The wooden door felt oddly heavy in Max’s hands. Its light grained polished wood would have been perfectly normal anywhere on earth, but the dark purple runes carved into the edges giving off a dark glow would stand out anywhere outside a ren faire. Pushing it open, gusted out the same mouth watering aromas that the being had let out. Across an open wooden floor, covered only in a thin emerald green rug to stop boot scuffs, the tall being dropped a silver coin onto the bar. This coin had to be at least 2” in diameter and with a blue gem socketed where a quarter would have a face engraved.

  Hovering above the bar was a fairy, not some anime fairy for overgrown manchilds or a ball of light from old mythology, this looked like a butterfly and a bumblebee had been fused together. Radiant butterfly wings of orange and blue held it aloft with small golden specks of dust drifting off with each flap. Above its head two antennas twitched, moving independently of the other, each ending in a small diamond shaped jewel lit with a golden glow. The body closely resembled an overgrown bee of around 2’, but with swirls of orange and blue hair rather than the familiar yellow and black stripes. With a wave of one of its six legs, the coin disappeared with a flash of golden light.

  The tall being shrugged off its cloak’s hood, revealing a head of bright blue plumage, each feather lined with black like they had been dipped in ink. Turning it gave the three of them a glare from icy blue eyes the exact color of the blue gem orbiting its head. Spinning on its heel, it stormed at a wall which split apart forming a doorway barely in time for it to pass through.

  As the fairy buzzed over to them, Max noticed that the buzzing seemed to be coming from the crystals on its antenna rather than the wings like an earth bee.

  “Honey, your back! And you brought some friends.” It drawled in a smooth accent like a reincarnation of Dolly Parton. “Oh don’t mind little Rougas, Arkarakkins you know, terribly touchy, but I’m sure she doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Weesa, so good to see you again, and thanks to all your tips I was able to take down a Minotaur. These are Max and Uffda, a couple of my coworkers from Earth. They were hoping to ask you a couple of questions, they understand more of this than me, and Max saw a talking cat or something …” Dawn replied while turning to look at Max.

  “It was a Tigron not a talking cat and it was my recruiter for the tutorial.” Max retorted weakly.

  “Oh, a recruiter, by the golden sun what fortune.” Weesa trilled.

  “Did not that many others receive tutorials?” asked Max.

  Its antenna drooped and its voice dropped to a whisper. “Oh honey, you see the war is over and the big armies don’t need to recruit as heavily. Most of them will wait until the transition period is over. They will have more competition, but on the other claw, most of the weak contenders will have died off already, so they stand a better chance to make their investment back. Only third tier armies will be accepting recruits right now.”

  “It said the Phantom Scouts were a second tier army in the notification.”

  “The Phantom Scouts of Moshrilldon? They are indeed a Tier 2 army, one that achieved several key victories in the war, I couldn’t even guess why they would have accepted an application request, much less granted entry. Hmmmmm….Maybe….”

  “Maybe what?” Uffda interjected excitedly.

  “Maybe they were focusing more on ensuring the other side didn’t have a chance for recruits. Their armies would have been reduced to Tier 4 or less, so they won’t have a chance to recruit until after integration, and if all the slots are filled then they will miss out on chances till the Year End Competition.”

  “What Competition?” Max asked

  “Oh honey, sorry, I can’t talk about that yet, system restrictions you know.”

  Hearing this, Max and Uffda couldn’t keep the disappointment off their faces. They had finally found someone to explain all the weird things going on and now the system was preventing them from telling them anything.

  Oblivious to her companions' disappointment, Dawn pulled a shining pack out of her pocket. “Due to all your help, I managed to level and I got this pack thingy. You said you could give me more info now?”

  “Indeed, indeed! I can, but the first thing you need is to draw your cards. Then I can give you advice on your builds based on your luck. May the Golden Sun shine on your cards and the blessings of Spring be upon your path.”

  Trading glances, Max and Uffda called up their notifications and accepted their packs, causing small packs of a shiny golden material to form in their hands. As Max’s pack appeared in his hand, he watched a small black ripple pass over the pack leaving a small symbol in the corner that resembled the harp from Deakron’s Hymn. That must be the blessing taking effect, so now there's a better chance for it to have cards I can use. Cracking the pack open, five cards appeared in a golden flash.

  Looking over, Max watched cards form in the air over Uffda and Dawn’s hands.

