[WARNING! [Bleeding] effect has multiplied!]
[WARNING! User's Health is under 10%]
[WARNING! User's Health is under 5%]
...
[You are dead!]
[The system is going to be revoked.]
...
Unknown to Wolfram, with his body fallen on the ground and bound by small metallic threads, he laid in a pool of dried and coagulated blood. The room was half destroyed with many soldiers lying around him. All dead.
Slowly but surely, his broken body was slowly yet surely being healed thanks to an unknown power that invaded his body and used it as a permanent host.
It was some kind of alien and formless energy that was gentle and mysterious, it stretched to all parts of his body, allowing him to gain a bit of vitality and give some color to his sickly pale skin, which, at first, made him like a corpse in a morgue.
[Card System being applied, please wait....]
As this robotic voice resounded in his head, a normal-looking deck of cards appeared from within his chest and floated a few inches above him. It was a strange sight but it became way stranger when the cards began separating until 52 cards were aligned next to each other with their back to the roof and their front side facing him.
The cards flashed with a red, white and an even mysterious black light that illuminated the dark room, which had no light in it due to the intense tremors.
Then, one by one, the cards started entering his chest beginning from the ace of hearts... two of hearts, all the way to the king of spades.
When all the deck could no longer be seen, Wolfram's body shook violently and the same lights from before appeared. Precisely where his heart was, a blood-red glow emanated, all his limbs emitted a bright white light, as for the weird black light, it swirled around his head.
After that, his appearance had some change as a small dark star similar to a tattoo appeared under his left eye, it wasn't particularly big but it could be seen and it was rather attention-grabbing.
The lower part of his eyelids also suffered a change as they were now black, similar to the makeup woman would generally do but what made it weird was that only the lower part was visibly dark, giving his facial feature a perpetually tired look.
[Card System applied successfully!]
[Checking compatibility with the user..... 100%.]
.....
An unknown amount of time passed, Wolfram's eyes fluttered before they opened. He felt numbness and heaviness assault him as the injuries were still affecting him. The agony he was experiencing due to the electricity was now gone but the slash marks caused by the torture were still present.
Fortunately, they seemed to have recovered a bit as some scabs appeared and the blood stopped leaking, however, that didn't mean he wasn't feeling pain, it was just not to the point of making him unable to move.
Slowly, he moved his numb limbs and got up with his back leaning on the wall. He surveyed his surroundings and saw the various pools of blood, headless bodies, and severed limbs, his eyes didn't even flinch when he saw such a gory sight, in fact, he let out a loud laugh that made him feel even more pain yet he still laughed as his eyes flashed with happiness.
"Hahahaha ladies and gentlemen, karma at its finest! Hahahahaha..."
He continued laughing for who knew how long before he stopped and started dragging his tired body near that of a dead soldier who was missing his head.
His stomach was grumbling from hunger and thirst, his lips were dry and the stench of blood was nauseating, to say the least. Wolfram ignored the starvation and stretched his arm, pulling the handgun of the soldier and checking if there were any bullets in it. The magazine was full which made him feel a bit relieved. He wasn't sure on what happened but he intended to kill as many soldiers as possible before he was taken down.
That wasn't the only weapon he took from the corpses, he snatched a military knife and a rifle from other corpses too. He hid the knife and the handgun and held the heavy rifle, which he could barely hold. The more he rested the more tired he became so he mustered his strength and stood up while gritting his teeth as the pain was nothing to scoff at.
The room wasn't particularly big and the entrance seemed to be blocked by medium-sized stone with pipes and broken metallic rods protruding from it.
"Reinforced room my ass, an earthquake was enough to turn this place upside down. Well, it matters not since it's in my favor."
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Wolfram licked his lips as he put the rifle down and started pulling down the rocks, trying to move them out of the way. After a few tries, he sat down, panting again as some of the injuries opened a bit and the pain came back.
As he leaned on the shattered wall, Wolfram felt a weird wriggling sensation inside his rear pocket. He had already changed his outfit and wore a clean one he got from a somewhat intact corpse, one that didn't have any messy gore or dried blood.
He slowly reached his hand in the pocket and took out what was inside with a frown on his face. When he looked at the object he was holding, the confusion on his face deepened as he examined the seemingly ordinary deck of cards.
He fiddled with the cards until he noticed that the card at the bottom of this deck was a bit weird, it was jet black and a bit thicker than the rest.
He put the cards on the side and inspected the black card with an utterly perplexed face. Normally, he wouldn't be surprised by anything, however, what was written on the card was really astonishing.
There was a picture of him at the upper left part and what was weirder was that he had a tattoo under his left eye.
