Johan advanced slowly, being careful to identify any enemy that could come at him from the darkness.

There was nothing but white and grey soil around him. And visibility ended after a hundred meters. As his vision depended on his ability to sense magic, it made sense he could only se as far as his magic sense could.

The only exception to the darkness around him, was the magic from faraway places, strong enough to pierce the darkness like a firmament. Still, there were nothing more than nebulous masses of light on the distance, that Johan used them to orient himself.

But the golden eye had the ability to see trice as far as his fleshy eye, and Johan took advantage of it to navigate, avoiding monster groups and attacking the lonesome ones.

Those boulder outcroppings were akin to little oasis of magic on an otherwise dry underworld. Johan noticed himself getting more tired out in the open, albeit it was still a small amount. Nothing his meager meat reservoir couldn't sustain.

Even there in the barren areas, a demon could survive a very long time on nothing but inner reserves.

-Shadowbeast level 15.

Johan stopped in his tracks, and checked all of his surroundings, hoping there were no other monsters around.

There were two.

-Shadowbeast level 7.

-Shadowbeast level 8.

They were near the first one, and nothing else on the surroundings, to Johan’s relief.

But they had to be controlling this territory, and Johan had no idea on which direction it extended. As far as he knew, they could make rounds on this area, and find his tracks.

The soil was mostly hard with small amounts of dust, but beasts surely had their ways. Otherwise they would simply not be able to survive.

And the fact was, he was attacked three times while in the outcropping, and none after that.

Moving like a blind man touching his surroundings, Johan advanced to the side, taking a wide detour around the big beast.

He sometimes found new beasts, and kept moving left.

Eventually it was clear it was a small pack, around eight beasts he could identify, but who knew how many more were outside his range

Johan had reached level ten while on the move, but without a good card synergy raw levels meant little.

-Sharp Spear 1.

His new card was not bad, but nothing special, and it would take plenty of levels, in order to finally have the beginnings of a decent hearth deck.

Not to mention, his mind deck was completely neglected. But without magical sources it would take him a very long time to develop better cards. And that was hard to do, without a safe place to rest and train.

“It doesn’t change anything.” Johan said to himself.

“Find information. Topple the local tyrant. Become the new local tyrant. Beat the demons into submission and raise a reign of terror. Build a power base and invade the surface. And among all of this, find the time to make a deck that will scare the gods themselves”

“No biggie.”

Little by little, some small stones littered the ground, and eventually gave way to proper boulders.

The place however, was more inhabited than the previous oasis. There were seven imps in total, one of them cleaned monster bones on the magic ejected from a floor vent, the same way he did before, the other six lazed around.

A big pile of bones could be seen nearby, but there were too few of them as compared to the amount of imps.

Johan himself had killed three on his own, but there were not even five sets of bones, judging for the skulls and pile sizes.

Back in the other world Johan knew little of demons, as he was a fledging hero on the run. But he knew lesser imps were the bottom feeder of demonkind. Probably he should evaluate their intelligence.

Johan walked around the boulder area, and found a place where he could approach, behind the cover of a big stone. He waited until there were no imps around and threw a piece of meat, then two more leading outside the outpost.

Eventually one of the imps caught the bait and took the meat, it followed the other two pieces and stood up, moving its neck around looking for more.

Johan threw the meat in front of the imp, and he crawled after it without checking for the source. When the imp raised its head, Johan stood in front of him.

The imp looked wide eyed, not at Johan but at his poncho, and grabbed it greedily. Then tried to jank it away, only to find Johan’s body exerting resistance.

“I can’t believe how stupid you are.” Johan said, and activated Sharp Lance to pierce his torso.

The imp tried to cry in anguish, but Johan stepped on his head, forcing his face onto the ground., then stabbed it again, for good measure.

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“Stupid it is then.” Johan knew he would not be able to properly lord over any demon without a solid set of cards. And if they were that stupid no negotiation was possible. “Gotta kill ‘Em all.”

Killing all the imps one by one was technically possible, but Johan had no interest on spending so much effort for so little gains, as it became harder to obtain new magical insights from similar enemies.

Effort and complexity were the basis of progress, and those could be better obtained with inventive, variety and risk.

Johan went back to the monsters’ territory, and took his time to chart their borders.

It took a while.

Had it been days from his awakening? A couple weeks at most?

He could not tell, time took a different meaning in the underworld.

Once Johan had a good idea of the shadowbeasts’ territory, he decided to fish one out.

Whenever he exposed himself, the beasts would see him, go after him and return to their original place. They were probably being kept in line by their boss, but Johan persevered.

Finally, he managed to taunt one shadowbeast long enough for it to attack him. It was level eight, and Johan had five inner cards backing up his strength.

It was not hard to spear the monster just enough to make it howl in pain, even easier to hurt without seriously injuring it, beyond the weakening caused by blood loss.

Once the monster decided it had enough and tried to retreat, Johan stabbed it with his bone lance, without using any cards to save them for later.

The pack only saw one of their own returning, howling and bleeding, with a spear protruding from its flank. This set them all on guard, but when nothing came chasing after the monster, their boss became curious.

It growled at the pack, and two of them advanced with it, walking on the direction of the imp nest.

