Chimera Summoner: A Deckbuilding LitRPG, page 22
“Genius and dangerous in equal measure.”
The set of three goblins would increase Gareth’s odds of casting Chimera Creation drastically. If he didn’t draw the spell in his opening hand then he could simply cast a Goblin Spell Forger and fetch it. Discarding one of his shields was a significant cost, discard shields went to his discard pile rather than being available to reuse over and over. Gareth’s Shieldwall feat went a long way to helping soothe that pain, giving him the option of at least increasing his shield at the cost of cards from his opening hand.
“You have anything else like these? Goblins I mean?”
“Possibly, I’ll have to take a look at the stock out the back. Not everything is on display. Honestly, I was considering moving those cards to boxes, I didn’t think anyone would ever want them. Are you a goblin user?”
“Yeah,” Gareth said. “I am.” It seemed like the bizarre stigma against goblins crossed borders. “From your tone, I can tell you think they’re bad. They aren’t, it’s just no one has ever managed to make them work.”
“I honestly didn’t think anyone even got them as an affinity. I’ve never come across a duellist with them.”
“Well, go in the back and dig out what you have, and you might see them in the tournament,” Gareth said with a smile, hoping the expression would translate across. “In the meantime, I’ll have a word with my friends here, see what they want and if there’s cards we want to offer up in trade.”
Shakir bowed slightly and then vanished through a stone door behind the counter.
“Do we actually want to trade anything to him?” Sarkuran said, surprised at Gareth’s statement. “He just sold you an entire playset of a card for essentially nothing. He doesn’t know we’ve got thousands of those coins. I feel confident we could buy anything we wanted.”
“It’s about the, oh what’s the word? Optics! That’s it,” Gareth said, snapping his fingers as the word came to him. “If he sees us buying big swathes of his stock with coins we have a problem, he’ll just jack up the prices because he knows we can afford it. You’ve got to remember this is the only card merchant who is willing to deal with us if Mariska can be trusted.” Gareth pulled the list of addresses from his pocket and waved it at Sarkuran to make his point. Now they knew how to move between floors finding the store had been easy, the address listing the exact corridor and doorway they needed.
“So, we trade him a card we don’t have a use for to hide the extent of our wealth to our benefit.” Sarkuran was grinning wide, a look that was more sinister than friendly. “You know, you can be ruthlessly devious at times, Gareth. I’m very proud of you.”
“We should get rid of the ones we got from beating those bugs,” Imelda suggested, the wyrmkin struggling to speak from the other side of the store whilst keeping her voice low enough that Shakir couldn’t hear her. “We don’t need any of those.”
“Not quite,” Gareth said. “I’ve got my eye on those Return from Beyond spells. I’ve got a plan for those, hopefully. But the two bug cards, yeah sure. None of you wants them, right?” It was less of a suggestion than it seemed. “Try and choose more than you actually want, throw in a couple of cards that aren’t really any good for you. That way you’ve got some leeway when he inevitably counteroffers.”
“Smart,” Magda said. “I didn’t think of that.”
The door behind the counter creaked as Shakir returned, a grip of cards clutched in his hands. He approached the desk and placed them down, spreading them apart with a wave of his hand.
“There we go, found them. I trust these might prove useful to you?” The golden said, gesturing at the dusty selection.
Goblin Necromancer
Monster- Goblin/Undead
Mana Cost: 4
Attack rating: 200 Defence rating:150 Hit points:1
Effect: Hodgepodge resurrection – When you summon this monster you may discard two cards from your hand. If you do choose one monster in your discard pile and summon it without paying mana or any additional costs.
“An…attempt was made.”
Goblin Desert-Runner
Monster – Goblin
Mana Cost: 5
Attack Rating: 400 Defence rating:150 Hit points:1
Effect: Mounted - When this monster is summoned place a mounted token on it. Monsters with mounted tokens on them get one hundred additional attack and defence rating. When a monster with a mounted token would take damage, instead remove the mounted token. Cross the Desert – When this monster attacks you may discard its mounted token to attack your opponent directly.
