2

Ace takes the streets and starts to wander without aim. He’s been banished from the castle and the only people at all like him. He’s been left to his own devices as a highschooler without any skills in a world completely foreign to him. He has no direction because the only things inside of him are things he no longer has. He no longer has his mother to love nor games to play. As he walks, concerned with his future even now in another world, he remembers the strange Skills he supposedly has, and begins to think about them.

“Skills… I wonder how I use them. They were all about card games, so I guess that gives me an upper hand. But I’m the only one, so I have to figure out everything on my own. Let’s see, which of those Skills sounds the most simple… ‘Pack Opening.’”

When Ace thinks the name of the skill, a strange, familiar object appears before him. One blue-tinted packet of cards floats in the air in front of him. He stops the moment they appear, and looks around frantically. It seems that nobody else can see the floating pack of cards. Ace tries to grab at the packet in a way that won’t draw attention, turning away from the street to do so, but his hand simply passes through the packet instead. Feeling self-conscious, Ace starts moving again. The pack of cards comes with him, maintaining the same position in front of his eyes no matter what he does with his head. Failing to interact with it physically, Ace tries to imagine tearing open the packet, even if he finds it somewhat silly. The packet makes a show of being opened for Ace, before revealing the back of fifteen cards.

The backs of the cards are deep blue, and the cards themselves are somewhat translucent and glowing. The only image on the backs is a sort of logo Ace has never seen before. In a paler blue is a single large five pointed star, five smaller stars in-between each point. He imagines the cards flipping over, and all fifteen do at once. Ace quickly looks over the cards. They look like standard fare trading cards, but of a wholly mundane topic.

On fourteen of the fifteen cards is nothing but a name of a food, a corresponding picture, and a short description for flavor text. The fifteenth card is not of food, but of a weapon. It depicts a dagger sitting on a stone floor in a dark room with the simple name of “Dagger.” Its flavor text, however, amuses Ace.

“The dagger once used by a nascent adventurer, who died in his foolhardy attempt at conquering the Caves of Mourning dungeon.”

Ace doesn’t know what to make of this story. He has no way of knowing if it’s real or fake. No way of knowing if the “Caves of Mourning” are even a real place. It’s strange and perhaps disturbed that the card would even speak of this hypothetical adventurer’s death so lightly. But reading it makes Ace smile.

The dagger, the last card he sees, vanishes from sight once he no longer wants to see it. From here, Ace is again lost. Although he now has fifteen cards, he does not know how to use them. He feels a small tingle in his head, and thinks the name of another Skill, “Binder.”

A new image appears before Ace. He sees a pale four by five grid, each spot clearly meant for another card, though he sees only two on this first sheet. Neither are cards he got from the pack. They appear to both be spells, one named “Snack” that seems to be some kind of healing and another named “Stab” that appears to be some kind of attack. To the right of the grid are three tabs, “Ability,” “Item,” and “New.” The Ability tab is discolored, showing that it’s the one being currently viewed. Ace wills the tab to switch to New. When it does, the fifteen cards he acquired appear before him. He imagines holding one in his hand, choosing Dagger because it brought him joy, and suddenly a dagger appears in his hand. Ace quickly hides it away on his person, not having expected such an immediate effect. He looks around to make sure that nobody saw the weapon appear and that nobody is coming to apprehend him. When he realizes it seems safe, he goes back to walking.

Having understood that the cards will respond to his will, Ace returns to the Ability tab. He notices that beneath each card is a number, fourteen for Snack and one for Stab. He quickly comes to the conclusion that each card he got from the pack had also given him a copy of one of these spells. He smiles again, his smile hidden by the mask covering his mouth. He tries to use Snack, but he doesn’t feel anything even as he tries to will it as he had with Dagger. Ace thinks back to his list of Skills and thinks of another name, “Deck.”

A new graphic appears, shrinking down Binder to make room. It’s another grid, though this one is slightly bigger at five by six. Each space on the grid is filled by the same card. The card is completely blank, saying only “Placeholder” at the top. Ace supposes that it exists in this way because he started out without any cards. Ace sighs and closes all the Skill windows. He then decides to check on two more of his skills, “Hand” and “Playmat.”

Two new images appear in front of Ace. The first is seven copies of Placeholder in a row. The second, right above it, is a graphic like a minimap. It shows the entirety of the area around Ace in a decently sized radius, both Ace himself and every other person around him marked with a small glowing dot. Ace figures, based on the names of the Skills, that Hand and Playmat will be his primary tools for using the Ability cards, just as soon as he figures out how to add them to his deck. He returns to his investigation by reopening Binder.

He inspects everything, but can’t find anything as simple as an “Add to Deck” button. He assumes that he won’t figure it out today, and Ace decides to refocus on how to live from now on, the more pressing of his concerns. However, just as he is about to close Binder, he is possessed by an intense curiosity. Ace begins to turn the imaginary pages of the Binder. Each sheet is blank. He keeps turning pages, a sudden excitement bubbling up inside of him.

“Each of these pages is another twenty cards? How many have I gone through by now? It feels like at least one-hundred so far. That’s two-thousand cards.” Ace keeps quickly flipping through the pages as he thinks and walks. “I’ve gone through so many of these pages I can’t even count them anymore. There are thousands and thousands of cards. The equivalent of all that history, all for me. A whole new game, in all its glory, all for me.”

Lost in thought, Ace walks right into the large arm of somebody.