Meanwhile, Johan had returned to the boulder area, and twisted the imp’s head until it popped out of the neck.

“I seriously underestimated the neck’s resilience.” Johan thought while disassembling his unwilling ally.

Once the head popped out, Johan tied a leather strap to it, battling with the slippery blood, then spun it over his head to gain momentum, and flung it at the imp that was cleaning the bones.

The head smashed into the bones, startling the imp, which rose to its feet.

-Lesser Imp level 12

“Come! Come!!!” The imp yelled, clawing at the air, the other imps gathered around him and grabbed a bone each.

They were not even sharpened bones. Johan almost facepalmed, but he kept his position hiding among the outside boulders.

Once the beasts were close enough, the eye detected them moving, advancing, circling and stopping. Obviously prodding the area to avoid an ambush.

But this was no ambush, it was a false flag operation.

Johan got close to the beasts, which had increased to five, threw a stone at them and retreated outside their perception range. Or what he assumed was their perception range. All he could see was darkness, and the beasts’ levels provided by the eye.

The beast moved even more slowly, but kept advancing. Which Johan took as a sign of them using their ability to blend with the shadows.

Johan repeated the process, this time throwing stones at the imps. They were more eager to scatter, but their leader growled and reeled them back in.

Finally, both groups found each other.

The camouflage of the shadowbeasts was pointless if the enemy was expecting them. Imps and beasts charged forwards and engaged in a direct melee.

Two of the imps fell on the first charge, bitten by one beast. Then by another, and got ripped in two. The other imps hit them on the side with their clubs, without much success.

“I cant believe how much they suck.” Johan lamented.

He had hoped to use them as cannon fodder to thin out the enemy, not to be so terribly incompetent.

But he didn’t waste his time, during that initial charge Johan had joined the imp’s numbers. He had hoped they would overlook him during the chaos, but they were not even looking at him.

The boss beast attacked the boss imp, and that one could at the very least resist the initial attack, using his bone to hit the monster’s head. Then it was shoved back by the enemy’s brute force, but managed to regain its footing.

Johan arrived from the side, activating Sharp Lance and Flame to empower his weapon.

The tip connected with the monsters belly and went in without much trouble. Johan let go of the spear, knowing the monster would trash around. Instead, he retreated.

The boss monster tried to attack Johan, but the imp boss delivered a hit with his bone club, similarly empowered by flame and maybe a brute force card.

Johan activated Compression, it absorbed mana and transformed into another card “Compression (charged),” then jumped at the monster’s side, yanked away the spear, activated combustion and shoved it on the wound with Compression.

The mana ignited into a fireball inside the monster’s belly, its dying howl so intense the monsters stopped and two of them ran away.

There were two monsters and four imps left.

The monsters had no combat abilities, but their stronger bodies boasted higher resilience and stamina, while the imps should have spend some stamina and cards during the battle.

But both sides were matched in intelligence, and the monsters retreated when the imp raised their clubs and ran at them yelling.

The original plan was to kill the boss monster, run away and return to get some gains from the leftover corpses, but the fighters made things much easier for him.

In the end only the monster boss was killed, while the imps lost three of them.

Johan jogged behind the boss imp, too engrossed on giving chase, and activated Sharp Claw to stab his lower back, then absorbed the leftover magic and cycled it inside his heart deck wheel.

There was no magic he could gain inspiration from, it was all brute force and flame affinity.

“I may have reached the limits of imp wisdom.” Johan said, and dumped the corpse to focus on the boss monster. “But this one should have something of value.”

Johan double checked, both imps and monsters were out of range.

The corpse was too heavy for him to move, but the belly was burned and the fire magic had mixed with the monster’s own.

Johan touched it, his hand resistant to small bouts of heat, and absorbed the magic.

This time it was different, the monster’s magic was intense compared to his own, and his leftover fulmin within the corpse made the monster’s magic more compatible with himself.

Johan could feel it, this had the potential to make a stronger card.

All cards could be upgraded in power, but they required a foundation composed of other cards.

A tier 2 card could not be produced until the hearth deck had enough cards of a similar type to use as a sample. Otherwise the card would destabilize and refuse to form, or form into a lesser card.

But the magic present on a monster of superior power served as the stabilization.

The monster died rushing at them, using its bigger body as an advantage. The power in the legs, the use of weight and speed, the bracing for impact.

The magic previously flowing across its body carrying knowledge of movement and strength. those aspects resonated with his Dash and Toughness cards, serving as the anchor within his heart deck.

The Sharpness cards vibrated, and then stopped, those were not solid enough to provide compatibility.

Johan reached level twelve, and a card formed.

-Charge 2.

*Deliver a frontal strike, empowered by speed.

His limit was still two cards, and having a tier 2 card to combine was a decent upgrade to his power.

“But even if I’m compatible, its too son for me to obtain tier 2 cards. Is it because of Soul Affinity?”

On principle, all magic originates from the soul, even plants and animals have degrees of spirituality. It was said the world itself had some kind of spirit, or a lot of them.

The demon’s ability to see magic was actually a form of soul perception. It was not strange to think a deeper perception would help him understand magic faster.

“I guess the imps could do that too, if they weren’t so stupid.”