The main event was here...
A face-down card floated silently above Big Goldtooth's corpse, swaying gently with the fluctuations of magic. It looked mysterious and powerful...
If his Warcraft mage class was the foundation of Aige's life in this world, then Hearthstone cards were his greatest aid in reaching greater possibilities. A card dropped by a rare boss monster was well worth looking forward to... At worst, it would be a basic card. A white card would do, a blue card would be good, and a purple card would be an absolute windfall... If he got an orange card, he would have to bathe, change his clothes, and fast for three days.
Almost like a pilgrim, Aige reached a trembling hand toward the mysterious card. The next moment, he flipped it over with a flourish... After a wave of mysterious magic...
"Boar"?
What the hell?! Of all the rotten luck, he'd drawn the worst possible lot?
The neutral one-star basic card Boar had one attack, one health, and Charge. He knew its stats by heart. After all, he already had two sitting quietly in his card pack...
The card flip he'd pinned such high hopes on was just as unreliable as the card packs Blizzard gave out! Still, at least the Boar card was useful. Since it wasn't very valuable, he wouldn't be reluctant to use it while leveling. He could just think of it as a drop of twenty portions of Arcane Dust... Since it took an average of three minor monsters to drop one portion of Arcane Dust, looking at it that way made him feel better. Beating Big Goldtooth was equivalent to getting the drops from sixty minor monsters.
"I should be satisfied!" It took Young Master Ai fifteen seconds to reluctantly accept the fact. He reached out to claim the card... and something unexpected happened!
As the Boar card was about to be stored, the moment it touched the Book of Hearthstone, it suddenly broke apart in midair, turning into several portions of Arcane Dust that entered the card pack...
Huh? What was going on?
The system notification sounded at just the right moment: Because the hero's Book of Hearthstone already contains two identical cards, the rules prevent it from holding any more. The Boar card has therefore been automatically disenchanted, yielding five portions of Arcane Dust. They have been deposited directly into your account. Please check your balance!
Aige stood there stunned for a long moment before he slowly reacted...
"Check my ass! You swallowed fifteen portions of my dust! Spit them out..."
It was said that an adventurer passing by that day had been about to enter the mine to investigate, only to be frightened into turning back by a shrill howl...
Master Ai trudged toward Hall Farm with his head hanging, listless and dejected. He still hadn't recovered from the "surprise" Big Goldtooth had given him. He hadn't expected the system to have this restriction: the Hearthstone card pack could hold at most two copies of the same card, and any extras were automatically "destroyed," with no chance to remedy the situation. He had gotten one from a boar while leveling, then another as a quest reward, filling both slots. Now Big Goldtooth had "generously" given him another, only for it to violate the system's two-card limit and be forcibly disenchanted into dust...
What an injustice! He'd been wronged worse than Dou E! If he'd known, would he have needed to save it? He could have pulled out a Boar to help him fight Big Goldtooth and won easily. There would have been no need to act like a miser, scrape out a narrow victory, and nearly get himself killed...
Damn it! Why hadn't he washed his hands before going out? Any other card he picked would have been better than this one. After all, the most copies of any card in his pack were the two Boars. Even another one-star neutral card would have been much better than a Boar...
What a loss! Crafting a one-star neutral card cost twenty portions of Arcane Dust, but disenchanting one yielded only five. Master Ai had thought he would never make such a losing deal in his life... And yet...
How frightening! If the Boar card hadn't given him such a hard knock, he probably wouldn't have taken such a serious look at the Book of Hearthstone's rules again. This time it was only a one-star basic card. If a legendary card had been forcibly disenchanted too, wouldn't he have been reduced to tears?
After all, Hearthstone's rules allowed at most two copies of the same card in a card pack, while only one copy of a legendary orange card could appear among summoned minions at a time. In other words, the pack could hold two, but at most one could fight in a battle. Crafting an orange card cost 1,600 portions of Arcane Dust, while disenchanting one yielded only 400-a direct loss of 1,200... If that really happened, even someone as thick-skinned as Master Ai would probably have trouble bearing it.
"All right! I'll just treat those fifteen portions of dust as tuition for this lesson. From now on, I need to keep an eye on my card pack. If I have two copies of a card, I must remind myself to use one as soon as possible. If I finally get another card drop and it's forcibly disenchanted again, I'll chop off my hand..."
Master Ai comforted himself this way, then suddenly realized that losing only fifteen dust was much better than losing 1,200, however he looked at it... He seemed to feel considerably better.