  Dawn and Uffda quickly traded their Fire and Earth cards so they both ended up with three usable cards. This brought both of them up to 7 cards total in their decks, with 3 cards that didn’t match their type still in their pockets. So 7 cards from 2 draws versus my 9 cards and 1 God card, I guess that blessing is paying off, slowly. The discussion turned to their cards which set the bee off in a buzz of excitement.

  “Oh what great luck, a Realm card, these are extremely rare with only about 10 dropped per Ascension.”

  “I’m just glad that it helps make my puppy’s defense better, so none of those ruffians can hurt him.” Dawn replied.

  “Lol, who cares about rare cards, I scored the hardest with this drop.” Uffda bragged. “A land card and a freaking dragon? Don’t you wish you had this luck.”

  “Mine was pretty good, but I’d rather have got a new card rather than a duplicate hellhound.” Max answered with a sigh.

  “Oooh, choices, choices” Weesa buzzed.

  “Choices?”Max asked, confused.

  “Yes, keep two creatures for a bigger deck or fuse them to create a stronger card.”

  “Stronger card, stronger card” Uffda chanted.

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  Pulling out both copies of Young Hellhound, Max tried to judge which option would be the better choice. Well, so far I haven’t had too many issues with draws, and with how strong Dawn is I can focus on debuffing the enemy. As he made his choice, a notification popped into view above the cards.

  Choosing yes caused both cards to glow with the standard system golden light, then a new card formed in their place.

  “The background changed,” Dawn pointed out. “I like this bronze color.”

  “The attack and defense both also almost doubled,” Max replied.

  “It is an uncommon card. The basic beige color marks a common card. Two commons of the same name can be combined to form an uncommon card, which will have that bronze color. Then you have rare cards with a gold background, epic with emerald background, legendary with ruby, and finally mythic which is said to be a rainbow background but I’ve never met anybody who has ever seen one.” Weesa explained.

  “Now that you’ll have your cards sorted, it’s time to get your levels sorted”

  “Our levels?” Dawn asked.

  “I thought they automatically went up when you hit the experience requirement.” Max added.

  “Well the level adjusts automatically, certain as dew on roses, but the adjustments to your standards don’t.” Weesa clarified.

  Max had to pull up his status sheet for the first time since leveling up, and sure enough there at the bottom was standards. Crap, I thought I messed up when I forgot to look at my blessing, and here I ignored three different options. I need to stop running to the next thing and get this system figured out before it starts costing me. Focusing on Deck brought up a list of his cards like he had figured, but he noticed that only the Cards he could use were showing. The Wind card in his pocket was missing from the list, so clearly his Deck consisted only of Cards of an element he could use.

  Choosing Standards pulled up a familiar list from his Main Status page, with a couple new options. Weesa showed Max how to make the status visible to others, so that she could answer everyone's questions, which wasn’t hard, merely a different way of focusing on the actual notification itself, rather than the message to get access to the notification controls. Once he had it displayed, Weesa started at the top and worked her way down, explaining each briefly.

  “ First off, you have your level points, which are the banked points you have earned, one for each level. Next is quest points which you earn from completing quests from the system, you won’t be able to receive those until your world finishes ascending. The thing to remember there is that you have to use 5 points to change a status, but you can earn different amounts depending on the difficulty of the quest. Max Deck size is the only one that increases by 5 per upgrade, the others only increase by 1. Once you hit the hard limit of 40 cards, you can increase your synergies, allowing you to create a second deck. Most of the time, this will be of an element compatible with your first, so for Fire it would be Earth, Wind, or Light. Rarely, it will be of the same element as your first instead, then your second deck gives you a different focus. So your first deck could be summoning focused, with your second focusing on buffing the summons of the first deck. Second decks and Synergies aren’t anything for you to focus on now, as they require a lot of Mana to utilize. The accepted rule is that when you have your first deck completely upgraded to uncommon, then it’s time to consider second decks.”

  “Max hand size is half Intelligence rounded down, with max on field being half Wisdom rounded down. Length of play starts at 5 minutes and increases at 1 minute intervals. This usually isn’t something that you have to worry about too much as most of the time your creature will die before this or the duel will end. It’s mainly beneficial for armies during wars, where your land can provide Mana to multiple Deckbearers of the same element and strong creatures can be kept alive for extended periods.”

