Chapter 300: Act 67 – The King of the Underground (Eighteen) (First Update, Please Support)
The ghostly green text projected onto the retina faded away.
Brendel immediately saw a floating light screen appear before him, specifically a roulette. Each engraving on the roulette corresponded to a color-illustrated card. After a brief moment of surprise, he understood the meaning of this thing.
The outer circle of the roulette had one hundred and seventy slots, with cards corresponding to elemental colors and of the rare bronze level. The inner circle had forty slots, with a layer of silver light on the card faces, indicating rare silver cards. However, the inner circle was currently gray, clearly not meeting the unlocking conditions for some reason.
Brendel shifted his gaze back to the outer layer, scanning carefully for the card he believed was the best, which was the earth element card ‘Bleeding Altar’ located at true north.
Bleeding Altar
(Wolf’s Den III)
25 Earth, 200 Mana
[Barrier – Lair]
You can sacrifice five gray creatures to summon the Earth Dragon Voltus into play (Creature – Dragon/Dragonkin, Level 50 Boss).
Whether Voltus dies or the barrier is destroyed, this card will enter the graveyard.
While Voltus is in play, you must sacrifice a gray creature each day to maintain it.
‘Not far away, a low rumble echoed from the cave—’
Another card caught his attention as well:
Gem Plain
(Wonders of the World VI)
[Special Land – Plain]
Tapped, generate 2 Light into your elemental pool.
Tapped, pay 2 Light to gain 20 Wealth.
‘No one knows what kind of natural gifts lie beneath the grasslands’
This card attracted Brendel even more than the first one, as both light elements and wealth were urgently needed resources for him. Especially the former, for which he had no supplementary means; instead, he had a large number of cards that required light elements to deploy.
For example, Golden Banner (5 Light), Blade of White Sun (5 Light), Holy Archangel (5 Light), and the Holy Archangel required an additional maintenance cost for each day it remained in play.
Since Brendel worked part-time as an Elementalist and gained light elemental pools on the night of the Battle of Firburh, he had been using that limited resource as frugally as possible, but now he had only six or seven points left.
If he obtained this card, it would completely change his dire situation; the contrast between one-time expenditure and sustainable use was clear to anyone.
Wealth’s role was even more crucial and didn’t need to be reiterated.
In fact, Brendel would find that he was not just lacking in wealth and light elements. If he carefully examined all the resources he had as a traveling mage, he would realize that his situation as a traveling mage was somewhat misrepresented.
He had a total of 19 cards in hand, including event cards that had already been used—Wolf’s Den.
Among them, there were four treasure cards, Holy Sword, Golden Banner, Silver Colt, and Eternal Sphere.
Five creature cards, Highland Retainer, Wind Elemental Spider, Mercenary of Lubis, Unicorn Knight, and Holy Archangel.
One resource card, Prosperous Gold Mine.
Three spell cards, Energy Drain, Blade of White Sun, and Galloping Charge.
Five land cards, Sacred Tree Secret Land, Root Marsh, Market of Loshar, Storm Nest, and Ember Volcano.
One event card, Wolf’s Den.
Nineteen cards, not even reaching half of a deck. According to Tumen, a deck must have at least over forty cards to be called a card set, and only such a set could be freely switched in practical combat.
In other words, if this was not Brendel’s first deck, he wouldn’t even meet the basic qualification of having forty cards. In other words, he was like a wizard apprentice—an existence like him could at most be considered an unofficial traveling mage apprentice.
Theoretically, his five land cards could provide him with 2 Nature, 1 Water, 1 Dark, 1 Earth, 2 Wind, and 1 Fire each day, and in addition, he would receive an extra 1 Water, 1 Dark, 1 Wind, and 1 Fire each week.
But in fact, because the Prosperous Gold Mine was attached to the Sacred Tree Secret Land, to ensure the normal operation of the gold mine and maintain the more important resource of ‘wealth’—the Sacred Tree Secret Land card hadn’t operated most of the time, yielding at best 1 point of water element per week.
Fortunately, the only water element card he had was Charles, and he lacked green cards, so at least he wouldn’t feel very challenged for the time being. But according to Tumen, natural cards had the highest quality summoning creatures among all cards, and Brendel understood that he would eventually face this issue.
Looking at his financial income, he had the Market of Loshar and the Prosperous Gold Mine, which generated 8 wealth and 4 wealth respectively, totaling 12 wealth/day.
But he had to pay for:
The maintenance cost of the Unicorn Knight card, 6 wealth, 1 Dark/day.
Luca’s Mercenary, 2 wealth/day.
Highland Retainer, 1 Earth/day.
Holy Archangel, 1 Light/day.
This shows that under normal circumstances, Brendel’s dark elements and earth elements were essentially equivalent to having no income daily.
The dark elements were manageable since Medisa generally couldn’t enter the graveyard. But the earth elements were a necessary consumption for Brendel’s other powerful card combination ‘Wind Elemental Spider – Sacred Sword Technique’, and this consumption was not negligible. Often, half a month’s supply was just enough for one battle.
To save on earth elements, Brendel preferred to return Charles to his deck each day and recast him, because summoning Highland Retainer only required 1 Water, but maintaining Highland Retainer required 1 Earth.
But this approach also had its downsides; firstly, the daily 1 Prestige provided by Highland Retainer couldn’t be obtained. Secondly, Brendel’s water element stock was gradually diminishing, and his behavior of relying on past resources would soon face the crisis of an elemental pool running dry.
