The Card Apprentice

“Catch up, everyone. Let’s go!” The card artisan in the lead kept reminding his comrades while cursing to himself about that damned team they were targeting. Their current situation was pretty messed up, with one of their comrades already breaking out into a low-grade fever. Another had been pricked by some unknown thorns, and now his entire arm was swelling up like a pig’s foot. But what calmed him somewhat was that the time for the newly dispatched card artisans to arrive was getting closer and closer.

In his walking until then, he’d felt some unspeakable hunch that was becoming more intense. If the orders from above hadn’t been on pain of death, he would have turned around earlier. He knew what it meant to disobey a mortal order, which was something he would never allow. If he were to die on the job, his family would get a secure placement and spend a pretty good life. His children would also get a proper education.

But if he were to disobey an order, he would be kicked off the team with no assets. For someone like him with a wife and kids, that would be the worst thing that could happen.

His heart was both conflicted and thankful. It was fortunate that his normal work was to track in the city. If his ordinary work was to be active in the jungle, just thinking about it made him scared. If he had studied jungle maneuvers, however, he wouldn’t have been so passive.

Fortunately, his adversary was a large troop. He didn’t need to expend a lot of energy finding the tracks of a few hundred people. They hadn’t lost the trail up until then, which made him feel pretty good. It was just that they would be able to leave the damned jungle after a few more hours.

Parting the brambles in front of them, his face became covered in a mess of scratches.

His target had just passed by there. The lead card artisan looked around on alert and found nothing strange. He signaled his comrades to catch up. There wasn’t much time left, and he didn’t want anything to happen during that critical period.

It was so quiet in the forest that a baby could sleep there, with only the sound of the occasional leaf rustling.

One of the card artisans couldn’t help his curiosity. “Tell me, Chief, what are these guys really doing drilling into the woods? Why are those upstairs so concerned about them?”

The one in the lead shook his head. “I don’t know. That troop is a little strange. As for those upstairs, that’s not something for us to ask about. If you don’t watch your mouth, Old Huang, something might happen someday.”

Old Huang was abruptly embarrassed. “Sometimes I talk too much, Chief; don’t take it to heart. But this time, we’re really stuck in it to put up with such a job. It’s no good. I’ll have to take a good rest when I get back. Going along like this will kill a person sooner or later!”

The look on the one in the lead shifted, and he yelled, “Shut your mouth! What’s not going to die, Old Huang? Don’t we have enough bad luck?”

The rest of their comrades were looking pretty bad. Old Huang knew he’d spoken badly, and he shut his mouth. Everyone moved ahead in silence with what Old Huang just said enshrouding their feelings like a gloomy haze they couldn’t get rid of.

Suddenly, Old Huang plopped down on the ground.

At first, no one paid any attention; falling in the woods was pretty common as far as they were concerned. After two or three minutes, however, when Old Huang still hadn’t gotten up, everyone didn’t feel so hot.

“Old Huang! Old Huang!” The expression on the card artisan in the lead changed, and he couldn’t help but shout. He then felt a sudden cramp in his heart and couldn’t get a single breath out. His legs went soft as he knelt to the ground.

The scene in front of him became gradually blurred, and right in that blurry scene, his own comrades seemed to be falling down one by one. He was alarmed and wanted to shout out, but he was swallowed up by darkness and lost consciousness.

After an hour, a team of 20 card artisans suddenly appeared not far from where Old Huang and the rest had fallen. The lead card artisan signaled, and all of the card artisans immediately knew to raise their energy cloaks.

“There is a toxic miasma here. Be careful.” The lead card artisan was speaking in a low voice. Everyone immediately propped up their energy cloaks and started to advance along the trail rapidly.

They discovered the fallen Old Huang and the rest. All of their faces turned serious, and one of them lowered himself to carefully examine the corpses, which had already started to blacken. “They died in a miasma, Captain. About an hour ago.”

Everyone looked a little worse off. If they had only been an hour quicker, nothing would have happened to their comrades.

The captain looked over everyone and calmly said, “We did our best. This was our top speed, and you can have clear consciences. Let’s go finish the job. That would be the best way to comfort them.”

The dark looks on those card artisans’ faces disappeared, and they became determined once again. The speed of the line picked up.

Chen Mu and his men also ran into some trouble.

They’d encountered a pack of Bosnian wolves numbering 700 or 800. To run into such a large-scale wolf pack in the Outer Reaches was a one-time thing not often seen. Those who had never experienced battle, like Xi Ping, Sue Lochiro, and Ru Qiu, were all pallid as they looked in terror at the wolf pack in front of them.

