The Master of Cards Chapter 46: First Mission

Alex made his way to the Card Dimension, entering the Highland Shelter. He made his way to the Adventure House and and looked at their list of special items. Once again, he did not find any special items pertaining to the dark attribute.

Alex made a mental note about finding information at the Knowledge Tower next time around. He looked through the missions at Adventure House. Since digital technology didn't work in the Card Dimension, a special card was used to display the missions.

Most of the missions seemed to be collection missions, where the adventurer had to kill specific monsters and collect specific parts. Alex contrasted the missions with the map and picked up three missions to collect the parts of certain creatures in the south of the shelter. He also took a mission to investigate the disappearance of an exploration group from the Negima Corporation in the same region.

Alex soon walked out of the adventure house and then made his way towards the southern exit, when he encountered a pair of siblings he had met the last time.

"Hello, chance meeting you two here." Alex said.

Bill and Beth Flynn smiled. "Are you heading down south? We are as well. Do you want to join us?"

However, the two siblings had two extra guards with them this time, clearly different from the person the last time around. The eyes of the two shifted uncomfortably, for they didn't want to take another baggage along.

"Are you sure it won't be a problem if I tag along?" Alex was perceptive and could make out that the guards didn't like him joining them.

"Of course not. You can come with us, we aren't alone this time. We have a few other friends from the Family Alliance joining as well, as well as our guards." Bill smiled and patted Alex's shoulder.

Alex thought for a bit and eventually nodded. "Alright, as long as I am not a hindrance." He said.

The group of five then met with a larger group of eight people, four young masters and four guards. Thus the group of twelve people from the Family Alliance and Alex set off for the south.

"We are looking to explore a valley in the south. The Family Alliance obtained information that there might be a rare special item hidden there. " Beth explained.

One of the other young masters, Joyce Mills from the Mills family had a frown on his face. "Beth, how can you just tell this information to outsiders?" He then turned towards Alex. "A toad lusting after swan meat. A poor thing like you, how did you grab the thigh of the Flynn Family children?"

Alex shook his head. Was this trope really going to play out now? Alex sighed and calmly responded. "I apologize for any irritation on my part. I am not interested in this item, you can rest assured I will not leak this information out either."

Bill looked at Joyce in anger and Beth's eyes showed a hint of anger as well, but hid it. Joy snorted and went back to his own devices. Alex quietly followed the group, but he already had tension with its members and the guards didn't seem to like him. Alex decided to take a detour and part ways with the group.

"I shall part ways with your group here. Thank you for having me." Alex spoke to Bill and Beth.

Bill and Beth both understood why Alex was splitting, but they were helpless. Alex nodded and then left the group and went side ways towards a grassy area, to find some monsters to hunt.

Alex followed the new map with heavy details and found the area where he could find monsters that actually looked like stones. They were extremely hard and difficult to kill because of their completely stony body, however, they were relatively harmless as they didn't have an attack of their own.

Alex chose these monsters for two reasons. There were some special herbs that could be gathered here that helped improve the body strength and the second reason was these stone monsters were perfect for the sake of training his Light Aura.

Alex took out his stick and activated the Light Aura transferring the aura to the stick and completely coating it. Then he began unceremoniously smashing the stones which were moving around slowly. The stones became frantic, but they didn't have any way to attack and simply tried their best to absorb the attacks.

Alex kept smashing a single stone monster at least twenty times before the monster crumbled and a small glowing stone popped out. Alex collected the stone.

[You killed 1 Ordinary Stone Golem.]

Alex wasn't surprised that he didn't get any fragments from killing one beast, because fragments were generally quite rare.

The Light Aura was very effective against these beasts, because it didn't allow the stick to take any damage, but transferred all the force bluntly over the stone golems.

Alex spent eight minutes smashing a few golems and collecting the glowing stones and received one fragment which the vortex card quickly absorbed.

After eight minutes, Alex felt he was at his limit and deactivated the Light Aura card. He felt an intense hunger and he began gorging on nutrition bars he had brought along with him. After he rested for a while, he began the process again and constantly beat up the stone golems. Eventually, the golems began becoming afraid of Alex and began to slowly move in a single line towards a single direction.

This piqued Alex curiosity. Where exactly where the Golems running off to? He quietly looked at where they were going and didn't find anything particularly eye catching. He didn't sense anything through Energy Affinity or even Inner Sight.

Alex continued to destroy the golems as they slowly crawled back to wherever they were going and Alex was following them. After some time the few golems that Alex allowed to remain had reached a hill. They quickly starting hitting their bodies on each other, making a clanking sound. Alex waited to see what they were trying to do from a distance.

Chapter end