Chapter 13
SURELY THE NINE WISE MEN had cards, right? Mira turned away from the display, disheartened. She headed to a nearby shelf to find sealed packs. Each colorful pack had a two-hundred-ducat price tag attached.
“Oho. Now we’re talking…” Bewitched, she took a pack in hand. It had illustrations of the Three Great Kingdoms’ generals on it. In large text, the name of the game read LEGENDS OF ASTERIA. Below it was the subtitle THREE DIVINE HEROES.
The shelf was full of Legends of Asteria expansions. Each booster pack bore different subtitles, and she grinned as she read them.
They seem quite popular, too.
She turned over the pack and saw a basic description: BECOME A GOD AND CREATE YOUR OWN LEGEND WITH THE HEROES OF THIS WORLD! A touch bombastic, to be sure. It also noted that there were five card rarity levels. Mira put the pack back on the shelf as the expansion immediately next to it caught her eye: NOVA OF SORCERY. Crimson hair, a striking bosom, and provocative red eyes.
That’s Luminaria, I know it! Then does that mean…there’s a card for me?!
Hope rekindled, Mira took the pack to the counter and asked the employee, “Excuse me! Do you have a moment? I’d like to ask a question.”
The counter was covered in deck boxes and playmats. A woman sat and flipped lazily through a book, her long, graying hair and beautiful features rather muddied by her sleepy eyes. She looked like she’d just pulled a double shift.
“Yes?” The woman slotted a bookmark into her book and gazed straight at Mira. Her sleepy expression didn’t change much, but from the faint smile plastered on her face, it was clear that she was at least trying.
“Does this expansion have a Danblf card?” Mira asked, setting a booster pack on the counter.
“Danblf? He’s one of the Nine Wise Men, isn’t he? Yeah, he’d be in that one. Maybe in a couple of these others, too. Oh, but he’s really rare in all of them.” The clerk appeared to know her stuff. She grabbed two more booster packs and laid them next to the one Mira had brought up. Their subtitles were ROARING WINDS and HOUR OF TUMULT.
“Okay. Can I get fifty packs of each?” Mira asked, and began fishing around in her waist pouch.
The woman was shocked. Fifty packs of three expansions, at 200 ducats each—30,000 ducats in total. The only people she knew who shopped this extravagantly were adults addicted to card games or grandparents trying to spoil their grandkids.
Still, she replied with a professional, “ One moment,” took the packs from the shelf, and counted them out as she placed them on the counter. As long as Mira paid, the clerk wasn’t going to argue.
One hundred and fifty packs. The veritable mountain of boosters piled on the counter was a bizarre sight, even in a shop for kids’ games. Several people playing at the tables peered over at the counter with wide eyes. She may have been a little girl, but Mira was a big spender.
“That’ll be 30,000 ducats,” the cashier said.
A murmur went through the crowd, but Mira didn’t even notice; to her, it was just the usual background noise of children playing. She nodded to the clerk and slid a gold coin across the counter—50,000 ducats.
The clerk squinted at Mira, as if this small girl was too dazzling to look at. Deciding that she must be some rich little miss, the clerk sighed before returning two mithril coins. “Ah. Um… Your change comes out to 20,000 ducats. Thank you very much.”
Cradling her bulging bag, the tiny mage looked around the room and scurried over to a table that had just opened up.
“Holy craaap…” someone said as the kids looked on with jealousy and curiosity. Preening a bit at their reaction, Mira plopped her bag onto the table and sat down.
Now, will I find myself in here?
Butterflies filled her stomach—a mixture of the desperate desire to pray and the total confidence that she was about to score—a flurry of emotion she hadn’t felt since childhood.
As the crowd gathered around, Mira pulled a pack from the bag at random, as if drawing lottery numbers. She unsealed it and looked at the cards…
***
Thirty minutes later…
Hrmm. Not what I expected.
Mira had neatly organized all seven hundred and fifty cards in order of rarity atop the table. On the far-right end was the single rarest card she had pulled.
Fuzzy Dice? I’ve never even heard of this guy.
It was a triple rare, the third highest. She hadn’t pulled Danblf, any of the other Nine Wise Men, or even their acting deputies.
“All duds…” Mira cried at her results and flopped face-first onto the table.
Yet it remained a mountain of treasure to the kids. Given the sheer volume, the right appraiser could find some decent cards in the pile. Some cards might be uncommon among their rarity bracket, or some low-rarity cards might have some competitive use.
A path opened up through the crowd and a boy stepped out. From the way the others made way for him, he seemed to have some clout among the regulars here.
