The Card Apprentice

“We need assistance! We need assistance! We are under heavy attack!” A man wearing military uniform shouted to his meter. An extreme desperation was shown in his voice!

However, he was at the wilderness. The telecommunication card was of no use at all. His efforts were all fruitless attempts.

“The opponent’s attack is too strong! Commander! You have to retreat!” The adjutant general shouted in panic.

The commander switched off the meter dejectedly and said, “Retreat? Where can we go?”

The adjutant general knew that his words would be of no use through his commander’s reaction. He stormed forward, struck the commander to unconsciousness, then carried him out and away from the Shuttle. The guards assembled outside earlier but only less than half of them were left. The adjutant general couldn’t bother much and he then placed an order urgently, “All of you, attack from the northwest!”

He had realized that the attacks coming from the northwest were way weaker.

These card artisans who had gotten ambushed raised their courage and stormed towards the northwest direction following the adjutant general.

Everything in the frontline could be seen clearly on the screen in the transport shuttle’s commanding room.

Sue Lochiro and Ru Qiu felt pity for the enemies when they saw their corpses in the blood pools. However, they were not foolish enough to plead to Bogner to stop the massacre. It was a war and this would decide whether they were able to survive. Most of the time, the results would be either they won or they died . It was a cruel reality after all and they clearly understood how it would work.

Ru Qiu suddenly realized that the card artisans were about to escape. Therefore, she couldn’t help but to point at the screen and shouted, “Uncle! They are trying to escape!”

“Heh! They will not be able to escape.” Bogner laughed.

Although Ru Qiu had no idea what was going on. However, she knew that Bogner had definitely well-prepared when heard his laugh.  ( AllNovel )

Indeed, right when she thought that the card artisans had managed to escape from the siege, an overwhelming attack dropped towards them without any signs.

“Hmm.. Seems like there’s another ambush here. Uncle, this is troublesome though. You could’ve just eliminate all of them in the siege just now”,said Young Ru Qiu.

“This is due to the consideration of injuries and deaths. If these people were to realise that they had no way to escape, they would defend themselves with their full capacity and thus, it would most probably cause deaths to our team. There are many newly-recruited soldiers in this troop and it is fine if they were to go for a casual war. However, these fresh soldiers could easily turn panic when there were plenty of deaths. Therefore, it would not benefit us this way.” Bogner explained.

Jiang Liang nodded as he kept Bogner’s words deep inside his mind.

“Wow! You’re awesome, Uncle!” Qiu Ru then suddenly thought of a question. “Uncle, did you teach anyone in how to fight in a war before this? Did anyone invite you to become their coach? Don’t you have any mentees?”

“Haha. No.” As if he had recalled something, Bogner stunned for awhile. He then shook his head, “Well, I’ll consider him as half of my mentee.”

“Half a mentee?” Ru Qiu looked confused.

“It is a long story. I don’t even know where exactly is the item now. Perhaps it had been thrown away to the dumpster.” Bogner’s tone was filled with nostalgia while mocking himself.

He suddenly made a laugh and said, “Well, I guess it’s time for me to get a mentee as I’m getting older. Little Jiang, be my mentee. What do you think?”

Jiang Liang buzzed with excitement. He stood straight and bowed, “Yes, mentor!”

“You are a bit old-fashioned. Boss is better than you in this term. It’s too bad that he’s not here. If not, you two could’ve been brothers.” Bogner laughed.

“Uncle, you’re too greedy! Are you trying to make Boss your mentee too?” Ru Qiu was showing a disdainful look. Ru Qiu had considered Chen Mu as her half mentor, even though she had never called him as her mentor, but Chen Mu did act like one whenever she was in trouble. If Chen Mu was to become Bogner’s mentee, she would have to address Bogner as her master’s master.

Looking at Ru Qiu’s naive and cute face, Sue Lochiro couldn’t help to smile at her.

Bogner laughed too, “Boss is the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. He doesn’t show off his intelligence, unlike any other. Little Jiang, you are a wise man too. However, you are indeed distinct from your Boss. You’re rigorous in nature and the way you deal with task assigned is extremely careful. Moreover, you seldom make silly mistakes. You are going to be great in the future with your upright personality. Facing against such commander like you would be a pain in the ass because you don’t make mistakes! When your opponent made a mistake, you would take the opportunity to maximize your advantage, leading your team towards victory. Boss isn’t the same. Rules and procedures do not exist in his mind. From the way he attacked the Big Bad Wolves, it had clearly shown that he had the courage to take on risks and he knew exactly how to adapt to various circumstances. If Little Jiang was labelled as righteous, Boss can be called as eccentric. However the remarkable thing is even though Boss is strange, he is still an honourable person! I find it unbelievable. How could he know such things when nobody had ever taught him so?”

Xi Ping was enjoying his tea. “Did anyone ever taught him a thing? Perhaps Wei-ah was the only one who provide him advice and knowledge. What about card making and card artisan skills? He is a maniac.”

