11 Chapter 11
"What, why do you want that card?" Steph asked with genuine confusion, "I don't see how not needing to breathe helps out your stealth card. I mean, I guess it'll make you a bit quieter, but you do know that we're taking you out to fight monsters, right? You may want to prioritize your choices better."
Daniel nodded along as Steph spoke. Everything she was saying made perfect sense considering she didn't know the finer details of Flicker Between Worlds.
"If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer not to get into the specifics of my card, but Breath of None covers a major weakness of it. Enough said."
Leaning against one of the display cases, Stanford snapped his fingers, "Oh I get it now, you can't breathe when you're stealthed, can you?"
Daniel's attention was immediately pulled over to the leather armored man, "Oh, and what gave you that idea?"
"What," Stanford laughed, "besides you wanting to buy a card that lets you not need to breathe? Every time you came out from stealth during our fight you were huffing like you'd just sprinted five miles. I'm just putting two and two together here."
Daniel stared at Stanford for a long moment before deeply sighing, "I will neither confirm nor deny your theory."
"Which means I hit the nail on the head," Stanford smiled smugly.
"Anyways," Steph said glaring at Stanford, "do you have enough money to buy the card?"
"That depends," Daniel said, turning towards Harold, "How much does it cost?"
Harold rubbed his graying beard as he hummed to himself, "Well it's been sitting on the shelf for a while, but it's not quite as niche as a lot of my other cards. Somebody will pick it up if I wait long enough. A hundred silver seems like a fair price."
Daniel frowned, he'd already counted the silver that Anton had given him, and it only amounted to forty pieces.
"Can you put it on hold for me?"
"Sure can," Harold said with a grin, "but that'll be a two silver holding fee."
"Fair enough I suppose," Daniel said with a sigh as he slid the two coins across the counter to Harold.
Stanford clapped Daniel on the back, "Alright, now that that's done let's go get you some armor. We can't have you getting impaled by the first aetherbloom you walk into."
"Yeah," Daniel agreed, "that sounds like a plan."
"Off to the blacksmiths then. Just let me do the talking," Steph said.
===
Twenty silver poorer and Two hours later Daniel was sitting in the lounge section of the guild surrounded by the entirety of his new team. The man he hadn't been introduced to yet, Jonathan, was leaned back in one of the guild's cushioned chairs with his eyes shut. Which Daniel preferred to what Gabriel had been doing for the past few minutes.
The group's self-appointed leader had given a halfhearted announcement that Daniel was going to be the newest member of their team and their designated scout. All the while sneaking glances towards him that Daniel didn't really want to dig into.
"We leave at sunrise tomorrow morning. I managed to nab our usual contract down at the Riese corpse. We need to get at least thirty splinters, but anything extra will get us a nice bonus," Gabriel said while looking towards Daniel. It seemed the man was giving this whole speech just for him.
"What's a splinter, and a Riese for that matter?" Daniel asked.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed before he eventually sighed deeply and began an explanation, "It's not a Riese, it's the Riese. It's the corpse of a fable that died and made up the mountain ranges south of the city. The city mines its corpse for cards."
"Splinters are small pieces of its body that for whatever reason come back to life," Steph cut in. "We think it's a trait of the Riese's card, but it's anyone's guess. It may just be a trait that all fable's share, or a trait of the monster itself."
Daniel nodded in understanding, "So how dangerous are these things? What cards do each of them have in their decks?"
"I think you mean what card does each of them have," Jonathan, the older man said with his eyes still shut. "They're not human. They're forsaken, cursed. Some more than others, but it's the same for all of them. They don't receive the same blessings that we do. The Sun goddess' grace doesn't extend to them."
Danel nodded along to the speech, though he didn't know how much of it could be trusted. It seemed steeped in the man's religious belief.
"Then what should I expect the splinters to be capable of?" Daniel asked.
Jonathan simply laughed in response, his eyes finally opening, "Anything and everything lad. That's what makes this job fun, and what makes it necessary."
"He's right," Gabriel said, "Which is why I'm going to go over some ground rules. These are mostly for Daniel, but a refresher is never a bad thing and I want each of you to pay attention to what I have to say."
Gabriel's gaze shifted between the members of the table before he began to speak, "First and foremost, if I say to run, you run. We'll meet up back at the wall and assess any damages we received, but do not disobey me when I give this command. I'd rather one of us die than all of us."
Daniel glanced at the fellow members of the table and found that nobody was surprised or disagreeing with Gabriel's declaration.
