Chapter 227 (Patreon)

Chapter 227

Winning condition: Strike a single blow against the deck-master.

Losing condition: Have an enemy totem or deck-master strike you.

Combat Started.

“Okay,” I said. “Here we go.”

“What? What’s this?” Donut suddenly demanded out of nowhere. “Carl, this is an outrage!”

We’d been fighting in the mock battle arena for hours now, spending a ridiculous amount of money. We’d just beaten the challenge difficulty, which had been easy because we’d pulled Shi Maria in the initial hand. Our opponent was a giant mouse or rat thing from Indian mythology named Mushika. It was only level 50. It’d been about to summon something, but Maria swooped in, paralyzed it with a spell, unhinged her lower jaw like a snake, and gobbled it up. The fight had lasted seconds. I had no idea why the fight was considered a challenge, but I suspected we were lucky we’d killed it before it finished its spell.

The damn spider was terrifying to behold. She seemed to get an almost sexual pleasure from committing violence. After she devoured the rat, she’d turned toward us and shouted “Again” before dissipating into dust.

After that, we’d unlocked the “Secret Challenge Mode” which was a “medium plus” difficulty challenger with a deck of their own. These fights were free, but we could only do it three times. This was our first opportunity to face someone else with cards, and I needed Donut to pay attention.

Donut stopped in the field, looking around angrily. She was on the ground to my right. She’d pulled an initial hand with only one totem, Raul the crab, and she’d just summoned him. The strange crab was doing stretches in front of us while he chanted a spell. We still hadn’t seen who our opponent was. The environment was “Verdant hills.” The playing field was a cluster of small, round hills covered in ankle-high, green grass. The tallest hills were in the center, meaning we didn’t have line-of-sight across the arena. Samantha and Mongo were having a great time, chasing after each other in the soft grass.

Donut made a scoffing noise. “This is an outrage!” she repeated.

“What?” I asked, looking around. “What is it?”

She looked up at me. She was wearing her sunglasses, and I saw my reflection in them, looking down worriedly at her. Her lower mouth trembled like it always did when she was really upset.

“I just received a notification that Empress D’Nadia sold my sponsorship to someone else!”

I grunted. “I’m not surprised, especially considering some of the action items you keep proposing in the warlord chat. We can look at it when the fight is over.”

“I’m not a trading card to be collected and discarded, Carl. No offense, Raul.”

Raul’s claws glowed as he finished casting his Bris spell. The spell was cocked and ready until he finished casting it.

The crab turned and bowed. “The path to the heavenly throne is rife with insult, great mistress Donut. This worm grovels and kotows in your resplendent light. If there is someone out there who doesn’t recognize your brilliance, then surely they are blind to your vastness.”

“Thank you, Raul.” She paused. “Wait, did you just call me fat?”

Raul threw himself to the ground. “Shame! Shame on this worthless maggot! I beg your permission to kill myself in my dishonor!”

“Never mind, just keep stretching. Start your magic shell the moment you see the bad guys.” She made a whimpering noise and turned back to me. “Carl, I thought she liked me.”

I held my tongue. “She does like you, but it’s not really appropriate for her to sponsor you when we’ll be fighting her.” Plus, I didn’t add, she’d likely overextended herself getting that faction wars spot. Selling Donut’s sponsorship had to have made her a lot of money. I’d actually been expecting this for a while now.

“My new sponsor is...” She paused. I watched as she composed herself. Across the way, the flash of a card summoning cracked across the hills. Our opponent had summoned their first totem, but we still couldn’t see them. “I am very happy to have a new sponsor. I am. I just don’t know how a waste management company is a good fit for my brand.”

“A waste management company?” I asked. A new card popped into Donut’s hand. A time extend. She tossed it onto Raul, who groveled as it hit him. Another 70 seconds added to his countdown.

“This undeserving cur accepts your gift, great mistress.”

“Raul,” I said. “Remember our talk last time? You need to stop acting like that. Her head is big enough as it is. I want you to work on your confidence.”

