Strange Card
The card that appeared in front of me was different from anything I had ever seen.
There was no subtle golden radiance painted on the surface, nor any elegant decorations like a work of art made with Archid characters.
It was just black. Rectangular darkness as if like a piece of paper was dipped into a puddle of ink.
And at that moment…
“Huh!”
I groaned without me realizing it.
‘… Blood?’
The three scars engraved on my finger– the holy scars placed on my body by the god of Magic, Igras-Sho– ached.
Blood trickled down from the spider-bite-like marks.
I realized it just before I even habitually talked to the divine power detector… or the devil’s sword. I paused after realizing that no other intelligent being could follow it in the space I was in.
‘If the traces of a divine being are reacting, then that means that too is-!’
I reach out to the card with caution, using my hand that wasn’t imbued with holy scars.
The moment my body came into contact with it…
Paht!
The system description popped up.
[Random Card of Fate (Rank: SSS)]
-It is a skill card imbued with the blessing of the entity in charge of luck and probability. Measure your luck with this card! If you feed one random card that you possess to this card, it returns 0~3 pieces of random skill card of the same level, and the result will help you determine your fortune in the near future.
– Fortune interpretation:
Extreme luck! You will be able to meet a person that is special to you in the near future, acquire valuable wealth, and accomplish your goals excellently.
Adequate luck! There is a high probability that your current plans will work out well. But don’t be relieved just yet. Fortune and misfortune go hand in hand with each other.
Your state is like a sailboat on a sea without even the subtlest blow of wind. No flow of fate at this moment will affect you. Every action will return as a result of faithful causality.
A bearable misfortune! Don’t be frustrated, and let yourself be satisfied that it’s only this much. If you have any plans, it is recommended that you do a full-scale revision on it. Risky attempts aren’t advised either. Now is the time to keep your head down and wait for this wind to pass.
Inescapable misery! It’s dangerous. It’s ominous. It may be irreversible. Get rid of everything you’ve planned out in your head. Don’t forget to get rid of everyone involved around that for a while as well. Keep in mind that misfortune does not come alone, and be prepared to survive a more significant storm.
“…”
I returned to the dungeon for the time being.
Paht!
As soon as the surrounding landscape changed, the devil’s sword on my back shouted like it was going to die after recovering its cognition.
‘Argh! You… you! You! What the hell did you do this time? You went to get your reward… but why are you carrying such a strong stink right now?!’
The sacred power detector was working well that day as well.
I hovered the black card I received in the air with psychokinesis and widened the distance with a frowning face.
The two people, excluding me, had returned first.
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Is that a skill card? But it looks so strange.”
As the card moved away, the blood that flowed from my hand stopped as well.
The devil’s sword saw that and murmured.
‘What… is it?!’
I nodded.
“Yes, I think this is…”
Euclid, who was interestingly observing the conversation being held between us, approached the card and recited a spell. It was [Analysis] magic. The dragon then opened its eyes wide as if it had confirmed its identity.
“Wow, my word. It’s a sacred item. Lucky you!”
The devil’s sword was shocked and shouted at me through a mental wave.
‘You were rewarded with a sacred item as a dungeon’s additional compensation?!’
It was a precious object with the power of a divine being.
“Yes, and I think I know which god’s blessing it contains as well.”
The being that endowed blessing on that card was the entity that controlled luck and probability as explained by the system.
Other nicknames included but were not limited to: ‘the mainstay of the fairest scale’ and ‘the one who is asleep in the valley of the convergence.’
And the name I knew it of was…
“Ramang-Schurt.”
It was a being that was equal to the magic god, Igras-Sho.
I could understand why blood started to flow from my fingers. Different gods tended to repel each other.
‘What the hell… Are you?’
Vain telepathy flowed into my head as if it were absurd.
In contrast, the dragon gave a recommendation, its gaze sparkling.
“Why don’t you give it a try? I’ve never seen anything like this before. This is a gift from the god of luck!”
I consulted with the devil’s sword for the moment.
“Like last time, feeding the card over there won’t result in forced reception, will it?”
The nightmare I had with Igras-Sho came into mind.
‘… No way. That’s not alive like the sacred beast, and it’s a sacred item, so it won’t even have an intellect.’
I contemplated about it for a while but ultimately decided to feed only one instead of experimenting with several cards.
I had analyzed why I got Igras-Sho’s attention the other time. I speculated that it might be because I had dedicated way too many monsters all at once to it and upgraded seven cards in return… Perhaps, it was because of the excessive volume of work I did.
“Then only one card, it is.”
What I took out from the snake inventory was an SSS-Class [Wide-Range Teleport] magic card.