"The second thing I need to make clear is how we fight. Do not under any circumstances look any of the splinters in their eyes, assuming they have them of course. Don't touch any of them directly and always be ready at all times to dodge an attack. These creatures are dangerous and unpredictable, but these tactics can help nullify a good chunk of their cards."
Daniel nodded along as Gabriel spoke. It made sense to him. If all it took to avoid dying to a potentially life-threatening card was to avoid eye contact he'd gladly take the precaution.
"Now," Gabriel said, "I want to make everyone's positions in our group clear. I cover the frontline, Steph and Stanford cover anything at range and Jonathan covers our healing and midrange."
Gabriel turned his attention over to Daniel with eyes that quickly turned stern, "You don't have a proper way to fight yet Daniel. You'll need to stay within the core of the group unless I ask you to scout for us."
"Are you done yet, Gabe? This is butting into my me time," Steph complained.
Gabriel glared in her direction before seemingly deciding to let it go, "Alright, we'll meet back up here at dawn. I got us an easy job for tomorrow, but that doesn't mean it's a safe one. Remember to stay on your toes. Dismissed."
===
Daniel laid awake on his bed that night thinking about all he'd done throughout the day, and all he'd need to do in the days to follow.
So much power was hidden inside of those tiny little cards. A worrying amount. Most of the monsters out beyond the wall would just have bronze cards according to Jonathan, but that didn't fool Daniel for a second.
Most was not all, and while many of the bronze cards in the vault had been unimpressive the group had made it very clear that most monsters didn't actually need their cards. Their bodies were far stronger and more durable than a normal human's. That in addition to any other natural advantages their bodies may possess resulted in a dangerous combination.
'Most monsters instinctively know how to use their cards from birth. Which will probably result in more bullshit than I'm willing to deal with,' Daniel thought sourly.
'A fire breathing dragon? Predictable, and something that can be planned around. A fire breathing dragon that says fuck you to a very specific and more importantly random portion of reality? That can't be good for the ol' survival rate.'
"Those are some paranoid rules laid out by Gabriel," Daniel said to nobody in particular, "But I guess you only need to run across one goblin that can rip out your soul and make it dance like a marionette for people to start implementing bizarre rules."
"If that isn't the truth then I've lived my whole life hearing only lies," responded a high-pitched voice from across the room.
Immediately Daniel opened his eyes and reached for the side table where his father's knife lay, before rolling off the bed and shifting between worlds.
A figure of smoke stood across the room. It was small, and from what Daniel could gather from its voice, either a woman or a child. It took all of two seconds for the figure to pull out something that vaguely resembled a knife from its smoke laden body and begin to scratch a message into the wall.
Strange choice sleeping with the lights on. Relax, I just wanted to offer you what I can only assume will be the best offer of your life.
The message didn't do much to calm Daniel's nerves. Words are just words, and whoever this was could have easily just been trying to lure him out into the real world. Besides, they'd scratched that into the wall disturbingly quick. A card was probably responsible.
'They're not giving me many choices here,' Daniel thought bitterly. 'It'd be a different story if I had Breath of None, but they can easily just wait me out as is. Honestly speaking, them knowing to write to me on the floor is already a massive red flag. He knows how my card works, or at least somewhat does.'
'So my options are to pop out of limbo and attack him or pop out and hear him out,' Daniel thought.
Daniel pondered the dilemma for several seconds before eventually shrugging, 'May as well hear him out, I guess. If he can break in here without alerting anybody then he's probably more than I can handle anyways.'
'Besides,' Daniel internally thought, 'hearing the best offer of my life sounds a lot better than dying trying to stab a…' Daniel squinted at the smokey figure, '...child? Yeah, probably a child.'
With a mental command Daniel left limbo and appeared back in his room where a young boy with greyish-white hair stood.
The boy, despite his age, was intimidating, and Daniel wasn't really sure why. Though he assumed it to be the effect of some kind of card.
He was dressed in dark colored clothing and wore a deep purple cloak with an insignia sowed with gold depicting half a dozen eyes clustered together.
The boy smiled upon seeing Daniel and bowed slightly, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Daniel. I am Pavel, and my house has recently been informed that you are in possession of Baron Douglass' firstborn sons legendary card. Is this correct?"
Daniel's grip on his knife tightened and his eyes narrowed, "And if I am?"
A smile spread across the boy's face, "Then I've come to offer you an invitation into my house, and my sister's hand in marriage."
