The open-cut quarry was carved into the side of a low mountain. Its walls were steep and rough, dotted with jagged rocks and crumbling heaps of loose gravel. The floor of the quarry was a maze of huge boulders, piles of rubble, and craters of murky water.

As Blake and Harry approached the quarry, Blake could hear the sound of the chafing of rock on stone before he even saw the creatures. They were of various sizes, from small ones the size of cats to massive creatures that walked on four legs the size of cars. Composed entirely of rock and earth, they roamed the quarry with reckless abandon.

They had taken control of the site, and their presence made it impossible for any human to work there.

Blake watched in awe as one of the stone monsters, a massive golem, hefted a boulder as big as a horse and hurled it into the air. The boulder smashed into the ground with a thunderous crash, sending dust and debris raining down.

The other stone monsters were no less impressive, rampaging through the quarry and tearing up the earth with their massive claws like it was loose garden soil.

Blake had to be careful if he was going to make it through the quarry unscathed. He crept forward, staying low and keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of danger.

There were still a number of heavy vehicles around the place, most of them surrounded by monsters. Blake and Harry had taken refuge behind one of the old quarry buildings right at the front to devise a plan before jumping in.

“We should definitely go into these buildings and take what we can from them,” Blake said.

If he’d learned one thing from playing post-apocalyptic video games, it was that people left a lot of stuff behind when bad things started to happen. This world now seemed to run on video game rules, and in post-apocalyptic video games abandoned buildings always held valuable supplies and resources like weapons, ammunition, and other valuable supplies.

There was also the chance that Blake and Harry might find valuables they could sell back to the City Lord. The Foreman from his construction crew was looking for heavy vehicles like the ones here in the quarry.

Harry agreed that they should search through everywhere they could. When they were relatively sure no monsters hid inside the building, they went and tried all of the doors. Some were locked, which was to be expected, but they eventually found an unlocked window.

They slipped in and ransacked the building, trying to keep as quiet as possible. They found a stash of chocolate bars left behind in one of the desk drawers in the office. These were particularly high in demand back in New Meridia, as everywhere that made chocolates was now destroyed or out of business.

They also found some money tucked away in one of the drawers. Harry insisted on taking this, even though Blake was pretty sure that it was completely useless now. New Meridia only used system-generated credits in place of cash.

But their most important find were the keys to a number of the massive heavy vehicles that sat idle out in the quarry.

Blake was actually a little surprised nobody had grabbed these before them. His construction supervisor seemed to think that New Meridia wanted as many heavy construction vehicles as it could get.

That nobody had come out here to check yet told Blake a lot about how people in New Meridia were feeling. There were all kinds of opportunities waiting outside the city for people to build wealth and find new power cards, but a lot of people seemed content staying in the city and not leaving.

“We are going to be able to use this to barter our way into a better position,” Blake said.

“Really?” Harry asked. “How do you figure that?”

“Apparently Clay Atlas wants big construction vehicles, stuff that is capable of moving lots of dirt at once. If we can get these keys back to the city, we can suggest that they send people out here to come and take all of this stuff back. As long as they have the keys and they can come and get all of these things, I’m pretty sure that they’re going to reward us.”

“Well, that would be nice,” Harry admitted. “Do you have a quest or anything like that that you can share?”

Blake shook his head. “No, it’s not a quest, it’s just something that my boss said. But you know what? I can just kind of approach the situation and ask him what kind of reward would be available if someone was to find a bunch of heavy machinery and surrender it to Clay Atlas. That way we can figure out if the reward is going to be worth handing it all over.”

“Yes, come on, let's do that. We’ll play it pretty close to our chest to start with, and then figure out what we want to do.”

“I was talking to one of the other construction workers the other day who said you should keep as many secrets as you can from Clay Atlas’s security force. He said that if you reveal that you have a rare card or any resources that the City Lord wants, he’ll find a way to take it from you,” Blake said as he rummaged through another set of drawers. This time, he didn’t find anything.

Harry nodded as he went through some cardboard boxes stacked in the corner. “Yeah, I’ve heard the same. One of the guys I work with in food prep used to be really tight with Clay’s chosen ones. It was all good, until he found a card and tried to keep it for himself instead of giving it up.

“They ended up threatening to kill him and his family if he didn't give the card up, so naturally he had no choice. They didn’t kill his family, but they busted him down to the food prep work crew and jacked his work order requirements way up. So he basically gets double the work order requirements just to keep being a citizen of New Meridia, and if they pull his citizenship, then his wife and two kids lose theirs as well.”