“Yes, daddy Carl. It’s difficult to exude confidence when I am nothing but an undeserving louse burning in her glittering radiance.”

“Look. The others are going to keep picking on you if you keep saying weird shit like that. Just do what we say, and you’ll be fine. You don’t need to insult yourself every time she gives you an order. And stop calling me daddy.”

Donut: MY NEW SPONSOR IS NAMED LONG HAUL BIOLOGICAL WASTE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS, AND I JUST CAN’T WITH THAT. I KNOW I’M SUPPOSED TO APPEAR GRATEFUL, BUT THAT SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING. CARL, ARE THEY GOING TO SHOW COMMERCIALS FOR GARBAGE TRUCKS ON MY FEED? THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Biological waste? I didn’t like the sound of that, but now wasn’t the time to be having this conversation. I turned my attention back to the field.

By this point, we’d gone through just about every combination of totems.

As expected, Asojano was a complete dick. The first thing he did was attempt to cast a nasty debuff on Donut, but he’d been stopped by the safeties of the mock battle arena. He’d only tried it once, but I didn’t trust him.

Still, he was ridiculously strong. Once Donut yelled at him, he’d snap to attention and do what we asked. When he engaged in battle, he’d fight enthusiastically. He took out a whole squad of bomber pigs with a shake of his fat wand. They’d fallen from the sky, their skin boiling and popping with sores, all of them dead before they hit the ground. It was the one time a totem had managed to kill all the enemies while we also had Shi Maria summoned.

Also, as expected, Raul and Geraldo didn’t get along and would fight each other unless Donut yelled at them to stop. Geraldo the monk seal was a great melee fighter and tank, and he generally did what Donut asked. He only wavered if Raul was also on the field. When that happened, he’d turn and start throwing insults at the crab, who in turn would start spouting nonsense about chi and celestial thrones at the seal.

They’d only come to actual blows once, and that was when Geraldo had said something about Raul’s mother. Donut yelled at them to stop, and Raul, who’d appeared to have the upper hand in the fight, stopped immediately, which allowed Geraldo to crack his shell and kill him. Donut made Geraldo apologize the next time they were together, but it was clear they’d always hate each other.

Raul, who’d been struggling with his self-confidence even before we picked him up, had turned into a simpering, sniveling, kiss-ass. He would follow Donut’s orders without question. Luckily, he was a powerful fighter. His once-a-fight Bris spell, which required a short meditation to cast, ended up being a great, ranged spell. He’d cast it on his claw, and it allowed him to powerfully crush things from a distance.

The biggest problem with Raul was that he was a big wuss. He’d fight, and he was damn good at it, but he would always cower and submit to any other summoned totems. The first time we’d summoned him the same time as Shi Maria, she’d picked him up, skewering him right through his shell, and used his body as a cudgel to beat a group of bowl-headed, Japanese monsters called kappas to death. He’d screamed and sniveled and cried as Maria gleefully pounded him down like a toddler with a toy hammer. Then, Shi Maria ended up telling this to Geraldo the next time they were both together, and now Geraldo was calling Raul “the spider lady’s jinetera.”

Skylar Spinach never talked and didn’t have much of a personality at all, and I suspected that had something to do with him or her already being half of a monster when we’d flagged them. They usually ignored the other totems and did exactly what Donut asked, though for some reason the thing really liked both Mongo and Samantha and would huddle up to them when summoned, an action that would freak out Mongo. If we talked to it, the donkey head would just make those unsettling heehaw donkey noises. The monster was great as a distraction, and I wished it had a summoning time longer than 60 seconds. Once it was killed the first time, the resulting donkey head with the bat wings had a Dodge of 15 and was next to impossible to hit, which would keep Donut safe as long as it was summoned. The snake half of the body was noncorporeal and shot spikes from a distance.

Also, Skylar Spinach had an interesting side effect I hadn’t anticipated. While we could only have six totems, if Skylar split and then timed out, the two pieces would split into two different, temporary cards for the remainder of the battle, which we could then summon separately. Both pieces were stronger than the original whole and had a longer timeout.

