Floor three wasn't anything like the first two. While floor one was an open wilderness full of ogres and tree monsters, floor two a warzone between contesting hordes of minotaurs, floor three was all about the quiet small inevitable death.
Goblins. Elves—and not the tall elegant type. Gnomes. Everything small and vicious and ready to swarm and tear you apart.
Goblins dropped certain types of cards pretty reliably. You could get a Slimeskin or Slink or Consume card, sometimes Fling or even a Lightstep. But there was something wrong with all of them. Even more so than other monster cards.
Goblin cards were practically a category of their own. You could always tell when someone had put goblin cards in their deck, because there was that sort of sheen to them, a slimy light that reeked of desperation.
Zibo wasn't above accepting that.
Right now, he was going to die.
He knew it, felt it.
The unchecked power in his deck was raging through his body and soul. Everything he was couldn't contain it, and it would tear him apart and burst forth in a moment if he couldn't stop it.
Just a little more experience.
Just one more shard.
Something.
Anything.
So when he saw a small group of younger goblins cut off from their hordes, he swallowed his disgust and instinctive fear and crept up toward them.
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“It’s almost unfair,” James said contemplatively as they burned their way through swarms of furious gnomes with impunity. “I finally get something that can take out the big guys, and we get a bunch of tiny ones?”
His own Protective Totem was keeping him perfectly safe as expected, but Ivy’s retaliation damage was proving just as powerful. As long as she blocked properly, the backlash was enough to knock out almost any attacker with one or two strikes.
James obliterated a pair of gnomes with rocks preparing to jump Ivy from behind, while she dueled an overly-large goblin to its death.
She grinned, entirely unsympathetic. “Oh, no, your perfectly optimized build isn’t perfect after all.”
James snorted. “What build? It’s a bunch of empty slots full of unspeakable power.”
“Too bad we weren’t able to take out any of those Expansionist weirdos, I bet they’d have had some fun cards.”
“You say that like you think we’ll never get the chance again.” James punted an elf, which shook its tiny fist at him as it flew off into the distance. “Do you think it’s weird how much physically stronger I am now, even though none of my cards augment my body?”
“Probably something to do with your soul power level.” Ivy sighed enviously. Three goblins slashed at her in unison, and all three fell back dying as their slashes were returned by her energy blade at double strength. “Shen Ai did a lot of powering herself up before we got here and she started out really strong.”
“You can power yourself up too.”
“As soon as our recruiter friend gets here, I hope to do just that. Seriously, can you imagine the kind of damage I’ll be able to do when I don’t have to worry about being hit?”
“I told you, I made low-level copies of my protection skill, if you want—”
“Nope, I’m earning it the old fashioned way.”
“Bribing factions into outfitting you with a combination of exploitation and nepotism?”
“Exactly! And you can’t deny, power armor is going to be so much cooler than that little glowy thing you do.”
“It’ll be magnificent, I’m sure.” He couldn’t help but grin a bit at the mental image of his sister as a glowing titan of unstoppable destruction. “I can’t wait to see.”
“Didn’t you upgrade more than your attack card though? I expected you to be flashing all kinds of new spells around.”
“Oh, I wanted to see if we got anything fun before sorting out the whole class thing. It looks complicated.”
Ivy regarded him flatly, then spun away to slash her way through another group of goblins. “You are unbelievably lazy sometimes, my dear brother.”
“And you are unbelievably energetic sometimes, my dear sister.” He flipped open his deck management interface and looked at the blinking icons for Class Upgrades Available. “Magic… which one, which one?”
Arcanist caught his attention immediately, improving the precision of any magic-type cards, but he gave the other options a quick scan anyway. Kineticist sounded boring, too much moving stuff around and not enough blasting. Warder would synergize well with his existing protective ability, but he didn’t really need more protection when he was already fully shielded. Conjurer would be a bit too impersonal, and require a lot more micromanagement.
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He selected Arcanist and the options changed to the next tier.
“More magic, I like it. Seems the number of options decreases the higher you go, though.” Spellsword would be more up-close than he preferred, but Elementalist sounded fun. It would be nice to add more power types to his repertoire instead of just ‘magebolt’ whatever that was. “Though I’m not sure if these are… Hmmmmmmm…”
“What are you muttering about over there?”
“I’m upgrading my class. Do you think I should go for Elemental Shaman, or Sorcerer?”
“The one with more words in it is usually more specialized. And your heart card does talk about totems with its whole protection thing.”
“Oh, is that what that means? Come to think of it, that may be why this is available at all. Eh-heh.” He selected the fancier-sounding class, and when the upgrade option went to High Shaman of Primal Fury he didn’t need to think twice. Certainly more interesting than High Shaman of Hidden Lore. He could sit around at home reading any old time. If he was going to be out doing magic he wanted to be doing magic, not research. “High Shaman of Primal Fury sounds really extravagant. It goes perfectly with my outfit.”
“And with your ego.” Ivy giggled.
James ignored her. “Ohhh, some of these are nice.” He slotted in Lightning Totem, the rare card from his Elementalist advancement, and watched as it rapidly evolved to Lightning Bombardment Totem. James grinned. “This looks like a perfect spot to try out some chain lightning, doesn’t it? At least it’ll keep the area clear so I can concentrate.”