“That is messed up,” Blake said, and he realized at that moment how much was riding on him keeping his situation quiet. “So all of that stuff that Clay Atlas says about justice and equality and all of that is just bullshit, right?”

“That’s pretty much my take on it,” Harry said.

“He’s trying to make the people think that he's ruling like this as a favor to them, but it’s all fake. He’s doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to achieve his own ends,” Blake said.

“Yep, that’s about the long and short of it,” Harry agreed.

After searching through the building, they found a whole host of nonperishable food and some important information about the quarry itself, such as issues and vulnerabilities in the geological structure of the area.

Apparently there was a cave system to the east of their current location which could possibly cave in if too much excavation took place there. They would be able to trade this information for more money or resources as well, Blake hoped. There was a map here as well that showed where they kept all the important resources, like their fuel and diesel reserves.

Another section highlighted a building that contained a number of explosives for excavation. Blake’s eyes went wide at that.

That had the potential to go very wrong, very quickly.

If the people in charge of New Meridia got access to explosives, Blake had a sneaking suspicion they would end up being used for nefarious purposes.

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Unless he and Harry used them all. Explosives could take out a lot of stone golems. The only problem was that Blake had absolutely no idea how to use explosives safely.

“Say Harry, you wouldn’t happen to know how to use explosives, would you?”

“I’ve got a little bit of experience with blasting caps and stuff like that. I used to work for a gold prospector up in the Yukon. He taught me how to not blow myself up.”

Blake looked up from the desk, surprised. “Really? I had no idea. Canada?”

“Yeah,” Harry continued. “It was a hard life, but I learned a lot. I never even knew what poutine was before I went up there, and now I look for it whenever I go into a diner. Well, back when we had diners. Anyway, explosives are fun.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Blake said.

Harry chuckled. “It was, but I learned quickly. I was young and eager to prove myself, and the prospector, an old guy named Mike Bayda, was a good teacher. He showed me how to drill into rock, set the charges, and get the gold out safely. It was a rush, you know? The excitement of finding gold and the thrill of the blast.”

Blake nodded. “I can imagine. So, did you strike it rich?”

Harry shook his head. “No, not really. But I learned a lot and had some good experiences. Now it’s going to help us kill more of these monsters. So let’s get to it, huh?”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Blake said.

They headed back out into the quarry and found Blake’s Shaleskin Wolf waiting. He focused on his wolf and saw it had just over 21 minutes remaining on his summon. With one anima left, he needed to figure out whether he wanted to use that for continuing to use his wolf or switch it out for his Stone Slasher Golem.

Blake could play as many cards as he wanted as long as he had the anima to power them. So technically he could summon his slasher at the same time as his wolf, and both of them could go on a killing spree together. Combined with the effects of whatever cards Harry had, there would be three empowered attackers on the battlefield at any given time.

The question was whether Blake wanted to focus on a longer duration of fighting or to increase the intensity of the fighting. They could very well clear out this entire quarry in the next twenty minutes to half an hour if they all worked together.

However, a mistake could lead them to being overwhelmed by the number of enemies here.

Blake and Harry agreed that they would clear this place out bit by bit, without risking attracting all the enemies at once. Blake would keep his last anima in reserve and figure out what he’d use it on later.

They decided to cut a path between the administration buildings at the front of the quarry site, right toward the locked explosives container. Once they were there, Harry would figure out whether he'd be able to rig any of the explosives in there to help clear things out more quickly.

But even if they couldn’t, there was nothing wrong with clearing out the quarry the old fashioned way. Monster by monster, fighting as they went.

All the enemies were stone golems of various descriptions. Some of them had empowered stone fists, like the monster that Blake first acquired back in the forest. But there was a greater diversity here with different weapons and body forms.

Blake didn’t see any that had the same long bladed weapons as his evolved card, but some had sharp pointed hands and feet and walked in a quadrupedal gait. Other monsters had stone hammers for fists.

Blake didn’t want to be on the receiving end of an attack from one of those, that was for sure.

They started slowly by pulling the attention of one or two monsters at a time. The first fight was a little messy, because Blake’s wolf accidentally drew the attention of three clustered enemies at once.

The wolf took a pummeling. Thankfully, its toughness score was high enough to endure it. Harry surprised Blake with a card he had seen before but didn’t know that Harry had a copy of it.

The card was called Stone Talons and it replaced the users fingers and toes with incredibly sharp stone claws. This card also seemed to increase Harry’s speed and agility, as well as his strength, unlike most earth cards that slowed users down.

