SNAPCRAFT | Ch. 29 - Gambler’s Fallacy (Patreon)

Greetings, awesome people!

Thank you all for your generous support. I can't thank you enough.

If you have a Goodreads account, could I please ask you to leave a sincere rating/review for my novels there?

Thank you!

**********************

Spring of 346, A.D.

“Where is he?” asked Trudy.

“I don’t know, Trudy. He has been a bit erratic lately, but…”

“That boy isn’t erratic, he’s selfish! Humph. It’s not like he can get away from participating. Daisy will fish him out from wherever he’s hiding. But the least he could do would be to wait with us. Everyone is a nervous wreck! It’s the least he could do.”

Kai spared a look at Ariel. Instead of defending her brother, she looked even angrier than Trudy. How could someone so beautiful become so scary? Terrified at the sight of an angry Ariel, Kai curled himself into a ball, trying to look as small as he felt.

It was his fourth summons. He hadn’t been called to an exam yet. Ariel had gone through one two years earlier. It had taken her months to recover from the disappointment of getting one of the last places.

“Hey Sunny, what are the chances I’ll be called this year?”

“One out of nine.”

“What about Alex?”

“One out of nine,” came the dry answer.

“What? Doesn’t the chance increase from year to year?”

“You should brush up on your math, Kai. It’s terrible.”

“Wait, you’re not making any sense. What about that Monty Ball problem you told us about?”

Sunny pulled his ear. He knew she was being playful, but it still hurt. “Monty Hall. Monty Hall. That’s different. Here, there is no conditioning. The chances of a name being called yearly are always the same.”

Kai sighed. He had hoped that Alex’s absence could be pinned on the impending pressure of being called to the exams. Why wasn’t he here? He spared a look at Ariel to see if she was calmer. Her mouth was slightly opened, and her eyes had a glassy, blank look. Her face was twisted in shock. He heard Trudy gasp and followed the direction they were looking at.

Alex was coming to the square. Cybermonkeys surrounded him. He had asked for asylum.

“Kai?"

"I'm sorry, boy," spoke Sunny, "the odds have changed. It’s one out of eight now.”

*

353rd Daisy Exams, Round of 64.

Kai checked the hit points of both [Water] cards. They were intact. This was excellent news. He had worried that every time he copied a card, it would lose one hit point. Daisy seemed to deem the sacrifice of two cards of an equal grade enough. Copying a card didn’t compromise its use in crafting.

This was an incredible upgrade. On the other hand, it would have to be used sparingly. For example, his score had come down to 100. Even though he created one new uncommon card, [Water], it only had 1vp, whereas one of the sacrifices, [Acacia Leaf], had two. He had lost one point in the exchange.

Now that his questions had been answered, it was time to make some decisions. There were sacrifices to be made if he wanted to get as many points as possible from his cards. The question now was: What cards did he want to make a copy of?

He looked over each card by grade for cards he wanted to get a copy of. In the realm of the legendary cards, [Unicorn] offered the most points. He didn’t mind sacrificing two [Light] cards in exchange for a second [Unicorn] one. At the same time, all those recipes he had collected in the factory arena could lead to another legendary card. He should wait before copying Unicorn.

Regarding rare cards, the one that offered the most points was [Fire]. [Perspective] had subpar stats, and he couldn’t think of any recipe in which it would fit. In his opinion, [Perspective] was only considered a rare card because it unlocked some sort of reward in the console. He didn’t mind sacrificing it. As for a second candidate for sacrifice, he could always spend one of his [Arabian Oryx] cards and then use it to make another [Fire] card.

As for uncommon and common cards, he couldn’t see any juicy targets. Maybe [Spider]? He had also only brought one copy of several ingredients that seemed to build into something valuable. After thinking it through, Kai checked where the blueprint recipes led him. After that, he would have more information to help him figure out what cards to copy.

He turned his attention to the biggest variable in this round: the blueprints. They hid some big secret, and Kai could feel it. The biggest challenge in this crafting round would be to try to reproduce with subpar ingredients the recipes he had learned about from the blueprints he discovered in the manager’s office.

He checked the very first recipe.

