＜ 9. The thief who stole the country (2) ＞
Andrea catches her breath and presses the surface of the card. If it hadn’t enough mana, it probably wouldn’t even have been used, but that didn’t seem to be the case as the card quickly disappeared.
At first, I didn’t notice much of a change. Only a faint sense of mana being used remained.
‘Isn’t it a type of card that activates immediately?’
Just as Andrea began to wonder, a change began to be felt.
It started with a sharp piercing pain in the back of my right hand. It feels like someone is slicing through your flesh with a blade. Andrea let go of the knife and grabbed her right hand.
“What, why?”
Tricia asked in a puzzled voice. Andrea couldn’t afford to answer.
The pain in his right hand soon took on a distinct shape. A black hook-shaped imprint. Andrea finally knew what card she was using.
‘Shadow Imprint!’
divine card.
It was one of the cards that only appeared when accepting the blessing of the Shadow God.
And it was a card that players who used it for the first time couldn’t help but wonder why these cards were so unique.
‘[Unique] Shadow Imprint (2 Cost): Engraves an imprint to correspond with the Divine and Shadow Gods.’
In the first place, the explanation was not intuitive unlike ordinary cards. It wasn’t an explanation of how many stats it gave or how much damage it did, but an ambiguous explanation that it corresponded with the unfamiliar keyword of divinity and the shadow god.
The ‘divine’ keyword has the meaning that the efficiency of the card varies depending on the compatibility of the god and the job.
For example, if a priest who serves the wave god uses the divine card of the wave god, it will show an unparalleled effect, but if a barbarian who is close to the earth god uses it, the effect is far less than that.
That’s why most classes take damage even if they use this card, and all they do is get a hook pattern somewhere on their body. Even the Crusader, who had a bad compatibility with the Shadow God, put it on top of it and fell into a state of blindness.
The true value of this card could only be enjoyed by the professions that the Shadow God loved. The only occupations that Andrea benefited from this card were thief and gambler.
The effect of the card is that the effects of the cards related to the shadow god are amplified according to the number of imprints.
‘That’s not all there is. The true hidden function of this card is…’
Andrea had discovered the hidden function of this card quite by accident when she was in a desperate situation. As I recalled the memory of that time, a thrill ran down my spine.
‘But if I think about it calmly, this card doesn’t have much use right now.’
The full-fledged use of this card came about when the deck was compressed to the extreme or when the deck was built with cards related to the Shadow God. Like ‘Continuous Reload’, a key card in the Infinite Shooting Cycle Deck, it was just a card that was nothing but mana waste when used alone.
“f*ck you, Andrea! This is not the time to be blank!”
Trisha’s words awakened my spirit. She was holding back the blade tails that were preparing to attack with arrows. Andrea hurriedly picked up the Polar Dawn from the floor again.
However, the moment I grabbed the handle, I felt something strange.
It’s like borrowing someone else’s hand to hold the hilt of a sword. Black energy was slowly rising from the back of the hand engraved with the inscription.
The energy that had been circling the back of his hand like a snake had spread to the sword before he knew it. The pure white sword body, which had been slightly azure, turned to a muddy color as if it had been soaked in lye.
“what is this.”
There was no such function in ‘Shadow Imprint’ in the game. As Andrea pondered her embarrassment, the blade’s tail attacked.
‘Kwaaung!’
Andrea lowered her stance. The movement of the enemy was felt more distinctly than ever.
The elasticity of the jumped-up joints, the jaw muscles tensed up to bite. The moment you need to stretch out your sword to cut successfully when it attacks along that trajectory is-
just now.
Sh-yah!
I knew it before the knife even touched it. This blade would slash the chest of the blade’s tail, and blood would splatter profusely.
‘Kieeng! Kya-evil!’
The predictions were just right. The blade tail let out a moan of pain and fell to the floor.
Andrea was surprised not only because her senses were sharpened enough to read the enemy’s movements as they were. The level of cutting force felt along the blade has changed.
Although it was a bladed tail, not the boss, the blade penetrated the leather too softly. I felt almost no resistance, so I was mistaken if it was really cut.
“What, what’s the card you just wrote…?”
Andrea wasn’t the only one surprised. Trisha also noticed that an unusual change had taken place in Andrea. However, there was no time for leisurely Q&A due to the viciously attacking blade tails.
‘Will it work for a boss with much thicker skin?’
Inside Andrea, a feeling of doubt, or a feeling that could be called sympathy rose up. As usual, the chief blade tail was running towards Andrea.
‘It’s a trick to pose like a pounce. The balance of the body is a little more to the left. That means… it seems to be worthy of the name.’
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No matter how hard I tried to hide it, everything was visible. What your opponent’s hand is like, how many bets you’re betting.
The key in this situation is trust. Even if the other person is just a beast, the belief that makes you believe that you haven’t noticed anything yet.
Andrea did not straighten her posture.
The leader twisted his body before touching it and swung his tail. Those hanging from their tails look like metal, but are coated with poison that causes random status ailments. Even a slight brush would have fatal consequences.