That being said, his Stone Slasher Golem didn’t suffer any movement penalties even though it was an earth element card as well. Blake wondered whether some fire cards out there would increase the weight and reduce the movement speed of the user similar to an earth card.

There were many different types of cards for many different types of strategies, and it was exceedingly difficult for Blake to preempt what effect a specific card would have when he used it.

Blake commanded his wolf to dance around the enemies, keeping their attention focused on different directions. When they were confused by the quickly bouncing wolf, Blake commanded the wolf to attack the legs. He wanted to immobilize the stone creatures to let Harry dispatch them more easily with his claws.

Blake was not content to sit on the sidelines, though. He grabbed a pickaxe laying on the ground and approached an enemy.

He’d noticed that whenever he had a monster summoned, he started to feel a little stronger himself. He hadn’t really taken much notice of this while working in the construction zone back in New Meridia, but it was definitely happening here in the wilds. His wolf had a higher defense than the slasher golem, and it moved much faster.

To Blake’s surprise, he could feel a new toughness in his own skin and felt like he could move even freely as well.

As they worked their way through a few packs of monsters Blake realized just how much of a difference fighting in the wilds had on experience accumulation versus having practiced duels in the city.

They’ve only been fighting for a few minutes so far, but his Stonefur Wolf had already gained more experience in that short amount of time than it had in the course of five practice duels. From a pure time-to-experience point investment perspective, there was simply no contest.

As long as Blake had the anima to invest in coming out into the wilds, he would do just that. He and his monsters would get far stronger fighting like this rather than playing pretend and practice duels.

The quest tracker updated with every enemy they destroyed.

They found some interesting and useful loot on the bodies of the enemies as well. The system labeled and described these different items, though some were quite mysterious.

Stone dust

This is the dust from a vanquished stone creature. A forger might be able to use this.

Heavy stone

This stone is extremely heavy. It is useful to many different professions.

Ruby

This is a precious gem which can be used by different professionals for varied effects.

Coal

This resource can be set on fire to power many different devices that require heat.

Stone

This construction reagent can be used to build many different structures, and other dwellings.

Living Stone

This stone moves faintly in your hand. Usable in crafting recipes that require the stone to become animated.

All of this was interesting to say the least, but none of it was what Harry or Blake were here for. They needed new power cards.

They’d already talked about what would happen if the other person got the card that the other person was really looking for, and they agreed that they’d discuss that if it happened. Both were open to trading to make their decks the most deadly they could.

Blake was a little worried about having to reveal to Harry the nature of any card he received.

If Blake received another Stone Fists card, and he told Harry about it, it would be difficult to explain why Blake couldn’t actually use the ability from that card. There was something deeply wrong about how this power card system interacted with Blake, and the more scrutiny he brought upon himself, the less safe he felt.

This was something that he wanted to keep as close to his chest as possible for as long as possible.

Blake decided that if he was going to get a card like Stone Fists, where he knew what the outcome was going to be when he summoned the monster, he’d offer that as a trade. But anything where he didn’t know what effect would happen, he decided to keep that card for himself.

The first power card drop of the day happened a few fights later.

They were battling stone monsters in pairs, when one of the monsters erupted into light. It flashed and that light coalesced into the rectangular shape of one of the power cards.

“There you go, buddy. The first card of the day! This isn’t so hard. I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about,” Harry said.

Blake reached out to grab the card sitting on the ground next to the monster’s corpse. The system asked him if he wanted to take possession of the card, warning again that it will become bound to him if he did. Blake accepted.

Despite coming from a regular run-of-the-mill stone golem, the card itself was a little different. It was an attack called Fissure. This was marked as an uncommon card and required two anima to activate.

It was an environment card, able to change the world around it, or at least that was the intent of the card.

Blake didn’t know whether he would summon a monster with this one or not. He wanted to experiment with it. Unfortunately, he only had one anima left.

And besides, his Shaleskin Wolf was reaching the end of its summon limit time. Blake decided he would file away this new environment card and experiment with it in his Lair later.

“What did you get?” Harry asked.

“It’s just an environment card. No monsters this time around,” Blake said, keeping the details under wraps.

“Well that’s a good thing, yeah? So far monsters are all you’ve got, but this should open up some strategic possibilities, isn’t that right?”

Blake nodded. “I certainly hope so. But I do want to keep this card, so I’m sorry I won’t be able to trade this one to you.”

“All good, man. Let’s keep going and kill some more monsters!”