"Right, I'd better hurry over to that middle-aged lady at Hall Farm and turn in the quest. I remember there was a pair of gloves as a reward, and I also get to draw a Priest class card! This time I have to wash my hands first..."
No sooner said than done... The idiot found a patch of bushes at random and squatted down to relieve himself...
Well! Even when he had to wash his hands, he still took the opportunity to take care of a bodily need beforehand... That awareness of his was absolutely god-tier!
"This is it! Thank you, Lord Aige. You really did help me find this precious necklace of my husband's. You are a benefactor of our Hall Farm. If you ever happen to pass by here again, please let us show you our hospitality!"
"These are linen gloves I acquired earlier. Though they aren't valuable, they're equipment for combat classes. Please accept them! There are also three silver coins here. Please accept those as well!"
When Mrs. Stonefield received the necklace Aige handed her, her eyes filled with tears. Sometimes a familiar object wasn't much cherished, and only after losing it did one realize how precious it was... Many things in the world were like that!
Aige didn't refuse. After saluting with a hand to his chest and accepting the reward he was due, he turned and returned to the fine room the farm had reserved for him... He would leave the remaining time to the lady silently stroking the necklace with tears in her eyes.
Notification: Quest to find the gold necklace completed. The system has randomly drawn one card from the one-star Priest class cards and placed it in the Book of Hearthstone. Notification: Congratulations! You have obtained one Priest class spell card, Holy Smite.
Holy Smite was a good one-mana Priest card, a basic spell card. Although it was a basic card, most Priests still reserved one or two slots for it in their decks, so it saw a fair amount of play!
The Priest class had its own distinctive traits, but its weakness was particularly glaring. Because of the Priest's class skill Lesser Heal and the characteristics of Priest class cards, its decks leaned too heavily toward the mid and late game... In other words, they were weak early on.
Early on, a Priest lacked sufficiently powerful creatures to hold the board. So, to survive until the mid and late game, he had to include some spell removal cards... such as Holy Smite.
The effect of this one-mana spell card was simple: deal two damage to any enemy target... Simple and practical. It was ideal for dealing with all kinds of two-health creatures, such as Swamp Ooze and Knife Juggler. When necessary, it could also attack the enemy hero. Being able to choose any target gave it a wide range of uses, and whether drawn early or late, its one-mana cost meant it would never be stuck in your hand.
After all, what Priests lacked most were finishing skills. An opponent's large monster with little health left could often stay on the board for several turns without dying... Unless the Priest had mastered the ultimate secret art of killing an opponent with a glance, there was simply no way to land that finishing blow.
So, in the eyes of other classes, Holy Smite wasn't a particularly good card. Take the rogue's Backstab, for example: it could also deal two damage. Although it required the minion to be undamaged, it was a genuine zero-mana card that could be played at any time. Compared directly like that, Holy Smite was underwhelming. But rogues actually had many ways to finish off enemies, while Priests did not... So, for the Priest class, this card was a godsend for finishing blows.
But always remember that using this card cost you card advantage, so make the most of it... Playing it at the start of a game just to deal two damage to the opposing hero deserved divine punishment.
Losing card advantage meant that even at its best, Holy Smite could only kill one enemy minion. Even then, it was a one-for-one trade, and sometimes it might not even kill the minion. So, on the whole, it cost card advantage and had to be used carefully. Of course, that didn't mean avoiding it altogether. For example, if you faced an aggro class that played a troublesome minion like Knife Juggler early on, failing to clear it promptly would make you suffer terribly later... At times like that, you had to use Holy Smite to clear it without hesitation. Leaving it alive would only cause trouble.
Even though he'd washed his hands who knew how many times-he really had scrubbed them repeatedly in some nameless stream; Master Ai had always been good about washing his hands before meals and after using the toilet-he still hadn't drawn a particularly powerful card. It was another basic card, which left the young master somewhat unhappy. Fortunately, he knew Holy Smite was still very useful. A spell card that could instantly deal two-star damage could be a killing move if used well...
It was easy to imagine: when Aige faced an enemy and both were at a critical moment, he could suddenly throw out this card and instantly deal two-star damage. Against Undead and demonic creatures, some of the damage would even be increased. Even against creatures that were neither Undead nor demons, he had never heard of anything called holy resistance, so those two stars of damage would definitely land in full, giving Aige absolute instantaneous burst power... This would be the key to turning a battle around.
Master Ai was lying on the soft bed, imagining battles that might occur later, when footsteps sounded outside, followed by a knock at the door...