“That,” Dylan looked around, “is more than I’d expected.”
More than half of the room was stacked with various types of monster corpses. The largest portion were the welves of different growth stages, but there were also several kinds of flying monsters, and an assortment of the other smaller creatures found in the dungeon and around Fairbasin.
“Like I said, we’ve got a lot of monster resources right now.” His father patted him on the shoulder before directing his attention across the room. “Everything else is on the table over there. That box has all the mana cores. They’re labeled, so they should be easy to use. Mostly. I threw in a few old souvenirs from my adventuring days with your uncle. We didn’t really track what came from where back then.”
“Thanks,” Dylan nodded.
“No problem. They were just collecting dust anyway,” his father said. “As for the plants, they’re most of what I could salvage from your mother’s garden. By giving them to you, I can put them to use and don’t need to worry too much about trying to get any potential medical supplies from the town.”
“So little,” Dylan muttered. He had fond memories of helping his mother with her garden. It hadn’t been big, but it had always been vibrant. To see it reduced to a frail collection not even large enough to cover a single table…
It hurt.
“The land we rented was too close to the wall. Almost everything was trampled.” His father sighed. “If your mother were here, she’d probably have been able to save more, but I’m glad she’s not. The capital’s probably the safest place for her right now.”
“Yeah,” Dylan echoed. Then he shook his head. I need to get started. This could take a while. He took a step toward the pile of monsters.
“You should recognize most of those, but a few are new. Looks like they’re mutations that happened in the dungeon break. You can come and get me if you have questions about them.”
“Got it.”
“I’ve also got one of those flying monsters that Hensly bombarded earlier today.” The man paused for a moment. “Well, not one of those ones exactly; they were all incinerated. But the town’s been seeing more of the things every day, so there were some bodies in storage.”
Dylan nodded, and as the stairs behind him creaked with the sound of his father leaving, he began a quick survey of the room. After a few minutes, he had a rough plan of action.
Before doing anything else, he wanted to make three more Mana Surges.
He’d considered experimenting to see if he could make something more useful, but recalling a few of his less successful attempts at card creation, he decided against it. With the town under siege and his resources limited, it was more important to make something reliable than to gamble on uncertain hopes.
He summoned his card catalog and brought out his mana crystals. When he drew a Blank Card from the book, he took a deep breath and shuddered a bit. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered.
He brought his mind back to the last time the System had guided him in making a card and began.
When he was halfway through, he guessed that something was wrong. When he held the finished card, he was sure.
Mana Surge’s brand was two wavy lines, and while the card he’d just made looked similar, it was just slightly off.
[Name: Restore Mana]
[Type: Spell]
[Summoning Cost: 1 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 2 Energy]
[Effect: Restore 7 Mana]
Shit.
The card was worse in nearly every way. Higher summoning cost. Lesser effect.
He felt like he’d just wasted his first mana crystal.
“Shit,” he cursed again, lightly kicking the floor. “What went wrong?”
He thought he’d followed the previous procedure to make Mana Surge, but something was obviously different.
Even though he’d almost prefer repeating the process of making DESTROY, he sunk deeper into the memories of the time when the System had hijacked his body and mind. He relived the details of every moment. Despite his own psychological hurdle blocking the way, it was surprisingly easy.
The loss of control. The overwhelming presence mastering his very being.
It was all a part of him. And he hated that.
But in the end, it was his feelings of resentment that helped him realize where he’d gone wrong. He hadn’t been careful enough in recalling how to create Mana Surge. Subconsciously, he’d distanced himself from the uncomfortable memories, and as a result, he hadn’t been able to properly replicate the intents needed to make the card.
After taking a few moments to calm his mind, Dylan began again.
He filled himself with thoughts of power, vigor, and energy. Just as the System had shown him. He drew them all together with the same feeling of connection he’d been forced to experience in the Tutorial.
And it worked.
He held a new, perfect copy of the Mana Surge card.
[Name: Mana Surge]
[Type: Spell]
[Summoning Cost: Free]
[Activation Cost: 2 Energy]
[Effect: Restore 10 Mana]
Dylan made two more before he stopped, and then he sat down to rest.
He wasn’t particularly tired. His mana was more than full enough to continue. But he needed to clear his head.
He only had eight Blank Cards left and didn’t want to waste any of them because he let himself get distracted by his complicated feelings about the System.
After nearly half an hour of meditation, he stood and walked over to the welf corpses.
