"Forty thousand Jewels turns into only four hundred Spirit Stones? At a hundred-to-one exchange rate, that's robbery!"
Silas Frost cursed loudly, but when his eyes landed on the quota displayed on the interface, his heart began to race with excitement.
Four hundred and forty Spirit Stones.
Not enough for a high-grade, guaranteed ten-pull, but if he exchanged them for gold currency, it would be just enough for two rounds of ten consecutive draws.
"Don't rush into card draws yet. Let's check what's inside the surprise package first."
Silas's heart pounded. Usually, the first free package would contain at least a decent starter card. If he got something truly rare… he'd be soaring straight into the sky!
"All the gods, bless me now! Please, just give me gold! Let me fly away from here!" Silas prayed fervently.
In this system, cards were divided into six levels: white, green, blue, purple, gold, and red. A common cardholder could only hope to draw a purple card at best, while the finest high-level cardholder had a chance to pull a red card.
Although red cards were immensely powerful, Silas didn't dare to dream that high. A single gold card would already be more than enough.
After praying for what felt like forever, Silas finally opened the surprise gift package.
In an instant, the package burst open, releasing a blinding crimson light that nearly made him cover his eyes.
"Impossible! Red?!"
Silas's eyes went wide. His voice cracked in disbelief. "Oh, hell yes!"
The red glow slowly dissipated. Inside, two rewards revealed themselves.
Silas's heart soared in excitement only to plummet straight into despair.
"Escanor Fragments ×10, Snow (Blue)."
And that was it.
Gone. All gone.
Silas felt like crying without tears. Sure, the gift package had given him a surprise but it was only that, a cruel surprise.
The red glow hadn't been a card at all, but a fragment. And a red card required sixty fragments to form a single complete card. Ten fragments at once? What use was that?!
He stared bitterly at the glowing letters: Escanor.
Card fragments. Silas Frost's eyes burned hot with desire.
Escanor! The Lion's Sin of Pride!
Evening: "Born as a human, I am deeply sorry."
Daytime: "Between heaven and earth, only I am worthy of honor."
At noon… Escanor!
His power at high noon was beyond words. Everyone knew it when Escanor stood in the heart of the sun, he became the sun itself. His strength was unmatched, beyond anything else.
But wanting him was useless. Ten fragments were nowhere near enough. He was still fifty fragments short. And with random draws… who knew how long it would take? Or how many Jewels he'd have to pour in before collecting them all?
Stuffing the fragments into the system backpack with a sigh, Silas turned his attention to the other reward the item.
Snow.
Zoro equips the blade: Card blessing, Attack Power +10%.
If given to Silas instead, the blessing would still work but the effect was halved, only +5%.
Even so…
As his thoughts moved, a massive sword suddenly appeared in his hand.
Silas drew the weapon free and admired the gleaming edge of the blade.
This was no ordinary card prize it was real, something he himself could wield.
"Heh. At least I got a weapon to comfort myself. Otherwise…"
"Really frustrating."
Silas Frost sighed, sliding Snow back into the system backpack. Right after, he pulled up the card draw interface.
From all the village-style mobile games he'd played in the past, he knew one thing for certain: in high-level card draws, the very first single pull or the first ten consecutive pulls almost always gave something decent.
He didn't have enough for ten consecutive draws right now, but he could at least afford a single pull.
"The surprise gift package didn't give me anything worthwhile… hopefully the single draw will at least give me a solid foundation."
Muttering to himself, Silas pressed the single-draw button.
In the next moment, countless golden cards spun through the air before raining downward. Among them, one ordinary-looking card came to a halt, floating in mid-air.
Silas took a deep breath and flipped it over.
A dazzling golden light burst forth, flooding his vision.
"A gold!"
His eyes lit up in excitement, but the memory of those useless Escanor fragments made his heart pound nervously.
As the golden glow slowly faded, the full image on the card revealed itself.
A silver-haired, golden-eyed, white-eared man appeared on the card face.
Silas clenched his fist tightly, his excitement overflowing.
Around the man's neck hung a string of purple-red spirit beads, infused with the demonic power of the Red Fire Rat. Beneath them he wore a white shirt, with loose, red, belted pants draped down. He was barefoot, a black rope slung across his shoulder, and at his waist rested the great blade Tetsusaiga.
It was Inuyasha the half-demon, the very protagonist of another world's tale!
His strength aside, just that half-demon physique alone was enough to skyrocket Silas Frost's system attributes to terrifying heights. This card completely overshadowed Satan's.
If the card slots hadn't allowed for six in total, Silas might have been tempted to toss Inuyasha aside as "dog food" to level up a lower-tier yellow card. But now, the yellow card itself came with skills unlike the basic white ones and equipping them gave a massive boost in power.
Without hesitation, Silas equipped the Inuyasha card. At once, a radiant sea of light attribute power flooded through him, setting every nerve in his body on edge.
Name: Silas Frost
Level: 1
Body: 1 + (3+26)
Strength: 1 + (2+28)
Agility: 1 + (2+25)
Silas let out a sharp breath.
Such an explosive surge in stats he had never seen anything like it before!
"There are still 340 Spirit Stones left. If I exchange another hundred…"
"Fifty thousand gold coins… eighty thousand gold coins is even better, still fairly cheap. Only costs one hundred fifty Spirit Stones. Let's exchange it and try the common miscellaneous pool first."
Silas Frost thought for a moment, then spent one hundred fifty Spirit Stones in exchange for eighty thousand gold coins. Without hesitation, he dumped all eighty thousand into the common miscellaneous pool.
The pool instantly boiled with energy. Ten cards rose up and hovered in mid-air.
Silas flipped them over.
In a flash, one blue light, one green light, and eight dull white lights flared out.
"Experience Card (Blue), Bitter Sky (Green), Experience Card (White) ×5, Pirate Loot (White), Old Master (White), Iruka (White)."
Looking at the pile of junk, Silas sighed silently.
As expected, if you wanted good rewards, you had to aim for the higher-level pools.
Only after drawing a card you actually admired should you return to the common pool, so you could feed it scraps as a bond.
"Fine. In the early stages, I still need some cards for backup. At least they'll stack my attributes bit by bit."
White cards came with no skills, only basic attribute boosts.
First, Silas pulled out the blue card.
Then he fed all six white Experience Cards to Inuyasha's card. In an instant, Inuyasha's card shot up to level ten, and Silas's attributes rose by one point.
After that, he equipped the other three white cards and checked his status board.
Name: Silas FrostLevel: 1Body: 1 + (3+27+1)Strength: 1 + (2+29+1)Agility: 1 + (2+25+1)
Wait!
Staring at the values, Silas froze. After carefully checking, he realized something strange. Only Iruka's card had boosted his attributes by one point. The Pirate Loot and Old Master white cards hadn't improved him at all!
That meant their base attributes weren't even over ten otherwise, they should have at least given one extra point.
"That doesn't make sense. Why does Satan's attribute shoot up so high? It's also a white card, right? But these pirate henchmen are white cards too?"
No answer came to his doubts.
But when Silas flipped open the Item Compendium, a faint line of small text caught his eye:
"Card grade is based on the anime's design."
The formatting was crude, but Silas finally understood.
This meant that in the future, if he drew anime characters with low combat power even if they came as yellow cards their attribute boosts would still be weaker than purple cards tied to high-combat characters.