This situation of robbing Peter to pay Paul made Brendel feel that he was hardly a qualified traveling mage. Before this, he had never considered the profession as his greatest reliance; of course, it was more than enough as an additional support.
However, Brendel had a faint sense of the latent power of being a traveling mage; he thought that perhaps this profession might one day bring him a huge surprise, even become a means of survival. But he also understood that it required a larger card set to support it.
This process would be very long, but the prospects it presented were tempting. Therefore, when Brendel saw that roulette, he couldn’t help but say, “Interesting—”
He eagerly tapped his finger on the light screen, hoping to obtain the card he desired, and the roulette immediately began to spin. Brendel’s gaze was tense and unmoving. About a few seconds later, the pointer slowed down; it first passed over Gem Plain, causing Brendel’s heart to tighten slightly with disappointment, but soon he saw the pointer approaching north.
At that moment, silence fell in the arena, and everyone saw Brendel standing motionless, frowning, gazing into the infinite distance ahead.
“Lord?” Medisa asked quietly, tilting her head.
But Brendel was oblivious; he saw the pointer slide past the ‘Bleeding Altar,’ and couldn’t help but shout inwardly, “Stop! Stop!”
However, that disobedient pointer finally slipped just a bit, only a smidge, but the card face changed its appearance:
Fireclaw Spearman
(Flame Tribe II)
15 Fire
[Creature – Fireclaw Lizardman/Warrior, Level 27 Creature]
Belligerent.
Place a squad of Fireclaw Spearmen into play.
While Fireclaw Spearmen are in play, pay 5 wealth daily.
‘There’s the scent of enemies in the flames—’
“Lady Martha, don’t do this!” Brendel internally yelled in frustration, but he did not show this frustration outwardly. Instead, he watched as the roulette instantly vanished, and a fiery red card floated down from the air into his hand.
Brendel looked at the card, which depicted a lizardman warrior; however, unlike the lizardmen of Vaunte, these red-scaled lizardmen were clearly much more robust, dressed in simple metal armor, with two long spears slung over their backs and at their waists.
What caught Brendel’s attention was the golden rhombus-shaped pupils of these lizardmen. Among the reptiles of Vaunte, having golden pupils was an indicator of dragon bl**d, and a close bloodline at that.
It seemed that these so-called Fireclaw Lizardmen had a combat power only at the level of peak Black Iron, but their origins were not simple— in other words, they came from a wealthy lineage.
Thus, the ‘belligerent’ trait on the card became easier to understand; dragons were famously belligerent— and Brendel didn’t know much, but this particular trait was somewhat familiar to him; he knew that some monsters in the Amber Sword had a ‘belligerent’ attribute, meaning that this creature would gain morale bonuses once they initiated an attack or were injured.
This morale boost was not easy to quantify in statistics, but Brendel’s rough estimation was that each 1 point of morale increase roughly corresponded to a 10% boost in overall combat power.
This buff, on balance, was quite advantageous.
But this card left Brendel feeling somewhat uneasy; he felt that what he needed were resource cards, not creature cards. Not to mention that the summoning cost of the Fireclaw Spearmen was as high as 15 Fire, and the maintenance cost was approaching that of the Unicorn Knight, yet this card was inferior to the latter in any regard.
He held the card and turned it over and over, and only when he saw the phrase ‘Place a squad of Fireclaw Spearmen into play’ did he feel a bit more at ease; according to Madara’s calculations, a squad consisted of thirty members, while Erluin had a hundred members. He wasn’t sure how many of these fire lizards were in a squad, but Brendel felt they shouldn’t be too disappointing.
When this card reached his hand, it was not unlocked. The young man made a small gesture to make it disappear from his hand and enter his deck instead. This scene was naturally seen by Medisa and the nearby youths, but Kuran, who was facing away from him, did not notice this small action.
“Lord?” Medisa asked, as she herself summoned creatures, but she didn’t understand why Brendel had obtained a card out of thin air.
Brendel then came back to his senses and quickly replied, “It’s just a reward; let’s continue challenging.”
“Do we still need to continue the challenge?” The silver elf princess was taken aback.
Brendel glanced at the longsword in the center of the arena and nodded. Ever since losing the Lance of Radiance, he had been yearning to find a suitable weapon again; this chance, he definitely wouldn’t want to miss.
Moreover, the Earth Sword was indeed enough to stir one’s heart.
Therefore, when the large voice echoed for the third time in the arena—“Mortal, do you wish to continue your challenge?”—Brendel didn’t hesitate to nod.
“I wish to proceed with the advancement challenge,” the young man replied while looking at the Earth Sword inscribed on the stone tablet.
A hush fell over the arena.
Then, amidst the astonished gazes of everyone, a massive cage slowly ascended from the other side of the sandy ground. The giant monster within the cage caused everyone to instinctively close their mouths—
It was a dragon.
……
(PS. Please support!
By the way, Chen Kaige is a prophetic emperor! 1. In “The Promise,” Man Shen tells Qingcheng (Zhang Bozhi) that you will never obtain true love; even if you do, you will lose it immediately! 2. Wu Huan (Xie Tingfeng) tells Qingcheng (Zhang Bozhi): You ruined my chance to be a good person! 3. Qingcheng (Zhang Bozhi) tells a hundred thousand soldiers: “Do you want to see me take off my clothes? Now billions worldwide have seen it! 4. Chen Kaige has said about “The Promise” that you may not understand it now, but you will in the future………) (To be continued, for more chapters and to support the author, please log in and support official reading!)
