In Domination, players can use mana for a myriad of things, such as healing their cards or resurrecting them. Without mana, if all of their cards are killed, they will be eliminated from the game.
‘A mana recovery penalty,’ Felix rubbed his thumb. ‘Not the worst.’
Summoning cards also required mana, but Felix didn't think about it. ‘With Eve, I don't even know if I'll get another card in this game.’
His favorite use of mana is to “scout.”
Players are bound to the cards they summoned. If a player strays too far from their cards, their mana will slowly deplete to zero and then teleport to their nearest card.
[Level 1 0/20 MP]
Felix shook his head, looking at the egg shaped number.
[Eve, let's be more cautious,] he said.
“You don't need to tell me that, Sapphire.”
Hearing Eve's grumbling, Felix couldn't keep a smile off his face. [Let's go, can you walk? Ashley’s not that far.]
Eve groaned. “Fine, let's go.”
Seeing Eve struggle to get up, Felix looked at his MP bar. It was still zero.
‘Normally, it takes ten minutes to regenerate one mana. With a 50% debuff, that'll be 15 minutes,’ he sighed.
Although 15 minutes wasn't a long time, each game only lasted 3 to 6 hours. Regular players didn't pay much attention to mana, but God Players are stingy about it.
‘F rank cards take one MP to heal, but Eve took 10 MP from me,’ Felix gulped. ‘If it's like this, I can't let Eve die.’
‘F rank cards need one to five Mana to resurrect, but judging from that and Eve being a legendary card, I'll be done for if he dies once.’
As for leveling up his Mana Power, Felix ignored it. He needed to sacrifice cards to upgrade his Mana Power, and to get cards, they needed to eliminate players.
+
Six days ebbed like the night's breeze under the blue moon. Eve spent six days hunting down clay men villages, and though they met a few players on the go, he and Felix avoided them.
‘According to Sapphire, only an hour passed by in his world,’ Eve hummed, glancing at the underground entrance hidden by leaves and sticks.
“They're in there, let's leave,” he said, glancing at Felix.
Earlier, he had destroyed yet another clay man village and gained a couple hundred clay soldiers. Then, he led the new clay soldiers into an underground cave, which he turned into a hideout.
‘I raided fourteen villages, giving me more than three thousand soldiers,’ Eve clenched his fists, feeling something he never thought he'd feel.
Energy.
Not stamina or physical energy, but a mysterious form of energy.
‘Mana, divinity, chaos, all of those magical powers come from raw energy,’ he shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, wielding raw energy is impossible. But the fact that it's there means it's possible to use magic in the future.’
Eve thought of the magic systems he knew of. Having traveled hundreds of worlds and wiped out hundreds of civilizations, his knowledge wasn't shallow. His only flaw would be that his memory wasn't infinite, and he wasn't blessed with a perfect memory either.
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‘Even then, I couldn't retain all my memories after my rebirth.’
Imprinting some of his memories on his soul was tough enough, imprinting all of his memories would take a literal eternity.
[Hey Eve,] Felix said, prompting Eve to turn around. However, Felix wasn't doing anything special, he was just standing there.
“What?”
[There's—hmm.]
As they spoke at the same time, Eve closed his mouth. Felix coughed, before continuing.
[There's only half of the players left,] he said.
“What do you mean?” Eve frowned. He didn't know there was a certain number of players in the tournament. ‘On hindsight, I should've known.’
[There's a thousand “God Players” in the yearly tournament, and I've been notified that the 501th player was just eliminated,] Felix floated forward, nearing Eve.
‘There were a thousand players in the tournament?!’ Eve took a sharp breath, feeling his body getting cold. ‘Even in the golden age of gods, there were less than a thousand living gods! And that's including all the miscellaneous ones!’
Seeing Eve's silence, Felix circled around him. [What's wrong?]
“No, nothing. Go on,” Eve sighed, secretly stirring in his mind. ‘With the number of gods increasing so dramatically, what has become of the universe?’
Less than a thousand gods nearly brought the universe to ruin back then, the memory of it was still vivid in his soul.
[Anyway, we've entered the mid-game! Good job, Eve!]
Eve nodded, chewing on Felix's words. “That means the gods we'll be fighting next are the stronger ones, and the weaker ones will get killed one by one.”
[That's… yeah, that's a way to summarize it,] Felix then hovered and stopped in front of him. [What's your plan? Continue raiding clay men villages?]
‘You should be the one making the plan,’ Eve inwardly lamented. ‘But, well, maybe this is better. You're too unreliable, Sapphire.’
“I want to gauge my power,” Eve said. “It's best to know the difference between me and the enemy. Can you pick a weak god for me?”
[Sure! Yes! Yes!] Felix floated up and down. [Okay, follow me!]
Eve shook his head and ran after Felix, who was floating away.
“How can you find another god?”
[Through luck!]
Eve nearly tripped.
