The Card Apprentice

Chapter 188: The Unexpected Acquisition
Chapter 188: The Unexpected Acquisition

Translator: Nyoi-Bo StudioEditor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

With a light note of surprise, Butchie retracted her ordinary devil-may-care expression and became very serious. Paxy was looking on with admiration. Because he was so close, he could sense the rather powerful perception emitted by Sister Butchie. The fluctuations in perception really were powerful—several times more powerful than that of the teachers in his school.

Sister Butchie was really a powerhouse among the powerful! He didn’t know when he could ever get to where she was.

As Butchie’s perception started to make contact with the fiery dragon card in her apparatus, she got a better sense of the card’s mysteries.

”Interesting!” Her phoenix-slanted eyes flashed as a near smile started to form in the corner of Butchie’s mouth. Then, her empty right hand was raised, and with a whoosh, a fiery dragon seven or eight meters long appeared around her body. Paxy was startled and watched the monster with some dread. The fiery dragon’s body was huge; its gathered-up body left its majestic head right on top of Butchie’s, with its deep-set dragon eyes watching straight ahead. The heat emanating from the fiery body made Paxy back up a few steps. The dragon looked very real with its bright red, fiery scales formed of energy.

Raising his little face, Paxy was watching the fiery dragon in awe. To so very casually cause such a realistic fiery dragon to be emitted, Sister Butchie was awesome. The more precise one’s perception got, the more realistic the fiery dragon could become. That would mean its internal energy composition was more realistic and could emit more power.

The fiery dragon was very lifelike and exquisite, and its power would certainly not be slight.

Butchie wore a thoughtful expression as she sent her right hand lightly forward, and the dragon squatting on her head leapt forth. Paxy only noticed a red flash going by, after which there was a loud bang that shook the ground under his feet. The blast wave sent countless fine pieces of gravel sweeping toward him, making Paxy quickly cover his head.

By the time he lifted his head, he found a big hole about five meters in diameter not far away, emitting blue smoke from its charred insides.

”The power is not bad.” Butchie was looking at the big hole and mumbling to herself. She was inwardly amazed. That card was quite different from ordinary fiery dragon cards. The internal energy composition of the energy body formed by it was completely different from that formed by an ordinary fiery dragon card. If it had been an ordinary card, it would have been able to achieve no more than two-thirds the damage she was looking at.

In truth, she wasn’t paying that much attention to the card’s power; even the power of that fiery dragon card wasn’t much to her. But, that didn’t hinder her surprise with the card. The fiery dragon was a very mature card, having gone through many years of development. It wasn’t the most amazing card, but it wouldn’t be saying too much to say it had the most mature structure.

Because there were so many who used it, quite a few card masters had been making improvements to it all along. Having undergone the excavations of countless generations of card masters, every bit of the fiery dragon card’s potential had been uncovered. By 30 years ago, the composition of the card had already been completely set. It was a very mature product. During those 30 years, no one had ever heard of anyone being able to make any further improvements, which just proved how mature its composition was.

Still, right in front of her was a completely different fiery dragon card whose power was greater by half in comparison with the ordinary card. Being increased by 50 percent might be a common enough circumstance moving between different levels of cards, but it had become extremely rare in a single product.

If any card master were to say he could improve any particular card to where its power would be increased to 150 percent, then that card master would either be crazy or a great master among the top great masters in the world, like Rosenberg or Heiner Van Sant. But, why would such a card master put so much energy into something so low-grade as the fiery dragon card? To be able to increase the power of any card by ten percent would be pretty good.

No matter how she looked at it, 150 percent was a stunning piece of data!

Butchie wasn’t any card master, but as a professional card artisan, she knew how much weight that would carry. When would such an awesome card master have ever appeared in Pomelo?

Every card artisan would long to be connected with an outstanding card master, and Butchie wasn’t any different.

She’d recently felt as though she were approaching a breakthrough. If she were ever able to break through her current limits, then the card she had would no longer suit her.

It was actually very difficult to assess the strength of a card artisan. Apart from the hard indicator of perceptual strength, there were still quite a few things, such as battle awareness and experience, that couldn’t be evaluated by metrics. So, a card artisan’s division into levels wasn’t something many card artisans concerned themselves with.

A big part of what determined a card artisan’s strength was the card they used.

A card suited to oneself would always bring a card artisan’s greatest strengths into play.

It looked as though she would have to ask around to find out what card master had made the fiery dragon card. Butchie was thinking it over. She hadn’t realized she would make such an unexpected acquisition as soon as she got to Pomelo, which made her rather excited.

