Sometimes I tried to look back and find the point where my real world illusion mixed with the magical abilities that I now had. I had treated the deck of cards just like any other, fiddling, moving them around, and trying to extend my capabilities any chance I had. It was perhaps one of the things that smoothed over the jolt of joining the System. Something similar, but slightly off. The answer I could never pinpoint. As soon as I had recovered from my head injury and sent the first card off - it was a natural part of me that grew in strength alongside me.

With practiced precision, the cards span off into the room through the slim gap in the wood, and I split them out of view towards the seated bandits. I made a mental note to try for thinner gaps when we had downtime. If we had downtime.

“Ow, the fuck?”

“Who was that?”

Ren exhaled from behind me. “Didn’t kill them?”

Footsteps thudded towards the door, and I shook my head. It wasn’t just the near-blind attack that dampened my first blow, but they also hadn’t been as fragile as the bandits we had fought on the starter island. I'd hate to think my card damage was falling off already... perhaps I should have better gear at this point—we did skip some Quests to get here quicker.

“Hold this and duck.” The elf pushed her sword into my hand as I threw down the Hellhound card out to summon a demon before the door. It was surprisingly light, even compared to the other swords I had held in my brief time here. The handle was slightly warm, too—but that could just be from her holding it. Overthinking. I needed to focus.

With a hefty kick, the door burst open and revealed the first thief. A slender man with tied back brown hair and a nasty-looking slice across his face, courtesy of my magic deck. The arrow fired from behind me into his eye socket did little to improve his appearance. He levied no complaints, however. As he dropped, blocking the way of the second thief, I threw out the pact card to allow Roger to inhabit him.

Ren awkwardly drew a second arrow in the confined space, my squirming blocking some of her movements. The dark passageway burst into light from the radiant glow of her Smite Strike as she aimed it toward the room.

The first thief regained his footing as purple ears burst from his skull. Without turning to us, Roger leaped at the more portly second enemy and knocked them to the ground, his arms flailing wildly at his target.

“I’m a fuckin' giant again,” the demon growled with joy, trying to choke out the prone figure.

Under my command, the Hellhound ran into the room as the other occupants readied their weapons toward us. The radiant arrow was let loose and arced over my canine to slam into the chest of a thief near the back.

“Go now.” She quickly slung the bow and took back her sword from my grip.

I stood back up straight after avoiding her shot to the back of my head, and threw out a purple card, splitting it in the air over Roger and embedding both into the raised arm of a thief trying to cudgel the demon off his comrade. His attack faltered as he grimaced from the pained arm, saving my demon from having his brains knocked out. Well, not his brains.

Another two cards went out and struck the same man as I stepped closer, but he didn’t drop. My right eye twitched at the System pop-up.

[New Monster: Thief <7>]

Ah, that might be why. I hadn’t checked the level of the Quests as we accepted them, assuming that Ren would have bought it up if it was going to be any issue. It wouldn’t be, I was sure… just a little more of a slog that I had hoped.

“At last, a worthy audience,” I boomed, slightly distracting those not currently being throttled to death. My hat dropped from my head and I reached inside to withdraw a sword twice as long as the hat was deep. I then flipped the hat back up onto my head perfectly. That one was a hard coded skill from months of practice. Nice of the System to give me the hat I was so used to wearing.

The sword felt awkward to wield, just from the length rather than the weight. Nothing as easy to hold or as warm as Ren's sword. But with some effort I swung it around in a wide arc at the thief with a cudgel. He raised his weapon in an attempt to block—and then my sword vanished—instead, one highly powered card zipped from my grip. He didn't have the time to react from this short distance and it went below his raised weapon and into his throat.

“He’s dead, Roger.” I sighed and put Card Fan up by reflex to block a crossbow bolt.

The Hellhound whined and withdrew as he became outnumbered, sporting a gash down his right flank. Ren leaped over the dead body as my pact demon rolled away up to his feet, her sword glowing a light blue as she swung it through the air.