[After half of the players are gone, the map slowly shrinks. As players go nearer the center of...]
‘Map? The “map” shrinks??’ Eve smacked his lips and yelled for Felix to stop.
“In my words, how would you say it?”
[Ah, right. In other words, the “world” slowly shrinks and the “gods” are forced to move toward the center of the “world,” which shrinks the “world” faster.]
‘The world can even shrink now,’ Eve sighed. ‘Why can't the world be normal and make sense for once?’
[Oh! There's another player nearby,] Felix said and slowly, his avatar dimmed.
Eve crouched, stepping slowly to dull his footsteps like a rabbit near a wolf. When they passed by a patch of bushes, he saw the player Felix was talking about. Like them, the player was in “stealth mode” and their color, which was white, looked dull and transparent.
“Is he weak?” Eve whispered. Below the avatar was a small butterfly with wings that transitioned from red to blue, and then blue to red.
[She,] Felix cleared his throat. [Is not weak, but with her card, you might have a chance.]
Eve nodded. “What's her card, then?”
[It's a mud dragon.]
“A mud dragon? That's possible?” Eve recalled the dragons he knew. Dragons were supernatural beings that rivaled gods, yet most of them don't chase godhood. They claimed it was for the so-called “order of life.”
[It is. It's a dragon-shaped mud monster, technically it's a mimic,] Felix explained.
“A mimic?” Eve felt a headache. ‘Was I reborn on another universe or something…?’
Felix sighed through his avatar. [Mimics are D rank cards and can shapeshift into something for a short while. The Mud Dragon is an evolved mimic that chose to mimic a dragon using mud.]
Eve pondered for a while, ignoring the doubt in his head. “That sounds… plausible.”
‘I haven't heard or seen a mimic before,’ Eve sighed. ‘Since Sapphire said I stand a chance…’
“I'm going in,” Eve said and without pause, he tensed his body. His clay body seemingly tightened, looking as though pliable rock, even though he was not as durable as one.
Not yet.
[Huh?]
Before the white avatar could respond, Eve sent a kick right to her face!
“Huh?!”
However, he phased through the avatar as though it was an illusion! Confused, Eve turned and saw the avatar staring at him. She disabled her stealth mode, and her pure white body shone a blinding white light.
[What's going on? Huh? Penalty?!]
Suddenly, the light was absorbed by the avatar, and its gaseous body condensed into something solid. Eve narrowed his eyes, jumped, and sent another kick to the avatar!
[Again?]
However, the avatar didn't move nor dodge. She watched as Eve's feet rapidly closed in on her face—BANG!
Eve smirked, landing on his feet and crouched.
“Heh, feels good.”
[I got hit?!]
The avatar showed no pain, but she exclaimed nonetheless.
‘I don't know what's going on, but it's a rare day to kick some god's face,’ Eve grinned and charged at the avatar, only for her body to suddenly be covered in mud!
“Tch,” Eve twisted his body and landed, before jumping back. The avatar rose from the ground and high into the air, the soil beneath them covering its body with mud.
A ferocious lizard-like face formed at the end of the mud construct, and a pair of glowing white eyes materialized on its eye-sockets. Its “body” elongated to a meter long, with scales forming across its body. Afterward, eight legs sprouted out of its length, each armed with three claws.
[I don't know who you are, but your Clay Soldier is dead!] The avatar yelled, charging at Eve with its mouth wide open.
“A sea dragon,” Eve shook his head and rolled to the side before hurriedly dashing forward. Grabbing a hold of one of its legs, he punched and tried pulling it out!
“You’re just mud, you can't be overlord of the seas!” Eve yelled, setting his body firm on the ground and pulled hard.
[What the hell?!] The avatar yelled, moving its body in a zigzag motion.
RIP—
Eve was thrown back, but he was holding a pile of mud in his hands. The mud quickly dissolved, and the previously eight legged dragon was now missing a leg.
“Without limbs, a mighty sea dragon is just a worm on land,” Eve mocked, however he felt like his body was about to dissolve.
‘Why is it moving stiffly?’ Eve thought. He remembered that when Felix moved, he looked stiff as well. Not to mention their stone-cold expressions and frozen bodies as they floated.
‘Are these gods being restricted by something?’ Eve pondered but threw it aside. Seeing the mud dragon charging at him relentlessly, he rushed ahead as well!
“Come, foolish god!”
[Shut up! Are you a legendary card?! Fuck, I didn't notice!]
Full of rage, the dragon tried to bite Eve, but Eve dodged to his left by rolling. Quickly finding another leg of the dragon, he dashed when suddenly—
‘It sped up?!’ Eve's eyes widened, and feeling the trembling ground beneath his feet, he looked back and was met with wide-open jaws made of mud.
Eve's mind went blank, before he was launched into the air. Looking down, he saw four clay soldiers standing in his place.
‘That’s… my old soldiers!’