Gus hovered his hand over the best card, but then moved down to the second best card. He nudged his friend Fern and pointed to the next best card. She obliged and took it. Yang and Lily did the same, looking at Max as they did.

They were clearly trying to leave the best card for Max, but he wasn’t sure if their gamble would pay off. He didn’t know the Chinese guys at all and he was sure Ashley wouldn’t play along.

Kezhi took his time to decide. It looked like he was going to choose the brightest card, but a stern look from Gus made him change his mind. Fang didn’t hesitate and took one of the bottom cards. He must have wanted that particular one.

Ashley seemed unsure of which card she should take. While she dithered, Ebba got up and wandered over to a distant monster body. She took out a knife and started butchering it. She had to work slowly because of her injury. Max wondered if monster meat was good eating.

When Ashley was about to pick the best card, she flinched and looked at Gus. Then she changed her mind and grabbed one of the lower cards.

Max was a bit surprised. Against all odds, the best card was left when it was his turn. He graciously accepted their generosity and read his new card.

Worthy

Augment

Citadel

Transmutes inorganic object within aura into a better version of itself. May choose to reinforce material or create a stronger magical effect. Final size may be increased by additional inorganic matter.

Mana Cost: 42

Charge: .2 Hours

Card Level: 6

Max almost swore out loud. This was a force multiplier. It would improve anything he could make, even make things more magical. It was a wonderful card, but he couldn’t use it. The mana cost was more than his whole pool. He had been so happy to get the best one, but it was useless to him right now. Nothing he could do about it now, besides everyone was waiting for him.

He said, “Alright, second round, reverse order this time. Starting with Ashley and going down to Gus. I’ll be last again. Ashley, go ahead.”

This time around, Ashley was quick to grab the largest orb. She scowled at Max as she held the colorful orb to her chest. He still had no idea what was going through her head.

James, Feng, Kezhi, and Lily quickly choose a large orb each. Each orb was a different color, swirling and flowing as they were jostled. Yang took longer to decide, and then grabbed a card. Fern and Gus each took a card as well. There were two cards left when it was Max’s turn. A citadel Gloves card, and a cup Grass card. Since his two cards were already citadel cards, he went with that.

Common

Gloves

Citadel

Transmutes mana neutral matter within aura into a set of gloves sized for the cardholder.

Mana Cost: 12

Refresh: 2.2 Hours

Card Level: 0

It looked like a pretty shitty magic power to Max. He decided to withhold judgment until after he tried them out. Maybe they had a hidden power like the hammer did. If it wasn’t for the super strike his hammer had, there is no way he could have crippled the titan. Maybe these gloves could let him climb walls like spider-man or something. He tried to absorb the card and try it out, but it wouldn’t work. He needed to upgrade his system before he could use more than one card.

That was the second round and everyone had two good rewards for the fight for their lives. There was one card left, but he ignored it for now. The rest of the orbs were all the same grade, mostly white with a splash of color. Max passed out one to each of the survivors.

That left one card and two orbs unassigned. He motioned Ebba over to them. He stood up so he could see her eye to eye. It didn’t work. She was seven feet tall and he still had to look up at her.

When she was close he said, “I want to renegotiate your fee for escorting us. We had a deal for you to escort twenty-four people to safety. Now there are only nine of us. Naturally your fee has gone down. Now we are only offering one card for the escort.”

“What? No! I get that you are upset, I am upset as well. But it requires almost the same amount of work to escort a lot of people as it does a few. However, in deference to your loss, I will reduce my price slightly. But not down to one card. I won’t escort you all the way to the first layer for anything less than three heart-cards.”

Max shook his head, “When you decided to abandon us to our fate, you said the whole journey was a waste. That means you don’t live around here and you are heading back home anyway. I bet you live near the first layer, don’t you? Take us along and you will earn at least one card. It’s this or nothing.”

Ebba huffed, “Yes, I live on the second layer and I’m heading home. Like you, I’m not yet adjusted to the high mana here. But I will live a lot longer before I die of cancer. Not like you. You have a short while to get there and have no idea where you are going.”

