When Aige used his mind to trigger the Hearthstone Priest's special skill, Lesser Heal, it activated instantly. Before he could react, he felt a surge of Holy Light brimming with vitality appear out of nowhere and envelop his body. There was none of the pain he had expected. Instead, he felt warm and wonderfully comfortable. Annoyingly, though, the feeling soon vanished. Then he discovered that he could move his arms and legs...
His body had been so badly hurt that he had nearly kicked the bucket (in fact, he already had), yet after just a few breaths of baptism in the Holy Light, he had fully recovered... The world of magic was so wondrous that many a fine gentleman declared it beyond his understanding.
But this was absolutely wonderful news. At first, he had thought there was good reason to doubt how much his Lesser Heal could restore. Who would have expected that just two stars of healing would bring him back to full health when he had been as good as dead? How exactly was that two-star healing calculated? He would have to investigate further later.
He crawled on all fours, then rose steadily to his feet. The feeling that everything was back under his control nearly brought him to tears... A moment ago, he had been lying helplessly on the ground, waiting for a wild dog to tear into him. But now, what was one wild dog to him?
Fireball!
I've had enough of looking at you! One fireball goes pew, and you're dead!
Unfortunately, Fireball was not an instant spell... His own magical energy gathered between his hands, then began drawing in the active fire elements around him, creating a small magical tide. A tiny fireball gradually took shape in his hands.
That wild dog was an ungrateful beast too. It sensed that something was wrong with this "corpse," which had actually come back to life. Now it sensed danger from the magical fireball gradually forming in the "revived corpse's" hands. The beast sprang backward and turned to flee...
Unfortunately for it, Aige had already locked onto it with his mind. The Lesser Fireball shot out, curved slightly to correct its course, and struck it squarely!
Boom! The fireball produced a small explosion when it hit the living target, blasting the unlucky wild dog off the ground. By the time it landed, it was already dead, with half its body cooked. The smell of roasted meat wafted over, making Aige's stomach rumble...
You could hardly blame the fine gentleman for his lack of self-control. The original owner of this body had been "Aige the Coward," who rarely had enough to eat and was usually starved down to skin and bones. How could he resist the sight of cooked meat he could eat?
But the smell of meat attracted a large pack of the dead dog's kind from nearby. On that bright, star-sparse night, even the faint visibility made the wild dogs, their eyes glowing eerily in the dark, look especially fearsome. Barks rose and fell all around. By a rough count, there were at least ten of them.
The wild dogs had not all rushed in at once only because they still did not quite understand the situation, and each of them was a competitor for that huge lump of fragrant meat. Otherwise, our young master Aige might have had to report to the King of Hell again right after coming back to life...
His Fireball was powerful and effective, but he refused to dwell on what would happen if he, a lone mage, were surrounded by a pack of ferocious wild dogs... He could run, but his stomach was empty, and his body was too weak from going without food for so long. He could imagine that even if he ran, he would not get far, and there was a good chance he would starve to death along the way... He had to find a way out of this predicament!
The only thing he could still rely on was certainly not his frail body, which was on the verge of collapse... Fortunately, he still had the Book of Hearthstone!
Summon Wisp!
Aige sent his mind straight into the Book of Hearthstone and seized the only card the system had given him... the common Wisp card! Then he played it at once!
A giant card descended from the sky and landed not far in front of him. Rays of magical light flashed from the white gem at its center, which represented the card's quality. The card's entire outer shell was torn to powder by magic, sending large amounts of Arcane Dust drifting through the air. The minion sealed inside emerged from its shell... A creature identical to a Wisp from World of Warcraft appeared before him.
The Wisp was a translucent elemental creature capable of communicating mentally. He could even sense the little fellow's delight at being unsealed, but it still could not speak and could only circle slowly around Aige...
All of this took a long time to describe, but it actually happened in an instant. No one else could see it at all; Aige alone could witness the minion's entire birth... It was as though the whole world had slowed down when he played the card, while the card's actions as it unsealed the monster continued at normal speed.
The Wisp had one star of attack and one star of overall defense (a combined calculation of health and other defensive abilities). Could it actually fight? This was crucial to assessing the value of the entire Hearthstone System. It was so important that even the young master, who had always prided himself on being composed, felt a little uneasy...
Sooner or later, the ugly bride had to meet her in-laws! What the hell was the point of being afraid? The best approach was, of course, to try an actual fight!
