All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG

Book 2: Chapter 69: At Last

Frustrated, Arthur struck at the spot where the sun ring portal had been a moment before. His hand struck the brick wall, sending a bright burst of pain up his arm. Hissing, he shook his hand out.

Of course. His Blunt Damage resistance was gone, too. That was just great.

Arthur resisted the urge to kick at the wall. With his luck right now, he’d probably break a toe.ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ NovelEnglish.net

Did it matter? He was going to die.

He looked desperately inward for inspiration, for anything. All his cards were blocked. He couldn’t even retreat into his Personal Space. He was as helpless as someone uncarded.

That was when a voice, breathy with song, drifted through his mind.

Arthur froze and the hair on the back of his neck stood up on end.

He looked around the small room — it was more of a pit with a low ceiling he could stretch up and reach, and just enough room to move three paces. No entrances or exits. No windows. This was a room meant to stash prisoners using card portal powers.

The only light came from a low-glowing brick in the ceiling. It wasn’t strong enough to cast shadows and there were no places to hide.

But Arthur felt he was not alone.

“Wh-what?” He licked his suddenly dry lips. “Who?”

With a shudder, Arthur clapped his hands over his ears, though he knew it was hopeless.

“Mind singer?”

He hadn’t thought much about the scourgeling that had helped cause so much trouble during the Legendary recruitment test. Once he was safe in Buck Moon hive his time had been taken up by Brixaby’s pending hatching.

Arthur’s lips lifted back in an involuntary snarl, “I hoped you’d died along with the other scourgelings.”

A memory flashed in front of his mind so intensely it was like being back, fighting the bat-like scourgeling by hand.

Yes, he had. And he had harvested its mind card. Though for the sake of morality, he hadn’t used it.

Arthur choked out a laugh. How could this day possibly get any worse?

“What do you want? Wait, how are you speaking to me? All card powers are blocked.”

“What…?” he said again, but something in the way the scourgeling spoke gave him a clue to figure it out. “You mean I have been shielded against you? Unconsciously?”

Because the more that they spoke, Arthur got the impression there were two voices twined together in a duet. One that was stronger and more coherent than before.

However, it used to be a trio.

He summoned his courage from somewhere and spat back, “Well too bad for you. It won’t matter if you take over my mind. I don’t have access to my cards. And the king is going to have me killed shortly, so whatever you have planned won’t work.”

He stiffened. “No, we are not.” Then he looked around again. “Where are you?”

He received flashes then, of Buck Moon hive, of following Valentina through the portal to Wolf Moon. The mind singer sisters had been close as a breath at times and no one, not even the Legendaries, had sensed them.

“I don’t know.”

He did.

It wasn’t written on the card. It was intuition. As the Mind Singer said, it was stamped on his soul.

“The items inside will be lost forever. Personal Space… It's personal. It’s my space. If someone had my card, they’d create their own personal space.”

Arthur frowned. He hadn’t used that card for very good reasons — mind magic felt like a slippery slope. Now that he knew it would link him in a minor way to the Mind Singer, he knew that instinct had been sound.

Still, he wasn’t about to give a scourgeling what it wanted.

“Maybe I’m saving it for a rainy day.”

Arthur’s breath caught. “You know what’s happening now? Is Brixaby okay?”

Arthur shuddered.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Arthur ground out.

“Shut up!” he roared and for a second, he felt his Telepathic Blocking skill activate.

The Mind Singer’s voice faded.

Then the skill was crushed down again, and she returned.

“What do you want?” Arthur demanded. “You have no chance of getting my card while I’m in here. So, unless you can break me out—“

Arthur stopped. “What?”

“What price?” he asked warily, though he knew.

He shook his head. “I’m not giving it to you. I haven’t fallen so far that I’m willing to aid the scourge.”

“Why… Why did they? Why would anyone?”

Arthur shook his head. He didn’t know what to think of that — or if he should trust it. And establish diplomacy with what? Other scourgelings? Ridiculous.

“I’m still not going to give you something you could use to hurt people.”

“And what’s that?”

The word echoed like a bell through his mind.

He shook his head. “I need to think.”

Arthur paced the two and a half steps it took to reach the other end of his cell.

He was in dire straits, but to aid a scourgeling was to betray humanity.

He had done things he knew weren’t kind or good — most of them directly impacting Penn — and he had even used his skills in ways that weren’t legal or bordered on cheating when gambling.

Nothing like what he was contemplating now.

Was the scourgeling influencing him?

He didn’t think there was an easy way to tell, but… at the same time he didn’t think so. Logic said any influence would quickly fade away once he got closer to the Mythic. So, there wasn’t much of a point.

What if he did agree?

He could tell himself that whatever harm he did today would be offset by the good he could do when he was a full Legendary dragon rider. But he didn’t know that for sure.

The fact was, Arthur wanted to live. He also didn’t want Brixaby to live a sad, mediocre life with Penn while they learned to not resent one another. Arthur had plans. He wanted to rescue people in his borderland village. He couldn’t do any of that if he was dead.

But…

He stopped, sighed, and said, “I can’t.”

“Because I’ve seen scourgeling eruptions. I’ve seen what they do to communities, to the land. If I gave you this card and you tried to raise another Legendary Demi-Scourgeling… every death would be on me.”

“The… what?”

There was only one Mythic level dragon in the kingdom. Did that mean…

“Are there other kingdoms?”

Arthur’s heart raced. Other kingdoms!

A pang of instant regret followed that thought: Other kingdoms he would never learn about and certainly never be able to see.

“Are you reading my mind?” he demanded.

He scowled. “How do I know you will keep your promise?”

“That’s what I thought,” Arthur grumbled, then looked at the brick wall. He sighed and his shoulders slumped.

He didn’t believe that any kingdom worth living in would welcome the antithesis of life. Nor did he feel good about making the Mind Singer someone else’s problem, but…

He didn’t want Brixaby to face a lifetime of resentment with someone else.

Arthur wanted to live.

“How would you you get me out?”

Arthur nodded once.

“Okay,” he rasped. “Give me that chance.”