Deckard lifted the lid of the chest, expecting disappointment.
Dull rust and the faint scent of seawater clinging to corroded metal greeted him. He sighed. Just more junk. But as he sifted through the pile, his fingers brushed against something solid. His eyes narrowed. Maybe not all of it was useless.
Corroded Shield (Common)
Description: A battered metal shield, crusted with salt and rust from years at the bottom of the ocean. It barely looks battle-worthy, but it still has some weight to it.
Effects:
+10 defense;
+5 block.
Requirements: 10 strength.
The shield looked quite nice. He picked up another item at random.
Corroded Ring (Common)
Description: A ring pulled from the shallows near Trash Islet. The salt has eaten away at its surface, but you can still wear it.
Effects:
+2 intelligence;
+10 energy.
There were ten such items. A barnacle-crusted pair of boots. A frayed sailcloth robe. A brine-stained belt with a rusted buckle. One for each equipment slot. Each provided minor stat boosts, which would be helpful to other players but wouldn’t do much for him.
Then, something caught his eye.
Dented Oxygen Bottle (Common)
Description: A battered oxygen tank, its exterior pitted with dents and corrosion. The gauge is unreadable, but a test valve still releases a faint hiss of air.
Effects: Allows the user to stay underwater for 15 minutes longer. Needs one hour to recharge.
Deckard froze. He hadn’t seen this coming. No stat buffs, no combat perks—but its effect was incredibly valuable.
Already, his mind raced through possibilities. It was a big ocean around the island, and there had to be things he could do with this breathing gear. He didn’t hesitate. Snatching the bottle, he sealed the chest shut.
He slid the item into his inventory and returned to Ronan, handing him the key.
“I see you’ve chosen your reward.” Ronan’s gaze flicked to the chest, then back to him. When Deckard lingered instead of leaving, Ronan arched an eyebrow. “Anything else?”
Deckard casually glanced at the new players rifling through the shop bins. A silent understanding passed between them. Without a word, he turned away and pretended to browse.
He ran his fingers over a row of low-level weapons, barely glancing at them. Meanwhile, more players came and went, stopping to pick through the shop’s wares. Still, he waited.
Minutes passed.
Eventually, the shop emptied.
Deckard turned back to Ronan. Now they could talk. Ronan gave a subtle nod toward the back of the shop. “Come on.”
He followed him into the small room beyond the counter. As the door shut, he caught a faint shimmer behind them. A hologram flickered into place, adjusting its stance to mirror Ronan’s usual posture. From the outside, no one would suspect a thing. To any player entering the store, it would seem like Ronan was still there.
“You’re finally learning the value of discretion, human. Well done.” Ronan’s voice was flat, his pale eyes watching him closely. Despite their history together, Ronan wasn’t the most inviting NPC, and Deckard could tell he had only a short window to keep his attention.
Without hesitation, Deckard pulled out something he knew would buy Ronan’s patience.
The air seemed to shift as soon as the [Whale Shark] card left his inventory. The nanites across Ronan’s skin flaked away, revealing his black, alien skin. The Zulmir’s eyes widened, and for a split second, he stood frozen, his usually unreadable face betraying genuine shock.
He recovered quickly. The nanites crawled back over his skin, his features smoothing over once more.
“I can’t believe you managed to get your hands on such a valuable subdimensionalization so quickly.” His voice was measured, but there was an edge to it. “Where did you get it?”
“Ratu lost it to me in a game.”
At the mention of the fisherman, the pale lines on Ronan’s forehead deepened.
“The fool,” he muttered under his breath.
He pushed forward, voice steady, “He babbled something about ‘they’ lending it to him. And he was terrified. He kept talking about the consequences of not returning their cards. Is his ‘they’ your ‘they’? What I mean is: Are our enemies lending cards to Ratu?”
Ronan’s gaze darkened. “Yes… and no.”
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Deckard frowned. “What does that mean?”
Ronan started pacing, rubbing his jaw as if weighing his words. Finally, he spoke. “They’re connected.”
“Okay. What does that mean?”
“It’s… complicated,” Ronan said.
“Is there anything you can tell me?”
“This is a fight I can’t get involved in, human.” Ronan’s voice was firmer now. “I tasked you with this mission, but I never promised to shield you. We Zulmirs are stretched thin as it is. You’ll have to fend for yourself.”
He took a deliberate step toward the door. Deckard’s pulse quickened. Ronan was about to walk away.
“Wait! Ronan! Can you at least tell me how I can find them?”
The alien shopkeeper kept walking, leaving the small room and sitting behind his desk. Then, a flicker of light caught his eye—the hologram shimmered once before vanishing.
As Ronan picked up the pen, he spoke. “They live somewhere in the jungle of the island.” His gaze flicked to the card still in Deckard’s hand, and he raised one bony finger, pointing directly at it. “That subdimensionalization is valuable… even to them. They are coming for you.”
Deckard gulped. The shop bell jingled.
A pair of new players stepped inside, their excited voices filling the space as they beelined toward the bins of low-tier gear.
Deckard sighed. He had so many questions, but Ronan was back to his scribbling self. He already knew the NPC well enough to know he wasn’t going to get anything else out of him.
Deckard left the shop and stepped out into the street. The warm hues of sunset stretched across the sky, painting the waves in fiery orange and deep indigo. Stiltwave Village swayed with the rhythm of the tide, the wooden walkways creaking under his steps. Torches flickered to life along the docks, their golden glow reflecting in the water below.