“The real question is where exactly it got that camel from?”
There were two copies of Goblin Desert Runner and one copy of Goblin Necromancer. Gareth was definitely interested in both. The desert-runner was the less impressive of the two cards, but still useful. Mounted was a good ability and having the option to ditch the token and swing in for a direct hit was a powerful one, easily something that could pull out a win through a stalled board state.
The necromancer was the exact thing Gareth was looking for. He had a plan for his deck, a drastic change from his tactics so far, and the necromancer fitted perfectly. He knew he had to have it as soon as he read its ability. Whilst there was only the one available, one was all Gareth would need if things worked the way he assumed they would.
“I’ll take the lot. What do you want for them?” Gareth said, trying his hardest to hide his excitement.
“Oh, say ten of those coins you’ve got,” Shakir said.
“Ten? You just traded me three cards for two.”
“Yes, but that was before I knew you were a goblin deck user. Now I know you need them the price has increased. Supply and demand, you know? I have the supply, so I demand the coin.”
Gareth hated to admit it, but he knew Shakir was right. Ten coins wasn’t really anything for Gareth, not with the vast sums they had collected from the repository, but it was the principle of the thing. He liked to think of himself as a shrewd trader and paying out more than he wanted to didn’t sit right with Gareth. Back on Earth trades tended to be arbitrated by online prices, each person making sure they were giving and receiving an equal sum. Frequently trades on one side were padded out by cards you didn’t need with the intent to trade them on later, often known just as “value”. The trick was to grab cards you thought were going to go up in price in the future to grow your portfolio. Some people went as far as to treat their trade binders like an investment, as though they were stocks and shares.
“Well, before you decide my friends have some cards they want to get,” Gareth said, his eyes glazing over as he opened a menu. Golden light filled his hand, the two skitherak cards he wanted to trade away taking shape in his hand. “And we’ve got some cards you might be interested in, straight from another land. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like these.” He slapped the two cards down on the counter and pushed them across so Shakir could see them.
“Ah, now these are the kind of things I’m looking for. There are people who collect objects from outside the kingdom, especially from the fleshy ones. Some cards straight from your hands should fetch a high price.”
“Oh, really?”
“Uh, well, not that high,” Shakir muttered, realising he had said too much. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I mean only the Pharaoh can know the minds of others and finding the right collector is some serious work…”
“Nice try. What was it you said? Supply and demand?”
“You fleshies might be dirty, but you’re not stupid,” Shakir said, letting out a rumbling chuckle. “If you ever decide to retire from duelling, I’ve got a job for you here. Might need to get you some kind of protective outfit, but you can deal as well as any merchant I’ve ever met.”
“Thanks,” Gareth said, choosing to accept the compliment. “Now. Let’s see what my friends want and go from there?”
***
Gareth sat with his back to the wall, his legs stretched out on his bedroll. Mariska had listed “lodgings” on her list of addresses, but it hadn’t been the inn that Gareth had expected. Instead, it had simply been an empty warehouse, the guard at the front desk left with instructions to let the party in, despite the golden’s obvious disgust. In hindsight it was obvious no proper tavern would let them inside, their very presence considered corrupting as if Gareth was constantly unleashing tidal waves of filth. He wondered what the Golden would make of some of the monsters he had encountered. The sight of a nightmare might be too much for them, the creatures’ physical forms unholy twisted abominations of pulsating skin and bone.
The thought of nightmares brought Gareth’s mind back to Jack, his rival off in Wildermount. Whilst Gareth had no great love for Jack, he was hoping the undead using duellist returned in one piece. They would need to go to Wildermount eventually, the presence of a teleport platform meant there had to be a Godsword nearby and knowing what exactly was happening there would make that task a lot easier. Gareth wasn’t relishing seeing what he was certain were ruins, he had lived in Wildermount for just a few months, but it had felt like home. He assumed that fighting to defend it during the siege had something to do with that. Laying your life on the line to protect a place was a good way to forge an instant connection.