Shi Maria was clearly our strongest card by a wide margin. The giant monster would appear, quickly assess the situation, and then skitter across the battlefield to dispatch any opponents, usually in seconds. Sometimes, though, she’d first demand to see all the other cards Donut had in her hand, and she’d make suggestions or ask Donut to cast some of the buffs on herself first.

Also, she’d occasionally play with the opponents. She had a sadistic streak, and she’d keep the opponent monsters alive long enough to devour them partially before she finished the job. Once, we fought a gorgon, which was just an eight-foot medusa creature with a naga body, and she paralyzed the monster and then started pulling the snakes from her head, one by one while the monster sobbed. She’d reached down and kissed the medusa full on the lips as she finally died, groaning sexually as she did so. All of us, including Uzi Jesus, had just stared at the display.

And speaking of Uzi Jesus, he was also going to be a problem. He wasn’t as openly hostile as Asojano, but if Donut asked him to do something, he’d smile and say he’d do it, but there was only a 50% chance he’d actually perform. And then he’d outright lie about it a minute later. It was like he was a toddler. I sent a sarcastic message to Florin thanking him for the card. He’d just responded with a laugh.

The last time we’d summoned him, Donut asked him to resurrect Geraldo, who’d been literally cleaved in two by a minotaur’s axe. He’d said he’d do it, but then he simply sat there.

“Now, Heyzoos. Please,” Donut had said, frustration rising. “Skylar is about to time out.” Skylar the donkey head with wings was on the other side of the battlefield flying in circles around the minotaur, who was screaming at her in Greek and swiping up with his giant, bloody ax. If Jesus used the Resurrect Totem spell, Geraldo would not only come back, but it would be as if we’d just summoned him for the first time. His timer would reset, and all the buffs and debuffs would go away.

“I did.”

“You didn’t. He’s still dead. I can see him right now.”

“The bodies turn to dust when they die,” he’d said. “He’s still there. That means I resurrected him. It’s not my fault he’s being a pansy.”

“He’s in two pieces, Jesus.”

“Maybe he’s an atheist.”

Donut looked as if she was going to leap over there and claw him. “If the deck has a resurrect card or a totem that can cast Resurrect, the bodies remain. You were the one who figured that out last time!”

“Well, I did it. Look, just let me go over there, and I will shoot the bull.”

“Don’t gaslight me, Jesus. I know you can shoot it. But this time I want you to resurrect Geraldo. We’re practicing. You’ve done it before. I don’t see why you won’t do it now.”

“Believe in me, Princess Donut.”

“Carl, do something!”

I sighed. “Look, Heyzoos, will you do it if she takes back what she said earlier?”

He crossed his arms. “Maybe.”

I gave Donut a pointed look.

She appeared on the precipice of violence. I’d never seen anyone get under her skin this much since Kiwi. I would’ve ejected the asshole by now, but he was such a powerful card, I wanted to wait and see if they could come to an understanding. I was trying not to be a backseat deckmaster. When the real fights started, I wouldn’t be able to sit there and help her.

“This is not how this is supposed to work. This is not how any of this works,” Donut said. Across the field, Skylar timed out with a pop. The minotaur roared and started charging in our direction. “Heyzoos, I’m sorry I said you’re not the real Jesus.”

Heyzoos sighed dramatically. “I weep, Princess Donut. I weep. I just hope my father will forgive your blasphemy. Gah!”

He accidently pulled the trigger on his Uzi, shooting himself in the shoulder. His gun went spinning away. While he danced around, cursing and holding his shoulder, Donut pulled Raul, who rushed over there and killed the charging bull with a spinning kick.

And that was pretty much how all of these fights were going. We’d win, and we’d win easily, but it wasn’t because Donut had firm control over her totems, which worried me.

