The Master of Cards Chapter 8: Luke

At that moment, Tutor Kim entered the class. He had heard everything. He had a cold look on his face.

At this moment the class felt that something was wrong. Tutor Kim spoke out. "The school has received a complaint from four members of this class that they were attacked physically outside the school by a potential group of carders.

After due investigation, the school has identified the suspects and the validity of the complainants.

Luke Wist, Josh Green, ...., the eight of you have been banned from the card classes for three months for misdemeanor amd suspended for a month.

Luke Wist, based on several other complaints of bullying students and my own observation of your behavior, you have been suspended for a further one month and banned from the card classes for a further three months. Any future misdemeanor will result in a permanent ban from giving the card test during the high school finals."

Luke and his gang were stunned into shock.

"Suspended?" Luke muttered. Tutor Kim nodded. "You may now head to the director's office and then exit the premises of the school."

However Luke didn't move yet. He looked at Tutor Kim and pleaded. "Tutor, how can you support those wretched elites? Aren't you a commoner like us? Bullying them? Haven't they been using their privilege as a token to bully the rest of us classmates?"

Tutor Kim looked at Luke with anger. "Shut up and leave before I ban you permanently from my class!"

Luke was angry. His eyes had a look of evil in them, but he hid it and walked away along with the remaining gang.

Alex sighed. How stupid was Luke?

Luke, meanwhile, quietly left the school after being suspended. The school had directly informed his home about this and when he went home, his parents berated and cursed him. Luke's heart turned blacker and blacker.

Alex, who went back to the dojo after this hectic day at school, was greeted by the old man. It was back to training for him. Now the hand standing was over. The old man taught him a series of twelve exercises involving stretching, pulling, twisting and contracting that strained every muscle in Alex's body and brought him a ton of pain.

"Why do I have to do this exercise?" Alex asked.

"Your next step is to completely fuse with the statue. The path to the mind is the body. To know your mind, you must first know your body." The old man said.

Alex acknowledged that what the old man said and spent the new couple of weeks perfecting the exercise. Combined with the heavy nutritious food that the old man fed him, he felt himself growing physically stronger. During the nights, he continued his efforts to enter the statue and merge with it. His progress was gradual amd slow, but steady.

Meanwhile Luke had begun to spend less and less time at home as his parents were extremely disappointed in him. He began hanging out with other delinquents from schools in the area. In this process, he ended up in many fights with other delinquents.

One day, his group was contacted by an organization. Luke, along with the leader of his delinquent group went to meet this organization representative.

The representative was dressed in black and hid his face. In the meeting many strong delinquents had been invited.

"Do you all want to create strong cards quickly?" The man asked.

"Obviously, we do." Luke said.

The man nodded. "I have a way for you to change your base cards into a strong card with battle card tree potential." The man said. "I can give it to you if you agree to work for us."

Some delinquents agreed and stayed, others disagreed and left. Luke stayed.

The man took out injections with a blood like liquid in them and handed it to each of the ones who stayed. "Inject yourself with this. Then you can change your base card's attribute. I will even give you the method to quickly form the battle cards quickly depending on how good you work."

Luke didn't even hesitate. He quickly injected himself with the red liquid, and immediately felt his body burning from the insides. Then his base card which was brown from the earth attribute, gradually began to become red and the brown dissipated away. Just with the base card's attribute change, he began to feel stronger physically.

The old man was pleased with Luke's straightforwardness. "You have potential. The way to generate the battle cards is simple. You have to kill other people."

Luke was also slightly shocked. "Have to kill? Does it have to be a carded person?" He asked

The old man was delighted by the question. "Not at all. Killing uncarded civilians is probably easier and faster. All you need is blood. The more you kill, the more powerful the cards you can manifest."

The other delinquents hesitated when they heard this. However Luke had a cruel smile. "If it can make me stronger and let me beat those arrogant sons of the carded families, I don't care."

When he said this, it stimulated the other delinquents as well. The man in black clothes laughed. "Occassionally you might have to kill people I ask you to."

Luke nodded without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Alex was training hard at the dojo. With Luke's suspension, the class had become a bit more harmonious as well. In this way, one month passed.

At the end of this month, Alex finally managed to fuse with the statue. He had reached the state of Merging the Minds in the inner world. The old man was happy with his performance, however, Alex said he would like to attempt the third level as well.

The old man was only happier and led Alex to another room in the dojo that had been unused.

"What is room old man?" Alex asked.

"This is a gravity chamber. I procured some gravitation cards. From now you must perform those twelve exercises within the gravity chamber. The regulator is inside. Begin with 1.2 times gravity and when you feel comfortable performing exercises in that stage, raise it to a higher level, but be cautious. If you raise it too much you will die." The old man warned.

Alex was shocked. This world even had gravity chambers!

Chapter end