Chapter 4 Mystery Card Shop

After Daniel came out from the white office building. He's walking aimlessly through the sidewalk as his mind wanders on how to recoup all of his loss.

His former wealth was forever lost to the hands of the royal family. He already cut that as a loss, but even if he knew and his mind accepted the reason. His heart was still not willing to accept such an outcome.

As time passed by, Daniel, who was still aimlessly walking through the sidewalk of the road, was feeling a little bit worn out and hungry. He decides to catch a break, eat something and then think about the little option he has left.

After eating his meals, he's walking toward where the river was as watching the river and looking at a variety of ships come and go about their business is the best pastime he enjoys the most when he can't think of anything good or a way forward.

Daniel slowly sits on the public gazebo near the river, watching the boat and ships passing by the river and the people who get on the pontoon nearby from the public transport boat and let his mind wander off along with the water current in the river.

He's thinking of many ways out of this, the condition is that he needs to be able to maintain his anonymity that could hide from the royal family radar.

He was just a normal guy who didn't have anything special even though he had some skill in business and designing some games but in this country where the government didn't care about small companies that didn't have enough personal funds to kick off their business. He wouldn't have a chance to grow.

Besides, creating any kind of business needs his ID to be reinstated from death status, and doing that would put him in danger if someday some royalist happens to find his name and decides to rat his name out of the royalist enforcer. He would be dead a second time for sure.

If he were to create a business without reinstating his ID it would be no different than a lamb for any deadbeat police to blackmail his money out of him. That scenario would make his life even more miserable.

[Do I have any choice at least?] Daniel thought to himself. Then trying to think about it more.

While his mind wanders and relaxes for some time, He felt like some kind of energy inside him start to permeate his body, making him energize and lessen his depression by a large margin.

Unknown to him, while he is feeling like that, the card "Dilmun" or the prototype card in his pocket is glowing a little before it gets absorbed into his body without his knowledge.

The time passed and the energized feeling finally subsided, now it was early dusk as the public clock nearby his gazebo indicated that it was already 6 pm.

Daniel decides to return to Murphy and asks him if he knows of any job that he could do without reinstating his ID. For now, he would do odd jobs for some small pay to keep himself fed first.

Thinking through this, Daniel then stood up and walked toward the bus stop. He feels much better now after letting his mind wander and mulling over his messy situation.

—

Under the golden sky that is growing darker and darker every passing minute, During the walks, Daniel noticed that there was an old wooden door at the end of a dark alley he was passing and on the door wrote the word "Card Shop".

Full of curiosity, Daniel decided to check it out as he wanted to enjoy some quality time by looking at card effects and cool card pictures even without money to buy anything. Daniel opened the old wooden door and walked into the shop.

Inside the store was a small square white room not larger than 10 square meters that only had a see-through glass counter showing a row of card boxes inside.

The thing that excited him the most was that all of the cards in his store were cards from one of the sets in his card game.

The name of the card games was, "War of Magic and Mythology" each booster pack has 12 cards; it consists of 5 Common cards, 3 Uncommon cards, and 1 Rare category that are ranging from Rare > Epic Rare > Legendary, Of course, the rarest of them all was the legendary cards, and the remaining 3 cards were the common locations cards.

[Didn't those companies scrap all of my work? Well maybe that shitty crown prince had decided to sell

There's no other card game present. Even though he's finding the current situation suspicious, the thought of seeing his creation again makes him forget all of that.

my game and get a little something for himself.] Daniel gives an explanation of the current situation.

"Welcome, the customer. Please feel free to browse." A deep voice of a man sounded out bringing Daniel's attention toward the direction of the voice.

A man clad in a black robe from head to toe, other than two light blue glows where it supposedly is the position of his eyes, the shade from his hood is unnaturally hiding all of the features of his face, increasing the air of mysteries about him.

Any other people would feel fear about the strange situation including the mystery feature of the man in front of him, but not Daniel.

If it were him before getting resurrected for an unknown reason he would have run away immediately and hide in the nearby church, temple, or any holy place he could find for a few days. But now, he feels intrigued and wants to experience these strange situations even more. Who knows, maybe one day he could find out about the reason why he got resurrected in the first place.

Daniel tries to browse through the card pack but there's nothing to browse as the only thing this shop has been the basic card packs for beginners. The first set that he designed for it to be simple and easy to use even with the higher rarity didn't have any complex mechanics.

Also, all of the cards were inside the booster pack and he couldn't check them out as he didn't have any money to buy them. The leftover money he got from Murphy needs to be used for paying for the transport to go back to Murphy's shack.

"Ah ha ha, Thank you for letting me browse but, I don't have any money to spare right now. Maybe some other times?" Daniel said with a dry laugh as he tried to get out of the shop.

The Shopkeeper in the black robe then looked at all of his merchandise and he immediately knew the problem.

"Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Customer. Our shop was just open a moment ago so we didn't prepare any of the samples and the variety of our goods is not enough for your browsing. Let me give you these as an apology then." The Shopkeeper offers and places three booster packs on the counter.

Daniel turned back and saw that the shopkeeper brought one of his booster boxes out from under the counter and began to rearrange it. It seems that what he said about his shop just opening a moment ago is the truth.

"Are you sure you want to give me these?" Daniel asks while picking up one of the booster packs.

"Of course, Mr. Customer. It's not good for my reputation If I were to say, I was kidding, right?" The shopkeeper answered.

"Oh! Thank you, boss! You might not know this but this gesture of your helping me to see that there is something to look forward to in my current shitty life." Daniel said with a bit of a joke while opening the first booster pack.

"Please, call me Keeper Mr.Customer." Said the shopkeeper.

"Then, please call me Daniel. Mr.Keeper." Daniel responded with a smile. He found that the name that the shopkeeper preferred him to call was a little bit strange but he didn't have any opinion about that. Maybe this shopkeeper just wants to roleplay as a mysterious shopkeeper. That's why his get-up was like that in the first place.

After exchanging a few pleasantries. Daniel gently opened the booster pack and saw that there were only 6 cards instead of 12.

"Mr.Keeper, Is this a sample booster? It only has 6 cards." Daniel asks in confusion.

Keeper shook his head and began to explain.

"No, Mr. Daniel. This is the real pack that I just pulled out of the box right here." The keeper then pointed to the box on the counter that had already opened.

Daniel looked at the box and saw that it was open and a lot of booster packs with the same thickness are neatly arranged within the box. Maybe the policy of the booster pack had changed after his death, that's why there are only 6 cards instead of 12.

Seeing that Daniel was just stopping and didn't say anything, The Keeper thought that Daniel thought he was scamming him. He let out a long sigh and said to Daniel.

"Mr. Daniel, To have your trust in our shop, How about this. You can choose one of the unopened boxes you saw and exchange one of your boosters with one of the booster packs of your choice in that box. How does that sound?" The Keeper offered.

Daniel looks at The Keeper in surprise. This guy is more generous than any shopkeeper he ever met!

"Thank you, But It's ok, I trust you," Daniel said and was about to bring the cards out of the first booster pack he opened to see what was inside.

Daniel slid the last card in the pack up to see the rarity symbol at the uppermost of the card first, but he was disappointed because it was just a rare card which is the minimum guaranteed to get 1 rare card in every booster pack.

"Why are you doing that?" The Keeper asks in curiosity.

"Oh! For me, It is more exciting this way. I get to see which rarity it is first, then I get to see what that card is." Daniel answers with excitement as if he has returned to become a boy again.

The shopkeeper just nodded and didn't comment on it.

"Oh, I almost forgot, Mr. Daniel. This shop has some easy rules you need to follow if you want to get the most out of your card." The Keeper said then pointed toward a chair and a table at the corner of the shop.

"Next booster, if you want to open it. You need to sit on that chair and place the card you've opened on the table, and you can only open the booster in this shop. You can't bring the booster out of here even if I allow it, You can't bring it out."

The strange rule in this shop made Daniel confused, and felt that it was a little bit strange. But he didn't object because it was just some small rule that didn't take any effort from him at all."

Daniel nodded and brought the remaining booster toward the chair and the table at the corner of the shop.

After he sat down on the chair he placed the unopened booster on the table and proceeded on checking all the cards he had opened from the first booster.

–1st Card–

Card: Warrior Golem

Picture: A humanoid human size golem made of unknown metal standing with a fighting stance with a heated battlefield as background.

Rarity: Rare

Type: Artifact, Creature

Mana Cost: 1 Non Element

Description: Mitigate 1 (Mitigate: Reduce all damage received)

Power: 2

Toughness: 2

Flavor text: The main assault group of any magi war has great hand-to-hand combat and good proficiencies in many varieties of melee weapons. It also has basic functions that could help any magi in running their daily day-to-day basis and necessities.

–2nd Card–

Card: Cultivate Prismatic flowers

Picture: The picture of a man taking care of two flowers that have prismatic petals that look like to be

Rarity: Uncommon

pαndα,noνɐ1,сoМ Type: Spell

Mana Cost: 1 Wood

Description: Create two tapped "Prismatic flower" tokens with Ability: [Tapped and destroy the token, Get 1 Mana of your choosing]

Flavor text: These flowers are a rare kind indeed.

–3rd Card–

Card: Acidic Fire

Picture: The picture of a fire spell burning someone alive while the background has a naked dude running away.

Rarity: Uncommon

Type: Quick Spell

Mana Cost: 1 Fire, 1 Non Element

Description: Choose one : [Deal 3 Damage to target creature]/[Destroy target artifact]

Flavor text: This fire could make you naked or it could make you baked.