After he checked his mana, Dylan hurried to find an open space for the mock battle between the ravager and the phantoms. Even though he’d wasted nearly ten minutes of his deck’s time, it shouldn’t be a problem to run through it once, and once was all he needed.

Looking around, he found the area he'd been originally planning to use was still available and moved toward it. As he went, he saw that it didn’t look like anyone had left the facility after the scare caused by the fireball. He’d thought that some people might go home, but then he realized that was stupid. If anything, the promise of a working protective cover that could be used in emergencies was a powerful incentive to stick around.

The training ground would probably just attract more of his peers as the day wore on.

The thought made Dylan want to finish his tests with the ravager as soon as he could. He didn’t think what he wanted to do with the Wisps of Knowledge card later would take quite as much space.

Arriving at his destination, Dylan played both a Basic Energy and an Intermediate Energy card in quick succession. He then summoned the two Phantom Archers in his hand.

The first matchup wasn’t ideal. If the ravager got anywhere close to the archers, it’d be able to quickly tear them apart, but they’d been the first two phantom cards he’d drawn. Because he was already planning to go through the entire deck and because four identical matchups of the Lizard Ravager fighting a Phantom Archer paired with a Phantom Soldier wouldn’t be as interesting, Dylan figured why not go with what he already had instead of waiting for something different.

But considering their fragility, he did give the archers a handicap. Before the fight began, he ordered them to stand at opposite positions on the edges of the space he was using to train. The ravager would only be able to attack one at a time and would have to have to cross the entire area to reach the second.

Though, given the creature’s speed and the archers’ slow rate of fire, Dylan wondered if either of the phantoms would even get the chance to shoot a second time.

The first one the ravager goes after probably won’t even get to fire once.

If the open space were larger, the match would be better, but he did his best to work with what he had.

Once everything was in place, Dylan ordered the ravager to attack the archers.

Since his goal in this first playthrough of his deck was to try his best to control the phantoms, he focused all of his attention on them, treating the lizard as a wild monster he needed to defeat.

At the same time the creature took off sprinting, Dylan ordered both of the archers to shoot it. Mist began to condense into arrows, and the ravager flew across the field.

Calculating the time it would take for the archers to fire while watching the monster advance on its first target, Dylan quickly realized that he’d been right to worry about needing a larger area for the battle. The ravager would be on top of one of the phantoms just before it could finish charging its arrow.

He immediately ordered it to stop shooting. If the archer was already as good as dead, then he’d use its death to buy as much time and convenience as he could for its twin across the field. It wasn’t well equipped to deal with close quarters combat nor was it fast enough to escape, so in order to make the most of its sacrifice, Dylan simply commanded it to try and use its body to entangle the ravager for as long as possible.

It didn’t work.

Maybe if he’d had more experience commanding the archers to fight up close, things could have gone better. But the archer didn’t seem to fully understand the order that Dylan was giving it. Its movements were stilted and its reaction speed slow.

The ravager pounced on the phantom and began to maul it with a violent efficiency.

Because there was no resistance and nothing to constrain the monster, the delay caused by the attack didn’t even help the second archer to find a stable target. When it released its arrow, the ravager seemed to sense something and shifted its body to the side, opening a path for the projectile to pierce through the already injured phantom on the ground, ending its life.

The archer faded into mist, and the lizard once again bounded across the field.

This time, the distance it needed to cross was farther, giving the phantom just long enough to charge another arrow. When it fired, the monster was almost upon it; the near point-blank range didn’t give the ravager an opportunity to dodge. The best it could do was to swing its tail forward to try knocking the projectile away.

There was a crunching sound as the arrow shattered into mist, and a few deep-blue scales scattered in the wind. And then the phantom was on the ground before it quickly joined the first.

Round one was over.

It hadn’t pushed the ravager as much as Dylan had hoped, but he had learned a few things about the creature.

It had good instincts and fast judgement to complement its agility and power.

The defense of its scales was also better than Dylan had expected. He knew that, in addition to resilience and physical power, the creature’s card listed the defense stat, but that stat was calculated based on his class tier. Currently it was only sitting at one. He’d expected it to increase the ravager’s survivability, but he’d underestimated by how much. Even after its tail had directly collided with the Phantom Archer’s arrow, it had only suffered minimal damage.

