The Card Apprentice

When Butchie discovered him, Chen Mu also discovered her. His situation that day had gotten very strange, with his perception untold times more acute than normal.

Slightly squinting, he raised his head in the shadows. He recognized Butchie from the recent battle where he had discovered how breathtaking that female card artisan was. Her understanding of energy and her control of perception were something he could never overtake.

If he hadn’t known his own perception had greatly increased during that time, he would have been afraid that even his perception was far from hers. Making the comparison with a cool head, Chen Mu stolidly found he wasn’t her equal at that time. What was more, and what felt strange, was that he didn’t feel any fear. He was a different person from when he’d just encountered Lu Xiaoru, with nothing to be seen of the novice’s peculiar panic.

Chen Mu then seemed like a seasoned hunter, composed and without the least bit of panic, hiding in the shadows and watching his counterpart. He probably didn’t even realize his mannerism of squinting was so similar to Wei-ah’s.

The two of them looked at each other for a few seconds. In such a tumultuous battlefield, a few seconds was a long time. The air between them seemed to have turned solid, and neither was making a sound.

Chen Mu abruptly moved like an agile civet cat as he shot wildly out of the shadows, springing from his feet. The big mud fish card was pushed to its limits through a succession of erratic flitting moves, so he was lost among the wrecked walls in a breath.

Butchie’s face turned white.

She was really stunned as she helplessly watched her adversary depart so easily without her making any response. For a richly experienced professional card artisan to respond that way was a fatal, low-level mistake. Yet, she had no such thoughts, remembering the scene just before that had given her a chill.

In the shadows, when her adversary had raised his head to look at her, that indistinct and weirdly breathing face with his two squinting eyes seemed to have been branded in her brain. She knew such a face was a mask, but whenever she thought about that painted face—that indistinct and weirdly twisted face slightly raised in the dark, and those two eyes—a chill would blast up from her tailbone!

The cool look he’d given her had also left a deep impression. Also surprising were his movements, or rather his manner of walking. Butchie had never seen such a strange walk; he had seemed to glide over the ground.

If he was using his physical strength, there would have to be some up and down motion, but he didn’t have any. While he might have been using a jet stream card, Butchie had still seen him using the strength in his legs. His erratic walk was hard to predict. Butchie couldn’t quite determine if she would be able to lock onto him once he’d made his move.

What a dangerous dude!

Butchie watched the place where Chen Mu had disappeared with lingering fear. She really didn’t know what that guy had come there for; she just hoped he wasn’t an enemy. Butchie was pondering absent-mindedly.

But, she quickly returned to her calm since the companions in front of her still needed her to rescue them. It wasn’t any time for wild thoughts. She settled herself and continued on toward Lu Xiaoru.

After a few seconds she saw her.

Lu Xiaoru looked badly off with her left shoulder a deep red. Butchie was curious about who had actually wounded her. As she looked her over, she determined Lu Xaioru’s skills were at about the same level as hers. Who could wound her on such a battlefield? Apart from herself, everyone else was in a raging battle. Ordinary card artisans couldn’t have hurt her apart from a combined effort, in which case she should be covered in wounds.

Could it have been him? Butchie’s heart pounded!

That slightly raised masked face from the shadows flashed through her mind unbidden, and she seemed to see a cold light flash from the two eyes in the mask just then!

When she thought about where he’d been ambushing just then, he would have been just able to see Lu Xiaoru, which felt about right to her.

She didn’t make as much of a fuss as Lu Xiaoru did about a card artisan assassin. There was a specific department of assassination in the organization, and those in it were all such people. It was said that it was unlit even where they lived, as gloomy as could be. When such people went out, they almost didn’t breathe. When in the assassin’s department, you would never know how much time you’d spent there or even how many personnel from the assassination department had passed by.

Anyone who had ever gone to the assassination department didn’t want to go there again. Although Butchie had never been there, she’d heard a lot of rumors about it. She’d asked Hugo about it and found that the way to promotion for such card artisan assassins was a lot more difficult than for ordinary card artisans. The things they learned were extremely complex, which would limit their later development. That was why truly top card artisan assassins could be counted on the fingers.

