He was starting to realize what Ebba meant when she said humans were addicted to leveling up. It wasn’t that he was jonesing for another hit, it was that he wanted to make himself more. To escape the bounds he was born with and improve himself.

It was something he was starting to realize about himself. He really wanted to get more powerful. Not necessarily more deadly, he didn’t feel the need to be a killing machine. He just wanted to be more than he was before. On Earth, that meant exercising and getting a job in construction. In this world, that meant magic.

That realization helped him solidify some choices. He was going to pick Insight and probably Flow too. Both of them focused on magic, seeing it and using it.

In the books, being able to perceive magic was a prerequisite to getting better at using magic. Max was leaning towards picking Insight today. He had already been using his magic cards, so it wasn’t like he had to have the help. His idea was that being able to see magic would help him use it better.

His mind made up, Max pulled up his system and chose Insight. Since he had the points, he went ahead and raised it to six right away. He was planning on putting more in, but it stopped there. It must not be able to be higher than his level.

He excitedly looked around the forest. Everything looked the same. Maybe there was a little bit of haze around everything now, but he might have been imagining it. He pulled up his system again to double check that it had worked. It showed he had three free points and the first row had changed.

Benefits:

See mana in use and track its origin.

Fathom basic information about magic items.

Range 24.8 feet

Insight Level 6

Drawbacks:

Physical senses will never improve.

Items that improve physical senses have a reduced effect.

It had clearly worked. He liked the look of those benefits, but was a bit bummed about the drawbacks. Never improving his physical senses, that would put him at a disadvantage to others that did. And apparently there were items to fix that, but they wouldn’t work as well for him. He wondered if that was part of the reason Ebba told them not to mess with their system.

He focused on Ebba as he thought about her. Insight kicked in and he saw something more. She was spewing something into the air like a fountain. Waves of something intangible were spreading out from her, moving as fast as a shockwave. It wasn’t anything he could see with his eyes, but he knew it was there nonetheless.

It had to be her card. She was constantly using her Disregard card. This must be what her magic in use looked like. He tried to trace the waves of magic she was sending out, but he lost track of them almost immediately. Perhaps he couldn’t expect too much from six points.

He looked down to his gauntlets. Those were magical, right? He stared at them for a bit, trying to tease out the lines of mana he knew had to be flowing through them. He didn’t see what he was looking for, but he did see something interesting.

Gloves, Charged

Max smiled as he read the glowing blue words. Insight was their version of inspect. He could learn about magical items by staring at them for long enough for the system to give him their description. And those two words told him a lot. The system still considered them gloves, despite the fact they were really gauntlets. The word ‘charged’ could only mean their magical ability. Insight would allow him to look at his hammers and gloves and tell if they were able to use their magic ability at the moment. Convenient.

It would be nice if it told him what his gloves did. He could add it to his deck, but then he couldn’t ever remove it. He needed to figure out if adding a common card to his deck would lower the grade of his other cards. Still, he was tempted to do it anyway.

Maybe Ebba was more right than he thought. He really wanted to just level up again and again. He distracted himself by testing his new sense.

For the next several minutes, he stared at plants and people around him. No words appeared until he came across an unearthly plant. It was one of those fractal plants with red flowers poking out of the middle. The edges of the plant’s leaves continued their fractal pattern longer than should be possible.. Max usually avoided looking at them since it gave him a headache. This time it made him smile.

Romanesco Rose - Ingredient

Fascinating. This meant that alchemy was a thing in this world. His Insight would help him find magical plants and he could sell or use them. He turned to find Ebba and ask her if it was worth harvesting. The fact that she hadn’t harvested a single plant despite having storage shorts implied that it wasn’t worth it.

Before Max could say anything, Ebba suddenly changed their route. Their winding path had been mostly northern, until just after the most recent break. She had cut west and sped up a bit. Max made his way to the front of the line.

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“Ebba, why are we going west now? Are we close to the city?”

“No, there is no such thing as west. We are walking spinward. East is anti-spinward.”

“Ok, fine. Why are we walking spinward now? Are we close to the city?”

“No, we won’t get to the city for a while yet. We need to make a little detour to visit your friends.”

“Friends? What friends?” Max looked back, but everyone was there. “Wait? Do you mean the five that abandoned us? I wouldn’t call them friends. Not anymore.”

“Regardless, we must visit them.”