Maybe the appendage was stronger than other parts of its body, and maybe the arrow would have done more damage if it’d struck elsewhere. But the fact that the ravager was skilled and fast enough with its tail to maneuver it to block such a close-range shot meant that it could easily use it to protect its more vulnerable areas.

It was enough to make Dylan smile as he collected the cards and energy he’d need for the second round of combat.

This time, it was one archer and one soldier.

When the battle began, Dylan positioned the ravager at one side of the open space, the archer on the opposite end, and the soldier in the middle.

Though he still anticipated the ravager winning fairly easily, he believed he could now give it more of a challenge than it had faced in the first match.

He was wrong.

After Dylan ordered the attack, the monster charged down the field, used its speed advantage to simply ignore the soldier, and then mauled the archer to death after blocking another shot with its tail.

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It wasn’t able to end to battle as quickly with the soldier, but because the phantom lacked enough offensive strength to truly damage it, the ravager won with no trouble.

The third round of combat was also an archer and a soldier.

Dylan cheated by giving the monster an extra restriction. It had to kill the soldier before going after the archer.

With his increasing familiarity with taking more direct control of the phantoms’ actions, he was able to delay the ravager for long enough to allow the archer four shots. Three while it fought with the soldier and one on the creature’s final sprint to victory.

The damage it suffered was still minimal, but Dylan was getting better at getting past its defenses. He’d even managed to use the soldier to entangle its tail at the precise moment he'd ordered the archer to loose its third arrow, hitting the monster in the shoulder.

He’d have preferred striking a more vital area, but it was progress.

The final battle was between the ravager and two soldiers, and it was the most taxing by far on Dylan’s mind.

In every other round of combat, although he’d always been controlling two phantoms, he’d never had to put his full attention on more than one of them at a time. There was always an empty period while the archers were charging their shots and the phantoms had never stood close to one another.

This time, both soldiers fought with the lizard together. He had to give precise orders at precise times to each phantom in order for them to support each other rather than get in each other’s way. Often, Dylan would be giving two completely different commands simultaneously.

It was stressful; it was taxing; but ultimately, it was rewarding.

As the battle progressed, Dylan found himself falling into a strange rhythm. He was able to get the phantoms to accomplish more precise and timely actions. Step back there. Move your left arm forward. Strike with your sword at that position.

The phantoms still couldn’t handle any complex orders, but with a series of increasingly minute commands being connected at an increasingly smooth and rapid pace, that didn’t matter. Dylan felt that the soldiers almost became an extension of his own limbs.

What he could think, they could do.

Of course, they still lost in the end.

When Dylan noticed an odd current of mana circulating through his head, his focus faltered, and he fell out of the rhythm he’d found. The current stopped, and his command of the battle fell to pieces.

Any illusion of parity between the phantoms and the ravager was destroyed in an instant. They’d only been able to stall the creature, never truly damage it, and once liberated from their coordinated tactics, it quickly tore them apart.

As the last soldier washed away into mist, Dylan collapsed on the ground. He was exhausted.

He didn’t know how to explain what had happened in the battle, but something about the state he’d entered had drained him of his mental strength. He checked his mana and found that it hadn’t bottomed out; he hadn’t entered mana exhaustion, but his reserves were lower than they were supposed to be.

That current in my head, he reasoned. It had to be something to do with that. Maybe the rhythm I fell into is dependent on a certain way of using mana. It did feel like my mind was more active…

It was something he wanted to explore, but it would have to wait until he’d recovered.

Maybe I can figure it out during my next playthrough of the deck.

Dylan released his cards and began to mediate. Too tired to think of anything else, he only focused on restoring his deck and his mana as soon as possible.

When he stood again, he still felt a little mental fatigue, but it wasn’t too severe. He didn’t think that it would affect the rest of his training.

He summoned his deck and began the second series of fights, this time trying to control the ravager.

It was a challenge.

The creature was alien to him. He didn’t have the same anatomy. He didn’t share the same kind of thought processes or battle strategies. Where the human-looking phantoms resonated well with his own experiences, those same experiences were now getting in the way.