My eyes blinked as I could see a little hovering box depicting Dazzle stacks by each of the remaining two thieves for the first time. Little white squares with sparkling stars in deep gray. Wait, two thieves? No… there should be three? My eyes darted around the room as a card spun in my hand. Ren had engaged the crossbow thief, and the hound was harrying the other to keep it from gaining the advantage against the elf. There was a closed doorway out of here, but…

I spun the card out and split it, causing them both to circle around me in orbit, with a slowly increasing diameter. My hand started to bleed, but then—there.

One of them struck something in mid-air to my left and a muscled man appeared into view again. My fist flashed out, and I punched him in the chest. Which did nothing.

He chuckled. “Weak!”

I threw out another punch, hitting him ineffectively. His grin widened, and he raised his weapon. As I readied another punch, he had all the confidence in the world that he wouldn’t need to block it. I had set the precedent, of course. At the last moment, my dagger appeared in my hand, stabbing straight between his ribs before he could bring his own weapon down. He twitched away with a growl and swung wildly at me. My Card Fan shimmered out and burst from the blow, with the remaining force sending me stumbling backward.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Roger and the Hellhound had taken the other thief down, the demon continuing the strike the inert figure with something heavy as Ren withdrew her sword from the guts of the last. She kicked the female thief to the rough floor and finished her off by slitting the throat of the wounded System-created.

Not too shabby. Being able to see the Dazzle stacks just incentivized me to go for racking those up. It was probably a fool’s errand to chase down more dopamine in the process of murder, but my mind had already bolted from the stable and hungrily rooted around for ideas amongst the fertile ground. Magic. I turned my attention to our surroundings, a gleam in my eye.

Ren furrowed her brow further and wiped her sword off on the dead body. “You’re really looting all that junk?”

The thieves had been gambling, and the table had an assortment of interesting little things. Poker chips, small trays, and even some dice. But by far the most important thing was a pack of loose cards. Not a full deck, for some reason, but it was a start. “Yeah, trust me, it'll be worth it. Oh, I’ll have that crossbow too, if you don’t want it?”

“Sure.” She shrugged, retrieving it from the ground for me.

I flipped one on the poker chips into the air. Once it spun back into my hand, I flipped it again - only now it was a gold coin. As the coin touched my hand, a purple card repeated the same process.

“You’re… exceptionally quick at switching through Inventory items.” Ren tilted her head as she handed over the weapon.

Was that a compliment? I'd take it. “Mmm, it’s just remembering where everything is, mostly. Like sleight of hand, but for my brain.” The actual sleight of hand, not just the System granted skill of the same name. Although both seemed to tick the right boxes.

“So just thinking quickly, then.” She rolled her eyes.

Roger stood up from the body and dropped the rock he had been carrying. “Being a giant is powerful,” he hissed.

“You’re normal size, it was the goblins that were…” I paused as his form dissolved into mist as he transferred to a body he hadn’t beaten to a pulp. “Never mind.”

Ren tutted as she watched the new puppet stand. “I know he is a demon, but you shouldn’t let him maim dead bodies.”

I opened my mouth to disagree, but she had a point. It wasn’t as though he was a child, but I was still responsible for how he interacted with the world. He stood up in the body of the crossbow-thief, his ears bursting from her skull. I winced, but it didn't move the needle much.

“Roger, don’t play with dead bodies. Kill the target and then move on.” I wasn’t used to being stern, but being bound by a pact should at least carry some of the weight of my request.

“Right, boss.” He looked down at the mashed head of the dead thief, but didn’t have anything further to say.

Ren kicked one of the bodies. "This one has boots with mana bonus on them, and a Power Token. Rest is junk. We'll split gold at some point?”

“No rush. Flat bonus or percentage for the mana? What are you using the token on?”

“Flat. My heal.” She looked as though she was already on the way to doing it.

“Pass, then. Good choice. I’m sure I’ll need pulling from the fire often enough.” I gave her a grin, which she dismissed with the wave of her hand as if I were a System notification.

“It’s best if we both stay alive. It has increased the heal percentage and I can have two charms now. One each.”

I nodded and looked around the room. It would be rather greedy for me to take both, she couldn't heal if she was dead, of course. I relented to looting the corpses beside me, hoping to find something useful.