The other eight humans were watching the exchange raptly, attention bouncing back and forth as they spoke.

“Sure I do. It’s not hard to figure out. As you said, we are on the third layer. We have been heading north this whole time, so that means we are heading towards your home on the second layer. The first layer must be just north of that. We need to cross two mountain ranges and we are safe. Difficult, but possible. Your services are not as valuable as you say.”

“It doesn’t matter if you know where you are going. You’ll die if you head out on your own. You won’t make it out of the third layer, let alone all the way to the first,” Ebba countered.

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“Max-” started Ashley.

Max just held out his hand to silence her and said, “Ebba. Either you leave us having wasted your time, or bring us with and earn something. You will be traveling either way. Why not accept the deal?”

Ebba rubbed her wounded side and stared Max down. He didn’t budge.

She hooted in frustration. “I will do it for two cards. One upfront, the other when we arrive. That’s the lowest I can go.”

Max let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Alright, deal.” He reached down and grabbed the card no one wanted. He handed it over and said, “Thank you for being reasonable. In turn, we will all do our best to make your job easier.”

“In that case, please be ready to go within 12.5 minutes.”

“We will try,” Max replied.

She walked away as everyone started packing bags and putting away their loot. Some absorbed the cards they had been given, others packed them away in their bags.

“Max,” Ashey hissed, “What were you thinking, negotiating with her like that? Our lives are on the line here. They aren’t worth a measly two cards.”

Max shook his head, “I did it because I think the cards are worth more than she is letting on. Did you see how fiercely she fought for every card? I think it’s really rare to have this many cards. Without guns it will be hard to kill a single monster, let alone the dozens we killed today. Cards are worth a lot, I am sure of it.”

“She was this close, this close, to leaving us to die, Max,” Ashley said as she held her fingers a centimeter apart.

“I was bluffing, Ashley. I never would have let her leave.”

“Just consult with me before you risk all of our lives like that!” She shouldered her backpack and walked over to the funeral pyre they had set up.

“Damn. What an ass,” Lily said, her hands on her hips.

“It’s been a tough day for everyone. I think that’s her best friend she is looking at,” he replied.

Lily looked away and said, “Oh. Sorry.”

Max patted her on the shoulder and walked over to his pack. After he had the pack clipped into his exoskeleton legs, Yang walked up to him.

“I have a pack now, so I will not need to borrow from you,” Yang said.

Max noticed for the first time that her crisp white shirt was dirtied and her left arm torn off. It was used as a bandage on her forearm. Before he could say anything, she held up a small bag.

She said, “This is a bag of food. Ebba says we will need to eat our own food as much as possible. Are you able to carry it along with your own pack?”

“Yeah, I can add a few pounds, no problem. The only problem will be that these legs won’t last. I think Ebba said they are going to break in a couple of days.”

“We can find a new solution then.”

“True, true. Thanks, Yang. I know this isn’t what you wanted, but I appreciate you. It helps to have more level heads around.”

Yang just grunted and walked away.

Max turned to see Gus holding a gun's magazine and talking to Ebba. Max walked over to the two tallest people in the group.

Gus said, “And all I’m saying is let’s do a little test. You said you didn’t know for sure why they stopped using guns, maybe it was because they ran out of ammo.”

“Fine. We can do a test. As you said, I do have something that should speed up the mana absorption process,” Ebba said. She pulled out a small vial of brightly blue liquid. “This is mana infused water. Place one of your ammo inside and we will see an explosion.”

Gus thumbed a bullet out of the magazine and plopped it into the vial. She placed it on the ground and backed up. Then she backed up some more. Max knew that a bullet going off without a gun shouldn’t be that dangerous. He backed up anyway. Maybe the mana would change things.

Nothing happened.

They stared at it for a minute and the bullet just sat there in the water. Ebba insisted it would work, but Max and Gus went back to packing while they waited. Five minutes later, the vial exploded.

