Looking around and finding that only a handful of people had arrived in the time since he’d been warming up, Dylan thought, Good.

His first test was with Giant Web, and if it worked the way he’d imagined, it was going to take a lot of space.

He’d been inspired after learning to control Collapsing Earth. When he’d read the detailed view of both cards, he’d found that the maximum coverage of each scaled based on the area of a circle by using his magic power to determine that circle’s radius. Collapsing Earth simply used his magic power in feet for the radius, and Giant Web used half that amount.

But he’d found a key difference in how each card was worded.

Collapsing Earth specified the shape of its effect as a circle in the card’s text. Giant Web did not; it simply used the formula for the area of a circle in its scaling calculation.

With Collapsing Earth’s prescriptive text as a contrast, Dylan speculated he could change the web’s shape. And after a few fumbled attempts to do so, he proved himself right.

That’s ridiculous. He almost laughed.

He looked at the foot-wide tangle of white threads reaching more than two hundred yards in front of him. It was like a thin white bridge spreading across the training grounds, and he could only imagine how much longer he’d be able to make it as the area the card was able to cover continued to expand.

Although he could think of a few specific cases where it might be helpful, he doubted he’d have much opportunity to use the web in the shape. It was too flat and too thin. But it was easy to come up with ways for the card’s newly discovered flexibility to work for him.

Just imagine how well it can clog up a tight corridor. Rather than a single large web providing a momentary obstacle, he could summon the thick strands of white fiber in a way that would present a long, complex, and interwoven blockade that would last for the card’s duration.

And that was only one potential application. Dylan’s thoughts turned with the possibilities as he prepared for the next card he planned to test.

Siphoning Veil.

What he wanted to do made him feel kind of dumb, but it would give him information he needed about how the card's protective effect worked.

After restoring his mana and summoning his deck, he waited until he had the Lizard Ravager in front of him and then walked over to the warehouse holding the practice weapons.

He nodded to Bennet. Over the past few days, the Warrior had been the most consistent feature in the training grounds.

“Thatcher,” the man returned the nod in greeting.

“Morning,” Dylan said, glancing at the small building. “Can I borrow the warehouse for a minute?” Dylan asked.

“What?” Bennet asked. “Do you mean you want to borrow a weapon like before? Mana gauntlets are still in the same place, so you know where to find them.”

“No,” Dylan shook his head and tried to clarify. “I want to borrow the warehouse. The building.”

The Warrior looked confused. “And how would that work exactly?”

“I’ve got an ability that can protect things. I don’t know how large a target it can cover, so I was wondering if I can use it on the warehouse and see how well it stops attacks.” Dylan pointed to the ravager.

Bennet scratched the stubble at the back of his neck. “I guess that’ll be okay,” he said. “As long as you don’t do anything excessive.”

“Got it.”

Dylan took a step back, and as pulled Siphoning Veil into his hand, Bennet followed.

Here goes nothing.

When he activated the card, the greenish smoke wrapped itself around the structure, although it did look a little bit thinner than he was used to seeing. When the ravager struck at the warehouse, its attacks slowed, and the veil absorbed its energy.

But there were two problems.

The protection wasn’t as strong. The decrease in effect was slight, but Dylan imagined that if he used the card on anything larger, the decline would start to get sharper.

The more pressing issue was the veil’s ability to sustain itself. For each turn it lasted, the smoke could absorb enough energy to extend its duration for three additional turns. Under normal circumstances, the ravager’s attacks would be more than enough to reach that limit, but now, the full force of its offensive was just barely enough to keep the veil active.

Dylan ordered the monster to stop, and at the end of the turn, the smoke disappeared.

“Thanks,” he nodded to Bennet again.

He looked at the scratches and cracks the lizard had left on the side of the warehouse. Should be fine. It didn’t seem like enough to overly tax the self-repair enchantment.

“Not a problem,” the Warrior grunted, also examining the damage. “Hope that was useful.”

“It was.”

Larger targets should be possible with more magic power, Dylan thought. Even though it’s not listed, I’m guessing that’s how it scales. But the energy required to maintain things…

That was also related to his magic power. The stronger the protective effect, the more energy it could absorb, but the obvious increase in the energy needed to cover more area wasn’t something he could easily maintain.

There goes the dream of using the card to cover the city wall, he half-joked with himself.

Ignoring the fact that the protective effect would probably be diluted into near nothingness with a target that large, the only way to supply enough energy to keep the veil going would be for it to face continuous attacks at a size and scale that would make the purpose of using the card irrelevant.