Now, a few hours later, we finally had a chance at deck versus deck combat, and it was Donut who was the one getting distracted. I looked down at her hand. She only had three cards at the moment, and another would appear in a few seconds. She had Force Discard, the mana-replenishing Blue Stuff, and the health-increasing Stout.

The moment the giant, ethereal wolf appeared at the top of the hill, her focus snapped back to the present. The totem had a timer at 76 seconds and counting. The ghostly wolf looked upon us and snarled. To my left, Mongo roared. Samantha spit out a mouthful of grass and starting shouting insults.

Der Kornwolf. Level 100

Summoned totem of Der Schachmeister.

No current Utilities or Snares.

It didn’t give any more information than that.

Raul started chanting, preparing his magical shell. The Shi Maria totem popped into Donut’s hand. She moved to summon the spider, but a giant, flaming, animated lock appeared floating in the air above her. It had a 30-second countdown.

“Summon lock!” the announcer shouted. Tiny, ethereal chains appeared on her cards.

“Carl, Carl, what’s happening?” Donut cried. “It won’t let me summon Shi Maria! I can’t do anything.”

“Our opponent cast a mystic card on you,” I said.

The wolf howled. Another flash of summoning appeared in the distance. A second wolf appeared. This one was also level 100, but it was called Die Kartoffelwolf.

“Where is the deck master guy?” Donut demanded. “I don’t even see him!”

As if she beckoned him, our opponent appeared. He was a little, human kid wearing a tuxedo and round glasses. Maybe about 12 years old. He appeared atop the distant hill, coming to stand between the two wolves. He had three, magazine-sized cards floating in front of him with a blinking wire frame indicating his fourth card would be summoned soon. The kid rubbed at his nose with his sleeve and then flipped us off.

“Hey!” Donut called.

Der Schachmeister. Level 25.

Holds a deck consisting of twenty cards, including six totems.

Has an eight-second card summoning cooldown.

Focuses on debuffs and disabling the opponent. He’s an annoying little prick without any regard for his own personal safety. You’ll have to deal with him the same way you would if this were a middle school playground. You gotta kick his ass before he outsmarts you and gets the adults involved.

That eight-second summoning cooldown was ominous. When Donut played or discarded a card, it took ten seconds for the next card to appear. I had thought that was a hard rule, and I hadn’t realized some opponents possibly had faster pull times. That meant some of these guys would be even more difficult to beat than I originally thought. I wondered if that meant some opponents would have more or less than six totems, too.

The two, horse-sized wolves snapped at each other and then charged toward our position. Next to me, Mongo shrieked in outrage.

“No,” I said, putting a calming hand on Mongo, who in turn looked to Donut for confirmation.

“Remember what mommy said, Mongo. You gotta do what Uncle Carl says when I have the cards out.”

He growled but complied. We didn’t want Mongo in on the practice fights, at least not against the enemy’s totems. I needed to practice with him following my commands. The wolves wouldn’t be able to hurt him here, which was good, but it also made it so this simulation wasn’t realistic. In a real fight, the enemy totems couldn’t hurt Donut if she had at least one totem summoned, but they could—and would—hurt me and Mongo and everybody else that wasn’t a deck-master. Mongo wouldn’t have a chance against two, level 100 wolves.

He would, however, be able to attack the kid directly. If this was a real fight, the path to victory was obvious. We’d ignore the totems and go straight for the kid. I suspected in future, the enemies wouldn’t be so vulnerable.

I held off for now. We needed to practice as much as we could.

“Peekaboo!” the announcer shouted. A freaky pair of bloodshot eyes emerged, floating above Donut, staring down. The names of Donut’s four cards appeared, hovering over the deck.

The kid had just cast a mystic card that allowed him to see our hand.

“Go away!” Donut cried up at the eyes. They didn’t go away, which implied he’d be able to see our hand for the remainder of the battle. “What do we do?”

“It’s your call,” I said.

“Real helpful, Carl.”

The wolves disappeared as they reached the bottom of the hill. They’d reappear in seconds and be on us.

“Raul, you don’t have time to finish your spell. You have to hold them off!” Donut said.

