Inside the box his father had pointed out to him, Dylan found a collection of small bags, each labeled with their contents. Most listed common monsters found in the dungeon or around Fairbasin followed by the tier the creatures had been when they’d died.
He was curious about the souvenirs his father had mentioned, but after seeing that none of them were labeled, he put them aside. He’d study them later; without knowing more about where they’d come from or what their previous owners had been able to do, he was wary of using them to make any cards. Proceeding blindly would probably just end up wasting the cores and his Blank Cards.
In the end, Dylan pulled out a bag containing a single core. It’d belonged to a low tier two clay bear. Younger examples of the species were rare, and while he had more middle and high tier two clay bear cores to choose from, he’d left them in place. After his earlier experiences, he felt the weakest core was the safest to work with.
He poured the small gemstone into his hand. It flickered with dull brown light, reflecting the direction of the mana the monster had used in life. He moved his hand, and the smooth surface rolled across his skin. Satisfied with the feeling, Dylan sat down and began to circulate his mana, falling into half-meditation.
The pull was instant. It had the same strength as the one coming from the mature welf, but with his fingers firmly holding the clay bear’s core, resonance was much easier to grasp. Some of that elusive feeling was still there, but it wasn’t enough to be a significant hindrance.
After finding the connection, Dylan considered how to proceed. He’d never tried to create a creature card without using a body as a material before, but excepting essence, he was currently holding what he considered to be the most crucial part of a monster.
It might work, he thought to himself. If I fail, I’ll consider it a learning experience.
He firmed his will and began.
He closed his eyes and recalled the detailed information he’d learned about clay bears in class. Their large size. Greyish-brown fur that was almost like armor. Enormous physical strength. And an affinity for simple earth magic.
To round out his mental grasp on the monster’s body, he recalled a large bear he’d seen his father defeat on one of their family outings into the forest.
To strengthen his impression of its abilities, he focused on images from his time in the Tutorial. Jaiden collapsing the earth. The floor falling away in the shaman’s room. The trembling cavern during the final boss fight.
Unbidden, memories of Lucas describing how a clay bear had destroyed Mitchell’s flooded his mind. Even though he hadn’t seen it, he couldn’t help but imagine the beast smashing through the floor and killing the people below. Including Kyle.
He forced unnecessary emotions away, and out of some unknown instinct, brought the core to his forehead.
The resonance reached a crescendo.
The hand holding the Blank Card followed.
A bright flash of light rushed through Dylan’s closed eyelids, and then it was done.
The new card was made.
With a hint of nervous excitement, Dylan looked at the image of bear’s paw crushing the earth beneath it.
Obviously, not what I was going for. He frowned but continued to read the card’s information.
[Name: Collapsing Earth]
[Type: Spell]
[Summoning Cost: 3 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 2 Energy]
[Effect: Call forth the phantom of a clay bear to strike at and collapse a section of earth. Uses the force of 60.06 Magic Power to act on a circle with a maximum radius of 30.03 feet.]
Although it looked like it might be promising, it was hard to tell how useful the card would be without testing it. But reading the words describing its effect set a new wave of thoughts crashing through Dylan’s mind.
The first thing that caught his attention was the word phantom. A few small additions made the meanings of “the phantom of a clay bear” and “phantom clay bear” significantly different, but he couldn’t help thinking that the word choice on the card was deliberate.
Can I use mana cores to make phantom cards?
Looking back, Dylan realized that his focus had shifted in the final moments of making the card. Instead of imagining adding abilities to the clay bear, he been more focused on the abilities of the clay bear. Another small but significant difference.
If I’d maintained a better grasp on my intent, would this card have become a Phantom Clay Bear instead of Collapsing Earth? And if I repeat this process with other mana cores, can I use them to make spell cards that approximate the abilities of the creatures they came from?
Both potential applications of the cores were exciting prospects for his future card creation, and if they worked, they would give him clear new directions to expand his card pool.
Phantoms had their limitations, but with support from cards like Phantom Rally, they could show a terrifying effectiveness.
And with all of the varied creatures in the world, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find cores tailored to the specific kinds of spells he wanted to use to enhance his decks.
Searching for a quick way to verify his guesses, Dylan found a bag containing several small black mana cores. They came from shadow squirrels, a weak tier one animal commonly found in the forest around Fairbasin.
Unlike the majority of the more aggressive monsters whose cores he had access to, the small creatures relied on more than a mana-enhanced body to survive. To complement their dark fur, they had the ability to fold the shadows around them, and when they felt threatened, the would often seem to melt into the ubiquitous patches of shade winding through the forest.