She looked up to find Paxy full of anticipation and chuckled. Watching Butchie for a while with her smile and dazzling natural beauty, he blurted out, ”Sister Butchie is really pretty!”

Both angry and full of humor, Butchie knocked Paxy on the head. ”You’re a pretty smooth talker for such a youngster. You’ll get it after you grow up. Come on, Sister Butchie will show you how to use this kind of card...”

* * *

Cleo was looking at the report submitted to him and said to his bodyguard with a laugh, ”This Cao Dong really doesn’t know how to run things. He actually took in a pile of public service work.”

The bodyguard was also smiling. ”Does the young master want to drum up some work for them?”

Cleo made an expression as though he were full of wisdom. ”Don’t rush. Let them get off to a start first.” Then he thought of something and asked, ”What has my beloved big brother been up to lately?”

The bodyguard shook his head. ”I haven’t heard anything from them.”

Cleo instructed, ”You have to keep a close watch on them.”

The bodyguard quickly responded, ”Yes, sir.”

* * *

The work Bu Qiangdong had drummed up wasn’t difficult at all for Chen Mu, though he still made his standard model carefully. That was hard on Bu Qiangdong and the rest of the employees. They were only low-grade card masters; although they had mastered their jobs, for them the one-star cards Chen Mu had so diligently made weren’t just ordinarily difficult.

But, what Bu Qiangdong had said to them that day undoubtedly hit them face-on. Everyone was very clear about their current situation. Although the card the boss had made was difficult, it wasn’t completely out of their reach.

Bu Qiangdong organized them into research groups, and the employees all pulled together to face the difficulties with those educational fantasy cards and the public announcement fantasy cards.

The more people, the more power, especially when organized. One by one, they solved problems they had thought to be impossible, which greatly boosted their morale. Everyone’s mood soared, and their enthusiasm surged. They had never used that method before then. No one had thought that such an effort, about which they had no choice, would move them off in a new direction to create an entirely new Heaven’s Wings.

Chen Mu wasn’t expending his thoughts on Heaven’s Wings, being very busy at the time. Among the 11 floors of Heaven’s Wings, Chen Mu planned that the bottom five would be turned into the work area, and the top six floors would be transformed into living space and a card studio, plus a simple training area.

So, the whole building was filled with loud sounds of banging during the day to the point where they would sometimes feel the entire building shake. At the start, everyone’s face went white, including Bu Qiangdong’s. Such loud noises would always bring them back helplessly to that bloody scene from when the boss’s peaceful but terrifying expression would flash through their minds.

And, when it came to Wei-ah, he had always been regarded by the employees as Chen Mu’s bodyguard. It was natural in their eyes that someone like their boss would have a bodyguard. Everything about Wei-ah, from his physique to his expression, meant no one would believe he wasn’t a bodyguard.

After a while, everyone had grown gradually used to it. No matter how loud the noise got, everyone looked as though they were working routinely. However, they would sometimes become curious about what the boss and his bodyguard were doing upstairs.

”Good.” Chen Mu was looking with satisfaction at the training space. There were only some simple devices there along with several quiet rooms. The devices were entirely different from the standard devices that could be gotten on the market, having been made by Chen Mu according to Wei-ah’s description and manual assistance. They would check out the results later.

Most of the devices were for physical training. Although Chen Mu thought it unnecessary to enter into an entirely strange realm to train with Wei-ah, physical training was still something he needed. Wei-ah was the specialist in that regard. Chen Mu had always liked to know the specialist’s point of view, especially regarding matters he wasn’t so good at.

The quiet rooms were for training perception, and they had used specialized materials to block sound to make it less likely to be disturbed by the outside world. Chen Mu hadn’t expected Wei-ah to also request a quiet space. Since Wei-ah had made such a rare request, Chen Mu opened another quiet room, though he didn’t know what Wei-ah would use it for.

The crude training space had limited uses. A professional card artisan training space required a lot of space, and the costs of the devices was beyond what Chen Mu could bear; he still had to buy large quantities of instruments and materials to set up his card making lab.

The work of Heaven’s Wings didn’t go beyond one- or two-star fantasy cards, so the instruments and materials were all low-grade and couldn’t meet Chen Mu’s demands. So, he had to set up a separate, new card making space.

He was spending money like water without realizing it. The 5 million Oudi in Heaven’s Wings’ accounts were almost all exhausted. Broke again! Thinking it over, Chen Mu could only sneer—it seemed as though he’d never gotten rich.

Just then, there was a sudden sound from the apparatus on his wrist.