Gears (Uncommon)

[Gearwheel] + [Drive Belt]

He had no [Gearwheel] nor [Drive Belt]. Instead, he had a [Rusty Gearwheel] and a [Dried Drive Belt]. They looked like good enough replacements. His only question was, did he have a way to repair the cards? When he discovered how to make [Lye], he’d been able to repair the [Rusty Pickaxe], right? He shook his head. He had only recovered its HP, but the card had kept the same name. He sighed. He didn’t have any card in his possession that could clean the rust off the gearwheel or rehydrate the rubber of the drive belt. He would just have to combine them and see what he got.

[Rusty Gearwheel] + [Dried Drive Belt]

[Rusty Gearwheel] | Hp: 2→1

[Dried Drive Belt] | Hp: 2→1

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Salvaged Gears].

Salvaged Gears (Common)

Gears salvaged from broken components. It barely works.

Hp: 1

Vp: 2

Kai hadn’t realized he was holding a breath. Seeing that the combination had somewhat worked was a huge relief. He wasn’t 100% sure that it would. That made him feel more hopeful about the other recipes he was about to recreate. He was now ready to tackle the next recipe.

Circuitry (Uncommon)

[Copper Wire] + [Console]

He was feeling better about this one. Even though the copper he found was covered in a green patina, Daisy had still judged it worthy of converting to a [Copper Wire] card. The only issue was that he didn’t have a working console. He only had a [Broken Console] card. After creating the [Salvaged Gears] card, he was confident that this combination would still work, but before he tried it, he wanted to use one of the cards he had retrieved from the trash piles.

He got the [Solder] card. In it was the drawing of a silver wire coiled. Even though advanced electronics were forbidden, they still had some simple machinery that they were allowed to keep. He had helped Sunny repair several of them and was no stranger to soldering. It’s true that to fix a console, plain solder wouldn’t do it. He would have to find first what kind of problem the machine had and then try to replace any burnt components.

The picture he had taken was of a broken console with a cracked screen. The picture in the card he had captured also showed this cracked glass. The solder didn’t fix a broken screen or restore the rusted metal. He pondered whether merging [Fire] with [Sand] would give him glass to fix the machine but decided against it.

He knew that the result was for a [Circuitry] card. The glass and the rust didn’t matter much then. What he wanted to focus on was what was inside the console. That made him lean toward using [Solder]. He wasn’t sure if he should do it now before combining the two cards or after the merge. He decided to try it now since [Broken Console] had two hit points, and he could always make a copy of it if he wished. Hopefully, it would work.

[Broken Console] + [Solder]

[Broken Console] | Hp: 2→1

[Solder] | Hp: 2→1

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Salvaged Console].

Salvaged Consolel (Uncommon)

A simple computer that was restored to minimum functionality.

Hp: 1

Vp: 3

Kai wiped the sweat off his brow and went for the next step of the recipe. Now that he had both ingredients, he combined them according to the recipe in the blueprints.

[Salvaged Console] + [Copper Wire]

[Salvaged Console] | Hp: 1→0

[Copper Wire] | Hp: 2→1

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Circuitry].

Circuitry (Uncommon)

A circuit board that can be programmed for several tasks.

Hp: 3

Vp: 1

What a nice surprise! He was counting on getting a rusty, salvaged, faulty, or recovered version of the card, but it looked like the ingredients were of a good enough quality for him to recreate a full-fledged [Circuitry] card!

Rather than figuring out what to do with the remaining HP of the cards he had already crafted, he kept going. He wanted to discover if there was some sort of secret hidden behind the blueprint recipes.

This is where things got tricky. He first picked the [Rusty Pipe] card and put it on one of the patterns, causing the table to hum to life. The other ingredient was [Metal Sheet]. He didn’t have that. The best piece of metal that he had found was [Rusty Steel Door]. Hopefully, it would work just as he had with the other ones. As he got the [Rusty Steel Door] card over the other engraved pattern on the table, it sucked it in, and the table lit up brilliantly before dimming. There was no new card materialized on the table!

[Rusty Steel Door] + [Rusty Pipe]

[Rusty Steel Door] | Hp: 1→0

[Rusty Pipe] | Hp: 2→1

Crafting failed!

