Chapter 161: Magic and Creature
Chapter 161: Magic and Creature
“But playing a card game on a computer feels a little strange.”
Of course, keyboards and mice were already familiar tools to Ella. But since she remembered enjoying card games before, it felt oddly awkward not to touch stiff physical cards with her hands and instead just watch things automatically move around beyond the monitor.
“Really?”
For Ras, who had little memory of actually playing physical card games, it was an emotional area that was hard to relate to. But it did not matter much.
“Then let’s play with real cards later. We’re going to make actual cards for this eventually anyway.”
“Okay.”
Ella was only at the stage of thinking it was fairly enjoyable and had not become deeply absorbed in it yet, so she did not react with particular excitement. Still, she nodded while thinking that playing card games with Ras in the mansion like she used to with her old companions did not sound bad either.
“Hmm...”
Nebrania seriously examined the cards in her hand. She was currently playing together with Jenny. The two had started occasionally hanging out after teaming up together at a game tournament before.
It was not enough to call them close friends, but they sometimes drank together after work and occasionally played newly released games together.
In truth, neither of them had originally been very interested in games, but they had gradually developed some interest while working at a game company.
At any rate, both of them had strong competitive spirits, so when it came to versus games, they became deeply immersed quite easily.
Competitive games naturally became more exciting when one side did not lose too one-sidedly, and after losing, immediately rushed in wanting to win again.
Nebrania had chosen the green deck.
This game did not impose attribute ownership restrictions, but since testing had only just begun, nobody had the resources to buy card packs yet, nor the experience to build their own unique decks, so everyone had no choice but to pick from the default decks provided.
Nebrania had simply chosen the color she was most familiar with among those default decks.
Back in the old days, I probably would’ve picked something like a fire deck.
When she was younger, she had often deliberately made choices that did not suit a Dryad because she disliked the preconceptions others had about her. But as time passed, she matured and settled into a stable life, so these days she simply followed whatever felt natural to her.
Her opponent, Jenny, was using the white deck.
It was commonly called the Light Deck, and her reason for choosing it was simple. Angels appeared in it, so it looked like the strongest deck.
Their battle was extremely straightforward. They summoned creatures and continuously exchanged blows.
Since it was their first time playing, naturally they had no idea about things like strategy.
But even that alone was fairly fun.
I just need to hold out a little longer.
Nebrania endured the opponent’s attacks using the Honey Bear, a creature with terrible attack power but excellent tanking ability thanks to its recovery effect each turn, while steadily gathering mana.
She was aiming to summon the cost-8 creature in her hand, the Six-Horned Deer.
The Six-Horned Deer was a deer with six legs. Its illustration depicted a majestic figure with enormous antlers growing alongside those legs.
It did not possess any particularly special abilities, but since it was a high-cost creature, its base stats were extremely high. Once summoned, it would instantly sweep away all the low-grade creatures Jenny had filled the field with.
It was the sort of strategy commonly used by beginner TCG players.
But Jenny was not an easy opponent.
The reason she had flooded the field with small mobs was not just to overwhelm the opponent early. It was also because of a certain magic card in her hand.
<Sacrifice>
At last, after Nebrania endured long enough to summon the Six-Horned Deer, Jenny used that card.
[Sacrifice allied units on the field to deal damage to the enemy field and player.
Damage: Number of allied units on the field × 2]
“Huh?! No!”
The Six-Horned Deer was an extremely powerful creature with a staggering 9 Health.
But 10 was still larger than 9.
Nebrania’s once-solid field was wiped out instantly. And because she had been using a defensive strategy, her player health had already been reduced somewhat, leaving her with only 4 remaining.
She hurriedly summoned the Treant on her field.
At least it was a guard-type creature, so it should be able to block attacks directed at the player.
Nebrania desperately prayed for a decent card to arrive next turn.
“Hehehe.”
But that next opportunity never came.
She had already found the laugh Jenny let out from across the desk ominous, but when she saw two charge-type creatures appear consecutively, she fell into despair.
Charge-types had somewhat lower stats, but they could attack immediately upon being placed on the field.
Jenny used the Fanatic Martyr to eliminate the Treant.
[After attacking once, it goes to the graveyard. When attacking, its Health is added to its Attack.]
The Treant did not have especially low Health or Defense, but the Fanatic Martyr was a creature specialized in suicidal attacks, so it possessed tremendous offensive power and instantly removed the Treant.
Then the Sun Chariot charged directly toward Nebrania’s player.
“Ah!”
Nebrania let out a short lament as the word [Defeat] appeared alongside her Health dropping to zero.
Her reaction was not especially dramatic, but those who knew her understood that she was actually incredibly frustrated.
She immediately challenged Jenny again, and Jenny gladly accepted.
“The reactions aren’t bad.”
“Yes. Thankfully.”
Team Leader Rights nodded with a bright expression.
The fact that they were playing with such immersion itself meant the game felt natural and enjoyable.
The reaction toward this TCG was even better than Ras had imagined.
It was probably because, unlike Korea, this world already had a widespread culture of playing card games.
Even though they were developers creating computer games, the familiarity brought by an already familiar culture strongly affected people’s preferences.
Moreover, the TCG genre itself was extremely fun, so people became absorbed in it so easily that Ras’s worries felt pointless.
Gaining confidence from this, Ras decided not to delay any longer and moved forward with the release immediately.
The package would be distributed through download.
Since it included illustrations and such, selling it for money would have been reasonable, but for now he chose to focus on spreading it widely.