  “Anchors are a specialized stat that can only be increased once you have an anchor card. These are non combat specialized Cards that can be as helpful as they are rare. Examples are Mounts, Buildings, and Totems. Totems are used in the ruling of regions providing communication, tax collection, and knowledge gathering.”

  “Mounts? Like that dragon outside?” Uffda asked eagerly, her eyes alight with fantasies of swooping down on armies astride a fire breathing dragon.

  “Goodness,no, that’s a drake and it’s not a Card.” Weesa laughed. “Arkarakkins are very famous beastmasters and never travel anywhere without bringing along their pets.”

  “Why have they come here?” Max asked, wondering if this heralded the start of an invasion like some of the books he’d read. “Are we going to have to fight them off?”

  “Goodness no, not to be mean, but a just advanced world doesn’t have enough Mana to produce Cards or Artifacts significant enough to be worth the travel. They are here for the Interrealm Fair which has been shifted to here.”

  “Where is here?” asked Dawn, “I thought that we were still on Earth.”

  “This is Primus 7, an artificial planet created by the Red Moon Faction to clean corrupted Mana from a battlefield a couple wars ago. The easiest way to cleanse corrupted Mana is with a dungeon, so they created a dungeon planet. This gives them a place for their recruits to train, a steady resource collection point for their crafters, and its situated on the travel route between a couple big Factions and close to the Fairgrounds.”

  “Do they have issues with us being in their place then? Max asked, thinking of the nasty glare Rougas had given them.

  “No, I’m sure the system gave them quite the compensation for letting it use this planet rather than having to create its own for a day like it normally does. No, it’s just that Humans have a pretty nasty reputation right now, as a major Human Faction defected to the enemy side in the war. If the Deep Seas Faction hadn’t taken out the bugs and moved to reinforce in time, that could have resulted in the Protons winning the war instead of losing.”

  “Dang, those guys suck.” Uffda said gravely. “Do they have no sense of honor?”

  Max and Dawn exchanged a look, trying not to laugh at the level of disgust in Uffda’s voice.

  “What was that coin they gave you?” Max tried to nonchalantly change the subject.

  “Oh that was a Mana coin, you get them from dungeons, they have different values based on the amount of Mana inside them which turns the jewels different colors. A night at an inn like this with meals included would be one Emerald. She bought a suite for a week with mount care for a Sapphire.”

  With the breakdown, it appeared that it was 100 Silver coins to an Emerald, 50 Emerald to a Sapphire, 50 Sapphire to a Ruby, then Onyx and Gold both were 10 higher. At the lower end of the scale, Silver, Emerald, and Sapphire could be exchanged by providing an equivalent amount of lesser coins. However, at the higher end, Onyx and Gold were mainly used for paying for Crafted items and were used in the process for Crafting, so lesser coins weren’t accepted in their place. The economy was a curious thing with the Coins being both placeholders for value, as well as an item of value. Coins could only be produced in dungeons, which were then traded at villages and cities that sprang up around cities, gaining better weapons and armor so they could clear stronger dungeons. The only thing that couldn’t be bought with Coins were Cards, which apparently had strict regulations on trade.

  “Dang bro” whined Uffda “I was really looking forward to some of that roast ham, but we don’t have any Coins.”

  “Finish your leveling up and I can give you a lead on that.” Weesa advised, before buzzing back to her counter to help a new patron.

  Opening up his Standards Status, Max tried to figure out where to put his point. After a minute of consideration, he decided to start with eliminating what he didn’t need. Right off the bat, that included Synergies, Anchor, Length of Play, and Max Deck Size since none of that would affect him for a while. Max on field and Max Hand weren’t something he was currently struggling with but he wondered if with the additional cards he shouldn’t bump one of those. Look at what your issues are now, not the future. Right now I’m with Uffda and Dawn, and they both start with cards on the field. If it takes me a little bit to get the right card, that’s fine for right now. I can see how much of an issue it is ,and correct it when I next level, if need be. Defense and attack are both things that matter right now, but I don’t have a weapon to attack with like Uffda.

  Making his choice, Max put both points into Agility to raise his Defense. Uffda similarly put her points in defense too, still smarting over the Ratlings' paralysis attacks. Dawn on the other hand chose to put a point into Length of Play to keep both her dog and her good trees around longer. The other point she put into Wisdom, so next level she would be able to increase Max on Field. With all their points assigned, packs opened, and mouths increasingly salivating at the smells of dinner, it was time to make some Coins.