Gus swore like a sailor and started tossing weapons and ammo. He had a surprisingly large amount. Once everyone was packed and ready to go, they lit the funeral pyre. They stayed long enough to be respectful, but Ebba urged them to leave before any of the monsters came back.

Ashley broke down crying and fell to the ground when it was time to go. Her best friend was on that pyre. Max and Lily tried to gently encourage her to get moving again, but she wouldn’t respond to them. Eventually, Ebba picked her up and started walking.

Gus stood at the edge of the clearing for a moment. When he turned back to join them there were tears on his face. Max was pretty sure he was mourning the two friends he had lost. He wouldn’t be too surprised if some of the tears were for the guns they were leaving behind. A few minutes after they started walking, Ashley asked to be put down. She slid to the back of the line, swearing under her breath.

They quickly put the meadow of death behind them. Ebba easily cut them a path and kept them all walking swiftly. Max kept an eye on James and made sure to call for a break whenever he was flagging. The temperature had been fine before, but now that they were exercising it felt hot and muggy. Sweat slowly dripped down the human’s faces.

During one of their breaks, he set up his solar chargers along the back of his pack. It would trickle in energy to his exolegs so he could keep walking all day. When he finished, he noticed something interesting on the side of the path.

The ordinary looking fern in front of him was regrowing from the cut Ebba gave it. The growth was fast enough to see new leaves forming and uncurling. He guessed that in a few hours there would be no trace of their passage. It was amazing.

Even more amazing to him was how fast Ebba was healing. The large cut on her side had stopped bleeding before they started walking and now the sides were closing. She would be fine by the morning. The humans in the group were healing faster than normal, but nowhere near that fast.

“Have you ever been to the surface?” James asked as Max was lost in wonder.

“What do you mean? We are on the surface now,” Ebba replied and patted the dirt beside her.

“No, I mean the surface of this planet. Like we are inside the planet now, but what about under our feet?”

“You humans have some crazy ideas. We are not inside a planet. Spinworld is a thin metal sphere floating in the void. It’s only three 1.2 miles thick. Then there is a layer of stone and dirt and then everything you see here.”

“What? No way. This place has almost as much gravity as Earth. The gravitational coefficient would require way more mass to create an internal pull this strong,” James said mostly to himself. When he realized Ebba was staring at him he shrunk back.

“Why do you think we call this place Spinworld?”

Max caught on before James did. He snapped his fingers and said, “Centrifugal force! This whole sphere is spinning on an axis. We aren’t feeling gravity, we are feeling the effects of being spun around.”

James tilted his head back and forth. “I don’t know, Max. The centrifugal force required to simulate Earth weight on this large of a structure would create huge stresses on the materials.”

“Something they clearly figured out already. And the forces wouldn’t be that large, locally we aren’t moving that fast.” Max said. He turned to Ebba and said, “Is the gravity lighter on layer one and nonexistent on the poles?”

“No one ever visits the north and south poles, so I wouldn’t know. But yes, you feel a bit lighter on layer one,” Ebba said.

Max turned to James with a grin. He knew his friend would understand what that meant. The smaller circumference of layer one with the same rate of spin as the rest of the sphere would result in a lower artificial gravity. James stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry. Max laughed and went back to walking, trying to catch glimpses of magic plants.

Over time, Max’s wonder at the alien jungle faded. He started thinking about his build, how he would level up his system and which cards he would focus on. His hammer card was a great start, especially once he figured out the super-strike. In order to use either of the other two cards, he would have to make a choice in his system. To specialize by merging it all into one card, or generalize and hold dozens at once.

Ebba recommended he not put any points into his system, but he was going to do it anyway. The potential benefits of having more magic at his fingertips outweighed the slight risks she mentioned. He pulled up his system and read over the descriptions again.

Merge cards within the heart deck to create stronger cards with modified effects.

Specialize or Generalize

Gain the ability to hold more cards at once and choose their interactions.

His heart said go for broke and get the powerful card from specialize. His brain said they needed to survive and a variety of cards was the only way to do that.