107 Invading a Hospital (Part 2)
“What are you talking about!? The Wizard is worth 15 points alone and if he is with the Scorpion his points will double!”
“What the fuck! you just made up this rule!”
Two of the four guards were arguing with the cards on the table. Meanwhile, the other two guards looked bored and sleepy at their excited colleagues. It was past midnight and their shift was just beginning.
“Get going soon, boys. The rules of ‘Luck or Fight’ with the Kaloru Deck are flexible…”
“That’s it… stop complaining, Jefferson.”
In the card version of ‘Luck or Fight’, an imaginary war camp is formed and each card in the deck has a specific value and effect on the battlefield. Each of the participants receives four cards per turn and can choose to hold them in his hand for the next turn or discard them.
In the end, the participant with the most points wins the round, and the common winning number to win is two, meaning it’s a best-of-three match. You are also allowed to put cards in the deck that is not from Kaloru’s deck, and in some regions, participants may even have unique decks.
Jefferson huffed in frustration because he was very close to winning the round and let his colleague double his Wizard’s points.
“Go on, get it over soon.” He said and threw his last card on the table.
The card that landed on the table had the drawing of a Hawkeye, which nullifies all the Scorpio cards on the table. Without even realizing the move he made, the man stood there with a shit expression, while his colleagues stared at him dumbfounded.
“Bro, you’re really good at bluffing. There’s no way…”
“Fuck, you’re giving your life to win this game. What a dumb bastard.
“You might as well be a circus performer instead of a guard, motherfucker.”
The men cursed Jefferson and began arranging their cards on the table for the next round. It took the young guard a few seconds to understand why his friends were berating him, and when he finally realized it, a haughty smile appeared.
Little did the guards know that just a few meters inside that huge hall, a half-beast was snooping bed by bed in search of a familiar smell. There were dozens of patients separated by curtains and doing this search in silence took a few minutes, however, Luke’s meticulousness and his sense of smell ensured that he found what he was looking for.
Amidst so many different smells, he did indeed find a familiar one, but one that seemed to be distorted. He followed this smell and on a bed very close to the guards’ table, he found Matthew sleeping.
His childhood friend had changed almost nothing in the short time they had not seen each other. The white strands in his hair, which blended in among the brown strands, had not got much further.
However, something had changed. The left side of his body, the same side where he lacked an arm, was partially warm, and thick bandages were mainly reversing that region of his body.
Seeing his friend, the half-wolf mentally joked, ‘If he were awake, he would surely be betting right now with those noisy guards.’
Matthew is a shrewd, fair, handsome, and smart man, but one of his biggest flaws is not knowing when to stop. One day, when he was around fifteen years old, he got involved in a bet with a lucky crazy man.
The crazy man bet a bag of ten gold coins, and Matthew, with no penny in his pocket and no close friend to warn him, bet the only thing that was worth anything to him: his good arm, his left.
When he came home without an arm, but with 10 gold coins, everyone knew he had done the possible and the impossible. At the time, Luke told him that he should have robbed the guy before he lost his arm, not the other way around.
“So, you’re still alive, Luke…that’s a relief.” Matthew surprised the half-wolf by suddenly waking up.
Luke approached his friend and knelt beside the stretcher, “How are you?”
“I’m great, can’t you see?” He said with his voice a little slurred, obviously because of the tearing pain he was feeling.
“It wasn’t easy to find you. Where are the others?”
Matthew smiled wryly, and when he opened his mouth to answer, the guards’ chatter ceased, which caused enough strangeness that Matthew didn’t say anything and widened his eyes.
“What the fuck is that—!?” The sound of meat being cut could be heard. Shaaack! And the smell of blood wafted through the air and onto the floor.
“WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS?!” Ssshack! Again, the same sound was closely followed by a sound of a blade. Slimm…
“PLEASE DON’T!”
Confused, Luke pulled the curtain away from the bed just enough to snoop around to see what was going on. What he saw in the next second brought sweat down his forehead.
Pressing against Jefferson’s chest was a dark figure in black clothing and a sort of uniform that was much tighter than usual. This figure was wearing a strange mask, which resembled a more distorted human face, imitating pointed teeth like those of a beast.
In this thing’s right hand was a one-sided sword, and this sword was stuck in the middle of the young guard’s head. The fact that the guards were killed already confirmed that this thing was dangerous.
Accompanied by this figure that killed Jefferson, four others were wearing the same ninja outfit as the first one and wore the same mask, which seemed to be made of metal.
“We have company,” Luke whispered to Matthew, calmly closing the small part he opened of the curtain.
“What? Those were death screams. What’s going on?” He said, trying to stay seated. The pain from the burn was still enormous.
“Matt, we have a lot to talk about, but now is not the time. You just have to know that I have now made a very, very strong enemy.”
Matthew swallowed his saliva seeing the serious look on the half-wolf’s face and asked, “What are we gonna do? I can’t fight…”
Then Luke moved a little further away from the bed and summoned the Behemoth Axe. By the time the Panspermia Weapon appeared, Matthew saw particles of light and the clean blade of the ax reflected the orange light from the lantern that was on the bedside desk.
‘I think it’s time to test this beauty.’ Luke thought and dragged the bedside curtain tightly.