“E-excuse me, Miss? Was there a specific card you wanted? Maybe I could trade with you, depending on what it is.” His small voice sounded bold amid the crowd, but his words were kind.
Mira looked up and saw a boy with black hair in a bowl cut under a knit cap. He looked a little older than Tact, the boy she’d met in Karanak. He blushed nervously as he waited for her answer.
Hm, trading? Perhaps I could with so many cards… But really, I just wanted to see it.
“Do you have a Danblf?” Mira asked.
The boy frowned and shrugged, perhaps disappointed that he didn’t get to show off his collection to a cute girl.
“Danblf is a Wise Man, right?” He asked. The boy checked the cards on Mira’s table and shook his head. “Even if I had him, all of those cards combined wouldn’t be worth as much as him.”
“Oho. Are the Nine Wise Men so rare?”
“Duh. They’re legendary rare. I haven’t seen someone buy this many packs in a long time, but you still don’t have anywhere near enough.” The boy plucked one of the empty wrappers scattered about the table. It landed face side-down and perfectly displayed the rarity contents on the back. Among them, the rarest were indeed the legendary cards. “The legendary cards only come one in every thousand packs.”
Other kids muttered in agreement.
“Yeah, I gave up on ‘em.”
“Anyone who can pull a legendary is legendary himself.”
“A thousand?!” Mira gasped. “What sort of cheap bastard made that decision? Now I want to see it even more!” At that rate, Mira realized she could buy every pack in the store and still come out with nothing.
Mira stuck her lip out and pouted, holding an empty pack in her hand.
“If you just wanna see one,” the boy ventured, “I can show you. I don’t have Danblf, but I do have a Wise Man.” The pride in his voice was clear, even under his nervousness.
“Ho ho! Now that’s fantastic. May I see it?” Mira gazed up at the boy with round, expectant eyes. It was almost too much for his young heart to handle. What youth wouldn’t go the extra mile?
The boy almost forgot to breathe for a moment. Recovering, he shouted, “Sure!” to cover up his intense blushing. He pursed his lips as he took a fist-sized box from his waist pouch. It was bright red, with the words Legends of Asteria written in golden script.
“Get ready. This is a legendary card.” He flipped through his case to gingerly pinch a single card. With this dramatic lead-in, he whipped it out and slammed it down on the table like a master shogi player placing his piece. The other kids gasped in amazement.
The legendary card had a gold border, gleaming as if to declare its superiority over the triple rare already on the table.
The card’s face depicted a man wrapped entirely in black with only his eyes visible, like some sort of black mummy. Above the art, in gold text, was written “WISE MAN WALLENSTEIN THE SHADOW.”
“Ho ho! Wallenstein, eh? They’ve portrayed him as a real badass here.” The card reminded her of the man himself. Mira smiled distantly, overcome with nostalgia.
In front of her, the boy found himself unable to look away as a sudden air of maturity descended upon her features. He stood with mouth agape, grappling with the vague fluttering of first love.
So my card should be similar, right? A shame that I couldn’t see, but this will do for now.
“Thank you,” Mira said. “I appreciate you showing me this.”
“Y-Yeah. It was nothing, y’know.”
Mira handed the card back to him, and the boy forced his scattered brain back together. But as he took it back, he accidentally brushed Mira’s hand in his panic. The warmth of the touch ran through the boy’s body like an electric shock. Face burning, he slid the legendary card back into his case with trembling fingers.
Hrmm…Wallenstein, eh? I wonder if he knows anything about the white pillar or Nebrapolis.
Wallenstein was the Wise Man of Exorcism. He’d be the one with knowledge of all monsters, fiends, demons, and other things. He was also an ace at puzzling out cryptic books.
But Mira had no way to find him. The trading card certainly offered no clues to his whereabouts.
Wallenstein wasn’t her goal, but now that she’d seen a card with a Wise Man on it, she turned her attention back to the table and her seven hundred fifty cards. She was more of a collector than a player. Now that she’d bought the cards, she wasn’t especially interested in playing the game.
What should I do with these, then?
She looked at the kids gathered around and made up her mind. She sorted through the stacks, taking one of each card and leaving the dupes behind. Then she put her new collection into her bag.
“You’re free to take anything you’d like.” She gestured toward the hundreds of cards left on the table.
The kids were shaken and refused to reach for any of the cards at first. They looked at each other and whispered frantically.
Finally, the boy who had shown her his Wallenstein card said, “Wait, are you serious? You can’t build a deck with the cards you kept… Just this card here goes three to almost every deck! And you can never have enough of this one.” He gestured toward cards in the magic and weapon categories. His blush was gone; he now spoke seriously, as an expert in his field.