Oh no! The crafting had failed. Why? Hadn’t he given the recipe the most solid hunk of metal he could find in the whole factory? Then why hadn’t it worked? Worse, he couldn’t reuse the [Rusty Steel Door] card! It had only come with one hit point.

“Aaargh!” Kai banged his head against the table. Why hadn't he copied it before trying out the recipe? He didn’t care Daisy would think him impatient. By now, he was confident he wasn’t being judged on his temper this year.

This was so frustrating! He had made it through half of the recipes! Was he destined to fail this? No. It was too soon to give up hope. There had to be something else he could do.

First things first. Why had the recipe failed? He scratched his chin and thought about it for a few minutes. It was OK. He had the time. There weren’t that many recipes to try. While he thought, he spared a look at the scoreboard. He had 106 points, and his opponent was at 99.

He grabbed the [Rusty Steel Door] card. This was a good piece of scrap metal. He was sure of it, but it wasn’t usable yet. It had to be prepared first.

Metal sheets and ingots were already ready for metalsmithing. This door wasn’t. He bit his lip. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner…  He looked at his other cards. Did he have any more scrap metal that he could repurpose to replace [Metal Sheet]?

He grabbed the [Fire Axe]. This axe’s head had a fine piece of steel. Could he extract it from this card somehow? Maybe throw it in with [Fire]. He had the feeling that it wouldn’t work. But perhaps he was on the right track.

He grabbed [Copper Wire] and put it on the table. He then reached for [Fire].

[Fire] + [Copper Wire]

[Fire] | Hp: 9→8

[Copper Wire] | Hp: 1→0

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Heated Copper].

Heated Copper (Common)

Copper that has been heated and has become malleable.

Hp: 3

Vp: 0

He smiled. He was onto something here. So he had heated copper. What did that mean? Should he try to mix that with [Rusty Pipe]? No. It didn’t sound like a good idea. Should he then try to use it with water? To cool it down? He decided to give that a try.

[Heated Copper] + [Water]

[Heated Copper ] | Hp: 3→0

[Water] | Hp: 3→2

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Brittle Copper].

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Steam].

Brittle Copper (Common)

Copper that is brittle and hard to work with.

Hp: 2

Vp: 0

Steam (Uncommon)

The gaseous form of water.

Hp: 1

Vp: 3

Kai grabbed the [Steam] card. As much as he wanted to brag later to Ariel or their future children that this was all part of his plan, the truth was that it was a complete accident. He had considered mixing [Water] and [Fire] and seeing what happened. But bumping into one of the remaining ingredients like this was a welcomed development.

As for the other card, it wasn’t looking good. Kai gulped. The stat line let him know he was close to failing the crafting process. This was all brand new ground for him. Here he was, blacksmithing with cards. Let’s see, what did he remember about metal brittleness?

When super-hot metals are cooled rapidly, they become hard and brittle. One had to reheat it to soften it again. He could reheat this brittle copper, then.

[Fire] + [Brittle Copper]

[Fire] | Hp: 8→7

[Brittle Copper] | Hp: 2→0

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Heated Copper].

Here he was, back at square one, but with two less HP on [Fire] and one less HP on [Water]. Kai looked at all his cards, trying to think of a way out. After a few minutes, he picked up [Solder]. Solder was made mostly of tin, right? What if he…

[Fire] + [Solder]

[Fire] | Hp: 7→6

[Solder] | Hp: 2→1

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Heated Tin].

Heated Tin (Common)

Tin that has been heated and has become malleable.

Hp: 3

Vp: 0

He grinned as soon as he saw that he had [Copper] and [Tin] in his hands. “So you didn’t want me to jump from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution in one go, hey? Albert was right. You have no imagination, Daisy.”

[Heated Copper] + [Heated Tin]

[Heated Copper] | Hp: 3→0

[Heated Tin] | Hp: 3→0

Bronze Sheet (Rare)

Hp: 3

Vp: 3

He had done it! He had just stepped into the Bronze Age using this recipe. Better than that, he now had a metal sheet! It wasn’t iron or steel but the next best thing. It was bronze! With this, he was confident he could recreate the third recipe from the manager’s office.

Ch. 28 - Infinite Loop

INDEX

Ch. 30 - Scrap Recycling