Hugo had said there weren’t many card artisans in the assassination department who could do her harm, so she didn’t have any dread of card artisan assassins. But, when she then faced a card artisan of that style, she finally understood the powerful sense of oppression, which was something ordinary card artisans wouldn’t give off.

Would all card artisan assassins give such a powerful sense of oppression?

Such notions flashed through her mind. Having such unbridled thoughts in the midst of battle was something that hadn’t happened to her for a long time. It seemed as though that card artisan had produced a pretty powerful attack, and Butchie smiled bitterly to herself. She then presented all of the fine psychological qualities of an outstanding card artisan, and she quickly swept away all of her unbridled thoughts. She put her attention on the battle that was just about to start.

She didn’t attack, but she very slowly and quietly emitted the tadpole energy bodies. Her battle card was called the “tadpole,” which was a three-star battle fantasy card. Once those energy bodies had been emitted, they were like tadpoles in the water, lively and splashing around strangely. But, because each of the energy bodies was so small, the energy fluctuations they produced were also quite small.

In order in increase the suddenness of the attack, Butchie deliberately slowed the speed of the energy bodies emitted, so they didn’t seem so normal. Then, when they took the initiative to attack the target, they would be swimming around Butchie’s body.

She’d spent countless hours on that card, having started to use the tadpole card ever since she’d gotten good enough to use three-star cards. As her strength kept increasing, the card wasn’t actually so suited to her anymore. The big guy had specifically come to find her about that, but she still always insisted on using the tadpole card.

The power of the tadpole card wasn’t so great because of her power, but it was because of how long she’d been using it. She’d already familiarized herself with the card to the point where she couldn’t know any more about it. It was clear from the energy bodies near her how far her control of that card had advanced. She’d even realized some new energy compositions, which not only increased the tadpole card’s power, but greatly improved its tactical diversity.

Hugo had said card artisans really only needed one card in their lives. The power of any card could be taken to the extreme once you understood its composition to the limit. All the cards that existed wouldn’t be much different in their power once they hit their extreme.

She had seen how amazing that middle-aged man had been using the ultimate blue snake line card that day. It was a very ordinary kind of card, but not only did it have shocking power in the hands of that middle-aged man, it could transform endlessly. It was astonishing to see.

The energy fluctuations produced in the instant the card artisan had emitted the energy body had been the largest over the entire process of the battle. After the energy body had been emitted, its energy fluctuations would die off to where they were hard to discern.

Several dozen tadpole-shaped energy bodies concentrated at Butchie’s side as though firmly drawn there by something.

Lu Xiaoru was tense and couldn’t slack off in the least. She could clearly sense the signal ball’s vibration through her fanny pack. The person was still nearby!

Where was he? Lu Xiaoru felt like she would go nuts. Where is the card artisan assassin actually hiding? There, in the shadows? Every shadow or dark place seemed to give off a ghastly chill.

Her eyes suddenly brightened. Rather than to stay here suffering, why not enter the chaotic battle in the sky? The melee in the air was unbearable, but in her eyes, it was still better than the shadows with dangerous, hidden places everywhere. That kind of invisible and pervasive pressure had nearly taken her breath away. It was like eyes in the dark, always staring at her until her scalp went numb.

She wanted to fly immediately to the fiercest part of the midair battle. Although it was dangerous there, she could get away from the guy hidden in the dark.

Glancing at the two card artisans not far away, she showed a chill smile from the corner of her mouth. I’m not going to play with you!

Just as Lu Xaioru was about to get them precisely out of the way, something suddenly happened, and her expression changed.

The guy finally made his move! At the same time, she breathed a sigh of relief. That’s how people were. Just when the adversary wasn’t making any moves, the pressure was the greatest; then, once the adversary made his move, the pressure would be released. Lu Xiaoru had all of her attention on the attack suddenly appearing behind her and put her fear to the side.

Although her adversary’s attack was powerful, she had long been prepared for it and wasn’t caught short. She was most thrilled that she detected her adversary’s position. The scariest thing about a card artisan assassin was that there was no way to accurately lock in on them, or even any way to know where they were hiding. But, once you knew their position, they weren’t even as good as an ordinary card artisan.

She had locked her perception onto her opponent and believed the adversary had no way to escape that time!