“Eh, I don’t even know the rules. Come on, guys, if you need any of this, take it. Just don’t fight over them.”
The kids began to clamor, finally realizing they would receive her spoils. Their excitement mounted as they surrounded the table.
“Hey, people are gonna fight over these,” the boy broke in again, exasperated. “There’s a whole lot of really good cards here.”
“Hrmm, is that so?” She raised a rare card up over her head for the kids to see and asked, “Do any of you wish to have this card?”
All their voices stopped at once. One child raised his hand and answered, “Me!” Immediately after, others followed suit.
Hmm… First come first served is definitely out of the question.
“Then let’s play rock-paper-scissors. Whoever wins gets it.” As soon as she said it, Mira wondered if rock-paper-scissors even existed in this world.
Evidently it did. The children whipped around toward each other and brought their fists down as they cried, “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” Before long, the activity in the card shop—now more of a rock-paper-scissors tournament—conlcuded with rare cards distributed in the least violent manner.
There was little demand for the more common cards, so people were free to take them without it turning into a brawl. Either satisfied or exhausted, the kids thanked Mira and left her alone. Only the boy who spoke to her before remained.
As Mira wondered how she’d deal with the remaining cards, the boy gestured toward a black box in the corner. “If you don’t want ’em, you can throw ’em in that box,” he said. “People can take whatever they want from it.” It was akin to a recycling bin.
“Oho, nice.” Mira picked up her cards and peeked inside the box. Indeed, it held nearly a hundred cards free for the taking. That done, Mira turned, smiled, and tousled the boy’s hair. “Thank you for teaching me, young man.”
Shocked by the sudden contact, the boy’s jaw dropped. For several moments, he stood still, experiencing the world in slow-motion, until his brain seemed to catch up to the normal flow of time.
“N-no prob!” He looked Mira straight in the eye as his cheeks flushed anew. Then he lost his nerve and looked away. Too much, too fast.
Mira paid his actions little mind, treating him as she would any child. “Goodbye, now. Make sure you get home before dark.”
Mira headed for the exit. She seemed to the boy to grow exponentially further with every step.
Screwing up his courage, the boy called out to her. “Wait!” he said, with a cracking voice that came out so quietly he wasn’t sure she’d hear him at all.
She stopped and turned around. “What? Is something wrong?”
Her silver hair swished gently across her back. Mira’s gaze, like a cold spring day, made the boy’s heart flutter—yet he managed to get himself under control.
“My name is Marian. What about you…?”
“Ah. Right, I didn’t introduce myself. Call me Mira.”
“Huh. Mira…” The boy seemed to take a moment to commit that to memory. “Are you coming back tomorrow, Mira?”
Mira mentally ran through her itinerary.
From here, she would go to the station city of Holy Gate and stay the night. She would leave around noon for the Kingdom of Alcait based on the railroad timetable. Until her departure, she would wander around the station city and perhaps buy some souvenirs for Solomon and the others. In other words…
“No.”
“Oh.”
Marian looked down and sighed. He gathered his determination, pulled his card case out of his waist pouch, and yanked a card out. “Here…you can have this! So…”
Don’t forget me, he almost said.
Mira cocked her head in confusion. Was this boy offering to give her an extremely rare card out of nowhere? She was satisfied just to have seen it; she couldn’t take something so valuable from a child.
“What are you talking about? I don’t—” It finally dawned on her. Marian was acting nervous. His face was so red, it looked sunburned. And most of all, he was trying to give his most treasured possession to a girl.
Marian had a crush.
I get it. I guess this was inevitable.
“You care about that card, don’t you? I can’t take it. But I accept your feelings,” Mira said, placing her hand gently on his.
This contact, even more sudden and deliberate than the last, caused Marian to stare at Mira’s hand and flap his mouth rapidly like a fish out of water. The warmth of her hand left him almost speechless. Eventually, he mustered an “Okay…”
“Be well, Marian. Listen to your parents and treasure your friends,” Mira warned with a mischievous grin.
“Jeez, you sound like my grandpa.” Marian responded sadly, knowing she would soon be gone.
“Farewell.”
“Come back any time. I’m always around!”
“Perhaps, if I have the chance.”
Marian stared at Mira for as long as he could after she waved to him and departed, in hopes of keeping the sight of her in his eyes forever.
***
“I’m a heartbreaker now,” Mira murmured to herself as she mounted Pegasus and flew away from the Holy City Ridel.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login