He didn’t plan to touch the other monsters for now. In part, it was because the more advanced welves in front of him were among the most powerful of the creatures, but more than that, Dylan’s decision came down to familiarity.
He’d learned about the characteristics of all of the monsters around Fairbasin and in its dungeon while in school. With books, images, videos, and chances to observe their corpses, his education had been comprehensive. But there was still a difference between learning in a classroom and practical experience.
The welf he and Alyssa had fought in the very room he was standing in now was the only monster before him that he’d had the chance to face in person. It was more real in his mind, and he recognized that sense of reality as an important factor in successful card creation.
He could use the other creatures to make cards, and given his growing confidence in the process, he felt he’d be able to create something better than his first fumbling attempts in the Tutorial. But unless he had some truly exceptional materials to work with, he knew he wouldn’t be able to exceed what he could produce with the welves.
Despite being drawn to a few of the additional options, Dylan chose to focus his efforts where he predicted the greatest chance for success. The rest weren’t going anywhere; the remnant mana in their bodies would prevent decay from setting in for at least another week. He told himself that if he encountered any living examples of the creatures during his time on the wall, he’d be ready to make use of any of the remaining bodies that seemed valuable.
That said, he decided to pay special attention to any of the flying monsters around town. They’d be a nice addition to his card pool. His eyes drifted across a few large bats he knew had come from the dungeon, an owl with dark feathers that had probably lived deeper in the forest than he was familiar with, and a creature that looked like a mix between the two.
Should be one of the mutations Dad mentioned.
After a moment, he shook his head and returned his attention to the welves. He counted more than a dozen of the things, mostly in the younger growth stages, but there were also a couple that were fully mature. There was even one that Dylan recognized as advanced.
The youngest were almost indistinguishable from normal wolves, but with closer examination, there were differences. Most notably, their front paws were elongated and had more flexible digits. Prototypes of the clawed hands they’d eventually become.
At the intermediate growth stage were the corpses of the same kind of monster that Dylan had faced before the Tutorial. Thick hind legs and oversized front claws that would drag on the ground before them, they were well on their way to becoming bipedal.
And when Dylan looked over the pair of mature welves in front of him, he couldn’t help but think of the pictures he’d seen of werewolves in the surviving records of pre-Awakening media and folklore. Hulking masses of fur and claws ready to rip apart anything that stood before them.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
As they progressed through their physical transformation, typical welves grew from the lower end of tier one to the lower end of tier two in power. But that wasn’t the end for a select few of the creatures.
Those that continued to grow no longer changed as drastically as the monsters did while maturing. Their muscles became more refined; their fur became more like sharp bristles, but their biggest transformation wasn’t visible. It was in their intelligence. They became more cunning, their tactics more ruthless, and with their greater ability to lead and coordinate the packs of less evolved welves, the danger they represented was much more significant than the simple improvements seen in their bodies.
Dylan couldn’t help but wonder what the species might be like if it weren’t spawned and completely corrupted amidst the impurities extracted by the wild dungeon.
It might not be impossible to see in the future.
All mana carried traces of the world around it, and it was generally accepted that dungeon cores, as nodes of the System, had a unique way of reading those traces. In the process of filtering the world’s ambient mana, the detailed information extracted by a wild dungeon’s core would guide the creation of life that could potentially exist in the surrounding land.
Wild dungeons in arid climates would produce monsters suited to survive in them. Dungeons found in cold areas were the same, spawning monsters with heavy pelts and good temperature resistances. And Fairbasin’s dungeon created monsters that would be at home in the forest.
Dylan had seen wolves and bears while out with his mother or father, and the dungeon had welves and clay bears. They existed in disconnected but mirrored biomes. The corrupted monsters weren’t exactly the same as their natural counterparts, but they’d have no trouble thriving outside the dungeon that had spawned them.
Seeing as the advanced welves had grown in a way that allowed them to show such a ruthless intelligence, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the wolves around Fairbasin could do the same with enough time and mana. But the difference was that they’d be born free from the wild dungeon’s corrupting influence.
It was a fascinating prospect.
How mana could change the world around it had always captivated Dylan. He’d been hoping to find a way to study it after gaining his class, but ever since becoming a Deckmaster, he’d had little time for anything more than training and survival.
Hopefully this all ends soon. He sighed and began to separate the bodies he needed from their piles.
Once he was done, he sat before an intermediate welf. The monster he was most familiar with.
He thought back to how he’d made the Lizard Ravager. It was his most successful summoned creature, and he wanted to replicate its creation process as much as he could.
