Book 4 Ch 27: Card Counting - All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG

None of the cards were on the verge of complete disintegration, like the ones from the brown dragon. But warning sparkles drifted off them, indicating they were in very bad shape.

Arthur longed to study them but only nodded at Brixaby. "Put them in your Personal Space," he said, then after a glance at the silver dragon, raised a hand to rub over his eyes. “I need to think, and I can’t do that here.”

"It reeks," Brixaby agreed.

Arthur shot his dragon a sympathetic look. He had tied a rag doused with vinegar over his nose to mask the smell, but Brixaby had gone without, even though his nose was much more sensitive than Arthur's.

"Let's get out of here." Arthur took one more look at the dead hulk of the silver dragon, wondering if he was missing anything. But if there was, he couldn’t see it. The dragon had been long dead. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Maybe its rider is lying along with him, Arthur thought with a reflexive shudder that went up and down his spine.

Collecting his tools, he turned and made his grateful way out.

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Of course, the area outside the nest wasn't much better, with the scourgeling bodies sometimes stacked on one another. Brixaby crouched in silent invitation for Arthur to come on board. As soon as he was seated, his dragon took off into the sky. Arthur ripped off the vinegar-soaked rag and stuffed it back into his Personal Space. Then he breathed the clean air.

Brixaby headed back toward the city and landed past the border of the dead lands. The sun was low in the sky, and hopeful crickets were peeping from the shadows made by clumps of weeds and bushes. It was peaceful here, and it helped calm Arthur's nerves. He didn't realize how thinly they’d been stretched until now.

The fact was, every scourgeling nest likely had a dead dragon under it, and those were only the ones that he knew about. Or the ones left that still had viable cards in them. Whenever that battle had happened, it had been long ago. The dark heart had gone through many different cycles, and Arthur guessed that those had depleted the strength of the cards inside the dragons.

The dead lands here were possibly an entire graveyard of dragon bodies.

Arthur shook his head. He didn't want to think about that right now. It was something that had happened long before he was born, something he couldn't change.

Though, he wondered if the city-state's administration knew about it.

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If they do, I doubt that they care, he thought.

Then he turned to Brixaby. "Let's take a better look at these cards. Pull them out, one at a time."

Brixaby did, and Arthur was glad to see that his dragon was on the same page as he was, because he pulled out the most interesting card out of the three.

Card Repair