The Card Apprentice

“What card set it this?” Bogner asked with a lot of curiosity.

“I haven’t come up with a name for it.” As usual, Chen Mu’s response was consistent with his style. He then gave the two cards to two among the three card artisans, giving them a few instructions in a low voice.

The two understood, and they ran through them for a few minutes before giving the signal that they could begin. Bogner’s spirits were quickly aroused. He was quite curious about what mysteries those two fiery red cards would reveal.

The two card artisans positioned themselves with one in front and one behind. The one in front gave out a shout, and with no visible move, there were suddenly countless thumb-sized flames floating in the air. The flames were completely different from ordinary flames, having a layer of deep blue inside them, while the outer layer was a vibrant red. Each ball of flame floated in midair, jumping around in an orderly fashion. From a distance, they looked so dense there seemed to be no fewer than several thousand, like a scary swarm of intersecting red and blue balls.

Bogner looked shocked. He had been about to open his mouth when he then saw the card artisan in front of him stretch out his right hand and lightly push it forward.

Weng!

Thousands of streams of alternating red and blue afterglow were as dense as rain, blanketing the earth and sky as they went roaring toward the target. Those several thousand balls of fire covered a huge area, enshrouding all the targets in the training space.

The popping was incessant.

The alternating blue and red glowing streams penetrated the targets easily. The most hair-raising thing was that when the fiery balls fell to the ground, they weren’t extinguished but kept on burning.

In an instant, the training space was filled with the acrid smell of smoke. Chen Mu immediately turned on the air circulation system, and the smoky smell disappeared after a few minutes. Looking back at the floor of the training space, it was covered with thumb-sized pits. The targets had been blown into sieves.

Bogner looked dazed.

Chen Mu introduced the card. “The inspiration for this card came from Fiery Raining Sand and Faya’s card appliance. I think we really need to be able to attack in a range, and we also need force suppression, so I designed this card. It can put out 1,024 little balls of fire at the same time, which can be used for force suppression with pretty good results. In order to increase the power of the fireballs, I redesigned the energy composition. The lethal power of the flames in the new composition isn’t great, but it does have one special quality, which is that it can powerfully extract energy for a source of combustion. If it were to fall onto our adversary’s energy cloaks, it would pump up all the energy in its vicinity and turn it into its own source of combustion. It would then expand in volume to a certain extent, which would thin the local area of the adversary’s energy cloak, thus speeding up its penetration of the energy cloak.”

“That… So powerful?” Bogner asked with a trembling voice as he swallowed hard.

“It’s pretty good.” Chen Mu didn’t even seem to notice as he continued the introduction with his usual expression. “Since it forms an attack over a range, it doesn’t have too many demands for accuracy, so I designed them all to be used by two-man groups. We can increase the flexibility of each small group that way. But the card set’s weakness is also obvious. There’s only one—it’s very energy-intensive. I tried it with a three-star power card, and it would only allow a single shot at full power. With a four-star power card, it could fire off four rounds. We won’t even consider a five-star power card for the time being.”

Bogner finally recovered some of his cool. He had just been scared to death by that card. The more than 1,000 balls of fire it would shoot out could blanket a large range. What if it were emitted by 100 teams? That would be 100,000 balls of fire covering a rather massive scope.

Such a large scope of fire had always been the bane of card artisans who were good at dodging, but it had never been much use for those who were good at defense. Although a range of attack could cover a large scope, the individual firepower wasn’t enough to penetrate the card artisans’ defensive cloaks.

However, if it was really the way the boss said it was, those fiery balls could abruptly change that situation to become the true nemesis of energy cloaks!

But when Chen Mu told of the card’s weakness, Bogner breathed a sigh of relief. If such a powerful card were to have no weaknesses, he would have been gripped with fear. After his sigh of relief, though, his heart abruptly contracted again. A three-star power card only giving it a single shot would mean the card artisans would have to pair it with a four-star power card during a battle! That was a shocking rate of consumption! If you were to add to that the normal training consumption…

No matter how much firepower there was each time it was shot off, it was simply shooting off Oudi! A single four-star power card was 150,000 Oudi and would only make four shots. That was to say it would shoot off upward of 20,000 units of power. Converting that to Oudi, every time they were fired, it would be equivalent to 37,500 Oudi. If that wasn’t shooting off Oudi, what was?

Thinking it over, if there were 100 small groups in a battle, every volley would be 3.75 million Oudi! Ten volleys would then be 37.5 million Oudi! For training, if a group of card artisans were to shoot ten times per day, it would come out to…

Bogner kept desperately swallowing as he counted on his fingers, his scalp having gone numb. He couldn’t hide the sneer on his face. Nothing was perfect those days, after all. Regardless, that card set’s power gave them all a rush of excitement, and Bogner could only say it was awe-inspiring. “It’s a great card, after all! Why don’t I name this one, Boss?”