He began by carefully examining the welf’s body. Its rough fur, its strong muscles, its sharp claws and long teeth.
He remembered the way the one he’d fought had moved and how it’d attacked. The pain he'd felt when he’d failed to defend against it.
All the while he circulated his mana. Searching for that tug, that essence resonating with his sense of what the creature was. He moved his hand over the welf’s heart, just as he had with the body that had turned into his ravager. And he found nothing.
Frowning, he continued searching, penetrating the monster with his mana. The heart was silent, but there was something further up, toward the head.
Once his hand hovered over the creature’s brain, Dylan felt a tug. It was different from what he’d experienced when making the ravager. It wasn’t the welf’s essence; it was its mana core.
Resonance built, and with it, Dylan built his intent. Focusing his mind on everything he knew about the welf and everything he wanted it to be, he took a Blank Card and reached out to the corpse.
Light flashed, and the body disappeared. Before even looking at the now pale-gold card, he knew he’d succeeded. It’d just felt right.
Bringing the card before his eyes, he found the image of the intermediate welf. It looking surprisingly lifelike for the few charred lines depicting it.
[Name: Intermediate Welf]
[Type: Summon]
[Subtypes: Creature, Welf]
[Summoning Cost: 3 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 2 Energy]
[Effect: Summon an Intermediate Welf. Lasts for the duration of Card Play or until destroyed. Has a Resilience of 18.018 and a Physical Power of 24.024.]
It wasn’t as good as the ravager. The sum of its stats was comparable to either of the phantoms, but for the relatively small price of increasing its summoning cost by one mana, it had lost their disadvantage of a short duration.
It was a good start, but he knew the next card he wanted to try making would be trickier.
After taking a few minutes to rest, he turned his attention to the younger, more wolflike welves.
He didn’t think any one of them would give a result worth his efforts, so he’d prepared two.
He’d always wanted to try making a card using more than one material. When he’d made Siphoning Veil, he’d had help fusing multiple pieces together, and then he’d treated the product as one entity. One material. At the time, he hadn’t been sure all of that work had been necessary, but he’d only had the one chance to make the card. He hadn’t wanted to take any risks.
Now, he had more security. If he failed, he’d only waste a single Blank Card. It would still be a loss, but he’d have extra monster corpses available to try again in the future.
Sitting down between the pair of young welves, he took a breath and began to examine the creatures.
They had softer fur and leaner bodies than the beast he’d just consumed, but their teeth and claws felt just as sharp.
One hand over each of the monsters, Dylan circulated his mana and fell into the familiar semi-meditative state, searching for resonance. It was hard to manage both bodies, but Dylan was surprised to find that it wasn’t quite as difficult as he’d expected.
Maybe it’s because of my practice with splitting my focus?
He shook his head to drive any extra thoughts from his mind and redoubled his concentration.
Once again, he found no essence. Silence in each heart; the only forces to pull against him were the mana cores entrenched inside the beasts’ skulls.
As he centered himself in the building resonance, Dylan made slight alterations to the intents he’d used for the previous card to better suit the current growth stage of the younger welves.
When he was satisfied, he reached out with a Blank Card to where the creatures’ paws were touching, building a loose bridge between the two with his mana. Everything connected, and both corpses flashed into nothingness.
The card changed from white to the usual pale-gold, and an image of the wolflike monsters burned itself onto the surface.
[Name: Young Welves]
[Type: Summon]
[Subtypes: Creature, Welf]
[Summoning Cost: 4 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 3 Energy]
[Effect: Summon a pair of Young Welves. They last for the duration of Card Play or until destroyed. They each have a Resilience of 12.012 and a Physical Power of 15.015.]
Dylan smiled. It had worked.
The stats of each welf were about what he’d expected, but he was a little disappointed with how expensive the card was.
Maybe I can make it cheaper with more practice, but it’s good enough for now. Creating a card using more than a single material was already progress.
Next, Dylan moved to one of the mature welves.
He was a little nervous. The monster had been in tier two when it’d been alive. Although he’d worked with rare materials in the Tutorial to make cards, he had no way of knowing what tier they actually were. Other than the rash decision that had resulted in the DESTROY card, this would be the first time that Dylan was knowingly using something above his own level.
He took a breath and began.
The same observation process. The same visualization of how the creature behaved. The same search for resonance.
As with the other welves, the essence in the beast’s heart was silent, but when Dylan penetrated the creature with his mana and moved his attention to its head, he found trouble.
