When Rowan finally woke up the next morning, the sun was already high up in the sky. He found himself only halfway on the bed and every part of his body ached, a sort of semi-numb feeling that promised pins and needles of pain later.

So he stayed in bed a bit longer and distracted himself by bringing up his battle log.

Battle Results:

EXP:

[Corrupted Wolf] + 75

[Demonic Stalker] +125

[Corrupted Fox] +60

…

Expand list?

Y/N

Loot:

128x cards in Party Loot Inventory

Rowan scrolled through all of the kills he had made. He could only remember a tiny portion of them, most of the fighting was now a blur even though it had just happened yesterday. One thing did stand out to him, the monsters all seemed to give far more experience than he expected. Where the level three and four boars only gave a handful of experience points, the monsters from yesterday all left him with double digit experience.

That almost made him sit up. Almost. All of that experience combined together would mean…

Rowan Clairfont

Level 12 Spearman

EXP: 322/650

STR: 16

VIT: 12

DEX: 16

PER: 10

INT: 10

WIS: 11

Available stats: 8

Level twelve. Eight whole stats. Rowan smiled so hard it hurt. In theory, there was plenty wrong with the stat screen as well. It was concerning how quickly the experience requirements were ramping up. And the fact that his current experience was listed as 322. He liked fives and tens, and it kept things nice and neat. It was the bloody squirrels, wasn’t it?

Thankfully, it was hard to be cranky when there were eight whole stats to distribute. If there was anything that soured his mood, it was that he didn't know what to spend the stats on.

Rowan’s first impulse was to bump both his strength and dexterity up to twenty. Those were big, significant numbers. He hadn’t taken the time to confirm his suspicions, but based on how ten had been so important to reach before he took a class, maybe twenty came with some extra benefits?

On the other hand, there were some more pressing issues. Namely, his perception. Several times yesterday, he had almost lost track of a foe because of how fast and nimble they were. He had enough speed and good enough reflexes to respond but that mattered less when he could barely spot death coming at him.

With great reluctance, Rowan spent four points on perception, then two each on strength and dexterity. The system went to work, leaving a deep ache in his muscles and bones. That, he was used to. What he didn’t realize was what bumping perception up by four points at once would do to him.

Every inch of his skin suddenly felt like it was dipped into acid. His sense of taste went on the fritz, things dancing across his tongue that he had no name for and that made him want to puke. His hearing, too, was filled with static and overwhelming noise, robbing him of all coherent thought.

The only mercy was the fact that the process didn’t last for long. A few moments later, Rowan wondered why he had never done this before.

The world was alive around him. He caught sounds and snippets of conversation outside when there was near perfect silence before. There was a pleasant scent in the room, something vaguely floral and medicinal. And his vision… it was like someone with horrendous eyesight getting glasses for the first time. The vibrancy of color, the way light played and refracted through the air, and even the dance of dust particles, all of it blew him away.

And yet, he managed to forget all of that when he turned his head and his eyes landed on the sleeping form of the baron’s daughter.

For what felt like the longest time, he just stared. Olivia was a bit of a mess, her clothes all ruffled and stained by mud and blood. There was a long, shallow cut right above her left eye, clipping her eyebrow. Her hair must have escaped the ponytail she put it into for the fight, because there were clear tracks of blood staining her green locks.

Rowan was struck by how relaxed she looked. Normally, even when she was resting, there was a coiled eagerness to everything she did. An animating force that pushed her to do something. All of that was gone now. Ironically, it made her look a little older, more mature.

He might have been stuck there staring at her if there wasn’t a potential monster horde outside. He prodded her cheek. “Hey. You alive?”

Olivia groaned and mumbled something, turning her face and burying it into the sheets. “Go away. Tell my father I’m not getting up today.”

“I’m not sure about you, but I’d rather be looking through loot than sleeping,” Rowan insisted, poking her again.

Olivia froze, and then shifted so one of her green eyes could peek at the world. “Rowan? Why are you in my bed?”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure you’re in my bed,” Rowan answered. “To answer the question, though, I have no idea. I blacked out after we won.”

“I did too.” Olivia checked to make sure she was decent before pushing herself onto her elbows. “Oh god. We ruined these sheets. The chief’s wife is going to be pissed. Wait, he has a wife, right?”

“Nope. She passed a couple of years ago. Some kind of sickness. Had a daughter and son-in-law, though, and an adorable grandkid.” Olivia hadn’t spent as much time getting to know the villagers, but Rowan more or less forced himself to know as many people in the village as possible. Most of them were very pleasant. The chief’s family, in particular, was nothing but kind and friendly. But they seemed scared and he could hear a rough edge under their voice.