The others had gone to sleep, the stresses of exploring a place where everyone seemed to hate you tiring. Gareth didn’t blame them for wanting to catch what rest they could, especially with the tournament coming up in a few days’ time. Grabbing even a little bit of sleep was a smart idea, the pyramid wasn’t exactly designed to accommodate their kind. Even if they had found a tavern willing to take them it wouldn’t have served any food or drink and Gareth found that he was yet again grateful for Imelda’s fastidiousness when it came to packing supplies.
The only other person still awake was Tax, the spider sitting in the opposite corner. She was preoccupied with the stack of leaves that acted as a proxy for her deck. She had them laid out before her, diligently studying the effects and abilities of all her cards.
Like the others, she was registered to take part in the upcoming celebrations, but unlike most of the party had ended up in a separate contest entirely. The tournament had been separated into divisions based on the number of cards a duellist had in their deck. Forty or more meant they went into the main event whilst duellists with less than that had been placed into an amateur’s division. Wildermount had imposed similar restrictions when it had run its tournament, the requirements forcing Gareth and his friends to expand the size of their decks despite doing so being strictly worse in the long run. At least the Golden Lands allowed for those without the required number rather than outright refusing them as Wildermount would do. It meant Tax had a good shot at earning some much-needed experience points.
Gareth opened his menu, examining the current contents of his deck.
Puny Goblin x 3
Goblin Soldier x3
Goblin Den Mother x3
Goblin Battlemaster x2
Goblin Shield Bearer x1
Goblin Catapult x1
Lightning Blast x3
Goblin War Banner x 3
Goblin Ancient Rider x 1
Goblin Field Doctor x 1
Chain Lightning x 1
Open the Warrens x 3
Zollof, The Goblin King x 1
Overconfident Goblin x 3
Goblin Tinkerer x 3
Helm of leadership x 1
Fraternal Goblin x 3
Hobgoblin Brute x 1
Chimera Creation x 3
Total cards 40/42. Total mana Cost 84/85.
Extra Deck
Goblin Riders x 1
Goblin Royal Procession x 1
Total cards 2/14.
Adding in the Chimera Creation spells had brought Gareth right up alongside the mana limit of his deck. That was frustrating, all his new cards were on the more expensive side and that meant either cutting other valuable cards or waiting until he gained a level and could spare the skill points. He took note that the extra deck had no mana restriction, thankfully, though it did have a maximum of fourteen cards with no clear way of increasing that amount.
There was one easy swap Gareth could make. He removed the Goblin Shield Bearer and added in one of his newly acquired Goblin Spell Forger. The cards cost the same mana wise, so it kept the eighty-four mana spent total. After some thought Gareth removed the Goblin Ancient Rider and his Goblin Field doctor as well, putting the last two copies of the spell-forger into his deck. That brought him exactly to eighty-five mana spent but it would make his plan of casting Chimera Creation much more consistent.
Hesitantly he removed one copy of open the warrens. The card was excellent, especially when combined with Gareth’s Spell Master feat, but doing that did come with a hefty cost. Gareth knew his deck was shifting from the aggressive deck it had been into something that was based around a specific combination he had in mind and Open the Warrens simply didn’t directly help that plan. He put in a Goblin Necromancer in its place, the card a key component to Gareth’s plan.
For now, the Goblin Desert-Runner would have to wait, it simply cost too much and Gareth didn’t want to cut any more of his most powerful cards. He examined his new decklist one last time before closing the menu.