Maybe in the future. He paused. The very distant future.

Dylan shook off the disappointment that wasn’t really disappointment, and after taking a rest and changing his deck, he moved over to the training mannequins for the third “just for fun” test.

This one, he’d been looking forward to for a while.

He positioned the target at twenty yards and began a wait that lasted for several minutes before getting the cards he needed. At the same time, he stockpiled seven energy. He briefly considered going for eight, but even if he managed to keep his feet under the pressure, he worried about whether or not he’d be able to move his arms to play his cards and dismissed the idea.

Just as he was starting to feel a little bored, he added a Draw to a hand that already held two copies of the card and two copies of Wisps of Knowledge.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s do this.”

When his next turn began, he activated both Wisps of Knowledge cards, and then played all three Draws. The actions took twice as long as usual with the weight of the energy he held pulling back against his movements, but soon, twelve balls of light swarmed around him, accompanying the six new additions to his hand.

Damn. The fourth copy of Draw wasn’t there. He wouldn’t be able to summon as many wisps as possible, but he didn’t let that stop him.

As a group, he ordered the wisps to attack the mannequin, and then he reshuffled.

For five seconds, twelve continuous streams of electricity buzzed through the air before him, and after he drew his Favored Card, two more joined the cacophony.

Dylan played his third Wisps of Knowledge and reshuffled again.

Three more dancing balls of energy were soon added to the swarm.

Pressure built in his head with the activation of a fourth channel, but still, he wasn’t done.

Four more wisps rose in front of him as he drew a card at the beginning of a new turn, and the weight of the energy around him vanished completely as his channels exacted their price, draining the rest of what he’d still held.

Again, he reshuffled, and another four wisps followed his Favored Card’s next appearance.

Pain resounded across his mind when he activated a fifth channel, but he managed to keep his focus.

One final time, he willed his deck to reshuffle, and when he drew Wisps of Knowledge five seconds later, five more of the humming balls of light merged with the others swimming through the air around him.

Thirty. In total, there were thirty wisps. Thirty seemingly continuous streams of airy lightning blasting across the field to the mannequin twenty yards away.

It wouldn’t last for more than a few seconds, but while it existed, the display was dazzling.

A new turn began and relief washed through Dylan’s mind. He had no more energy to pay their maintenance costs, so every channel had been automatically cancelled.

At the same time, the lights of just over half of the wisps winked out. They’d reached the limit of their two-turn duration.

Freed from the burden of maintaining the cards that had summoned them, Dylan spent the next fifteen seconds attentively commanding the remaining thirteen creatures. As he’d done when he’d first tested Wisps of Knowledge, he separated them into groups and practiced maneuvering them around in front of him while they continued their assault.

And just like he had two days earlier, he found it easy. As long as he kept the number of groups relatively small, it didn’t seem to matter how many individual wisps were gathered together.

When the turn ended and the rest of the creatures disappeared, Dylan jogged up to inspect the target.

Before he even reached it, it was clear that the front of the mannequin had been melted. In the short forty-five seconds, the swarm had output significantly more damage than anything else he’d done when he’d practiced against one of the dummies.

Dylan reached out to touch to smoothed surfaced but pulled his hand back from the residual heat.

Impressive. But that wasn’t cheap.

He checked his remaining mana and quickly let his deck dissipate when he realized that he didn’t have enough remaining to pay for the next minute’s maintenance cost. Keeping the deck active now required the staggering amount of nearly fifty mana per minute.

That was fun. That was informative. But that was definitely not practical.

Even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to easily repeat the experience outside of practice, Dylan couldn’t keep an uncharacteristically stupid grin off his face.

He’d drawn eyes with his display, but he didn’t care.

He couldn’t quite say why, but he just enjoyed controlling the wisps. He still didn’t have a deep enough card pool to support a deck that featured them, but the brief glimpse of what that deck might eventually become had been exhilarating.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

He sat down to meditate, and when he opened his eyes again, he found that at least forty of his peers had already come to the training facility. Over the next few hours, the numbers continued to grow.

His father had told him that of the eighteen-year-olds coming back from the Tutorial, nearly three-quarters had awakened combat classes. It was an unusually high proportion for Fairbasin, and Dylan guessed that more than a handful had been influenced by the dungeon break to choose a class they normally would have avoided.