“Okay, fine. We’ll talk about how you know that later. Why, exactly, did you ruin a good thing and wake me up again?” Olivia asked.

“Check your system logs.” There really wasn’t much else to add.

“That’s a lot of cards,” Olivia muttered. There was a certain dazed quality to her voice, and he couldn’t ignore it.

“Something wrong?” Rowan asked as he got comfortable in his spot. “You don’t sound too happy.”

“No, it’s just that we’ve been getting cards left and right lately.” Olivia sat up as well. “Just by defending the village, the barony gained at least a thousand cards. Getting this many cards isn’t normal. Normally, you’d need to go looking for corrupted animals or demonic monsters.”

“And with the invasion, it’s like the demons are delivering the cards to us,” Rowan said.

“Father used to say that each demon invasion is a great reshuffling of the noble houses. Cards that used to be sought-after are now common,” Olivia said. “This is horrible, don’t get me wrong. A lot of people could have died. A lot of people did die. Still, opportunities like this don’t even appear every generation. It’s ironic, we only get the opportunity to become powerful when the world itself is threatened.”

“Or it’s the other way around. There’s no need to be powerful if a world-ending threat doesn’t exist,” Rowan offered.

Olivia was quiet for a second, but she eventually nodded. “Well, no point in thinking too much about it.”

Your party member is viewing the loot report, open loot inventory?

Y/N

Rowan hit the yes button, and let the cards unfurl in his vision. Just like last time, he was briefly overwhelmed. There were so many cards, he didn’t know where to look. But then a flash of green caught his attention.

Flash Freeze (Uncommon, Active)

Send your mana out in a wave, covering everything in a thin layer of ice and dealing ice damage to foes within ten feet of you. The severity of the damage is proportional to the amount of mana invested.

“How’d we get an uncommon card?” Rowan asked as he sent the screen over to Olivia.

“An uncommon? We probably defeated an uncommon monster at some point,” Olivia replied, her attention taken elsewhere.

“We did?” Rowan mumbled as he expanded up the list of monsters to look at each and every kill. Halfway down the list, he found it. At some point, the two of them had defeated something worth a whopping two hundred and fifty experience points. A [Corrupted Winter Tapir]. Just the name alone was enough for Rowan to pay more attention to it. “How’s the card?”

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Olivia refocused her attention, and a smile blossomed. “It’s a mana card.” When Rowan didn’t show the appropriate levels of appreciation, she made a face and continued. “It’s a card that gives you a mana skill, something that you can use to channel your mana directly.”

“And that’s rare?” Rowan guessed. He mentally toggled a ‘pass’ on the card, the same way he had done with the Corrupted Heart Card.

“You have no idea,” Olivia said as she summoned the now-uncontested card. It was a pretty thing, the glacier-blue image glittered under the sun. “Cards like these come from monsters that can innately use mana. They’re incredibly hard to find.”

“So you’re going to use it?” Rowan asked.

Olivia paused in her excitement as her eyes went glassy. Rowan assumed that she was looking at her deck. “Maybe, if I can make enough space for the card. The other cards synergize quite well with my class.”

Rowan nodded absentmindedly. His attention was already on something else.

Nimble Body (Common, Passive) x 17

He immediately rolled for all of them, and grinned when Olivia immediately passed on them. The cards rained down on his chest, and he gathered ten as quickly as he could.

Nimble Body had been one of his impulse picks, and when paired with Empowered Thrust, he could attack at angles that would have been impossible before. More than that, it also gave him the flexibility to dodge without losing his balance. To say he was excited about an improved version would be an understatement.

Contortionist's Physique (Uncommon, Passive)

You can control your body with startling precision in new and unexpected ways, allowing you to move with precision and pass through gaps you normally couldn’t.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Rowan chanted, practically forcing the card into his chest while unequipping Nimble Body. It settled into his deck with a thrum of power that pulsed through his body, and his aching muscles actually relaxed a fraction.

Testing things out, Rowan focused on the various muscle groups, finding that he could both perceive them and tense them individually. It was like someone had mapped out his body, then transmitted the knowledge right into his brain. I could probably recreate that scene from The Exorcist.

“I don’t like the way you’re grinning. Stop it,” Olivia joked, tossing one of the common cards that were now scattered all over the bed at his face.

Rowan just laughed, unbothered. “You have no idea how amazing this card feels. You’ve got to get one for yourself.”

He illustrated his point by pulling his arm so far back that it cracked three times in a single motion. Demonstration over, Rowan sank back down into the bed with a content sigh.