“As if you’re doing any of the work keeping the area clear.”
“Exactly. Time I pulled my legendary-master-fury weight around here.” He activated the new card, and the totem appeared in front of him. It sparkled with lightning and immediately began to grow sparking spheres over each of its wings and another at the front and back of what would be its chest if it were remotely person-shaped.
“Wow, it’s very sparkly. We should use it as a Christmas tree.”
“Wait for it…”
The four orbs of lightning continued to grow for two seconds, then turned opaque and blasted out in four directions as though fired from a catapult. They arced out over the battlefield, each one landing dead center on one of the attacking swarm, then exploded outward in branching arcs that jumped from enemy to enemy.
For a moment, all that could be seen was the afterimage of a hundred monsters lit up by elemental destruction, then the totem shifted itself in place, rotating about a quarter turn as it charged up another set.
James blinked at the mass of charred goblin remnants, none of which had any cards. Every last bit of the lifespan he usually earned a part of dissipated upward into the tower. He wondered if one of the Boons or Blessings the shop talked about might be able to redirect that energy to him, though he didn’t think he was really in any need of more levels. The lifespan would be nice though, especially if he could transfer it to the Bastion of Points.
“My cards!” Ivy shouted, throwing her hands up at the sky. “My precious, precious cards, all gone!”
“Well, uh, I cleared some space…” James rubbed the back of his head with an uneasy grin.
She glared at him. “What level are you anyway?”
“Legendary?”
“You…” She groaned. “Seriously… Have you paid attention to any of the tower’s rules by now?”
“Nope! Rules are boring. I can take care of things just fine without knowing any of that.” He gestured to the totem, which fired off another blast and cleared another swath of enemies.
“Stop! I need those too!”
“Fine, fine.” He dismissed the totem. “Back to card-picking, I suppose.” He scanned the available options again. “Can’t pass this one up, since it shares a name with my class and all.”
The Primal Fury Totem didn’t change when he slotted it in, since it was already legendary, but it still felt fairly awesome. It went into the one open slot that didn’t already have legendary-level energy waiting to push it to max.
“I suppose you don’t want me to unleash primal fury upon the poor goblins?”
“Yes, please refrain for now.”
James reluctantly left his first actually-Legendary non-heart card unactivated for now and moved on. “The arcanist options are boring for such a cool-sounding class.”
“What are they? I can help you decide.”
James held out the screen to her. “Can you read it?”
“No, I don’t think that’s how it works.”
He couldn’t help but think it would be a lot easier to see what the base card would upgrade into at Legendary rarity when he slotted them in, but he noticed that the base card was always amplified and enhanced in one way or another. The seeming randomness didn’t help him make his decision though. “All stuff to augment spells, but all my spells are already going to be insane, so what kind of enhancement would I even need? And there’s no guarantee it’ll become what I think it will. Conceal Spell, Expand Spell, Imbue Spell…”
“Usually stronger spells have a bigger cost, so maybe something that will make it easier for you to fire them off. Something like a higher base energy pool or regeneration might go a long way? Though Imbue Spell does sound like a really interesting option, if it’s going to be immediately raised to a Legendary rarity.” She waved her energy sword with a grin. “Just think of all the possibilities.”
“Sure, let’s see what it does.” He selected Imbue Spell and dropped it into one of the open card slots. The card shifted even more rapidly than the Lightning Totem had, flickering through several interesting looking variations before settling on Arcanic Imbuement. “Oh, it’s become passive. Guess that makes it easy. Boring, but can’t go wrong with everything being stronger.”
“Well, what’s it do?”
“Imbues Arcane,” he said in a mystical voice. “Guess we’ll just have to test it out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Pretty lame. Not even a guess?”
“Since the initial form added force to the spell it was paired to, and it went through several versions of ‘add something to spell’, it probably adds either a lot of something or several somethings.”
“How many do you have left now?” Ivy asked, looking a little bothered by his obvious hacking of the tower, seeing as she found it to be akin to an arcade.
“Just one. Elemental Shaman’s cards are passive again. I wonder if it alternates? Is that all classes, or did I just get unlucky?” He shrugged. “Shaman’s Mark, what does that even mean? Totemic Spirit?”
“I wouldn’t know.” The attitude she gave him was uncalled for, in his opinion, but he was more focused on his final upgrade to worry much. She crossed her arms and ignored him.
“Well, I have three totems now, so let’s use that. May as well.” Totemic Spirit doubled the effectiveness of summoned totems, though he wasn’t sure if any of them needed doubling. After slotting it in, however, it immediately shifted to Totemic Pride which retained the amplification effect and added another effect. “Doubles the number of active totems I can have? I wonder what my current limit is.”
“Why don’t you try it? Or you can just use the block and look at the skills or your class. It’s not like they don’t specifically tell you their details or anything,” she grumbled.
James grinned. “You want me to try to make as many totems as I can?”
Ivy watched the destroyed battlefield begin to repopulate, her eyes dulling as she muttered, “My cards…”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
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