He steeled himself and ordered the newly born Wisp to guard him. Then he locked onto one of the loudest-barking wild dogs with his mind and began conjuring a Lesser Fireball...
Sensing the danger from the fireball in Aige's hands, the pack suddenly fell silent... Boom! A Lesser Fireball claimed a wild dog's life. The blast was like a signal: the pack, which had been hesitating just moments ago, suddenly charged at him together.
It was easy to imagine how terrifying it was to have nearly ten vicious dogs charging at you all at once. But fear was useless now, and panic would only get him killed faster. Aige forced himself to calm down, locked onto the dog charging fastest, and concentrated on casting...
Boom! The Lesser Fireball did not disappoint, taking down another one... He locked onto the next target and gathered the fire elements needed for the next Lesser Fireball (filling the spellcasting progress bar...).
As a top-tier rogue in the future, he had absolutely no problem with combat awareness. Before the vicious dogs could close in, he had killed three wild dogs at the fastest casting speed he could manage. But the others...? They were already close. The fine gentleman somewhat regretted overestimating himself. He had not expected these wild dogs to be so unafraid of death that even four dead dogs could not scare them off.
Buzz! A wild dog was the first to enter the Wisp's defensive range, and the Wisp immediately attacked. Its translucent body formed something like an illusory fist and punched the vicious dog in the stomach. The dog seemed to be in tremendous pain. Although Aige, who had been watching closely, was a little disappointed that it had not been killed in one blow, he was soon pleasantly surprised to discover that the Wisp's swift second attack finally took the dog's life!
Two attacks can kill a wild dog? One star of attack isn't too bad... He consoled himself with that thought as he released another Lesser Fireball.
The wild dogs were quite agile, but Aige's movements were not much worse than theirs now. After all, the stat bonuses from his primary mage class in the Warcraft Hearthstone System gave him considerable strength and agility despite his frail appearance. He was definitely not as weak as he looked at first glance. At times he dodged the wild dogs' attacks; at others, he seized an opening to cast swiftly. Sometimes he even followed up the Wisp's attacks with punches to finish the wild dogs off...
His fists were quite powerful too. When he found an opening and landed a punch, it had at least about half the attack power the Wisp had shown, making it a very good supplement to their offense.
Because he had to spend more time dodging the wild dogs' lunges, he found it hard to focus on casting. Under the intense pressure, the awareness and **positioning of a future top-tier rogue appeared once more. He often moved around the Wisp, treating it not only as a source of damage but also relying on it as an indirect meat shield. While it blocked damage for him, he could also gauge the limits of one-star overall defense.
At last, with dog corpses scattered across the ground and only two dogs still alive, the beasts finally learned fear and prepared to flee. But how could the young master let the beasts that had nearly chewed his bones escape?
Two fireballs, cast without interruption from a distance, took the last survivors' lives as well, leaving him with twelve wild dog corpses. The system also notified him that he had gained some experience, enough to raise his mage class to level two, along with several attribute points. He also learned level-one Frostbolt (the attributes will not be listed; padding the word count is really annoying). Finally, there were eight points of Arcane Dust and one card...
What? Ordinary monsters can drop cards and Arcane Dust?
Aige rubbed his eyes. The post-battle system notifications really did mention both...
He scrambled into Hero Space to examine the Book of Hearthstone in detail...
A number eight was clearly visible on the book's cover. Good, that definitely represented the amount of Arcane Dust. In Hearthstone, Arcane Dust could be used to craft high-level cards, but every high-level card consumed a great deal of it. A legendary card, for instance-a top-tier orange card-required 1,600 Arcane Dust, a downright despair-inducing amount.
The corresponding golden orange card gave no attribute bonuses at all, merely adding a golden dragon border and some card animation effects, yet it dared to cost 3,200 Arcane Dust. As the saying went, there was no biggest rip-off, only a bigger one...
Killing twelve wild dogs here had produced a total of eight points of Arcane Dust, such an auspicious number. That meant ordinary monsters (counting wild dogs as low-level ordinary mobs) had a chance to drop Arcane Dust. But since there had not been twelve points, the drops depended on luck too. Perhaps a monster would not drop any if it had left home without it, or perhaps a rich lady might drop several at once. Who knew?
But why was there only one card? And why was it no longer the zero-cost common Wisp?
The neutral card page was completely clean, utterly empty. Where's my Wisp card? Who stole and ate it?
A new card had appeared among the Priest class cards, though.
As for what card it was?
Take a guess...