Olivia scrunched up her nose at him in distaste, and she shook her head in an adamant no. “Nope. You can have your weird physique card, I’ll stick to my build. Besides, I can’t get as much out of it as you can.”

“Wait, why not?”

“You’re a dexterity build, dummy. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how much better your speed and reflexes have gotten. Cards all have stats they work well with. Do you really think someone with ten or less dexterity could use the Nimble Body series of cards half as well as you do? The majority of my points are in intelligence and wisdom.”

Rowan considered that for a moment, and it made perfect sense. He definitely couldn’t get far with the Flash Freeze. It would probably drain him in two or three casts max, and then he’d be a sitting duck. Or passed out in the middle of a battleground.

“Do you think my stats make Relentless Advance more effective, too? I mean, if it’s rushing an opponent, it has to have something to do with strength and dexterity, right?” Rowan asked.

“Probably? But if you think about a boar, they’re mostly strength and vitality builds. Not dexterity,” Olivia said, her finger on her chin. “If you want to have a good baseline for the way your stats affect the card, you’d need to compare with someone else that has it. Not that a lot of people are likely to agree to such testing.”

Rowan was about to be an idiot and ask why not, but it was pretty obvious. Even until now, he didn’t know what Olivia’s full deck was. He knew that she could make potions, some of which were more like bombs than enhancement brews, but he had no clue what her full deck looked like. If people were that cagey about their cards, then they were probably equally unlikely to be using them for testing.

“Does anyone ever do that kind of stuff?” Rowan asked. “Proper testing on cards and such? That feels pretty important.”

“Of course. The mage association does it often. However, if you want to browse the results of their research, you need to be either a member with high enough access or you need to pay a whole lot of money. More than we can afford now that my father is a baron, at any rate. The imperial academy also does some testing and research, but only high-ranking nobles and the king’s men go there.”

Rowan heard a slight edge in Olivia’s voice when she mentioned the academy. Instead, he refocused on their loot.

Most of it was not that exciting.

The best of the loot were sixteen copies of Eerie Stare and nine copies of Light Step. Those, Rowan grabbed with Olivia’s blessing.

Malevolent Gaze (Uncommon, Passive)

Cow your enemies into submission and reduce the stats of an enemy you lock eyes with by ten percent if your INT and WIS total is higher than theirs.

Malevolent Gaze was perhaps Rowan’s best card outside of the ones he currently had in his deck. Rather than a simple reduction to an enemy’s morale, the card had grown into something with a real effect. Its effects fell somewhere between a passive and active card, yet no mana cost was mentioned for its use.

The only problem were his stats. With the dependence on intelligence and wisdom, he wasn’t sure how much mileage he’d get out of the thing.

“You sure you don’t want this one?” Rowan asked, drawing Olivia’s attention away from her Flash Freeze and showing her the description of Malevolent Gaze.

“Huh, I didn’t know about that one. It’s from the wolf drop, right? How many duplicates do we have of those?” Olivia asked.

“Nine. We’re one short of getting another uncommon,” Rowan said. To be so close to another upgrade definitely bothered him a little.

“Hrm. Well, it can definitely work with my build, and it would give me more options in combat beyond just my potions. Flash Freeze is going to help immensely with that, too. I’ll hold on to the card for now,” Olivia said as she took the card along with all of the Eerie Stares. “With how many wolves we had to fight, I’m sure someone has a copy they’re willing to trade for one of our cards or just for scrap.”

Rowan nodded, moving onto the second combination.

Ethereal Step (Uncommon, Passive)

Your steps are nearly silent and deceptively light, bypassing all pressure-based common tier traps and all standard or lower quality uncommon tier traps. The effectiveness of higher tier traps against you depends on your dexterity values.

Rowan didn’t see an immediate value for the card. Still, given that it was an uncommon card, he stowed it away in his cardholder.

Scanning the rest of the card drops, Rowan zeroed in on another unusual card drop. He knew which beast this particular card came from instantly.

Acid Spray (Common, Active)

Shoot a stream of corrosive acid at your foe, dissolving flesh and weaker materials. Your acid can damage most common tier items, and sometimes entirely destroy them.

That was a nasty card. Surprisingly enough, the system didn’t hit Rowan with a warning that he couldn’t equip it. To double-check, Rowan tracked down the Coarse Fur cards, of which they’d gotten twenty-one duplicates, and the warning was right there. Interesting.

“Hey, couldn’t you also use this for your build? You’re all about poisons and explosions. Feels like a natural fit,” Rowan teased, forwarding Olivia the card info.