What cemented Dylan's decision to use the cores was that he had seen his fair share of the squirrels when he’d been taken into the woods as a child. They’d never felt the need to hide from him before; without stats or a class, he’d been too weak for them to fear. When his parents had lowered their sense of presence, he and his brother had made it a game to try and catch the creatures but had never succeeded. And when his parents had reasserted themselves, the two young boys had found countless opportunities to witness the critters performing their vanishing act.
He felt well prepared to try making both a phantom and a spell.
After a few minutes of calming his mind, he began. The low tier of the cores made building a resonance simple, and the cards came easily.
With his first attempt, he tried to focus on nothing but the squirrel’s ability; with his second, he tried building a complete picture of the little monster while making sure not to focus too much on any one part.
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Ten minutes later, he was holding two brand new cards and smiling.
On the first was the image of a small mass of shadows.
[Name: Shadow Cloak]
[Type: Spell]
[Summoning Cost: 2 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 1 Energy]
[Effect: Surround a target with shadows. Channel 1 Mana/turn.]
As with Collapsing Earth, it was a card with good potential that needed testing to determine its true value. Unlike Collapsing Earth, there was no mention of a phantom in the descriptive text. It was purely an abstraction of the monster’s ability.
The second card he made had the smudged brand of a fuzzy squirrel on its surface.
[Name: Phantom Shadow Squirrel]
[Type: Summon]
[Subtypes: Creature, Phantom]
[Summoning Cost: 2 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 1 Energy]
[Effect: Summon a Phantom Shadow Squirrel. Lasts for 5 turns. Has a Resilience of 6.006, a Physical Power of 6.006, and a Magic Power of 30.03. Skill: Shadow Cloak.]
Dylan’s first reaction was to be surprised the card didn’t also have a squirrel subtype.
Maybe phantom creatures are only ever phantom creatures?
Then he looked at the rest of the card.
All three basic stats and a skill.
With the exception of magic power, the numbers were low, but when taken together, they added up to about the same stat total found on the other phantoms. The only problem was that, as far as he knew, shadow squirrels had no ability to attack with magic.
He looked for the skill’s description in the catalog and hoped that it would make up for the card's otherwise lackluster capabilities.
[Shadow Cloak: A creature with Shadow Cloak can remain undetected by cloaking itself in shadows. Chances of avoiding detection increase with Magic Power.]
The relatively high magic power on the card now made sense, but Dylan was a little disappointed at the difference between his spell and his new phantom’s skill.
It’d have been great if the little guy could cloak others as well, but as things are, it looks built to be a scout. Dylan frowned. I just wish I had a clear way to communicate with it.
He’d only ever felt vague impressions when trying to get information from his other phantoms.
He remembered that Rangers like Lucas usually had skills that let them tame certain kinds of monsters, and many also received a complementary skill that gave them the ability to have their minds possess and directly control their partners.
If I could get something like that, it wouldn’t just help the squirrel. It’d make everything I can summon more versatile.
With the thought, Dylan decided to keep an eye out for any information about monsters that might have comparable skills. If he could get a few cores to generate spells from, it would go a long way to enhancing his capabilities.
He suddenly felt more pressured than ever to increase the number of Blank Cards he had, but until his tier rose, he was limited to making one a day. Looking at the two he had left, he shook his head and turned his attention to the plants on the table.
About half were ornamental flowers that his mother liked to cultivate; the rest had a variety of medicinal uses. Dylan’s problem was that most of those uses were complicated and required a specialist or combination of other materials to bring out. He wasn’t sure he could properly replicate their effects with a card.
Ultimately, his attention landed on a fern and a small pile of berries.
The first was the same plant he’d failed to make into a healing card in the Tutorial, the sangverve fern. That attempt had given him the Makeshift Remedy card with its clunky use conditions, expensive cost, and middling effect.
He wanted to try again, but looking at the singular plant and the two remaining Blank Cards, he decided to wait. He needed more preparation.
Maybe I can try again while I’m under some kind of healing effect. There should be a couple people who came back from the Tutorial with healing classes.
He didn’t think any of the more experienced healers in town would have the time to spare for his card making experiments, and he doubted he’d be able to get anything like a healing potion unless he was actually injured.
Maybe I could “hurt” myself in training…
He shook his head to interrupt the thoughts. It’d be selfish to pull resources away from those in more desperate need when the town was in crisis. One of his peers would be his safest bet.
He’d save the fern and one of his Blank Cards and see what he could do with them the next day.
That left him with the berries.