It was an SS-Class teleport card that was upgraded to the next level through the holy water, but since it couldn’t be used by most humans’ Mana capacity in that time and age, and it couldn’t be sold, it was a card that had remained in my possession.
“Okay, I’ll try it now.”
I left The devil’s sword far away and approached it with my holy scarred hand pulled back as far as I could.
I brought the SSS-Class card in my hand near the random card in the air, and as I did so-
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
The black card instantly absorbed the card, almost like it swallowed it, and I quickly widened my distance from it. The blood flowing from and the pain felt from the holy scar stopped again.
‘I did expect it, but auto-healing doesn’t even work on this kind of bleeding.’
As I waited for a while in that state…
Wubble!
“Wow, that’s amazing!”
Nate exclaimed. Something popped out of the black surface of the item, which then took the form of a card.
With psychokinesis, I snatched whatever random card it spat out.
It was two ordinary skill cards.
“I fed it one sheet and got two sheets back… It must be ‘adequate luck.'”
According to the system description, my luck applied for some time was not a bad trend. It was enough for the works I had planned to be solved well.
And, what was fortunate most of all…
“…”
I looked at the change of air.
‘…’
I also sensed the devil’s sword paying extreme attention. It was worried that the whole place would turn into holy ground, or I would be dragged into another space and come back being lathered with suffocating divine power again.
But after a few seconds, nothing changed at all.
“Phew.”
Looking at me sigh deeply; the two humans and the dragon made a strange face.
“Yeah, there isn’t an observable anomaly with only one sheet.”
‘But still, be careful about feeding too many cards at once or often. Until you fully understand the mechanism, that is.’
Then the sword corrected what it just said.
‘No, it would be absurd for the mortal to predict the properties of the sacred items that the gods imbued by using their heads.’
“I will still remain careful about using it regardless.”
I talked to Nate.
“Will you keep this card for the time being? If I kept it with me, I would keep bleeding as you just saw a couple of moments ago.”
“Yes! I got it.”
The sacred item was absorbed into Nate’s shadow without any problems.
I then checked the messages that came up due to the two regular cards in my hand that the card spat out.
“Huh?”
My face, which had been stiff from nervousness, became a little relaxed.
[Duplication (Rank: SSS)]
-If an Awakened with a buffed state of this skill uses one skill in a row twice, the second skill will be activated without Mana consumption.
※ Operation of the duplicated skill is limited to 5 minutes once a day.
[Mana Legacy (Rank: SSS)]
– Enables the transference of the active Mana of the caster to another Awakened with a 1:1 ratio. There is no limit to the amount of Mana that can be transferred. For as long as the active Mana and the Mana capacity of the person subject to the skill allow it, the transaction would proceed.
※Mana transferred by [Mana Legacy] cannot be re-sent to another being through [Mana Legacy] again.
My eyes were shining brightly.
‘I’ve never seen the both of them before!’
Yeah, I had never come across both cards in my previous life.
And just by reading the explanation attached to the skills…
‘I should be able to use it to a great extent favorably!’
My heart skipped a beat.
“Let’s experiment right now!”
“Huh? What is it?”
Nate scratched his head, and Hibiki seemed a little surprised by my expression, which she had rarely seen.
And as expected, Euclid, who quietly recited the [Analysis] magic…
“Oh, my days!”
She was staring at me with her jaw about to fall out.
“… Indeed. Looking at the cards and the bow you were holding- Did you really get chosen by the god of luck?”
I replied to her query while smirking wide.
“It would be a big trouble if I really was.”
Because that god, aside from luck, governed misfortune as well.
*
Neither of the SSS-Class skills was intended to be mounted in my slot. If I did that, I’d be the only one who could use it.
On the other hand, if I put a card in an empty slot of a colleague, I could simply just look at it and imitate it. Through that method, two people would be able to use the same skill.
Coincidentally, there were empty slots, so it was decided that [Duplication] would be learned by Hibiki and [Mana Legacy] by Nate.
And they also agreed to conduct performance experiments at the dungeon before returning to Earth. There was no place like an entirely different dimension that would give us the freedom we needed to try the skills out as much as we wanted to.
“Then, Hibiki shall go first. Among the skill that you can use right now… Is it ‘that one’ that consumes Mana the most?”
Hibiki nodded.
“Yes, it is [Meteor Strike].”
It was a magic spell made available thanks to learning the SSS-Rank Summon Mastery.
The spell was barely enough to be cast once with her active Mana, which was just over 26,000.
“Well, shall we go do that?”
Hibiki used the skill first.
[Duplication!]
A complex Mana pattern was observed, seeping like smoke and wrapping around her body.
‘Oh, that’s what it looks like.’
