed a GBG one I had never seen before, neither in matches or the collection: Coma Papillon. A 1/6 4 cost, It depicted a white and brown dog of said breed, unconscious, connected to life support, and a thought bubble coming out of his head, depicting three collars: a dark gray one, and two in different hues of yellow. It had a legend on its textbox.

This card’s effect will remain hidden until a player figures it out and reveals it in a non-private pvp game.

Hint: Living will be easy if your collars are like my dreams.

“This is bullshit. I need to know the effect of the cards I get.”

Blacky shook his head, his schnauzer beard following with difficulty, “But people experimenting with them entertains the goddess, master.”

“Fine.”

Passing that card, I noticed another new one: One Loess War Curse. It was a five cost, big breeds spell, depicting a bunch of different dog breeds engaged in a bloody fight, their eyes injected red, their bodies trembling under a dark rain.

Wake up all sleeping dogs in the field. Dogs cannot fall sleep again during this turn. At the end of their owner’s turn, all dogs affected by this spell die from exhaustion. You can attack once with each affected dog after you play this spell.

At first I was dumbfounded at how complex and contrived an effect to just give an extra attack was. But then I remembered something about a card the warden had used against me.

I opened my collection and scrolled down to Retrievaid, reading her text carefully.

If you have gained health this turn, activate my effect to gain 1 point of health and draw a card. I go to sleep for two turns afterwards for giving injections tires me out.

I began grinning like an idiot, and then giggling like a madman. “Hey, Blacky, Retrievaid has no once-per-turn clause.”

“Oh. Well, she is a pretty weak card in the meta. No serious deck uses it.”

“I figured out a seven kibble, three card combo to draw my whole deck, and heal a lot. Deck that will include rabies outbreak. Let’s leave the other packs for later, go to the Warden, pugmel his face a bit, and then buy the mullingan. We have a degenerate, Non-corgi deck to make.”