Wolfram ignored his picture and proceeded to examine the rest of the information written on the card. All the letters were written with shining gold characters which made it look quite appealing, much different to a shabby ID card that normal citizens had.
'What the hell? Why did they bother to create this if I was about to die? Anyways, this looks great! I look quite handsome in this picture.'
As he kept inspecting this dark card, Wolfram came to understand that this wasn't made by those scientists, or at least, that was what he speculated after spending ten minutes minutes thoroughly reading what was displayed on it.
[Wolfram Sakimoto]
[Race: No Race]
{Class: 1 Star Trickster]
--
[Cards Control : 1]
[Cards Sharpness : 1]
[Cards Speed : 1]
--
[Strength : 1.5]
[Vitality : 0.4]
[Speed : 1.3]
[Perception : 1.9]
[Magic : 2]
[Magic Control : 1]
[Magic Resistance : 1]
--
[Card Points : 1]
---
Wolfram understood the meaning of these numbers after musing with himself for a bit. He didn't know if they were real or not, but from the looks of it, this was similar to modern games where they relied on some kind of numerical values to see how strong the players were.
He wasn't very knowledgeable about them but he understood the concept. However, the magic stats and the cards stats lacked any elaborate or satisfactory explanation.
He unconsciously touched the Cards Control which led to a sudden change to the black card. All the contents written on it instantaneously changed and a row of golden characters appeared in his sight.
[Cards Control : It shows how efficient and nimble the trickster is when he's using his cards. The higher the number, the more tricks he could perform.]
He tried tapping again on the golden characters, and just like he guessed, the front page which displayed the stats appeared before him again.
He checked the other stats which he couldn't understand and slowly came to understand their roles.
Basically, Card Speed was how fast the cards were when thrown or performing tricks with them, as for the sharpness, it just means how sharp they were, quite literally.
The Magic stat was about how strong the unleashed magic spell would be.
"Magic, huh... this is a very pleasant surprise."
When he tapped on the Card Points stat, it stated that the trickster could gain CP (Card Points) through various ways with the most efficient one being slaying living beings, their race didn't matter, only their level does.
The higher their level, the more CP he'd get. CP could be distributed to any of the displayed stats.
The stats related to him could be raised in other ways too, and that was by looting stats cards from the corpses of the enemies. Basically, every stat had a unique card to it, such as Strength Card, Perception Card and so on...
Apparently, there was a 50/50 chance that a stat card will drop, furthermore, they were selectively generated. For example, a muscular soldier had a high chance to drop a Strength Card but he could also drop a Perception Card, even dropping a Magic Card was a possibility, albeit a very slim one.
The experiment Wolfram did was rather simple, he used his one and only Card Points and added it to his lowest stats, Vitality. Once he did that, he checked his stats again and just as he had theorized, his Vitality became (1.4), moreover, he felt a wave of warm energy wash over his body, lessening his physical fatigue ever-so-slightly.
"Hahahahaha ain't this a motherfucking good day!"
He didn't know what exactly happened: How did these cards appear or how could he see stats on this weird dark card, but in all honesty, he didn't care at all.
What mattered was that he was still alive. He might be injured but he'll recover, the soldiers around him were all dead and he was currently in a relatively safe place. All he had to do was get out of here, one way or another, no matter how many more lives he had to take.
The hunger and thirst notwithstanding, Wolfram patiently waited for half an hour before he got up and started checking his body. He spent all that time fiddling with the normal deck of cards he had found in his pocket. Surprisingly, his was quite proficient in handling the deck of cards even though he had scarcely played any card games throughout his life.
He couldn't do amazing tricks like those famous magicians but he could throw them in a somewhat straight line or perform some simple tricks that would fool the naked eye. He didn't know how he was able to do it, but it felt like an innate talent that was granted to him by the so-called 'Card System'.
The cards weren't that sharp, at least not to the point of being able to cut the lifeless corpse of the soldiers. What was more astonishing was that the thrown cards would disappear after some time and come back to his deck as if they had never been thrown.
When he finally got up, his body recovered enough energy to dismiss some of the pain and exhaustion. The knife scars he had gotten from the torture were no longer painful or leaking blood, they seemed like old scars that had long since healed. The scabs had appeared and if he didn't purposely tire himself to death, then they would not hinder his movements that much.
With how his body was right now, although he wasn't not in his peak state, he could still run and battle with experienced soldiers, and even they ganged up on him, he was confident in handling them somewhat efficiently... provided he wouldn't get ambushed, that is.
Wolfram stretched his body and tucked the deck of cards in his rear pocket, he positioned the handgun in a place where it was easily accessible in battle and hid the military knife; With a fully loaded rifle in his hands, he walked around the shattered room to inspect the corpses before he left his cell once and for all.