“Oh, all right,” Chen Mu said indifferently.

The set of cards was finally named the Oudi Burner, which profoundly expressed Bogner’s intense regret about the card. It already gave him a headache, and he was afraid that old thief Xi Ping was certainly going to be fighting him for his life!

Still, Chen Mu wasn’t finished with his show, and he brought out another set of cards. They were silvery-gray and had a complex, tangled pattern on their surface, which was rather eye-catching.

By that time, Bogner was feeling pretty conflicted. He was both scared and enraptured. While he hoped Chen Mu could pull out even stronger cards, he was also afraid he was going to pull out another money-burning card like the Oudi Burner.

However, Chen Mu wasn’t paying much attention to Bogner’s psychology, his two demonstrations having been rather thoroughly inspired and passionate. He was full of a sense of accomplishment looking at how outstanding those cards were—cards he had both designed and made. For any technician, such an achievement in the field of technology was its own greatest reward.

He then said enthusiastically, “This set of cards is in imitation of the Field of Snowflakes that Xiaobo grabbed last time, though I’ve made a lot of changes. This set requires three card artisans to use it, though it is simple to use. It can establish a belt of delay 15 meters in diameter. That belt of delay has no other use besides defense. Its mechanism is different from an energy cloak. Within the belt, the flow of time becomes utterly slow. Even that card set I just demonstrated, the, um, Oudi Burner, would have no way to break through it. This set is called the Ring of Sluggishness. It can provide an excellent defense for our team members, though it does have shortcomings. Once the delay belt is opened, those three card artisans can’t move, so it can only be used in positional warfare.”

Bogner’s eyes lit up, already pondering how to use the Ring of Sluggishness. Even though its shortcomings were perfectly obvious, he still thought it could play out huge value if used properly.

“Oh.” Chen Mu pulled out yet another set of purple cards. “There’s nothing much to say about this one. It’s about the same as the folding Yanbo card but with a little more power. It also requires three people to use. Mmmm, I had been thinking of using it against Faya’s bothersome shuttle cars, but you’ll have to see for yourselves how that would be done.”

Chen Mu said nothing more. He believed Bogner had more expertise and authority in that regard.

After introducing the cards, Chen Mu breathed a sigh of relief. Ru Qiu had already finished sorting through the cards he’d made, and they totaled more than 2,700, which filled Chen Mu’s heart with pride! Then, for the first time, he determined the name of that card set, calling it the Whorled Sniper Shuttle.

Bogner had been in a state of trance across several days. The cards Chen Mu had made shocked him as never before, making his heart itch unbearably but also presenting him with a huge challenge. The entirely new cards meant an entirely new battle style. Chen Mu had made quite a few different kinds that time, both in the cards’ distribution and the tactics that went along with them. Then, there was the matter of how to train with them and so forth. Even Jiang Liang remained sealed up with Bogner during that time as they carefully explored the issues.

Having solved the issue of cards for his subordinates, Chen Mu felt a lot of relief. Still, he had to consider his own cards. In the midst of the previous battle, his apparatus had been blown apart. The folding Yanbo card, the tailless shuttle card, and the big mudfish card had been inside it and were all destroyed. He would have to make entirely new cards.

But what kinds of cards should he make? A jet stream card was essential, and he couldn’t go without the powerful directional change function of the big mudfish card. By then, he had had a first glimpse of mid-level Token Theory, and he could already advance deeper layers of optimization for the Big Mudfish. He believed that after such optimization, it would have even more powerful capabilities.

Apart from that, he had to give a good deal of consideration to the two other cards.

He first had to match his battle style. A close-combat card should be a card that could be used when fighting almost in touch. It wouldn’t need much power, but the energy fluctuations would certainly have to be as small as possible. That would be the most crucial aspect. In that way, he could bring his cardless sect moves into play to the greatest extent.

He needed a remote card just the same. With pure close combat, once he was discovered, it would be easy for him to sink into a passive state. With no remote attack moves, he would always be subject to others. A remote card for him required high firepower, high accuracy, and low energy fluctuations. Even if the firing frequency was a little low, that would still be acceptable.

Chen Mu suddenly found that his own attack style tended in two extremes. But he still rather liked the kind of tactical variability of the sectional succession card. That wasn’t the style he was best at, though. Moreover, the Sectional Succession was rather eye-catching; if someone in the know where to pay attention to him using it, that would be disastrous for him.

Chen Mu fell into deep thought.