Andrea leaned to the side, easily dodged, and quickly plunged the sword into the body of the leader. The blade pierced the thick hide and slit the predator’s peritoneum.
‘Kyaaa – evil!’
Like a boss, he let out a loud scream and collapsed. Just in time, Frost Bite was activated. When Andrea drew her sword, fragments of reddish ice scattered and scattered.
‘Keyiing, kek.’
With the death of the leader, the sweeping of the remnants came to an abrupt end. One of them was pierced with a fatal blow by an arrow, and the last one died in the same way as the boss.
After the battle, Trisha stared at Andrea. For some reason, Andrea felt that those gazes were not unfamiliar.
Come to think of it, that wasn’t too different from the way Marco looked at him when he was unmatched.
*
Andrea hypothesized to convince herself.
‘The efficiency of the divine card is completely different depending on the compatibility of the god and the job. The fact that there has been an effect that has not been experienced while using the shadow imprint so far means that the profession of a follower is ridiculously good with the shadow god.’
But now that I think about it, it’s not the first time I’ve been through something like this. Because there was a character in ‘Dungeon of Infinity’ who was loved by all kinds of gods.
‘Anna… An Elementalist who can use almost all the powers of God.’
‘Anna’ was a character that could be said to be the opposite of Andrea.
There are usually two types of hidden characters in games. Trash characters like ‘Andrea’ with the worst conditions, and cheating characters like ‘Anna’ who start with all sorts of ridiculous advantages.
The method of unlocking is the same as clearing the 100th floor with all other characters, but the treatment was insufficient to say the difference between heaven and earth.
As proof of that, Jeong-hyeon couldn’t get over the 42nd floor with Andrea, but he went over the 300th floor with Anna.
‘Well, after the 100th floor, the same monsters were strengthened and appeared repeatedly, taking on various penalties.’
Most jobs have one good god and one bad god, and the balance is balanced in such a way that the rest have mediocre compatibility. However, Anna was extremely good with all the gods except for the shadow god, as a character in the story.
Because of this, when playing as Anna, there was a lot of cases where the divinity card showed unexpected crazy effects from time to time.
“So… this is the card.”
While Andrea was lost in her thoughts, Trisha and Marco were looking at the ‘Shadow Imprint’. As expected, it was a performance that was difficult to understand just from the description written on the card.
“Can’t I try it now? I want to see how great it was.”
Marco asked Andrea with a curious face. Andrea laughed and shook her head.
“That hurts a lot. When you use it, it feels like someone is picking the back of your hand with a knife.”
Marco nodded his head sadly.
When the battle was over, the imprint had disappeared. The performance was better than expected, but I couldn’t help but feel happy when I thought I would have to use it while going through the pain every time.
‘It’s a happy complaint, though. Because it’s much better to be sick and strong for a moment than to die. Anyway… It seems certain that the Shadow God is treating me in a special way.’
Even in the game, the shadow god had so many secrets and secretly intervened that it was difficult to guess his intentions. Andrea thought that if the Temple of the Shadow God appeared, she would have to somehow create an opportunity to receive an oracle or a revelation.
The rewards of this floor made Andrea quite conflicted. Trisha made another strong shot come out and take care of it, but Andrea’s compensation was the problem.
‘Shadow Strike and the source of power.’
‘[Rare] Shadow Strike (3 cost): Holy, the next physical attack you deal deals 5 more damage. The damage is increased by 5 for each card with ‘Shadow’ appended to its name in the deck.’
‘[Rare] Source of Power (2 cost): Extinct, increases strength by 10 during this battle.’
Source of Power is an intuitively good card to hold out in the early stages. However, it is not a percentage increase, but a fixed number increase, so the efficiency drops considerably after the beginning.
On the other hand, Shadow Strike is a card that is not even as good as a hit without enhancement, but if you make a deck with determination, it becomes a one-hit kill card.
Had it been on the 10th floor, Andrea would have chosen the source of her power without hesitation. However, the class she had never experienced before, called ‘Shindo’, and the effect of ‘Shadow Imprint’ made Andrea hesitate.
‘Originally, divine cards are not easy to obtain. Even if I received a blessing, I wondered if I would have to receive the reward 5 times or not, and the card wouldn’t come out at all in the shop. That’s why most divine decks don’t go unless you’re insanely lucky…’
Of the three rewards received after the class was created, two divine cards have already appeared. There weren’t many samples, but they were enough to cause conflict.
In the end, Andrea picked up the ‘Shadow Strike’.
‘Let’s take a gamble. To the point that the characteristic of the Shinto class is that a lot of sacred cards come out.’
After Andrea collected the reward, the group walked up the stairs to the 28th floor. If I had known what floor the 28th floor was, I wouldn’t have left so lightheartedly.
Andrea realized as soon as she came down the hallway leading to the entrance.
‘Oh, damn it. It’s a trap room.’
＜ 9. The thief who stole the country (2) ＞ End