After a few rounds of combat, Dylan stopped. He realized that he had a problem. When he was trying to issue more direct commands to the ravager in the same way he’d been doing with the phantoms earlier, he wasn’t improving the beast’s combat efficiency. He was reducing it. Where he’d slowly gotten better at handling the phantoms’ attacks and movements, he showed no such progress with the ravager.

Is this pointless? He sighed.

The monster had already proven itself a formidable presence when acting on its own; it would be easy to let it continue doing so, but there was an itch at the back of Dylan’s mind telling him that if he could learn how to tailor his commands to the ravager’s unique capabilities, it could be even stronger.

But in order to do that, he’d need to learn to let go much of what he’d been taught about combat. The instincts that had allowed him to enter that strange state of resonance with the Phantom Soldiers couldn’t help him with the ravager. He realized that in order to get better at controlling the monster, he needed to be better at getting inside its head. And that would mean he needed to do much more work to observe and learn about the creature.

But would the effort even be worth it?

The Lizard Ravager was only one of his cards. Learning the best ways to use and control it would certainly improve his combat capabilities, but with all of the other cards he had, not to mention all of the other cards he’d make in the future, he needed to choose where to focus his time.

It was important to familiarize himself with all of his cards and how they worked, but Dylan was beginning to wonder just how much attention he should spare to training with each one.

Putting aside the simpler cards, the ones like Draw and Basic Energy where all he felt he could improve on was learning when to best play them, Dylan still had quite a few that required practice with and his direct control over to produce their optimal effects.

Mana Bolt, for example, had initially felt useless until he’d taken the effort to train with it, and even now, more time with the card would allow him to better manipulate the projectile and fine tune its targeting. But how valuable would that really be? Would the time spent be worth the results?

Dylan doubted it. He could already use Mana Bolt well enough for combat, and unless the card itself changed, any more time dedicated to practicing with it would, at best, be limited to yielding marginal improvements.

He didn’t plan to neglect the card; he still wanted to work on increasing its mastery progress, but he didn’t see the need for the same kind dedicated practice he’d been doing with his summoned creatures. His ability to use it was already good enough.

But that left him with another set of questions. Where was good enough for cards like the Lizard Ravager? Was it good enough to give the creature a set of orders and then allow it to operate on its own? And if he decided to leave how to execute his commands to the ravager itself, would that affect his mastery progress with the card?

Dylan couldn’t answer any of it at the moment. His doubts and concerns could only be resolved with time and careful consideration.

Besides, he didn’t think he’d reached a skill plateau with the ravager yet; he’d just been frustrated by his momentary lack of progress. He’d keep working. He was sure he’d eventually get the hang of controlling the creature.

But he couldn’t dismiss the thoughts he’d had entirely. They’d made him aware of a very real problem he’d need to face. And maybe he’d need to face it sooner than he’d like.

He already had a handful of cards that he felt the need to have focused practice with; the amount was still manageable, but he made a new Blank Card every day. Even if some of those would be wasted in his card creation experiments or used to make duplicates like he was planning to do with Mana Surge, Dylan would inevitably produce new cards. And if any of those new cards were useful, he would inevitably need to train with them.

The only bottleneck he faced in expanding his card pool was lack of materials. But Dylan already had a small pile of Blank Cards ready to go, just waiting for his father to fulfill his promise. In a day or two, he may well have more new cards to test and train with.

It was becoming clear to Dylan that the manageable handful of cards he was currently working with would eventually grow beyond what his time would allow him to focus on. When that happened, he’d need to choose where to put his attention.

He’d need to make decisions about which cards were only worthy of familiarity and which were worthy of mastery.

Dylan shook his head. That was for the future, and right now, he still had work to do.

He looked at the ravager before him and felt like he’d done what he’d set out to accomplish with it for the day. He’d tested its capabilities and run it through some initial training. It was time to move on.

He let his deck dissipate and walked over to get some water. Then he sat down to meditate.

Once his mana was full, Dylan summoned his card catalog and navigated to the phantom deck section.

[Would you like to Activate Deck: Wisps? Yes/No]

Yes.

The book vibrated, card shadows shifting across its pages.

[Deck: Ravager has been Deactivated.]

Dylan nodded and began loading the new deck.