Or maybe those less suitable for combat classes were more likely to die before the System teleported us all away from the initial attack.

By noon, almost everyone had arrived.

Dylan joined the crowd gathering in the sparring ring and waited. He glanced around, and not including Risha and the other helpers, he counted upwards of seventy people.

A few minutes later, a tall man walked into the ring. He had greying hair split on the left side by a scar tracing back from his temple. On his right, was a middle-aged man full of muscles and built like a rectangle, and to his left was a younger man with a willowy figure. The two looked vaguely familiar, but Dylan didn’t truly recognize either.

The man in the center was different; Dylan would be hard pressed not to know him. It was Fairbasin’s guard captain, Michael Caplan, though due to the serendipitous quirk of his name and the position he held, everyone had simply taken to calling him Cap.

The man was a Guardian, and along with Hensly and the mayor’s aging mother, he was one of the only people in town with a tier three combat class. As the Fire Mage was a visitor and the mayor’s mother’s health was in decline, Cap was normally the peak of Fairbasin’s combat power.

Scattered conversations fell off, and Dylan joined everyone else in giving the man his attention.

“Alright,” the captain began with a gruff voice, “you all know why we’re here, so I’m going to make this short. Starting tomorrow, we want you to begin taking turns up on the wall. To ease you into things, we’ll have you working in teams and give each group the support and guidance of a veteran guard member.

“Now, we’re not going to force anyone to go up who truly doesn’t want to fight, but if you choose to not be on the wall, you will contribute behind it. There’s still plenty that needs doing in town, and we’ll assign you with the noncombat classes.”

The well-muscled man on the captain’s right took a step forward and added, “But don’t think avoiding the wall is doing yourself any favors. Challenging your class parameters is how you grow, and for everyone gathered here today, the best way to do that is to face actual combat.”

Cap nodded. “Normally, you’d train in one of these facilities until your stats grew into the middle of tier one before joining a team and starting to practice in the forest, but we don’t have that luxury anymore. Graham’s right; going up to the wall with us watching over you is the best way for you to advance quickly. Not only will it help you get stronger and more experienced, but after you’ve got a better handle on things, it’ll allow us to free up some manpower to help find an actual solution to this whole mess.”

The man’s eyes swept the ring. “Anyone going up, gather at the north gate tomorrow morning at eight. Anyone who isn’t, gather in the town square at the same time.”

Cap looked like he was about to dismiss everyone when the man standing to his left gave a cough that couldn’t quite be described as discreet.

“And one last thing,” the captain rolled his eyes and began again. “You’ve probably all heard rumors about the town wanting to take the mana crystals you earned in the Tutorial. They’re true. Power, communications, defense. The infrastructure we need if we want to survive this crisis. It all takes mana crystals. Without the dungeon to provide us with a fresh supply, we need to be careful with everything do. Any crystal we use is now one less we have, and without the protective cover to guard the town, we’ve had to start employing less efficient methods of keeping the monsters back. We need all the mana crystals we can get, and the ones you brought back with you are the last supply we can count on.”

Dylan noticed the others around him begin to look uncomfortable. He didn’t doubt that, like himself, many had already begun to use the crystals they had. It was only natural; that’s what they were for.

At their stat level, a single mana crystal would generally be consumed after about a week of intensive meditation, and given how long some of his peers had been back, he wouldn’t be surprised if a few were reaching the end of the energy their first crystals could provide. Having already felt the difference the supplement could make in their practice, being told to hand in the rest of their supply was understandably upsetting.

“We’re not asking for everything,” Cap continued, “only half. If you choose to give more, we’ll take it. We’ll pay you back with double the amount you contribute once the dungeon is working normally again, but I’d recommend keeping at least one to yourself for training.”

With the words, Dylan guessed that Cap was one of the people who had been advocating for them to keep more of what they’d earned.

“We don’t know how much longer this siege will last, and your own strength isn’t only the best guarantee for your own survival, it’s also the capital you’ll use to help the rest of the town.”

The thin man to Cap’s left repressed a scowl. He looked like he wanted to speak but the man the captain had called Graham gave him a stare that kept him quiet. Probably one of the ones who wanted to take everything.

Cap looked over the crowd in front of him. “Bring what you’re going to donate when you report to the wall in the morning.”

The willowy man frowned again when he heard the words phrased in a way that implied giving any amount of mana crystals was a choice.