The pull coming from the mana core was both stronger and more elusive than he’d previously experienced. It took significantly longer to lock in on it and form a resonance with the body, and as time passed, Dylan felt his mana drain.
This can’t last forever.
When he finally gained a foothold, he acted decisively. A Blank Card met the creature’s skull and triggered the familiar flash of light. The body vanished, and the welf’s image appeared on the newly created card.
[Name: Mature Welf]
[Type: Summon]
[Subtypes: Creature, Welf]
[Summoning Cost: 4 Mana]
[Activation Cost: 4 Energy]
[Effect: Summon a Mature Welf. Lasts for the duration of Card Play or until destroyed. Has a Resilience of 24.024 and a Physical Power of 33.033.]
The card was not particularly good.
It had higher stats than any of the other welves he’d made, but that didn’t matter much when its cost rivaled the most expensive cards he could currently play. The ravager took a single mana more to put in his deck but was significantly more powerful.
Dylan wondered if the tier mismatch between himself and the body had played a role in the results.
Maybe he’d just been too hasty in activating the Blank Card. Even if it had been difficult, more time spent connecting to the mana core might have helped.
Or maybe he’d simply failed to visualize as clear a picture of the mature welf as he’d needed to create a better card. He’d seen the intermediate welf in action, and although they weren’t exactly the same creatures, he had enough experience observing wolves around Fairbasin to use their behavior as a substitute when working with the younger welves. All he had to go on with the mature creature were the few videos he’d seen in class.
Nothing to be done for it now.
He considered giving up on the advanced welf he’d been planning on trying to use. Based on what he’d learned of the creatures, it looked like it had reached somewhere around high tier two. If he wanted to create a card with it, he’d have to deal with the fact that it was much more powerful than the mature welf had been, and he’d still have the problem of not holding a completely fleshed out view of its behavior. But before abandoning it, he decided to see just how hard it would be to build resonance with the creature.
Dylan circulated his mana again, but when he reached out, he froze after making contact with the bristly gray fur. It was faint, but there was a tug leading his hand to the monster’s heart.
Why this one?
He moved his fingers over the welf’s chest, and although the feeling grew stronger, it never rose to anything more than an echo. It would be difficult for him to build any kind of resonance out of it.
Although disappointed, Dylan didn’t move. He tried to find more of the creature’s essence, but ultimately, he couldn’t. After a few minutes of searching, he gave up, shifting his attention to the mana core.
He rested his hand on the welf’s forehead and reached inside with his mana. The moment his senses touched the core, a rising headache threatened to pull his focus away from his task.
This isn’t going to work.
Dylan sighed and sat back from the body.
The essence he’d found was too weak and the mana core too advanced. He could probably force the creature into a card, but without either of those two anchors, the results would be suboptimal.
It’d probably turn out like my earliest attempts with card creation.
He moved to sit by the wall to meditate. He needed to recover his mana before doing anything else. But as he rested, he considered what he’d learned.
Not all bodies held essence.
He didn’t know if the way the System created monsters in challenge dungeons had anything to do with why he'd felt such a strong resonance with the essence inside the lizard boss during the Tutorial, and he didn’t know why he’d only felt the ghost of any essence from one of the welves.
A mana core could serve the same purpose during card creation, but Dylan couldn’t help but have a feeling. Heart and mind, essence and the memory of mana. The most complete creatures should only be able to be summoned after incorporating both.
He stood up and walked back the pile of bodies. He’d been intending to move on to the other materials in the basement, but he felt compelled to do something first.
He circulated his mana and began to reach out and touch each and every monster.
He’d noticed that searching for resonance from a mana core required him to run his own mana through a creature’s body; it had to spread to the core itself. But with essence, all he needed was a touch. With both the lizard boss and the advanced welf, he’d felt the tug leading his mana-flushed fingers to the creatures' hearts the moment his skin had made contact.
No. No. Not this one. There. No. No. No. This one.
With each body he touched, he came to a better understanding of what was happening. The stronger the creature had been in life, the greater the chance he could feel its essence in death. The fresher the body, the more likely it was that essence would remain.
When he finished, he sat back down to restore the mana he’d just used.
This probably means that all living things have essence of some kind, but it fades after death. And the stronger the being, the greater its essence or the greater its body’s ability to retain its essence, Dylan concluded.
That put a time limit on his ability to use the best materials, but he was glad he’d found a path to improving both his knowledge of the world and his ability to make cards.
He still had a smile on his face as he approached the table holding the plants and miscellaneous mana cores.