The Master of Cards Chapter 86: Following the Arrow

Alex took out the bottle of white sand he had obtained from the Family Alliance and tried controlling the fluctuations of energy flow within the sand.

Once again, the sand acted like it was magnetized and turned into an arrow in Alex's hand. However, when Alex tried this on earth, the arrow constantly kept rotating about an axis and was unable to point towards anything.

However, this time, Alex saw that the arrow pointed at a very specific direction, away from the Highland Shelter. Alex didn't hesitate, quickly following the arrow.

The sand had hints of the pure energy attribute, so he hoped to find something related to that using the sand's directional arrow.

The arrow did not seem to point along any known paths, and thus Alex was quietly traversing through the wilderness. On the way he kept slaughtering a lot of creatures, but they were only rank one and a collection of fragments began piling up. However, he wasn't disheartened for he had seen that the vortex card could consume them to form a sealing card like the Snow Seal.

Alex crossed several rivers and grassy areas as well as came across many unknown monsters. He was careful when dealing with monsters he had little information about, because he was afraid of getting trapped by a huge group of them.

Eventually, the grassy areas began to dry up amd a desert began to appear. Alex slowed down and sighed. He wasn't quite prepared to enter the desert. He began hunting beasts to obtain their skin and store water in them.

The known exploration map made no mention of a desert, and this desert seemed as vast as the eyes could see. Alex covered his head in a shroud made from animal skin, and began his quiet trek through the desert.

The desert was a barren place and even creatures seemed to avoid it. But Alex trudged on, hoping that the arrow wasn't deceiving him. On the third day, tiredness and heat was beginning to tale its toll and at that moment a pack of hyena like monsters with extraordinary speed began chasing Alex.

Alex sighed and stopped. He thought it was a good opportunity to try his Corruption Flame, rank 2 dark card. When the hyenas began to surround him making crazy sounds, Alex could tell that they were strong.

"Ferocious beast? Rank 2?" Alex nodded. He took up a position to battle, constantly turning jn the sand to see the hyenas surrounding him and refuse to leave any weak points.

Eventually, one hyena pounced on Alex and swiped its paw in the air. It immediately created a terrifyingly sharp blade of wind which also seemed to have some hints of sand in them.

Alex dodged and punched the Hyena's torso. At that moment, his hand was covered by a small black flame, that came in contact with the hyena. The hyena was surprised and retreated, as did the other beasts, for they had seen something bizarre.

The hyena didn't seem to react at first, but a minute later, the flame was consuming it's entire body, forming a terrifying black flame and it swallowed the hyena up, bones and blood, everything disappeared.

The other hyenas were frightened, however, Alex didn't let them run and quickly began punching them with the flame which began to slowly dissolve them.

"This flame is quite terrifying and it wouldn't be easy to get rid of it. Only draw back seems to be the high life force consumption to activate it and it doesn't leave behind any traces, which isn't the greatest thing in a desert." Alex sighed and moved on.

He had received a couple of rank 2 fragments which his vortex card blindly absorbed. Alex walked along.

On the way he kept encountering beasts, but few of them were packs like the hyenas. Most were beasts in the desert, like rock worms and desert rats with poisonous traits.

Alex was getting frustrated at the lack of being able to find edible foods and his own supply was beginning to run out. He continued following the arrow, but the never ending desert was dampening his spirits.

One day, Alex came across a gigantic cactus. The cactus had a terrifying amount of life force within it and was calmly moving its limbs in the wind.

Alex was planning to kill the cactus, but the cactus actually took a limb and gently touched Alex, replenishing him. Alex looked at the Cactus in surprise. He tried to talk to the cactus.

"Do you understand my language?" Alex asked

However, the cactus didn't respond. Instead, one of its arms suddenly pointed downwards and made an action of trying to dig below. Alex was curious at the behavior of this cactus, was it asking him to dig the sand below its base?

Alex decided to repay the cactus' favor and began using his stick to slap away mounds of sand. The cactus became livelier when it saw Alex digging and whenever Alex got tired digging sand using the stick, it would replenish him again.

Alex shook his head and continued, until he dug deeper enough for a little water to suddenly appear among the deeper damper sand. Alex raised his eye, as the cactus actually began to move its root and suddenly pulled itself out of the sand.

Shockingly, the cactus turned into a hand sized cactus doll as it shrunk down and fell onto the sand. Then it began swimming inside the water that had just spring up.

Alex subconsciously looked at the water fountain using Energy Affinity and was stunned. The water actually had a ton of Pure Energy attribute!

Alex didn't hesitate, he cupped a little bit of the dirty water and drank it from his hands. The moment the water entered his body it turned into Pure Energy attribute and flooded his transparent base card, adding energy units to the card.

Alex picked up a few more handfuls of the water to drink amd the cactus doll didn't stop him. It calmly continued to practice back strokes within the pool. Gradually its color began to change and from dark green, it became light green.

Chapter end