“That’s it,” Cap said. “Keep practicing, but don’t train too hard today. You all need to be fresh tomorrow.” He and Graham turned and began to leave the ring at the same time. After a moment’s hesitation, the other man trailed behind.

Following the announcement, Dylan ignored the chatter around him and went back to testing his cards, and when many of the others began to filter out of the facility early in the afternoon, he stayed behind.

He had one final thing that he wanted to test, and to do it safely, he needed to borrow the sparring ring. When there was no one left who looked like they wanted to use it, he went up to Risha and explained what he planned to do.

“You’re gonna blow it up again?” she asked.

“I’ll be safe about it this time.” He nodded to the center of the ring. “I’ll put it in the middle while I stand outside the wall and the dampening enchantment.”

“Then why do you need my help?”

“Because I didn’t get a good look at it yesterday. I was caught up in the blast and couldn’t really see anything. There’s something I want to do differently, and I need someone who can help me compare the results with what happened the first time.”

Dylan wanted to overload one of his Phantom Archers while it was holding a charged arrow.

Having now had time to reflect on his accident the day before, he realized that he obviously hadn’t faced the full force of the archer’s strength. When it’d erupted, its physical power had been pushed up to around five hundred, and with how close he’d been standing to it, if all of that force had been behind the blast, it should have been more than enough to have more seriously injured or even killed him.

After being grateful, he wondered where all that power had gone. More importantly, he wondered whether there was a way to use it. He’d thought about the problem for much of the day, and the only idea he could come up with was the archer’s arrow.

Under normal circumstances, the phantom’s power should be evenly distributed through its body, but when it was preparing to fire, that strength was focused and drawn toward its bow. It was the difference between passive and active power.

Dylan felt that if he overloaded the phantom while it was holding its shot, then maybe the resulting explosion would be more destructive than the one that had injured him.

Once he’d explained everything to Risha, he summoned his deck and began to wait for the cards he needed. With the time it took to gather everything, he realized again that what he was trying to do wasn’t a reliable tactic he could employ in a battle.

At least, not yet, he thought. If he could increase the number of Phantom Rally cards he had access to, it would be easier to stack their power, and he could avoid needlessly ballooning his deck’s maintenance cost with multiple consecutive reshuffles.

He didn’t know how to make the card yet, but even if he couldn’t figure it out on his own, he knew that there were other options to obtain more copies. He thought of one of the rewards the System had given him, Duplicate Card; although he still hadn’t decided on what the best choice to use it with was, he felt that the fact he’d received one should mean that he could get more.

Maybe I’ll even learn how to make them one day.

Dylan drew a Phantom Archer and began to wait for his second Phantom Rally, but at the beginning of his next turn, he paused. He’d drawn the squirrel.

That should also explode…

He hadn’t intended to test overloading the other phantoms, but after thinking about how well the shadow squirrel could hide itself, he reconsidered.

The second obstacle he needed to overcome in order to turn his exploding phantoms into a more viable tactic was how vulnerable the archers were. If he wanted to replicate the blasts in combat, they could only display their greatest power if the phantoms were next to what he wanted to target. And with their low resilience, there was a question of whether the archers would even be able to survive long enough to detonate.

Dylan thought about using the soldiers, but their low physical power would likely mean they’d need a fifth enhancement from Phantom Rally to approach their own overload thresholds. Without perfectly timed reshuffles or more copies of the card, reaching that height may not even be possible.

But the squirrel was different.

The Phantom Shadow Squirrel had a magic power equivalent to the archer’s physical power and just a little less resilience. It should explode at the same point.

And it could hide. With the way its skill worked, each enhancement it received would make it harder to find.

Dylan doubted it could produce the same amount of power he was expecting from an archer holding a charged shot, but what he valued was that the little creature would be a more secure delivery mechanism for the blast.

When he finally drew the last card he needed, Dylan summoned the archer and the squirrel into the ring.

“You blowing that one up too?” Risha asked.

Dylan nodded as he directed the two phantoms to stand as far apart from each other as they could while still keeping a safe distance from the dampening enchantment.

“Squirrel bomb,” the woman snorted a laugh.

“I figure its stealth can play a role if I ever do get to do this in battle,” Dylan said.

“Makes sense.”

As his next turn began, Dylan discarded both copies of Phantom Rally and reshuffled his deck. Mist swirled around the two test subjects in the ring.

Violent light began to crack at the air when he drew and discarded the card again. He ordered the archer to start charging its arrow and reshuffled one final time, but he had the squirrel simply stand there. Although he could tell where the creature was when it used its skill through his connection to it, observing what happened would be more difficult if it had melted into the shadows.