Before she could expend all her hatred on killing her adversary, she first had to dodge the wave of attacks. Her perception filled the space around her like a fog. Those little energy bodies were rushing toward her with astonishing speed and nimbleness.

That was her first time to see such small energy bodies, and she acclaimed silently, finding her adversary’s methods so unusual. Generally speaking, the volume of energy bodies would correspond to their power; the more energy they contained, the bigger their volume would be. Of course, there were exceptions, such as the wavy blade card. Although the most penetrating wavy blades weren’t necessarily the smallest, they tended to be the thinnest.

That came from their particular structure. Wavy blades were formed from the oscillation of a shared frequency, so the energy would always tend to collapse toward the middle. The higher the vibrational frequency was, the thinner they were and the more stunning their power. They also kept their high frequency vibrations to a narrow range, so it would be very easy for them to cut apart hard alloys.

Lu Xiaoru didn’t underestimate those energy bodies because of their fineness in the least, with her adversary being an assassin card artisan. In those days, when there weren’t enough outstanding assassin card artisans, there wasn’t any room for their existence. Her adversary certainly had extraordinary methods.

Sure enough, when the fine, small energy bodies were about three meters from where she was, they gathered in front of her like sharks smelling something fishy. She was unprepared for such an unforeseen event. She didn’t quite understand what the goal of those energy bodies was.

A momentary feeling of danger made all of the hairs on Lu Xiaoru’s body stand on end. Almost unconsciously, she deployed the energy cloak she had long since prepared. The card artisan assassin’s blows were quite aggressive, and the energy cloak had limited usefulness. However, if she hadn’t been covered by the energy cloak to block them, she would probably already be dead!

Her adversary’s shuttle had been locked onto her throat. When it was blocked by the energy cover, even though it smashed the energy cloak, its direction was inevitably affected. The originally lethal blow had hit her in the shoulder.

Lu Xiaoru had always been prepared to deploy her energy cloak to defend against Chen Mu’s sneak attack. However, she somehow hadn’t thought it wasn’t going to be Chen Mu’s expected attack, but Butchie’s instead.

Hong!

Incredibly hot flames abruptly flared up, trapping Lu Xiaoru inside them. The bright red flames were like a wild beast with a ferocious appearance whose volume was endlessly increasing with shocking speed. Even Butchie, who had released the attack, had deployed her energy cloak to protect herself from being burned up by the sweeping burst of high-temperature gases.

That was an original tactic of Butchie’s. The small tadpole-shaped energy bodies only had limited power. They didn’t even have a way to break through a somewhat good card artisan’s energy cloak. So, she had thought up that method to control a large quantity of energy bodies within a small area in order to advance a concentrated, matched explosion among them. In that way, the energy bodies could become unusually enraged to trigger an amazing explosion. Another fatal aspect was that they would develop an extremely high temperature, which was impossible to accurately determine. If an energy cloak were the least bit weak, it would basically have no way to block such high temperature.

That was Butchie’s Firestorm Countermeasure!

Hugo had endlessly praised its power. Since it was a sneak attack that time, Butchie had only released about 20 or 30 energy bodies. The most she’d ever done was release nearly 70 energy bodies to set off the subsequent Firestorm Countermeasure. The explosion had blasted the training field into a ruin. Ever since then, the number of people chasing Butchie had dropped off, and everyone’s darling became the famous female Tyrannosaurus rex of the organization.

Although there were only 20-some small energy bodies this time, their explosive power still had spectacular sound and fury. Butchie’s two companions were also caught up in it. They were tumbled by the shock wave and fell straight off.

Chen Mu hadn’t left, though he changed his position again. He felt he had to get the woman card artisan dressed in red, so he decided to hang around.

His concealment was completely successful again, and when the female card artisan got there later, she didn’t find him. He then thought his having just been discovered was only because he had happened to be in his adversary’s flight path.

Before he could finish, he saw Butchie’s Firestorm Countermeasure!

He was immediately stunned by such a wild explosion! Compared to the soundless explosion from the half-masked man from before, which had been triggered by the beam of light, this time the explosion doubtlessly had more visual impact. The incredibly bright, deep red flames and the percussive blast shook the earth. Apart from their blasting up a load of gravel, the explosion’s shock waves also had oppressive heat! Chen Mu’s position was probably 30 meters from the explosion, and he could still feel the burning heat at such a distance.

