24

👍︎︎︎︎♒︎︎︎︎♋︎︎︎︎◻︎︎︎︎⧫︎︎︎︎♏︎︎︎︎❒︎︎︎︎ 📄︎︎🗐︎🖳︎︎ ☹︎♏︎⬧︎⬧︎□︎■︎ 📄︎ ♋︎■︎♎︎ 🗏︎

Micahael/The Puppeteer rose from his bed as it was the next morning. He looked around, still a bit tired and decided to get up. He got himself some breakfast before going outside to bask in the early morning sun. He sat there and thought a bit to himself before going back inside to write a note and then left again.

"I'm sure that they won't mind me going out for a little while," he thought to himself as he began to walk around town, "it's not like anything wrong can go wrong right?"

And in that moment, something went wrong. Micahael got lost. "Didn't I take a left… or was it a right… or straight… damn it all these buildings look the same!" he mumbled to himself as he wandered through the town. "Wait," he thought in a moment of brilliance, "the holdus should show me directions…" he pulled his out only for it to say: Location not Found. He sighed and continued to wander.

Meanwhile at Thor's house, Thor and Ben had just got up. They soon realized the absence of Micahael and found the note he had laid on the table. "Wh-what the hell is he saying?" Thor asked Ben, handing him the note. "I-is this even Landrith?"

"I don't know…" Ben replied, "I'll go around town and ask."

"No, you stay," Thor ordered, "we don't even know who wrote the note even though I'm assuming that The Puppeteer did, but there's no way of knowing."

"Yeah, but if we—"

At that moment, there was a knock on the door. The two looked at each other before both silently agreeing to open the door. In the doorway stood a disheveled Puppeteer. He was covered in tree branches, claw marks, and was soaked from head to toe.

"Wh—" Thor began,

"Y-you don't want to know…" Micahael muttered, interrupting Thor, "I-I-I-I really don't want to talk about it. Is it okay if I take a shower before we talk?"

"Uh sure…"

"Alright then, I'll be right back."

He took a quick shower before returning to talk with the other two people at the table. "So where do we want to start?"

"Let's talk about the note first," Thor said, "What did you write down here."

"You can't read it? It says, 'Hey guys, I'm going to go out for a bit. I'll be back soon.'"

"No, we can't read it." Thor said, "that's why we needed you to read what it said. Two reasons. One: whatever language you wrote that in isn't how we write it nowadays. Two: your handwriting is shit."

"Well, how was I supposed to know?"

"I don't know? Maybe you're from an age that was really long ago? Just a thought?"

"Fine. I apologize."

"Now, second point. Where were you and how did you end up like that?"

Micahael let out a sigh, "um… so I got lost wandering around the town…"

"Didn't I show you the map?" Ben asked.

"Yeah, but it said, location not found and I just gave up on it."

"Did you try calibrating it?"

"Calibrating it?"

"Yeah," Ben responded, "every few days you need to recalibrate your holdus. It's so that the cards that you've used are properly stored in the system and other uses of the holdus don't work if the holdus isn't calibrated properly."

"That solves that problem then," Micahael said as he began to continue, "So I took a left somewhere, somehow bumped into a tree, a cat-like thing fell on me, it got scared and attacked me, then some kids sprayed water on me."

"Well that sucks," Thor replied, "at least you're back which means that we've solved our problems."

"I guess…" Micahael turned towards Ben, "I guess it's also time for us to start Lesson 2?"

"Yes please!" Ben responded enthusiastically, "I'm ready to learn!"

"Alright then, so last time we talked about Deck types and Elements. Today we'll go over the basic card." He handed Ben a card. "I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of these. That right there is a blank card or "sample" card. It's basically a baseline for what all the other cards will follow. So in the top left we have the Element of the card. As I told you before, the element at the top dictates which well it must pull from. To the right we have the card's name which is sometimes used in card effects. Now in the top right we have the cost of the card. This is how much it uses the Well in order to be played. Now there's the image of the card in the middle, that's just there for decoration. In the left middle, we have the category. This is what determines synergy most of the time. Now in the right middle we have the rarity. C for common; your mostly weak cards, U for uncommon; your baseline good cards, R for rare; your really good cards, S for super; these are normally your cards that you use to win the game, and L for legendary; which are the broken cards."

"Then what's this B?"