Five seconds later, the archer was ready and the fourth copy of Phantom Rally was in Dylan’s hand. “Here we go,” he said and discarded the card.

Two simultaneous flashes shook the ring, and glittering mist erupted everywhere.

On the squirrel’s side, the blast was smaller; the power seemed to be evenly distributed around where the creature had stood, expanding in all directions.

With the archer, the brunt of the explosion was focused in the direction its arrow had pointed. Roiling mist still exploded everywhere, but in a ninety-degree cone in front of the archer, it was thicker, more tangible. And the destructive energy reached further.

The runic script in front of Dylan lit up as the dampening enchantment siphoned off the last vestiges of the archer’s energy, though by that point, it had already dissipated enough to cause no harm. Not even a breeze made it to where he stood.

But something else did.

It was just a shadow, but a feeling reminiscent of the mana patterns drifted across Dylan’s senses. It was weak, weaker than even the faint impression the movements of his cards gave him whenever he summoned his deck.

His eyes were drawn to the runes, but as soon as he started to look closely, the feeling went away. The lights dimmed, and the enchantment returned to dormancy. Its job was done.

Think about it later.

He returned his mind to its original purpose.

The contrast between the two clouds reminded Dylan of the problem Alyssa had been trying to overcome with her Barrier Detonation skill. By default, her shields’ explosions would be evenly distributed like the squirrel's, but she wanted to learn to shape them like the archer’s.

“How do they compare to yesterday?” he asked Risha.

“I’d say they’re both more powerful.”

“Really?” Dylan was surprised. The archer he’d expected, but he didn’t know how to explain the squirrel. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Ignoring the weaker areas around the archer, the energy out front was noticeably stronger and more concentrated. And although the blast around the squirrel wasn’t as powerful as that, it had more oomph than the explosion yesterday.”

“But they have the same stat values,” he stared out at the ring and muttered.

“But they’re not the same size.”

Dylan looked up at the woman, question in his eyes.

“You say that they each had the same amount of power, but the bodies containing that power are different. They’re both made of that mist stuff, but the archer has more of it.” Risha crossed her arms. “If I had to guess, I would say that the volumes of the explosions are determined by the volumes of the phantoms that created them. The power is determined by their stats. Now, remember the spell you tested with me yesterday?”

Collapsing Earth. Dylan nodded. “So, you’re saying that all of the explosions contain the same total amount of power, but its just being distributed differently because of how much space the mist in their bodies cover when it fully expands?”

“Mostly. That’s what I’m thinking for the squirrel and the one from yesterday, but charging the arrow added something extra.”

Interesting.

“I’m gonna meditate and then do the squirrel one more time.” Dylan sat down. “I want to see if anything changes when it’s using its skill. It’s not the same as charging an attack, but it does involve activating its magic power.”

Risha nodded and briefly left to help the few others remaining in the training facility during the wait.

When he stood to run the test again, Dylan only summoned the squirrel. He directed it to hide itself in the shadow of a passing cloud and began.

At first, he could still barely make it out with his eyes. Even for a creature adept at hiding in them, the only shadows in the center of the ring were too light to provide much cover. But as soon as he discarded his first copy of Phantom Rally, he lost sight of the squirrel completely. After reshuffling and discarding the third, Risha did as well.

“Can’t find it anymore,” she said. “I know it’s there. If I concentrate, I can feel traces of its power, but I don’t see anything.”

Dylan nodded. It looks like its Shadow Cloak skill even covers up the visual anomalies that spring up around the phantoms when they begin to get too much power. Although, the fact that Risha can still feel it with her other senses is something to be careful of if I ever need to send it near stronger enemies.

When he finished reshuffling again and discarded the last Phantom Rally, mist and light seemed to erupt from nothing. The blast was the same size as the last one that had come from the squirrel, but it looked more substantial.

“Seems more powerful,” Risha echoed his thoughts. “It’s still not at the level of that last archer, but it’s more dangerous than the first squirrel.”

“Good.” Dylan nodded before he stretched and started to walk away from the sparring ring.

“That it for today?” Risha kept pace.

“Yeah. Think I’ve tested everything that I wanted to. Now I just need to make some final adjustments to my deck.”

“Well then, it’s been fun, kid.” She patted him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t stay up too late tonight. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

Right, Dylan’s mind added. The reprieve is over.