First Ratu’s fear and now Ronan’s warning. I have a bad feeling about this.
He could feel a storm coming. From the little that Ratu and Ronan had revealed, there was some sort of NPC or group of NPCs on the island related to the enemies of the Zulmirs. If the game kept following the same trend it did up to this point, sometime soon, someone would appear at his doorstep, challenging him to a game of Terralore.
Deckard adjusted his spectacles as he took stock of the situation. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles,” he quoted. “Let’s review what I know about my enemy.”
He ticked off each point on his fingers. “One, they have access to many cards. Two, they are somehow associated with the Zulmirs’ enemies, whoever they are. Three, they’re somewhere out in the jungle. Four, they will probably show up as I reach a milestone in my collection. And finally, they are stupid enough to lend an epic card to Ratu but powerful enough to scare Ronan.”
He turned to his other hand. “As for me… let’s see… One, if they show up whenever I reach a milestone in my collection, like Ratu did, I have some control over when we meet. Two, if they are in the jungle, I should be OK as long as I stay out of it.”
As he considered the implications of his situation, he winced. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He needed to keep getting stronger if he had any hope of dealing with Ratu’s backers.
Ratu had first brought out a fox deck, then a shark deck. And those were just the cards these guys were willing to lend a dodgy fisherman like him. Maybe they weren’t even stupid. Maybe they just had so many cards in their collection that losing a few on a wild gamble didn’t matter to them.
Just how many more cards do these guys have?
How many more rare or epic ones? He had barely scraped by against Ratu, but he wasn’t sure he could handle his backers. They had access to a massive card pool. Meanwhile, his deck—while much better than the garbage one he’d started with—still wasn’t good enough. He needed more cards before he could build something formidable.
And that was assuming they were coming for a game of Terralore.
What if they just wanted a fight? His class was linked to Terralore, but it was more than that. If the developers wanted to test his mastery of his hidden class, then a real fight wasn’t out of the question.
He was stronger than when he first started playing, sure. He no longer freaked out when fighting mobs. But he was still wet behind the ears. The only reason he had taken down elites and bosses so far was because he’d found ways to cheese them—exploiting the system to capture them instead of engaging in a proper battle. If he had to fight an elite or a hidden boss head-on right now? He wasn’t sure he’d win.
Deckard massaged his temples.
He had to keep advancing his collection. He had to keep getting stronger—not just as a Terralore player, but as a card slinger. And he needed to figure out how to do that without getting shut down by Ratu’s backers.
Should I just collect cards but stop when I’m about to complete a set?
That was fine in theory, but there were at least two problems there. One was that he needed the skills granted by milestone achievements in order to be able to deal with the increasingly tougher beasts of the game. And two, if he wasn’t mistaken, some of the island’s creatures were in the interior of the island. How was he supposed to go there to farm for cards without drawing the attention of Ratu’s backers?
As Deckard wrestled with possible courses of action, he had an idea. He thought about the recommendation letter sitting in his inventory. A connection to start over in Aquascape. What if he just ran away?
Wait… wasn’t there a teleportation gate in the village?
He’d read something about it online. It was supposed to help players travel to the mid-tiered cities more easily. Nothing was holding him down here. He could keep collecting cards in the mid-tiered city and show up once he was strong enough to wipe the floor with Ratu’s backer.
If I’m not mistaken, it’s somewhere over there.
He ran over to the location of Makoa, the village warrior who taught basic skills to players. As he approached, he noticed a player ahead of him stepping onto the glowing metal disks. The villagers barely glanced at them as they vanished in a burst of golden light. Another player, dressed in a colorful robe of red and green feathers, was already walking up, waiting for their turn.
Deckard approached the gate, too.
Welcome to Stiltwave’s Teleportation Gate.
Warning: You can’t use this. Come back when you’re level 10.
“What?!”
He tried again, but the gate kept showing him the same message. He froze, jaw clenched. His class didn’t come with levels! How was he ever going to get to level 10? Card slingers progressed by increasing his collection. If this teleportation gate was barred behind a level, that meant he was never going to be able to use it!
Sweat beaded across his brow. He had never expected his hidden class to have such a lousy setback! He couldn’t use teleportation gates? At all?! That meant he would have to walk everywhere.
He had thought that not having levels was just an alternate route to progress. A different playstyle. Something the developers had accounted for. Maybe the system would have given him an alternative requirement—something like: You can use the teleportation gate once you have ten mini-sets or 1,000 cards collected.
But no.
This means that while everyone uses this thing once they reach level 10, I’ll be stuck taking the long path through the tunnel Ronan was telling me about earlier.
A tunnel that was in the middle of the jungle, the enemy’s backyard.
Deckard took out his spectacles and cleaned them. “I’m so screwed,” he muttered.
He was right back where he started. The game had spun a web he couldn’t break free from. No shortcuts. No easy way out. Everyone else would just step onto that glowing gate and be gone, but he was stuck.
Unless…
He turned toward the ocean, his gaze locking onto the silhouette of Trash Islet in the fading light. He opened his inventory and picked up his newest acquisition: the dented oxygen bottle.
The jungle was a trap, but the ocean? The ocean was open. Maybe there was a way to get stronger without venturing into the island's interior after all.
If the game wanted to box him in, then fine. He’d just find another way.
Time to see if the devs really thought of everything.
Card Crawler yet?
