Strange Card | Selling Cards on the Black Market

Five minutes...

Ten minutes...

Xie Mingzhe thought the system had crashed. Just as he was about to restart his helmet, a voice suddenly sounded beside his ear. "Card review approved. You may imprint your unique LOGO on the card as proof of copyright."

Approved! Xie Mingzhe was thrilled. He decided to use the character "Zhe" as his logo and place it in the lower-right corner of the card's back—he had learned that from Tang Muzhou. The "Tang" character on Tang Muzhou's cards looked incredibly stylish and cool.

However, the moment he entered "Zhe," the system prompted him, "LOGO already in use. Please modify it."

Xie Mingzhe was helpless. Apparently, "Zhe" was far too common. The game had been publicly available for ten years, so all kinds of logos had surely been registered already. Since he could not show off with that, he might as well use his in-game ID. To avoid "Fat" being taken too, Xie Mingzhe simply entered "Yueban." This time, it finally passed.

On the back of the approved card, the originally pure-white Nebula Paper gradually took on a soft green sheen.

Green cards were the lowest-tier One-Star Cards in the game, and all player-created cards started as One-Star Cards. Cards could be leveled up and promoted anyway. As long as the attributes were good, making a One-Star Card cost the least. He could slowly raise Daiyu to seven stars later.

Xie Mingzhe rubbed his hands together and picked up the card from the workbench for a closer look.

He had drawn Lin Daiyu in a manga style. As an artist who cared deeply about appearances, there was no questioning Lin Daiyu's beauty—an elegant, delicate ancient beauty stood by the river, scattering flower petals into the water. The composition of the entire scene was excellent as well, capturing ninety percent of the mood of Daiyu Burying Flowers.

Xie Mingzhe then looked at the card's attributes.

Lin Daiyu (Wood)

Card Level: Level 1

Evolution Stars: ★

Uses Remaining: 1/1

Base Attributes: HP 100, Attack 0, Defense 15, Agility 1, Critical Hit Rate 0%

Additional Skill: Daiyu Burying Flowers (Deals heavy damage to flower-type cards, with a 10% chance to trigger an Instant Death effect)

Xie Mingzhe was dumbfounded.

What kind of skill was this? Heavy damage against flower-type cards?

Because it was Daiyu Burying Flowers, could she only fight the opponent's Flower Cards? If the opponent did not have any Flower Cards, would she not be completely useless?

Defense 15... Tang Muzhou's fully leveled Tuberose card seemed to have 50,000 defense, did it not?

Ahem, that gap was way too huge.

The Little Ice Snake the system had given him had 50 defense even before it was upgraded. With only 15 defense, would Daiyu not be as fragile as paper, shattering at the slightest touch? Poor Lin Meimei—she was so frail even after being made into a card...

Xie Mingzhe started getting a headache.

This card's stats were truly not good enough. It seemed he was not destined to get rich overnight.

Would anyone want it if he took it to the Black Market?

Author's note: The cheat ability I gave the bottom is making character cards. I mentioned it in the synopsis. :)

Lin Daiyu is a Wood-element card. There will also be many Water, Fire, Earth, and Metal character cards later on.

Strange Card | Selling Cards on the Black Market

The Daiyu Card's additional skill was "Instant Death triggered against flower-type cards." Xie Mingzhe guessed the system had generated it automatically based on his imagination, because while drawing the Daiyu Card, he had constantly been thinking about the scene of Daiyu Burying Flowers. This Daiyu Card was highly specialized against flower-type cards, but unfortunately, its defense was too low and its skill activation rate was only 10%. The stats looked awful.

What should he do with this card? Sell it for some pocket money? He really needed money right now, and even a few dollars would be good. With that thought, Xie Mingzhe focused his mind and began drawing more Daiyu Burying Flowers cards.

Since he was the copyright holder, making this card did not count as plagiarism for him. Others definitely would not be able to copy it.

Xie Mingzhe made a total of nine Daiyu Cards, using up all the Nebula Paper he had bought.

The reason he kept making the same card was that he had only just started out. He wanted to accumulate experience through the process and learn some card-making techniques in Star Card World. He discovered that the more focused his mental energy was, the clearer the image on the card became, and the better its stats were. The final Daiyu Card had different values from the first one. Although its defense of 16 was still not high, it was an improvement over 15. At least he was not standing still.

Xie Mingzhe optimistically put away the nine cards and took the nine Daiyu Cards to the Black Market.

After arriving at the Black Market, Xie Mingzhe first wandered around to take a look—newbies who did not know prices were easily cheated. Investigating the market before buying or selling was a habit he had developed from years of playing online games. The Black Market was a great place for research, with every kind of card imaginable.

After making a round, he roughly got the idea.

Original low-tier One-Star Cards with good stats and powerful skills would be sent directly to auctions, or raised to full stars before being sold at a high price. Here at the Black Market, ordinary One-Star Cards sold for 50 gold coins—roughly five dollars in real life. Cards with poorer stats but attractive artwork sold for 20 to 30 gold coins, while all sorts of miscellaneous cards went for less than 10 gold coins.

Raising a low-tier card into a high-tier card required a large investment of upgrade materials, so low-tier cards were generally very cheap. Low-tier cards with bad stats in particular were practically worthless. The reason original cards with poor stats could still sell on the Black Market was the prestige attached to the word "original." These cards were not very useful; everyone bought and sold them as collectibles.

After checking the prices, Xie Mingzhe came to a fairly large stall in the Black Market. The sign beside it read, "Purchasing Original Cards." He walked over and politely asked, "Boss, I have some original cards here. Would you be interested?"

The owner took his card and glanced at it. "The artwork is quite pretty, but aren't the stats way too low?"

Xie Mingzhe had already prepared himself to be mocked over the stats. Smiling, he said, "I've only just started making cards, so I'm not very skilled yet. The stats are indeed a little low. How much do you think it could sell for?"

The owner stroked his chin and examined it from side to side, finding the card strangely odd.

The card artwork was beautiful: a delicate girl with tears all over her face, realistic flowers, and a river used as supporting decoration. It was practically like a painting. He had never seen such a pretty card face before. But these terrible stats simply did not match the artwork at all, creating an overwhelming sense of dissonance.