Captain Tario wanted to chase the girl immediately, Zach had told him that it had been her that had been inside with the cave with the prince, but before he could he needed to make sure the rest of his team survived to bring the body back to the city. The Lifeline Arrow Card would allow him to track the girl anywhere in the world. It had been on the prince only minutes ago, but Tario hadn’t noticed it snap because he had been busy giving orders to his subordinates.

He wasn’t particularly scared of the tribesmen, they were like children trying to punch a hole in a stone wall, but when the bodies start to pile up and the Cards leave the corpses bodies then it would draw monsters from all around.

When he got back to their camp he saw that most of the tribesmen were dead. Surprisingly enough so were a few of his own. They were the porters and squires, so their Cards were not good enough to keep them alive in such a fight.

Even the knight that had a huge rock dropped on him had survived.

He ignored the final skirmishes to go inside the cave. His Journeyman's Card made him able to thrive in most environments so the smoke that was still hanging in the air did nothing to his body.

He looked at his dead friend, his face had no expression and was stained with patches of soot. Zach had not touched the five Epic Cards from Arev’s hand, but Tario could not see the shine from the Meta Card they had worked for months to get.

“Where is his Legendary Card?” Tario asked, his voice cold.

It was actually a Meta Card, but only Arev and Tario knew that. The others of his group were no doubt doubtful that it was a Legendary, it was pretty common knowledge in the cities that Legendary Cards were gold, not white with speckled color. That thing was priceless. The only other person he thought had one was the Queen herself.

The two possibilities were obvious either Zach had taken it or the girl who had killed the prince had.

“T-the girl had it. I didn’t notice until after I had knocked her away.”

“Can anyone back up your story?”

Zach shivered.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Someone else had to of seen it.”

“You should hope so.”

Luckily for Zach a few people did see the girl have the Card in her hand so Tario didn’t have to kill him to be safe.

Had the girl known about the Card? No, anyone would be curious about a unknown type of Card, and the girl couldn't be older than thirteen. That reminded Tario of another thing, the great Prince of Valdinis, city lord of Ozart had been killed by a child.

Even children could be deadly if they had the right Card, but the prince had been suffocated by toxic gas in his sleep, it was no different that being killed by holding a pillow against his mouth so he couldn’t breathe.

Screams of birds, howls of wolves and the trembling in the ground told Tario that the monsters were coming for a feast. He would deliver the body of the Prince safely back to the city of Ozart before he went off to hunt for the girl.

He looked over the few remaining tribesmen, there might have been a few that escaped, but he didn’t care much for them. The ones the remained were bloodied and being held down by the others.

“Kill them.”

—

I awoke covered in sweat and my entire body aching with pain. I had placed a hasty bandage over my eye from a strip of my shirt, but it had slipped off while I slept. My pack was still in the cave where I had killed the prince so I had nothing on me to help me survive other than my Cards.

I climbed down the tree I had slept in, my joints screaming in pain and my eye throbbing. Once I did I oriented where I was and where I had come from and headed off in the opposite direction. Every step was agony, but I knew that I couldn’t just get away with killing a prince.

I had added Far Away Hands to my Hand. The hands were a slightly transparent green and were slightly larger than my own real ones. I could have one or two activated at a time, but having only one didn’t increase its power, based on what the Card said each one probably had the ability to carry half of what I normally could.

Based on that alone there was something I should be able to do.

As if I was a child each hand gripped me from under my armpits and lifted.

I began to hover in the air slightly. I tried to push it further but I wasn’t so strong as to make someone of my own weight go flying.

With a Body Card that increased my strength then the power of the hands would increase as well. It wasn’t some baseless conjecture. Cards were meant to synergize with one another. My Smokey Hands and Cleanse didn’t because they were so different from one another, but I knew that my Smokey Hands and Far Away Hands would.

I didn’t have the energy however to test as I wanted, but I was able to confirm that I could make my Far Away Hands puff out smoke like I could my real ones. I needed to get away. According to the Elders there was going to be a Shuffling soon. My hope was that I would be able to evade pursuers long enough that I’d be shipped off far away by the Shuffling.

I would try out my abilities more when I stopped to sleep for the night.