"Oh that means banned. Those cards are mostly collectables or funny super powerful cards. Anyway after that we have the card effect. Some have effects, some don't and each effect varies." Micahael handed Ben a little pamphlet. "Here's a list of every codename for an effect and what it exactly does. There's a lot of them, but they're pretty easy to remember. Now finally at the bottom middle you have the type of card. Cards are split into 3 types. Unit, Truth, and Equip. Units are what you play on the field to attack and whatnot, Truths are a catch all of what happens like dealing damage or buffing a Unit, and finally Equips are direct cards that are equipped to Units that help them. Now only Unit cards have this last part which are stats. The one on the bottom left is Attack which is how much damage it deals, and the bottom right one is Health, how much damage it can take before it is destroyed. And that's Lesson 2."

"Is that all you're going to teach him?" Thor asked, "If so, that's not a lot to learn in one day."

"Well we can always start on Lesson 3," Micahael said looking at Ben, "Just as a heads up Lesson 4 is when you get to duel me."

"And what's Lesson 3 exactly," Thor asked.

"This," Micahael said as he opened his box and pulled something off the underside of the lid. "Say hello to the board. 10 Unit zones at the top, 3 Truth zones on the left, 1 deck slot on the right, 1 Counter Zone in the middle, 1 Destroyed Units zone at the bottom, and 1 Destroyed Truths/Equips zone also at the bottom."

"Is that really necessary? We normally just play freehand."

"No, not necessary but pretty useful in explaining to someone new to the game. So Ben, up for it?"

"Yes sir!"

"Alright! So this is the board with the listed zones as the maximum number of whatever can go there. And now we get into how to play the actual game. So you put your deck in the deck zone and draw 6 cards from it. Turn 1 is no one draws a card and no one can attack which is why Turn 1 is referred to as the setup turn, however damage can still be dealt by using Truths or Equips or Unit card effects. Now on turn 2 you start the turn by drawing a card and then you play cards and then attack which is the standard order for the match then on. As each turn goes on your wells gain more and more mana up to 10 mana on turn 10."

"Is that it?" Ben and Thor asked.

"Can't really think of anything else so I guess. I mean I should mention A and B turns. Person who goes first which is determined by a coin flip is assigned A and the person who goes second is B. The only reason to point this out is because some card effects will say start of THE turn and some say start of YOUR turn. Your turn can be A or B while the turn is always A. Also max hand size is 10 cards, if you go over 10 you get to keep all your cards, but you take damage equal to the extra cards. If you run out of cards in your deck and you have to draw, you lose. That's about it really unless I think of something later on."

"That's all your lessons are?" Thor asked, shocked.

"Yeah. Not much to explain as deck building, which is an essential part of getting started. Once you learn the rules you can get right into it, but in order to have fun or win you need a deck."

"Sensei?" Ben abruptly chimed in, "can we go onto Lesson 4?"

"Well, I'm kind of not in the mood for another duel and also you need time to digest the notes and read over card effects."

"Darn…"

"Here's a deal. After our next mission, we'll do Lesson 4 since as of now, you know the basics of the game and should be able to help us in our next mission if it's remotely dangerous."

"And that's all you're going to do today?" Thor asked.

"You see, if you had to go through what I went through, you might as well have called it a day before the little lesson."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"That's the exact problem I have. Normally when I have free time I do a few things. One, if I have school, do schoolwork or study for a bit. Two, if I'm free, I watch TV, or Three play video games, but it doesn't seem like either option is available. So we go with option 4, go for a walk!"

"Didn't you already go for a walk?"

"Your point being?"

"How exactly did that first walk end up for you?"

"You never know if you don't try! There's no way something like that would happen a second time!

* * * * * *

"It happened a second time." Micahael said as he returned from his walk. "You're not going to believe me, but what if I told you—"

"We don't need you to speak," Thor interrupted, "Go get cleaned up."

"Sensei's really something." Ben said as Micahael shuffled towards the bathroom.

"He's relatively smart, I'll give him that. But it doesn't seem like he uses that intelligence very often." Thor replied.

"I guess that's who he is."

"Indeed."

"So basically," Micahael interrupted, "This time I ran into the same tree but this time a giant squirrel dropped this massive nut and it cracked on my head and dumped tons of nut juice on me."

They both just stared at him.

"How does that explain the scratch marks then?" Ben asked.

"Oh, that was that squirrel thing."

"It's called a Squaires, and the thing it dropped was probably its lunch."

"Anyway, third time's the charm right?" Micahael said as he prepared to head out the door.

"Absolutely not!" Thor demanded, grabbing his shoulder. "If you want to burn time, Ben and I have reached a conclusion."

"Which is?"

"We're going on another mission."

"Already? We went on one yesterday though."

"If we're going to waste time, might as well do something productive was the result he and I made together, so we just need your opinion."

Micahael took a deep breath and immediately answered, "Let's go for it. I want to actually do something this time."

"Alright. Time to start your actual first mission."

Chapter 24: Lesson 2 and 3 END