At that moment, Hibiki should be able to activate the meteorite summoning magic twice in a row without a potion, which initially could only be used if she emptied her Mana capacity. Although [Duplication] had restrictions on the use of continuous activation, it was possible to reduce delays as much as possible with time-difference multi-recitation.
But of course, I didn’t mean to be satisfied with only twice.
Whoo!
I copied and reenacted the Mana pattern that I just saw.
Unlike Hibiki, however, I did not designate the buff application subject to myself.
Of course, the target was Hibiki.
[Duplication!]
Due to that, the fog made out of Mana surrounding Hibiki became two-layered.
“Now, then.”
She nodded, and Hibiki recited the spell.
An enormous magic circle appeared in front of her.
[Meteor Strike!]
Rumble!
Immediately, a black gate arose within the boundaries of the dungeon.
Swish!
A massive meteorite fell from beyond the dark space.
And then-
Boo-boom!
A violent impact quaked the earth.
The ground lost its firmness and fluctuated.
Even though the summoning location was set up on a plain far from the mountain where Euclid’s lair was situated, the big shock wave reached all the way to where we were.
In my eyes, I could vividly see the ground over there melting down and being crushed like clay.
Rumblee!
Clouds, dust, and flames rushing up like an avalanche filled the space.
The place where it landed became a gigantic crater.
“Woah!”
Nate exclaimed with excitement.
But it didn’t end there.
Although she stumbled since she was in a state that was close to Mana exhaustion, she immediately recited the same spell one more time instead of drinking a potion and waiting for the Mana capacity to fill up.
[Meteor Strike!]
Satisfyingly, the second meteorite fell.
The ground, even though its wound hadn’t healed yet, was once again horribly violated.
Boo-boom! Rumble!
I nodded my head.
‘As expected, the second activation didn’t consume Mana at all!’
I saw it in my eyes. The Mana in Hibiki’s body was no different from right after she recited the first spell. It gently splashed around her core, maintaining a shallow depth.
Up to that point, it was considered as common usage.
But the most important part of the experiment came from beyond that.
“Now, again!”
One from me, and one from Hibiki-
As a result, [Duplication] was superimposed and applied to Hibiki’s body twice.
The question was if the system would add them together or multiply them with each other.
“Here it comes again!”
The third meteorite.
Boo-boo-boom!
Mushroom clouds repeatedly rose and then crumpled again, spread out, and were swallowed by the flames that pushed from below. The heat that engulfed the sky made even our location become heated up.
Euclid muttered distraughtly.
“I don’t think even my dad would have been able to cast three meteorites this fast…”
The most critical phase was coming.
Hibiki and I exchanged glances. It was the moment when the hypothesis would be proven right or wrong.
She recited the spell for the last time, and we all witnessed it.
Eating up the sky above the plains, the fourth black gate increased its size.
“Okay! That’s what I expected!”
The system interpreted overlapping duplications as ‘x4’.
Through that, a foothold had been created that enabled any skill to be repeated four times. What differed from normally casting it was that it only used enough Mana equal to casting it a single time for as long as it’s within a five-minute time limit.
Shhhhhh!
And from far away, that day’s fourth meteorite crashed into the Earth with chaotic noise.
*
“Thank you.”
Hibiki’s Mana, which was on the verge of exhaustion, was filled back up with [Mana Legacy] by Nate and me.
‘The biggest advantage is that there’s no risk of a potion shock. In case of an emergency, I can directly share the Mana I absorbed with [Mana Drain] to the two.’
It was a skill optimized for team play.
With those two skills that I got that day, a how they could be used entered my head.
“Now, this is my lair.”
Euclid took us to its resting place before it went to Earth with us. It was because I gave it time to pack its things.
Although it offered to give us all the treasures in the lair because we saved its life as promised…
“Nevermind, I don’t have anything to bring from here. You take care of it.”
“Tsk.”
That was why I didn’t expect anything from the treasures of the lair in the first place. It was also the reason why I didn’t include such a sentence in the contract.
The lair level of the dragon, which was barely over 300 years old, was evident.
It was inferior to the Celestial Dragon’s artifact supply warehouse.
Euclid murmured as if its pride was hurt.
“Well, I couldn’t do much about it! I had just made a lair when I suddenly got caught up in the dimensional interference… I didn’t have time to pile up more treasures! And after I was brought here, I couldn’t even get out of the dungeon perimeter, so how would I have any choices?”
I suddenly got curious when I heard that.
I only knew the principle of the middle dimension being created and the dungeons being distinguished in it, but I had never actually experienced it myself.
“By the way, how did you get dragged all the way here?”
“Ah, about that.”
The dragon’s forehead furrowed, and it started to talk about what it had experienced.
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