Let's Draw Cards Together

Chen De took a deep breath.

He replied.

Su Xi: Got it.

Xing Lan: Sister Su, what's your name? Is that your real name?

Chen De's finger hovered over the screen.

He couldn't exactly say, "My name's Chen De, I'm a guy, a second-year high school student, and I'm slowly turning into a girl."

"Qubi, what information did I put down when I registered?"

"Number 009. Registered name: Su Xi. Gender: female."

"I never filled in the gender field."

"System default."

"Female by default?"

"Magical girls are obviously female by default."

Chen De felt like his life was racing in an irreversible direction, and the brakes had failed.

Gritting his teeth, he replied.

Su Xi: It's my real name.

Xing Lan: Okay, Sister Su!

Xing Lan: Sister Su, what school do you go to? We could arrange to—

Su Xi: Not convenient to disclose.

Xing Lan: Oh, okay! Then let's fight Calamities together next time!

Su Xi: We'll see.

Chen De locked his phone.

The class bell rang right then. He stuffed his phone into his pocket and picked up his textbook.

Qubi lay at the corner of his desk, its tail swaying.

"Your social efficiency was very high today."

"You call that socializing? That was maintaining my persona. Big difference."

Chen De opened his math textbook, his face wearing the dead-fish expression that came from having been through too much.

The teacher wrote about function monotonicity on the blackboard, chalk tapping away.

Chen De appeared to be looking at his textbook, but his mind was occupied with something else.

Lin Xi.

A complete newcomer who had signed up two days ago, and she had faced a Fierce Calamity alone last night.

What would have happened to her if he hadn't gone?

"Qubi." He kept his voice low.

"Mm."

"Fierce Calamities... if no one rescues them, can they kill magical girls?"

Qubi's ears twitched.

"Most likely not."

Chen De froze slightly.

"Fierce Calamities don't have the ability to kill magical girls one-on-one. Not even the weakest ones."

"Then last night, she—"

"At most, she would have suffered minor injuries and been a little embarrassed, but she wouldn't have died."

Chen De's expression stiffened for a second.

"Then my rushing over in such a hurry last night was..."

"It wasn't completely unnecessary. Because you went, she suffered much less."

"But fundamentally, I worried for nothing."

"You earned 120,000."

Chen De shut his mouth.

Fine.

Trading one bout of pointless worry for 120,000 wasn't a loss.

But he still wanted to understand the boundaries.

"What's the minimum threshold for something that can kill a magical girl?"

"At the very least, a Dire Calamity. In theory, more than ten Fierce Calamities capable of cooperation could also do it, but Calamities don't cooperate with each other, so treat the latter as a joke."

"So last night, I..."

"To you, it was nothing. But to Xing Lan, who had only signed up two days ago and could barely hold her wand steady, it was probably like encountering material beyond the syllabus during finals."

"She couldn't solve it, but nothing would happen?"

"Right."

Chen De relaxed slightly.

But only slightly.

"Are Dire Calamities likely to appear?"

"Pretty unlikely, but not that unlikely."

"Can you speak like a human?"

"Depends on your luck."

Chen De frowned.

He hated uncertainty most of all.

"Be specific."

"At any given time, the total number of Calamities is fixed."

Qubi's tail stopped moving, and its tone suddenly became a little more serious.

"But if you kill them too quickly, it indirectly raises the odds of higher-tier Calamities appearing."

Chen De's pen stopped.

"What do you mean?"

"Literally. Clearing too many in a short time is the equivalent of drawing a huge number of cards in a short time. You're more likely to pull something big."

"You mean, the more efficiently I fight Calamities, the more likely I am to spawn stronger ones?"

"You could understand it that way."

Chen De stared at Qubi for a full three seconds.

Something felt off.

"So every time you notify me about a Calamity, you wait for a while first?"

"Yes."

"It's not an information delay."

"No."

"You're deliberately controlling my clearing speed."

"Recklessly clearing them continuously would only spawn high-tier Calamities faster."

Chen De leaned back in his chair as the clues in his head rapidly connected.

No wonder Qubi never urged him.

No wonder every notification was spaced out by a day or two.

So it wasn't that the system was slow.

It was regulating his pace.

"What if I fight five or six Lesser Calamities in one day?"

"There's a chance of spawning a Fierce Calamity."

"What if I fight three or four Fierce Calamities in one day?"

"The probability of a Dire Calamity appearing rises significantly."

"How significant?"

"About thirty percent."

Chen De gripped his pen until his hand went rigid.

Thirty percent.

At a casino, that kind of probability was enough to bankrupt someone overnight.

"How many can I fight per day and stay within the safe range?"

"Two or three Lesser Calamities, or one Fierce Calamity."

"What if I go over?"

"You assume the risk yourself."

Chen De closed his eyes.

He took a deep breath.

His original plan had been to take advantage of his current strength and fight as many as he could to earn as much as possible.

Now that path was completely blocked.

Going too hard meant manually summoning a boss for himself, while playing too cautiously meant not earning enough.

He could only maintain an incredibly narrow pace.

"Qubi, how much is the bounty for a Dire Calamity?"

"800,000."

Chen De's eyes lit up for an instant.

Then the light swiftly faded.

"Can I beat a Dire Calamity right now?"

"With your current combat power, it would be very difficult."

"How difficult?"

"More than an eighty percent chance of severe injury."

Chen De slowly exhaled.

"What about the remaining twenty percent?"

Qubi's tail paused.

Then, in an astonishingly calm tone, it said something profoundly unsettling.

"You'll die."

In the classroom, chalk tapped against the blackboard.

The students in the front row bent over their notes.

Jiang Ping secretly scrolled through his phone beside him.

Everything was normal.

Chen De sat still, staring at the densely packed mathematical formulas in his textbook without taking in a single word.

800,000.

Eighty percent chance of severe injury, twenty percent chance of death.

He turned those three figures over and over in his mind before rationally reaching a conclusion:

He couldn't touch Dire Calamities yet.

"Qubi."

"Mm."

"How do I increase my combat power?"

"The more times you transform, the deeper your accumulation becomes. Along with training afterward, your strength will naturally increase."

"Roughly how long until I can reach the threshold for Dire Calamities?"

"Conservatively, half a year."

"And if I'm not conservative?"

"If you transform a few extra times every day... within two months."

Chen De's pen tip punched a dot into the paper.

One month.

He had never even considered a conservative approach.

Being conservative would only slow down his money-making.

As for side effects?

What were those?

"Chen De."

He jerked his head up.

The math teacher stood at the podium, looking at him with an inscrutable expression.

"Do the third problem."

Chen De glanced at the equation on the board and stood up.

The intervals of monotonicity. He studied it for two seconds.

"The interval where it increases is negative infinity to negative one, and the interval where it decreases is negative one to positive infinity."

The teacher froze for a moment.

"...Sit down."

Jiang Ping leaned over and whispered.

"You kept spacing out today, but whenever you were called on, you got the answer right. Were you even listening to the lesson?"

"I was."

"Then what were you thinking about while you were spacing out?"

Chen De glanced at him and replied with an extremely calm expression:

"I was calculating how to clear dungeons scientifically."

Jiang Ping fell silent for three seconds.

"All right, then. You can think about math problems and dungeon strategies at the same time. Your brain really works better than mine."

Chen De did not respond. He lowered his head and turned to the next page.

But the moment Jiang Ping turned away, Chen De glanced toward the corner of the desk.

Qubi was curled up there, its emerald-green eyes flickering.

For two months, he would not touch the Dire Calamity.

After two months—

Chen De silently fixed that deadline in his mind.

That would be another matter.