[32 Gold]

[Metal Bar (Scrap)]

[Soap]

[Orange (3)]

I pulled a face at the loot disparity between what Ren had found and... whatever you could call that. There wasn’t much else in the room aside from some spare furniture that looked like it had been exclusively used to store dust. The exit door was considerably better made than the two prior, and looked rather secure. Oddly so. Roger caught my gaze and went over to it.

“No, don’t.” I raised my hand and furrowed my brow.

Ren loosened up her sword arm. “Trapped?”

It wasn’t even that. “Most definitely, but there’s something else.” My brain did a quick rewind and checked around the room again. “There’s a body missing - we saw six at first, right?”

The elf pet the Hellhound on the head as it sunk from this realm. “They probably went through the door then, unless they’re invisible too?”

I rubbed my face, briefly distracted by the fact that I found I couldn’t put corpses in my Inventory. Probably not living things either. Made sense, but somewhat disappointing. Some of the furniture on the other hand… “Ah, no, I think we would have seen or heard it. I think that is a fake door.”

Roger leaned forward and sniffed it. An awkward motion for the body he was puppeteering. “Looks real to me, boss.”

“It’s too perfect.” I shook my head. “It’s the first thing I've seen in here that is well made and in good condition.”

Ren tilted her head. “So what are you thinking then, trickster?”

A poker chip appeared in my hand, and I turned to the wall behind me. The only one not cluttered with aged wooden furniture and debris. I flicked it to the left and after spinning through the air; it bounced from the wall and rolled across the stone floor. Then a second one more towards the middle. Bounce. Then at the far end, the chip sunk straight through, the slight sound of it rolling across stone dissipating beyond.

“An illusion.” I grinned, congratulating myself for not also saying 'ta-da!'

“You'll send Roger in first then?” The Oathwarden rolled her eyes. “I’d hate to go through and find there are thugs on the other side waiting to break my skull open.”

“Might be an improvement,” the demon murmured.

If she heard it, she made no sign of it - which was either an extraordinary poker face, or something to do with the pact.

The demon walked over to the part of the wall I had designated and felt around for the upper edge of the secret passage. Part of me expected him to go full speed into it and knock himself over - perhaps that was just me hoping for some levity rather than wishing slapstick injury on him. Just above waist level - crouching but not crawling. He slunk down and then was gone.

After the demon had fully disappeared down into the hidden passage, Ren sighed. She caught my slightly raised eyebrow. “I have what you might call 'holy' energy. That’s why he finds me so distasteful.”

“That makes some sense.” I nodded. Demonic and Holy energy… or magic… seemed opposite to each other, and somehow that explanation was more palatable than just the idea that he didn’t think she was pleasant on the eye. He was strange, but surely not that crazy. I briefly took her in before looking back to where he had gotten to.

I tilted my head, trying to hear his progress. As much as I had wanted to send cards through, attacking blindly when I didn’t know the depth of the passage was futile. “I feel somewhat guilty for sending him to test for traps.”

“Better him than us. At least he can come back with another summon.” She shrugged and walked over next to me.

If he ran out of time, then it was simple enough to throw another card at a corpse. If he actually died in combat, then it wasn’t so straightforward—there was a much longer cooldown. At this stage, I wasn’t sure if it would then bring me a different demon, or he would need to reform back in Hell before coming back. Either way, I’d be down a pact demon for a while.

“Feeling okay, Max?”

I looked at her; her glare was no less menacing than usual. “Better than ever,” I responded, actually with a healthy handful of truth to it this time. Not only was I getting a better hold of my magical abilities, but fireworks of inspiration for new tricks were in constant bloom in the darkened reaches of my mind. My eyebrow raised. “Why do you ask?”

“There’s just furniture missing from this room now.” Her impassive stare gave no hint at her actual concern, or perhaps amusement. "Odd that you pale at the idea of looting beneficial items, but want to fill your Inventory with junk."

With faux surprise on my face, I glanced around as if I had only just realized the room was half as cluttered as it previously was.

Her bright blue eyes narrowed in anticipation, already knowing me well enough to see that I was about to earn myself a renewed glare.

"Couldn't have been me..." As I tipped my hat with a nod, I barely hid my grin. “Must have been magic.”