“Wei-ah is a maniac.” Bogner continued saying.

Bark! Bark! Bark! The fat dog was barking while staring at Bogner with hostility, getting ready to lunge towards him.

Cold sweat streamed down from Bogner’s head as Sue Lochiro comforted the fat dog before it lied down once again slowly. Among the people, the fat dog would only allow Sue Lochiro to get near to itself as she used to remove a spur from its tongue before.

“Sir, the enemies have been wiped out! 19 of our men are injured and 1 dead.” The person making the report was Lu Xiaoru. She stood valiantly like an experienced card artisan, very attractive.

“I wasn’t expecting any deaths.” Bogner shook his head and muttered, “They’re indeed new recruits!”

He looked at Jiang Liang and said, “Oh yeah. Regarding the news previously, where did boss go?”

Jiang Liang said, “Boss had left Dongrui City and he had entered into the wood together with the newly-recruited card artisans. His destination remained unknown.”

As their [Thousand-kilometers Card] was destroyed, they couldn’t make any contact with Chen Mu and Wei-ah. Fortunately, they knew about Chen Mu’s disguise identity and therefore, they could manage to acquire some information about their Boss’s tracks from the news as Chen Mu’s actions were catchy headlines.

“What is Boss trying to do?” Bogner went deep in thought. With Boss’s actions of massive recruiting card artisans and disappearing from Dongrui City into the forest, Bogner couldn’t guess what his next step would be. “Should we send help to him? No way! Boss is located too far away from them.”

Boss…

His focus fell onto the map once again. He then immediately dropped an order. “Take a three hour break. We’re heading back to Lijiang City.”

Aside from the table light in front of Chen Mu, there was total darkness in the jungle shuttle. Many spare parts were placed in front of him. Although he didn’t learn much from the Wanqi Tribe’s superb metal processing skills, he still had a knack to produce metal spare parts that he needed.

His concept wasn’t complicated because he was planning to make a ‘mold’. After inserting card ink and perception into the mold, the perception would undergo a special arrangement following the pattern. The moment the ‘mold’ got into contact with the blank card, a chemical reaction would occur between the card ink in the pattern, the perception, and the blank card, and eventually, a new card was formed!

Therefore, all a card makers needed to do would be to insert Perception!

Even though the concept was simple, but when it came to creating the card, it was way more difficult.

The hardest step was to control the Perception in distributing according to the pattern.

The final functional structure would be the token structure, which was not a complicated structure. What inspired Chen Mu was the simple Water World, which was already quite an unobtainable card for him. The simple Water World was extremely sensitive to the strength of Perception. Only a certain level of strength of Perception could trigger some specific criteria of the Water World card.

Chen Mu was trying to utilise this characteristic to scale his perception strength. When his perception reached the required value, the part that inserted Perception would automatically turn towards the other parts of the pattern. When the whole pattern had achieved the labelled value, the machine would automatically cut off the injection of Perception and a card would be successfully made.

The completed trial machine had occupied almost half of the space in the jungle shuttle.

A square light appeared right in front of Chen Mu. It was the projected image of the mold’s core, which was also the machine’s central system. He had to complete the pattern and to finish labelling the perception value on every part of the pattern .

He took out a black basic iron rod with a glowing spot on the tip of the rod. If one were to look closely, the size of the light spot was exactly the same with the nib of his [Weak Water] card.

Using the ray on top of the iron bar as a penpoint, Chen Mu started drafting the card’s pattern on the square projected screen.

Along with the swirling of his penpoint, a thin bright line was formed on the projected screen. He drew carefully without pausing. He was drawing the pattern of a 3-star Energy card which he could already rattled off. He managed to complete the drawing in a short time. He checked again before he put down the iron bar satisfactorily.

Right now, what he needed to do was the second step, which would be to complete the labelling of credits on all parts of the pattern.

He placed the pattern horizontally in front of him and picked up another iron rod. The light spot on the front end of the rod was in glowing in bright red. He tipped twice on the pattern he had completed previously and it expanded in front of him instantly. The pattern which was originally the size of half a palm of an infant’s, enlarged immediately into the size of a desk. All the details of the pattern could be seen clearly in front of him.

Without hesitating, Chen Mu took the iron rod and started drawing on the top side of the pattern. He raised and lowered the iron rod while drawing around the pattern. Sooner or later, an uneven red line appeared on the pattern. The parts drawn by the red line appeared on a red screen, joining the pattern with the red line together.

Upon completing his drawing, the flat pattern became bulge with uneven surfaces, like an ancient city wall. The position of the red line represented the strength of Perception required at each part.

After checking again, he had finally assured that there were no mistakes in the labelling of the credits.

After completing all the steps, he started to formulate the card ink needed to produce a 3-stars Energy card. He worked swiftly as he had created plenty of 3-stars Energy cards before.

He inserted the freshly formulated card ink into the machine carefully.

He took a deep breath after completing all these tasks!

Whether it’s a success or failure, it’s all up to this moment!