As he walked, Dylan’s mind went back to the piles of monster corpses. His way of thinking had shifted a bit after becoming a Deckmaster.
Dead monsters used to be a collection of resources for noncombat classes to transform in their work. Meat for food, leather for armor, blood for enchanting, and a whole host of other materials for other uses. But now, Dylan could transform those resources as well.
Now, every one of those monsters all bore the additional label of potential card creation material in his eyes. He obviously couldn’t use all of them. There were people in Fairbasin who needed them just as much as he did. The town wouldn’t bother to sort the bodies otherwise. And even if Dylan had wanted to try swallowing them all himself, the number of his Blank Cards were limited. But because he could only use such a small number, it shouldn’t be a problem to ask if his father could get some for him, right?
He was excited to see what kinds of new cards he could make.
What made Dylan want the monsters even more, though, was a material that most of them had that hadn’t existed in the Tutorial. Mana cores.
Similar to the mana crystals that Dylan had already used, mana cores were essentially concentrated energy. They were found in monsters of all kinds, helping them utilize and focus their mana, and they were one of the most prized monster materials used by crafting classes. Often, they’d be employed for some sort of power generation or retention effect.
Thinking about it now, Dylan just felt it was a shame that cores all varied in energy level and purity. Because of his father’s note, he knew the city desperately needed mana crystals, and if they’d all been uniform, the cores may have been able to fill that hole.
Overfill it, by the size of the piles, he mused.
But reality always made things difficult. Manatech that used cores for power had to be specifically built and customized for it. It was impossible for them to work as an energy source in the kind of tech that had been standardized and spread throughout the world in the past several decades without that tech undergoing heavy modification. Most modern manatech was reliant on being able to use the universally available and universally identical mana crystals. Changing that wasn’t something the town had the time or energy for, even when it wasn’t in crisis.
Dylan had heard of classes with skills that could convert mana cores into mana crystals, but there was no one he knew of who could do it in town. There was also news of an emerging piece of manatech that had the same function, but it was still in its trial stages, far out of reach of a small place like Fairbasin.
For now, the cores could only be used in the same ways they’d always been. Crafters individually transforming them while making their own desired products. And after getting his class, Dylan could transform them to make something as well.
When he’d first had the opportunity to freely create his own cards, Dylan had intuitively felt that a monster’s mana core would be a good material, but he’d never had the chance to use one. Saying nothing of the other ways the cores might be effective, he wondered how their presence would change his attempts to make more summoned creatures.
Monsters created by the System in its challenge dungeons didn’t grow cores. No one knew why for certain, but the most commonly accepted idea was that it was related to the constant recycling and reorganization process those dungeons experienced.
But monsters spawned in wild dungeons were different. They were created as fully-formed, adult members of their species and then left to fend for themselves. The System’s interference in their lives seemed to begin and end with using them as a mechanism to contain the impurities wild dungeons filtered from the world’s ambient mana.
Of course, this meant that the mana cores they produced were also corrupted and full of impurities. They were valuable, but inefficient to use. The best cores came from natural creatures, those beasts and animals that grew and evolved freely in the world and its mana. Uninhibited by the filtering process in the wild dungeons or the System’s restrictions in the challenge dungeons.
Their higher purity and greater energy values made natural cores significantly more attractive to those working with the material, but obtaining them had its own problems. Especially for cores of higher tiers.
Dungeon monsters were never truly considered thinking beings by most. They showed the appearance of being intelligent, but few would truly regard them as such. In challenge dungeons, they were created and strictly controlled by the System, existing more as advanced programs than anything else, and although monsters from wild dungeons had complete autonomy after being spawned, they were so corrupted by the filtered impurities that an instinctual aggression dominated their actions in a way that obscured any true intelligence they might have otherwise harbored. In all but a few cases, monsters that came out of wild dungeons would only showcase a kind of short-term cunning that was mainly used in the service of brutality.
Natural monsters were different. They behaved as the animals they’d evolved from. Their actions had the purposes of furthering their individual survival and the propagation of their species, and the stronger they became, the smarter they were. When their power could approximate tier three, they generally began to show human levels of wisdom and intelligence. Recklessly hunting them for their mana cores could provoke conflicts most people would prefer to avoid.
Dylan didn’t think of that as a problem, though. At his level, what he could get from the dungeon monsters was more than enough. He’d worry about getting higher quality materials once he had the confidence and experience to use them without waste. Besides, after seeing the corpses of the higher tier dungeon monsters like the clay bears or humanoid welves, he was beginning to have the suspicion that they may be more difficult to use in card creation than he’d previously imagined.
He couldn’t quite tell where the feeling was coming from, but he had an intuition that working with materials too far above his current tier would produce similar difficulties to someone trying to use cross-tier equipment. Injuries, excess mana consumption, drained vitality, and in severe cases, even death.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He’d have to be careful, but Dylan was determined to experiment to find the limits of what he could handle. Encountering another situation like the DESTROY card would not be good. He used to think all the damage he’d suffered in its creation was because of the weirdness of the mana patterns, but his new gut feeling made him wonder. It could also be partly because the levels of the materials he was working with were too high.
Challenging limits was certainly one path toward rapid growth, but everything needed to be done within reason; Dylan couldn’t challenge his limits without knowing what they were first.
As he turned onto his street, he became more determined to ask for his father’s help in getting a few of the monster corpses. He also decided to ask if he could get some card making materials of different levels after explaining the details of his class.