Despite their bright red appearance, they were called golden domeberries. The name came from the spongy yellow half-shell that protected them before reaching full maturity. When it fell off, the berries’ sweet scent would attract animals to eat them and spread the seeds inside. However, if someone like his mother tended the bush they grew from, the berries could be protected while retaining their peak ripeness, ready to be picked when needed.
Like the fern, they had healing properties. They were usually prepared as part of potions or poultices and were less effective when taken raw. But they were Dylan’s best option at the moment.
Seeing the small pile of squishy red spheres, he guessed the bush they’d come from had most likely been destroyed. Without the support of the plant, they wouldn’t remain ripe for much longer and would soon begin to lose their medicinal effect as well.
Let’s do it then.
Dylan took a handful of the berries and sat down.
His memory drifted back to the time he’d spent helping his mother with the bush that grew them, and he began to run his mana and construct the intents he needed for the card he wanted them to become.
His mind watched a new domeberry mature in its golden shell before releasing its enticing scent to the wind when it’d expanded beyond the confines of its spongy protection.
He thought about the berries' common uses. The medicines they could help prepare. The foods they could help enhance. Ripe domeberries had an overly sweet flavor that people tended to either love or hate, and when they were unripe, they had a bitter flavor that caused much the same kind of reaction.
Dylan personally preferred the bitter taste, but now, he needed the sweet flavor associated with the berries' healing properties.
To help him focus, he put one in his mouth and savored it, but with his first failure to make a healing card, he worried that still wouldn’t be sufficient. Physical properties were only the medium for the medicinal effect.
Thinking about his plan to find a helper the next day, he gritted his teeth made a small cut on the back on his arm. He swallowed the berry in his mouth and replaced it with another.
As the first fell to his stomach, a gentle energy slowly seeped into his blood and swam through his body.
He focused his mind on the feeling of vitality the energy carried, the itching tingle replacing the pain of the wound he’d just made, the flavor in his mouth, and the textures resting in his hand.
His mana hummed across his fingers, and he brought one of his last Blank Cards to meet the berries he held between them.
Light flashed. A card marked by three plump little circles appeared before him.
[Name: Golden Domeberries]
[Type: Summon]
[Subtypes: Object, Food]
[Summoning Cost: 1 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 1 Energy]
[Effect: Summon 3 Golden Domeberries. They last for the duration of Card Play, until destroyed, or until consumed.]
It wasn’t what he’d been going for. No instant healing. No regenerative effect. But unlike Makeshift Remedy, it was far from worthless.
Dylan’s eyes glanced at the new “food” subtype and the new “until consumed” duration. Taken together, the words were enough to pull his lips back into a smile.
He’d wondered about making food cards before, but he hadn’t imagined that they’d be included as a part of a legitimate subtype. If he was understanding the card correctly, then as long as someone ate the berries before his deck dissipated, they should behave as if they were real. They’d fill that person’s stomach while stimulating a weak healing effect.
It wouldn’t be as powerful as the card he’d wanted to make, but it opened up new doors and new possibilities that had much greater potential.
Looking at its effect, he decided to examine the card’s detailed view. The numbers appearing on the rest of what he’d made during his stay in the basement had seemed relatively self-explanatory to him. He could also guess how this new card scaled, but he wanted to double check.
[Name: Golden Domeberries, Mastery Progress 0.00%]
[Type: Summon]
[Subtypes: Object, Food]
[Summoning Cost: 1 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 1 Energy]
[Effect: Summon, quantity = (Magic Power) / (10), Golden Domeberries. Truncate quantity to whole number. Uses maximum of 100 Magic Power. They last for the duration of Card Play, until destroyed, or until consumed.]
Interesting. But why are these descriptions always more convoluted than they need to be? Why can’t it just say that it summons one berry for every ten magic power that I have?
Dylan shook his head and put the matter out of his mind. It wasn’t important at the moment.
He stood up and stretched. He was done for the day. He had one Blank Card left in reserve for the sangverve fern and the active healing card it would hopefully bring him. The ones he’d make over the next few days would be reserved for use with Assimilating Void.
As he climbed the stairs, Dylan juggled his two remaining mana crystals.
Dad wants me to use these to meditate…
He was still tempted to try incorporating them into new card creation experiments, but he could also see why his father wanted him to raise his stats. If his cards represented his versatility and the means he had to employ his power, his stats represented that power itself. When they went up, nearly all of his cards improved.
He found his father maintaining his equipment on the simple wooden table they’d been using and nodded a quick goodnight to the man as he walked to his room.
Looking out his bedroom window before he sat down to meditate, he thought that, for once, the night was quiet.