Puny Goblin x 3
Goblin Soldier x3
Goblin Den Mother x3
Goblin Battlemaster x2
Goblin Catapult x1
Lightning Blast x3
Goblin War Banner x 3
Goblin Necromancer x 1
Chain Lightning x 1
Open the Warrens x 2
Zollof, The Goblin King x 1
Overconfident Goblin x 3
Goblin Tinkerer x 3
Helm of leadership x 1
Fraternal Goblin x 3
Hobgoblin Brute x 1
Chimera Creation x 3
Goblin Spell-Forger x 3
Total cards 40/42. Total mana Cost 85/85.
Extra Deck
Goblin Riders x 1
Goblin Royal Procession x 1
Total cards 2/14.
Gareth was happy with the changes. Now all he had to do was test them in a duel. If he was right, he would be able to set up an incredibly powerful board state off the back of a single Chimera Creation. The combo was a simple one, in theory anyway. There were a few variations, but the basic gist of his plan was predicated on the fact that the components of a Chimera monster sat beneath it. The ideal plan would be to summon a Goblin Rider’s, placing a Goblin spell-forger beneath it, activating its ability to place a mounted token onto it and dropping the spell-forger into the discard pile. From there Gareth could use the necromancer to return the spell-forger to play, reactivate its ability and search up another Chimera Creation to then throw out the Goblin Royal Procession. Only having one necromancer was a problem, but Gareth planned on adding the Return from Beyond spell to his deck once he could afford its high mana cost. In the meantime, he could use the ever-useful Goblin Den Mother to add the necromancer to his hand.
The combo also worked the other way around, using the royal procession to play out a whole host of goblins at once and triggering the various search abilities to refill Gareth’s hand. Then, if the procession died, he could bring Zollof back into the fight and keep his advantage.
At least, that was the theory anyway. Back on Earth, Gareth could have tested the plan against whatever the current top tournament decks were by just jumping online. The way decks worked on Acamida made things a lot trickier, there was simply no way of knowing what he would come up against. Of course, that had worked in his favour more than once. Being a goblin affinity duellist had caught people out and Gareth expected it to do so again.
He was satisfied with the changes, for now at least. With the brain itch that demanded he tinker with his deck soothed, Gareth laid back and let sleep take him.
Chapter Twenty
Something was wrong in the jungle. Henig didn’t know how he knew, it was a feeling, one that he would have attributed to his gut if he still had one. He had spent thousands of years staring out at the trees around him and now something in that endless sea of green had changed. It wasn’t like when the necrofungus had come creeping in, that had exuded strange but easily sensible mana. No, what he was feeling was more subtle, like something had upset the delicate balance of the ancients. It put Henig on edge, whilst the others were gone, he was the only duellist available and whilst Luthor would no doubt keep the refugees safe there was always the chance Henig might be called to help protect the people.
Things had been so much simpler when the barriers of the tower were working. The arcane aura kept anything that could be dangerous away. There had been the rather more dramatic magical barrier that the tower could use, in theory, but the first time that it been called into use it had failed, the thousands of years of wear rendering the runic matrix fragile. Thankfully the monster it had been activated to keep out had proven to be the friendly Luthor. Henig hated to think what would have happened if the dragon had been hostile.
As he looked out over the jungle Henig’s bony fingers dropped to the lid of his deck box. He was certain now; he could see trees swaying where massive predatory ancients stumbled through them. Something had to be upsetting them to force the kind of movement he was seeing. Someone would have to investigate. Mavis and her guards could go alone, but Henig knew that meant he would be denying them arcane support he stayed at the tower and the presence of a duellist could be vital to their survival, there was no telling what was happening amongst the trees after all.
If he was being honest with himself, Henig was afraid. He had spent thousands of years inside the tower. It was more than it simply being his home, it was a part of him, his soul bound to the structure. The tower was an extension of himself, and Henig didn’t know what would happen if he ventured too far from it. It was what had prevented him from exploring the repository centuries ago, or even culling the numbers of ancients in the immediate vicinity. Now his goddess had returned and his deck and been untangled from powering the arcane trials of the tower there wasn’t anything from him testing the limits of his range, and yet Henig simply hadn’t.