He only had eleven Blank Cards, twelve if he counted the one he hadn’t yet made for the day. It wasn’t enough for everything he wanted to experiment with; it wasn’t even enough for the plans he’d already made about creating more energy and mana related cards, but preparing the materials he wanted to use early would never be a bad thing.
When Dylan stepped through the front door, he found his father waiting for him. The man tried to hide it, but there was an obvious trace of worry in his eyes.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Better,” Dylan said. “You?”
“Better.”
Dylan nodded and began to walk toward the kitchen. “Do we have anything to eat besides bread and jerky?”
“Not much.” His father followed him. “Mayor ordered rationing early. We’re not in danger of starving or anything, but we lost around half of our farmland and haven’t had the chance to sort it out yet.” The man sighed and shook his head. “That, combined with the break taking away our free access to the forest made the higher ups not want to take any chances. Food’s gonna be pretty basic for a while.”
“How’d we lose so much land? I thought the monsters wouldn’t show much interest in destroying that sort of thing? And don't we have some people purifying the meat from the dungeon monsters?”
“A section of the wall on the east side of town collapsed that first night. Apparently, a massive pack of welves followed a few clay bears through the gap. It’s a miracle that wasn’t the end of it all right then.” In the moment of silence that followed, Dylan’s mind painted the picture of just how bad things could have been. The destruction not just encroaching from the outer edges of Fairbaisin, but driving straight for the town’s heart.
He heard his father take a breath before continuing, “Luckily, Hensly, the Fire Mage I told you about last night, was using the big training field out there before the break happened. When the wall came down, he was close enough to stop things from getting bad. Unfortunately, the only way he could do that was to torch everything, farmland included. Kept casualties to a minimum, but property damage was high.”
Dylan rummaged through the limited options in front of him and found an old wheel of cheese. He couldn’t remember when they’d gotten it. “This still good?”
His father looked over his shoulder, and after staring for second, responded, “I think so? Does it smell?”
“A little, but I think this is one of those kinds that’s supposed to. Looks like something mom would get.”
“Eh, let’s try it. You’ve got stats now. If it is bad, it’s not something that’ll cause you too much trouble anymore.”
The two finished making a basic meal and returned to the table.
“As for your second question,” Dylan’s father picked up the earlier conversation as they began to eat, “it’s not that we don’t want anyone purifying the meat, but we found out that the break had caused some kind of mutation that made the corrupted mana more ingrained in the beasts’ flesh.” He took a bite before continuing. “Takes three to five times the time and effort to get them safe to eat now. With everything else that needs doing, decision was made to put most people on different tasks. Like I said before, we’re not in danger of starving yet; we’ve got other priorities.” Another bite. “There’s still some meat being processed, but supplies are limited.”
Maybe I can make some food cards in the future, Dylan pondered. Would that even work? Would it provide any nutrients, and if it did would they disappear with my deck?
Knowing his son’s look when distracted by a stray thought, Dylan’s father let the meal lapse into a comfortable silence. It wasn’t until the two were done eating that he said, “Now, tell me about the Tutorial.”
Dylan nodded and began to narrate his experience. Starting from the very beginning, he talked about fleeing Mitchell’s with Alyssa, the fight in the basement, getting saved by the Tutorial, and getting his class. He ignored his father’s slight frown at the mention of selecting a random class. Things had worked out, hadn’t they?
The older man’s expression got better when Dylan summoned his card catalogue and went through each of the cards in his initial deck and what they did, but Dylan noticed the frown begin to creep back as he got deeper into his explanation of the dungeon.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” his father said. “I’ll tell you at the end.”
It can’t be nothing and something you’ll tell me at the end at the same time, Dylan mentally muttered.
“Continue.”
And so, Dylan continued. The spiders, the lizards, the shaman, the dual bosses at the end. And then the missing core and collapsing dungeon. Along the way, Dylan brought out every card that he’d made or received and explained their functions. After his experience with Chester, he knew his father couldn’t see the text, but the man looked at every image burned into the card faces for a few seconds before sorting them on the table by card type.
For a moment, Dylan hesitated as he came to an end. He’d explained almost every card, including those from the final reward he’d received after returning to Fairbasin. He’d even gone into detail about what his new piece of adaptive gear did. The only thing he hadn’t discussed was the DESTROY card. It, and the mana patterns, he’d left out of the story completely.
He started worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. The patterns were scary. They were dangerous, and they attracted him. They held so much power. Dylan wanted it, but he knew that want could easily consume him. Beyond the consumption of obsessive desire, pursuing that power could consume his flesh and blood. It could kill him. Creating the DESTROY card nearly had killed him.
He didn’t want to tell his father about it. He didn’t want to worry the man. After seeing the toll of the past week on his father’s face, Dylan didn’t want to add another reason for his father to fear for his safety.
But Dylan also recognized his apprehension about his father’s feelings for the excuse that it was. He had another reason for wanting to keep the patterns a secret. He was worried his father would see the danger and try to protect him from it. And the only way Dylan could think his father would do that would be to try to keep him from it. Ultimately, he didn’t want to be told not to go after the patterns.
“What is it?” The deep, steady voice brought Dylan’s head up to meet the eyes of the man staring at him from across the table. When Dylan didn’t say anything, his father pressed. “Come on, I know what you look like when you’re worried about something. Out with it. It’s never good to worry alone.”
After deep breath, Dylan made a decision. “There’s something I’ve left out of the story.”
His father raised his eyebrow. “Oh?”
Dylan nodded, and began again. “It happened when the mana storm hit the city.” He closed his eyes and thought back, mind unconsciously drawn to the image of the figures as they’d been when he’d first seen them, twisting across the sky. “I saw these patterns made out of mana…”