“Still, it feels kind of strange releasing something directly without going through Barbal Soft.”
He was not particularly expecting an answer.
It simply felt awkward because it was different from the familiar process he had repeated until now. At the same time, Barbal Soft had always served as one more testing stage and a place where he could gauge reactions to the game, so skipping that process made him feel slightly uneasy.
But Ras shook off that feeling after seeing Ella quietly chuckle.
Ella probably laughed without any deeper meaning, but to Ras, it felt as though she were asking why he was worrying over something so trivial.
Thinking about all the successes he had built up until now, worrying like this really did seem ridiculous.
“Magic and Creature?”
Billus was one of the hardcore users of Spirit Space.
Now in his early thirties, he truly felt the world’s progress after experiencing Spirit Space.
Back when he was young, outside of major cities, most people did not even know electronic games existed, and telephone penetration rates were far lower than they were now.
In fact, many people still treated televisions as luxury items.
But now it was possible to connect with countless people and enjoy games regardless of distance through networks.
It was endlessly fascinating.
He enjoyed browsing bulletin boards by themselves, but these days he was also enjoying other content.
When novels first started being serialized there, it had already felt like an entirely new world had opened up. Then games playable directly through Spirit Space began appearing one after another, and he became deeply absorbed in them.
At one point, he became so addicted to MUD Games that his daily life fell apart.
That was why these days he mostly enjoyed lighter games like card games and chess instead.
Still, they could not quite compare to MUD Games, so he constantly checked the boards searching for something new.
And today, a brand-new game had been released.
“TCG? Looks like it’s some kind of card game?”
But the file size was larger than expected.
It was a whopping 3 megabytes.
He hesitated briefly.
A 3-megabyte download would take quite a while, and during that time he would not be able to use the computer.
“Huh? Graphics Skip Mode? You can play without downloading? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He could not quite understand how a game could be playable without downloading the package.
Still, since there were already card games and chess playable without separate downloads, he figured it probably worked similarly and pressed the execute button.
[Loading...]
After some loading time, the game launched.
Naturally, since there was no separate package installed, it was implemented as text within the Spirit Space interface itself.
Hmm...
He decided to read the manual first.
But while he had expected something similar to poker, it was actually very different.
This feels more like some kind of RPG game?
It was not exactly the same, but with monsters appearing and magic being used, the atmosphere felt closer to modern computer games than traditional card games.
Rather than jumping straight into versus mode, he decided to try the tutorial first.
The explanation alone had not been easy to understand immediately.
But once he entered the tutorial, he quickly grasped the rules.
The text explanations were fairly complicated, but after playing against the computer once, it became easy to understand.
The rules themselves were quite logical.
You drew resources, then used those resources to summon creatures or cast magic.
Billus chose the Darkness Deck.
The concept of evil and forbidden magic stimulated his curiosity.
People on Earth sometimes made similar choices for similar reasons, but in this world, where such magic actually existed, it felt even more provocative.
Of course, it was merely a choice within a fictional game. Billus was not actually an evil person.
[Searching for an opponent.]
[Opponent found. Starting game.]
Before entering a real match, Billus had not expected much.
The tutorial battles had not been particularly fun.
It felt somewhat unique, but that was all.
But fighting an actual person felt completely different.
“Huh?!”
The opponent used the Metal attribute.
At first, they summoned a creature that looked like an onion with arms and legs, and Billus scoffed at how ridiculous it looked.
Its stats were genuinely unimpressive too.
But instead of summoning more creatures or casting offensive magic, the opponent continuously layered things onto that creature.
They changed its type to Shield, raised its Health and Defense, increased its Attack, added a Magic Resistance Shield, and strengthened it step by step.
Naturally, Billus did not just sit there watching.
He continuously summoned creatures and cast magic trying to eliminate it, but the opponent used all sorts of strange skills to defend against everything.
Just moments ago, he had even used his trump-card magic, “Hellfire.”
But the opponent activated a skill called Bronze Giant’s Shield and simply absorbed it.
“That thing’s completely broken!”
In the end, the fully completed Onion Swordsman instantly slaughtered Billus’s creatures and began directly damaging his player.
Billus fought as hard as he could.
But the cards the opponent used were simply too bizarre and unpredictable.
<Defeat>
Eventually, he lost.
“Whoa... fuXk.”
It was his first time playing, so he was not completely consumed by excitement, but he was definitely irritated.
It felt like the opponent’s deck was simply better, so he selected the Metal Deck and began examining the cards inside it.
“Huh?”
But despite being the same Metal Deck used by “MeowMeow,” the player he had just fought, something was different.
It was not his imagination.
The card that had dealt him the decisive blow, “Bronze Giant’s Shield,” was not there.
Footnotes:
Translator’s Notes:
TCG (Trading Card Game) — A genre of card game where players build decks using collectible cards and battle according to defined rules. Popular real-world examples include Magic: The Gathering (1993, USA) and Yu-Gi-Oh! (1999, Japan).
MUD Game — “Multi-User Dungeon,” an early form of online multiplayer game originating in the late 1970s and 1980s. Primarily text-based, players explored virtual worlds, fought monsters, and interacted with others through typed commands.
RPG (Role-Playing Game) — A game genre centered around character growth, combat, exploration, and storytelling. Computer RPGs became especially popular worldwide during the 1980s–1990s.
Megabyte (MB) — A digital storage unit equal to roughly one million bytes. During the 1990s-style computer era reflected in this novel, a 3MB download was considered fairly large and time-consuming over network connections.