Max wanted to say more, but Ebba sped up, indicating the conversation was over. About ten minutes later, they came across the five humans that had abandoned the rest. They were spread out across a small clearing.

All of them were dead.

The remains of the tall guy with the shield was the closest. The others were spread out in a line with Kristina being the furthest. They were all face down, like they had run and got cut down before they got far. Blood was splattered across the nearby plants, but the bodies were mostly intact. It didn’t look like the monsters had eaten the humans after they were dead.

A card was hovering over the bodies of each one. Ebba walked over to the shield guy and snatched up his card and kept walking to the next.

“Hey! Those aren’t your cards!” Gus said.

Ebba turned back to him, confusion in her hand’s expression. “They are dead, the cards belong to no one now.”

Max stepped forward. “Gus is right. You got these five killed, Ebba. You shouldn’t profit because they were running away from a problem you created. Keep the one you took, but that’s it.”

Ebba folded both sets of arms. “Max. I am trying to be fair with you nestlings, but you push too far. These are mine by right of discovery. If it wasn’t for my scouting, you would have walked on by and no one would get the cards.”

Max glanced back to the group to gauge their stances. Most of them seemed like they were on his side, but it was clear that Ashley was about to blow up. He hadn’t checked with her before talking to Ebba about cards, again.

“Ebba. I believe you are a good person. You are leading us to safety instead of letting us all die and collecting our cards afterwards. Please be a good person here too,” Max said.

Ebba twitched like she was struck. She looked back at the cards and then towards Max again. “You are almost as bad as a Paj. I don’t think we will be friends after this. You may take two cards for your flock, but do not ask for more.”

Max sensed that she wouldn’t budge and agreed to the deal. He walked forward to grab two cards. He didn’t know which ones would be better than the others so he just grabbed the closest ones. The first was a clover suit and the other a pawn.

A pang of regret washed through Max. The pawn suit card was particularly interesting, but he couldn’t use it because he had picked Specialize and locked himself into the citadel suit.

Common

Splice

Pawn

Adjusts body of summoned monster based on mental model of user’s other Pawn cards. Must use existing monster templates.

Mana Cost: 34

Adjustments: 3

Card Level: 0

He could just imagine giving a bear a scorpion tail or a lion with wings. Like the sphinx! He could make his own Greek myth menagerie. Or rather, he couldn’t. Everything he made had to revolve around his hammer card.

Max turned back to the humans and said, “Need before greed, can anyone here use these?”

“I can use the pawn suit,” Lily said, trying and failing to appear nonchalant.

When no one else spoke up, Max nodded and handed it over. It was really only useful if you already had a summon that you wanted to change. Lily slumped in relief and thanked him.

“I want the evil twin card,” Gus said.

Max raised his eyebrows and read the clover suit card for the first time.

Advanced

Warped Mirror

Clover

Summons a clone of a target creature within its aura. Clones will attack the target until its death or 24 seconds, whichever is first.

Mana Cost: 38

Creature Tier: 1

Card Level: 2

“Huh, I see what you mean. I like your card name better, Gus,” Max said. He turned to the group and said, “Anyone else able to use it?”

“Why does he get it just because he can use it? How is that fair?” Ashley said.

Max shook his head, “It isn’t fair. We aren’t trying to be fair here, Ashley. We are trying to survive. You saw what happened to these five. We are trying to get strong enough so that we can fight if Ebba gets hurt or something.”

Left unsaid was the possibility that Ebba could just abandon them like she did before. Max understood where Ashley was coming from, but now wasn’t the time for fairness. Survival first, equity later.

Ashley shook her head, “No, we need to be fair. We can’t let some people have everything and others get nothing. It’s a problem that will only get worse if we don’t solve it now.”

“Alright. You come up with some solutions we can discuss tonight. In the meantime, we are doing this.” Max handed the cards out to Gus and Lily. They both absorbed the cards right away.

Ashley looked at him in shock. She shook her head and squawked. She was about to go off on him when Ebba interrupted.

“Eyes up, nestlings. We have company,” Ebba said and pointed up.

They looked up into the canopy. There were flocks of multicolored birds crowded around each other. They were vibrantly colored and moved together in silence. As Max looked, he realized he was wrong. They weren’t birds, they were feathered snakes, each one over ten feet long. Feathers covered their bodies. A scaled face poked out of the feathers, giving them a dinosaur look. More than a dozen of them were slowly slithering through the branches, circling around the people below.