“My old friends!” Bogner muttered in a low voice so no one could hear it. His gaze suddenly made contact with those 400 card artisans, who were showing faint signs of the commotion of panic.

Any look of sadness in his eyes disappeared as a shower of fire exploded in them. “A**holes! You heard of pigs! Get in formation! Do you still f***ing need me to show you how?”

Bogner’s growl rolled like thunder over the entire camp! Even Chen Mu was a little surprised as he watched him, muttering to himself that it looked like the size of a voice wasn’t related to perception.

The roar was clearly quite effective. The card artisans had been experiencing strict training for a while. It was drilled into their bones and had become something instinctual. But they had never seen such a battle and were immediately flustered. Bogner’s growl had come at just the right time, rescuing them from their panic.

Jiang Liang’s reaction was the quickest. His small group was the first to get into formation and activate their apparatuses. Looking over his chaotic comrades, he was quick to make a decision. “Everyone pay attention; our objective is in front of us at 30 degrees. Fire!”

Neat, sharp whistles suddenly sounded out. The 25 fighting units could shoot off six energy shuttles per second, and within one second there were 150 of them. It was like a canopy of raining shuttles, which accurately hit their targets.

Jiang Liang had picked out the foremost part of the pack, needing to buy some time for his comrades to help them finish their adjustments. The raging pack of wolves was like it had run headlong into a solid shoal of rock.

The scene was spectacular!

More than 100 energy shuttles were triangulated in! The wolf pack suddenly splashed sprays of blood as though waves were crashing onto a reef. It was both sad and beautiful.

If one were looking on from above, one would find that the wolf pack had suddenly collapsed over a large area. The attack of Jiang Liang and the rest killed nearly 70 or 80 Bosnian wolves. The energy shuttles approached a damage value of 1,000, doubtlessly an embodiment of their power. The defensive performance of the Bosnian wolves’ outstanding pelts in front of the energy shuttles was nothing. Quite a few of the energy shuttles even penetrated several wolves.

If it weren’t that the raw recruits were so nervous, that round of attack wouldn’t have ended with just those few. The attack wave included a few units that were too nervous; they had some issues with the coordination among the three of them. They didn’t fire off any energy shuttles.

The deficiencies and weaknesses of the novices’ experience was undoubtedly on display. Most of the card artisans unconsciously aimed at the forward-most wolves, wasting a lot of firepower.

Those few pitiful Bosnian wolves were shot into honeycombs. The air was filled with the heavy smell of blood!

The novice card artisans were provoked by the smell of blood, and they displayed utterly different reactions. Some were like Jiang Liang, whose eyes were red with excitement. But most of the card artisans had turned white, with no blood in their faces and some even about to vomit.

Although the attack was terrible to Bogner, it did stir their low morale quite a bit. The novices had found out that the wolf pack wasn’t as scary as they had imagined. Even though their faces had turned pallid, and their limbs were shaking, in the end they’d dialed in their formation.

However, the smell of blood had also provoked the wolf pack.

The pack suddenly started howling to the sky, gathering into a torrent and destroying the novices’ fragile spirit. They also seemed to be paying attention to the novices’ panicked expressions as they all bowed their bodies to spring!

The scene of several hundred wolves bounding into a run utterly shattered their courage. The earth was shaking, and in the blood-gorged eyes of the wolves were reflected back the novice card artisans’ pallid faces.

“They are all here right in front of us. Fire!” Jiang Liang’s command rescued them again, and the other few team leaders sounded the order to attack as though they had been aroused from a dream!

Shuttles were flying like a tapestry—sharp and unstoppable! The wolf pack was rolling in like thunder!

The two torrents hit head-on, and the desperation of the scene froze Chen Mu as he watched. He had experienced countless battles, but he had never encountered such a grand scene as that one.

The fleshy dog in Wei-ah’s hands swept away his laziness for the first time and got really excited. He was struggling in Wei-ah’s arms, where he began to howl madly, loud and clear. The face, which was ordinarily so covered in flesh that you couldn’t discern his five orifices, had now stretched out into a strangely sinister rage!

Wei-ah gave him a look and shook the hand that was holding him by the neck twice, which immediately softened the fleshy dog, his bones having nearly been shaken out.

The fleshy dog’s eyes were looking at Wei-ah meekly as he barked through tears. Wei-ah didn’t understand him. He retracted his gaze, turning his attention back to the battle.