The sound of the explosion had certainly scared people, and even those card artisans fighting furiously in the sky had noticed the movements, although none of them came over. No one would dare to touch that female T. rex.

Chen Mu was most surprised by Butchie’s abnormal control of her perception. He didn’t miss a single detail of the battle between them.

The energy bodies were quite small, and it wasn’t difficult to control them. However, when their numbers got to more than 20, the difficulty would increase by several times. Moreover, she wasn’t only controlling the movements and direction of more than 20 energy bodies. She also controlled the high-speed collisions among them, making great demands on accuracy.

His own perception was similar to his counterpart’s, but when it came to perceptual control, he was a long way off. Could that be the real strength of a professional card artisan? Chen Mu once again didn’t have any way to stay calm as he took on a look of awe.

Butchie’s battle tactics lit up his eyes. Chen Mu got the general idea of the card she was using, which was why he was finally heaping such praise on that uniquely creative battle tactic. He didn’t realize such unremarkable energy bodies could emit so much power after undergoing those kinds of collisions.

Thinking of that, he couldn’t help but feel ashamed that his tailless shuttle card hadn’t undergone much of a change in his hands. He was still using its most basic and simple methods of deployment. Chen Mu suddenly felt as though he’d been wasting his resources.

Although he marveled, Chen Mu was still paying attention to staying hidden. Too much marveling and he would inevitably be sorry. But, what he was sorry about was the female card artisan dressed in red, who was boding disaster by then.

Chen Mu didn’t feel too aggrieved when a life was lost in front of him, having experienced such emotions quite a few times already. What he needed to consider was that once the woman died, he would never know what her objective had been in attacking him.

Another thing that made him feel sorry was her card. Her means of attack were quite peculiar, and Chen Mu had never seen their like. He surmised that the woman card artisan dressed in red was using some kind of unique card to be able to get such results. He had originally wanted to find some way to grab her. Apart from interrogating her objective, he also wanted to take a look at what sort of card that really was.

He was full of curiosity about that card of hers, which had nothing to do with his needs but was entirely to satisfy his research hobby.

While Chen Mu was privately regretting, the situation on the field had changed its complexion.

A hole about ten centimeters in diameter suddenly appeared in the red flames. Within that hole, there weren’t any flames. Chen Mu could clearly see a pair of hands, one them wearing an apparatus. He didn’t know if it was because of the heat or something else, but the light rays seemed a little twisted.

On the other side of the hole was Butchie enveloped in her energy cloak. At the same time, Butchie’s orange energy cloak suddenly shook at a high frequency, and the materialized energy cloak started to drone.

Chen Mu’s spirits were stirred that the female card artisan dressed in red hadn’t died! Wasn’t that intangible attack style what he had just been watching without comprehension?

The pained expression of the woman could be seen through the orange energy cloak. She seemed to be enduring extremely fierce pain, though Chen Mu couldn’t see any sign of injury.

Could she be seeing some kind of terrifying illusion? Chen Mu shook his head inwardly. The so-called fantasy illusion cards were mostly one-star or two-star fantasy cards. They were quite realistic and looked like a true environment, so someone with a weak mind would always tend to be fooled by the illusion. But, who among those card artisans didn’t have a mind as firm as iron?

There was another kind of fantasy illusion card that was much rarer and more high-grade. For example, the mysterious card Chen Mu had gotten was an extremely high-grade fantasy illusion card. Once you entered into the fantasy world it composed, all sense of reality would be cut off. You wouldn’t hear anyone talking to you, and you wouldn’t sense anything nearby. Most such fantasy illusion cards were handed down from ancient times. It was no longer heard of for anyone to be able to make them.

That kind of fantasy illusion card was quite hard to get, and to use it in warfare would be still more rare.

The most famous of them was the star in the hands of the president of the Star Academy, which came from the hand of Heiner Van Sant. It was one of the most famous and powerful cards in the whole federation. That was one of the reasons that although the Star Academy had declined, it could still remain among the Big Six.

But, if it was a fantasy illusion card, then what was up with the hole in the flames?

If it wasn’t a fantasy illusion card, then what was it?