“What in the world dropped this?” Olivia asked, but she did roll on the card, and Rowan chose to pass on it.

“Demonic Stalker. I had to fight one of those when they dug their way into the village.” Rowan hated the mere mention of those things. “There was even an uncommon tier among them.”

“I might use it for brewing potions,” Olivia said as she summoned the card to look at the art. “We might need to hunt down some more of these cards for it to be useful though.”

“Maybe someone’ll want to trade for the cards we have,” Rowan said. “Or we can try to scrap our cards. We have a lot of fragments and useless cards piled up.”

“Later. There’s a trick to fragment fusing. Usually, it’s better to have a whole bunch of fragments and fuse them all at once,” Olivia said. “For now, I think it’s time to clean up and find something to eat. We definitely need a change of clothes.”

Rowan had to admit that it was a little funny to watch Olivia cautiously crack the door open and then scout the hallway before scurrying into her room. He wasn’t sure what she was worried about, but he left her to it.

—

A couple hours later, they finally ventured out of the village chief’s house and into the chaos of everything happening outside.

Everywhere they looked, someone was hauling in beasts, butchering them, or packing away monster materials. The villagers worked away with smiles on their faces, and even the mercenaries were pitching in with gusto.

Rowan felt a little ill when he saw that the stalkers were being scavenged too, but felt a little better when he realized the villagers were after the exoskeleton, claws, tails, and venom sacks instead of the creature’s flesh.

The two of them found Bron at the top of the walls, more or less where they’d left him the previous day. Instead of commanding the troops in battle, the officer was now overseeing another round of repairs for the wall.

“Ah, the hero party joins us humble mortals,” Bron drawled, spotting them before they reached him. “I almost thought you would be lost for the day. You did look cute, though, all collapsed on the bed like that.”

“We didn’t, I mean, nothing happened,” Rowan stuttered, blushing even harder. A glance at Olivia revealed that she was suffering just as much as he was, and her blush was even more apparent when contrasted with her green hair.

“I know, lad, I know,” Bron laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “I hope you understand I still have to report everything to the baron, though. No lying to my liege, not if I want to keep my job. Or my head.” The man looked to be relishing their discomfort a bit too much.

Rowan groaned, refusing to give into the urge to bury his face in his hands. If he couldn’t beat Bron at his game, he could at least go for a distraction. “How was yesterday? We won, but at what cost?”

Bron sighed, his cheer dropping away in favor of resigned weariness. “It went about as well as it could have, with fliers and burrowers added to the mix. There were losses, you saw that much yourself, but we handled ourselves well. I’m just worried about what this means for Baron Sutton’s troops. If things are this bad here, then…” Bron trailed off, but there was no real need to finish.

“At least the worst is over for now, right? I doubt we’re going to see another attack this quickly after such a large horde,” Rowan offered. There were small mountains of monster corpses piled around the village. Rowan had a hard time imagining that there were many more of those corrupted beasts around.

It seemed like that was the exact wrong thing to say. Right as Rowan’s voice fell, a howl ripped through the air.

It was a terrible sound, like the cross between a wail of sorrow and a scream of rage. A feeling of dread welled up in Rowan’s chest and Bron snapped his attention to the forest. Rowan followed the officer’s gaze and saw nothing for the first few moments. Then, be it because of his heightened perception or because the creatures had drawn near, he saw the threat.

It was a noble out for a stroll with his dogs. Or rather, it was something that resembled a noble and beasts that resembled dogs. The faces of the beasts looked half-melted, and even their skin seemed to be slipping off their bones. Weeping sores were strewn all over them, leaking pus and blood that steamed.

But the noble was far stranger. It wore no clothes, giving Rowan a direct view at the purple-gray, distinctly non-human, skin. Its torso was massive and wide, wrinkled skin folded all around, and all stuck on top of comically stubby legs. A total of six long, spindly arms jutted out of its body. Two from the shoulders, two on its front, and two on its back. They ended in fingers that could have belonged to a pianist, if they weren’t tipped by claws.

It leaned forward, and its two front most arms landed on the ground, effortlessly supporting its weight in spite of the fact that the limbs were over six feet long and perhaps as thick as a normal person’s wrist throughout. The arms then lifted its entire bulk, swinging the creature out of the cover of the trees, depositing it on the ground almost gently.

“Morsels… Many… Yes… Divine Scent… Near…” A voice echoed out of the monster, muffled and lilting, while its lips didn’t so much as twitch.

“What the hell is that?” Rowan hissed, drawing his spear and relying on Keen Spear to center himself.

Bron replied. “A demon.”