The crab flipped in the air, landing in front of Donut.

Across the way, I watched as the kid swiped another card from his hand. It was another mystic card.

“To Hell With Ya!” the announcer shouted.

The Shi Maria card flew from Donut’s hand, did a flip in the air, and burst into flames.

“Hey!” Donut shouted.

We wouldn’t be able to summon her for the rest of the battle. I knew that one was a legendary, consumable card.

The two wolves rushed up the hill, barking and snarling. Raul unleashed his Bris on the first of the two.

The wolf, Der Kornwolf—whatever the hell that meant—exploded into dust. Raul had snapped his head off from a distance. The second one threw itself at Raul, who flipped, waving his claws. The wolf tackled him, and they went rolling down the hill, a snarling, hissing, snapping mass.

Raul wouldn’t be able to hold the wolf off for long. Donut still had a few seconds before her deck would unlock, and she didn’t have any totems in hand. I suspected the kid had another deck-freezing card ready to go. This fight was already over if I didn’t intervene.

I sighed. I was about to send Mongo over there to end it, when Samantha suddenly rose into the air and hovered there for a moment. She started to glow, a bright, crackling blue like she was a miniature sun. I stepped back, surprised at the heat coming off of her. That was new.

What the hell, I thought.

“Nein! Nein!” the kid shouted from the distance. He started to back away, as if he knew what was about to happen.

“Watch this!” Samantha started to say, the flames getting brighter. But then she abruptly fizzled out, and she fell to the grass.

“God mother damnit,” Samantha said. “I used it all up.” She growled and started to roll away.

Totem Killed.

I turned to see where the wolf was, but it was too late. The wolf leapt, flying up the hill and slamming directly into Donut.

The moment he hit her, the room flashed, and all the opponents disappeared.

Simulation Failed.

Congratulations. If this was a real fight, you would all be dead right now.

Combat Complete. Deck has been reset.

“That guy was a cheater,” Donut said. “How are we supposed to win if we can’t use our deck? And I was distracted by my new sponsor! That fight shouldn’t count!”

I thought of our earlier fight in the challenge difficulty, the one against the rat monster from India. “Shi Maria’s main tactic is the smart one. We need to be faster. We need to attack immediately, no matter what hand we pull. That means I need to hit the enemy right away. Me and Mongo.” I extended my xistera and drew a heavy ball into my hand. I lobbed it across the empty arena. It cracked into an invisible wall in the distance. I remembered Mordecai’s advice when it came to mages. They can’t cast their spells when you’re punching them in the face.

I continued. “We also need to work on getting these totems to attack as quickly as possible. We should work on moves we can call out, like you and I do. I wish we could call them out of the cards to talk to them. We’ll have to spend some time in the easy arena with them.”

“Asojano and Heyzoos barely listen to me,” Donut said. “They’re not going to remember any moves.”

“I know,” I said.

Asojano and Uzi Jesus were both good, powerful cards, but if they were going to be slow to comply, they were almost useless. If we fought a guy like that last kid, and he was better protected, we’d be toast.

I thought of Katia. We still had a few hours before she would wake up. She’d offered me a totem card earlier. She was having the same issue we were with Raul and Geraldo. She had two cards who hated each other, and her charisma wasn’t high enough to keep them from fighting one another, so she was giving one of them up. If we could get that one, it meant we’d have to give up one of ours. But what was the best totem to get rid of? We’d have to decide fast. We only had a little more than a day left.

We needed more practice.

“Let’s try this again.”

~

Hey everyone! This chapter was necessary, but I'm not 100% certain it's going to remain intact the final version of the book. There's only so much hidden foreshadowing I can pile into something before it collapses under its own weight. Plus I'm not a huge fan of wasting time on low-stakes conflict. We'll see how it pans out.

I will be in Las Vegas next week for the 20Booksto50K conference. I will be speaking at a panel or two, though I suspect most of my time will be spent drinking. If anyone is going, let me know, and I will buy you alcohol. More soon.