Kiba looks forward, the town in flames. How had it come to this? He only avoided the Demon King fight once, and that had locked him into a bad path for the entire town? The very next time he had seen the Demon King, it literally stole his entire inventory other than the cards in his hand, and ran off. Then he had met up with some person in a very expensive looking suit, and sped off to a warehouse, where they had an ambush set up for him and knocked him through a ship. It was a good thing that the universal level ten power didn't do any direct damage. The actual physical contact hurt, as did his head after smashing through background scenery into the hold, but he conveniently landed in a bed and healed up to full health before walking up to the deck, at which point everything was on fire.

“Your intellect is too feeble to comprehend the danger you have found yourself in. You are a puppet to forces beyond your understanding, and the course placed by your unseen master makes us immutable enemies. Give in to your ultimate fate, and die with the rest of your world.”

Turning around, the Demon King had suddenly shown up behind him. This time, he actually had clothes on, which was a change from literally a minute ago. With no cards, this would be a tough fight. For some reason, he had only one eye, but both hands were full with the poison he had stolen previously and a wooden staff. Apparently the plot was accounting for the lack of status ailments in this match, but taking it easy on him because of lack of cards wasn't enough since he didn’t actually have any swordsmanship abilities. It didn’t matter that the Demon King couldn’t hit him, since he couldn’t hit either.

Without wasting time with words, Kiba tries stabbing toward the Demon King’s chest, only to have the tip stick a tiny bit into his skin before being stopped. The Demon King smacks the blade off to the side, the rapier tearing a rip through his chest, leaving a black gash along its path. It was the same shade as the missing eyeball, which implied it did to an amount of damage. Without any cards, he couldn’t get any statistical information, and wasn’t even getting a health bar like he had in the last fight. This might have the makings of a plot style gimmick battle.

The Demon King swings the staff across the deck toward Kiba’s head, but it’s extremely slow and awkward since he’s using one arm to aim a two handed staff. Somersaulting forward, Kiba dodges to behind him, and stabs into the Demon King’s back. The rapier doesn’t make it very far into the demon, and pulling the blade down and back out only reveals a black line on the purple robe. From the slit, the Demon King’s tail shoots out, wrapping around Kiba’s neck. Hovering in front of his face, the tip of the appendage is the same black as the other injured areas. It might have been an indication that the Demon King couldn’t just spear through his brain, but avoiding instant death was a paltry comfort when he was about to be strangled to death.

Suddenly the loop around his neck slips off, as the Demon King is knocked off to the edge of the ship. Spinning through the air, a figure headbutts into the Demon’s chest, a single black leg, arm, and a full face-covering helmet contrasting with a white scholar’s suit. They stand up and quickly rush to the edge, the arm and helmet vanishing into nothing as they vomit over the ship into the sea. The Demon King growls, and Kiba raises his rapier toward the boss fight as he raises back up to attack again.

“Let me guess, you’re the one that beat up a small child for his playing card,” the Kiba guesses, sarcastically stating the worst possible time for a side quest to pop up. Spinning around, the person starts rage ranting.

“I did not! I found that card fair and square, and he tried to claim it was his,” he rages, pulling the card in question out of his belt. “I was the one who put in the work to get to it, and he thinks he can just say it was his the whole time? No way, like anyone would believe that kind of excuse! If it’s laying out in the open, it’s finder’s keepers, and-”

If there was one thing he needed right now, it was literally any card. Charging forward, Kiba grabs the card out of the guy’s hand, immediately activating it directed toward the Demon King. Slamming the hilt of the rapier against the Demon King’s skull, there’s no visible effect, and Kiba recognizes the motion of the Sleep card. That was disappointing. The main reason to be disappointed was that the Demon King was nearly completely immune to the Sleep effect. Unless he hit like forty times in the one fight without getting hit once, thanks to the blind effect already applied by something else, there was no way he was getting that status ailment to apply, particularly since this card had the rare cooldown for affliction cards of twenty seconds per activation.

Sleep Rare Cooldown: 20 Seconds Basic bashing attack. Some sleep chance.

Snapping forward with his terrible maw, the Demon King bites toward Kiba’s exposed arm, so he throws himself backward, stumbling down the gangplank of the ship. The moment he takes his foot off the deck of the boat, it starts sinking.

“Leave peasant, your presence is neither wanted nor permitted,” the beast tells her, not looking away from the Chosen.

“Right, sorry, I didn’t mean to get thrown here,” the guy on the ship apologizes, staying back for the moment, “that’s the only way off though.”

“Acceptable, you may egress behind my person, followed by running for your life” the Demon King quips, taking a couple steps before leaping toward the Kiba headfirst, hands full of poison and staff respectively at his side. Kiba dodges off the side of the gangplank, now almost level with the ship, onto the dock, and the Demon King lands heavily on the wooden panel. While he’s still on the ground, Kiba uses both hands to stab directly downward, pushing into the Demon King with his rapier with all his body weight, pinning him to the deck.

The sidequest guy jumps up onto the dock, and runs off toward the town proper. Technically Kiba hadn’t finished the sidequest by beating up the one that stole the child’s card, but he had bigger priorities at the moment. He had already gotten the reward for the task anyway.

Off to the side, the ship sinks down into the depths.

The Demon King laughs, a bone chilling noise, and pushes up against the dock. The rapier goes up through the entire chest of the Demon King, then stops at the handle. He continues rising, and turns to face Kiba, the rapier now thrusting out toward him as the Demon King steps toward him.

Kiba decides to run away.

Off to the left, there was a path toward where the Demon King had ambushed him in the first place. That was as good a route to take as any, particularly, since there was a building he could circle around. The Demon King was going at a slightly slower walking pace than he would walk, and that meant he would have enough time once he got there to circle around the place and run away while he was even further away. If he got all the way back to the faction headquarters, he could probably get some of the higher level people to take out the boss for him.

Down at the entrance to the warehouse, Kiba sees a shine, and makes a beeline for it. The moment he’s close enough, he can tell that it’s a pile of coins and cards, the majority of which are unique. Bending down to pick the collection up, Kiba suddenly gets a quest completion notification.

Quest Completed

Inventory Retrieved Reward: Inventory System Restored

With access to the inventory system again, Kiba drops the new Sleep card into his active deck and… All of the cards were removed from the active deck. Rather than waste the time to reorganize all the cards into a useable state, order the things, and make sure there weren’t too many of any given card so he didn’t have to draw for quite as long to get the card he wanted, he just opened up all the cards and dumped them into the active deck.

Air Mana Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Generates energy with air affinity. Peek Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Identifies which card can be drawn from target. Pierce Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Basic piercing attack. Ignores some defense. Slam Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Basic crushing attack. Some knockback and stun chance. Slash Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Basic slashing attack. Some bleed chance. Poison Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Basic poison blast. Some poison chance. Confuse Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Basic mental attack. Some confuse chance. Befuddling Cloud Unique Cooldown: 20 Seconds Area of effect mental attack. Some confuse chance. Deadly Cloud Unique Cooldown: 20 Seconds Area of attack poison blast. Some poison chance. Petrify Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Basic pertification attack. Some petrification chance. Find Weakness Unique Cooldown: 1 Minute Determines which damage type is effective against target. Status Effect Vulnerability Unique Cooldown: 1 Minute Determines resistance of target against status effects. Steal Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Chance to obtain item of target. Defaults to card. Steal Info Unique Cooldown: 10 Minutes Chance to obtain detailed information about target. Detect Ability Unique Cooldown: 5 Minutes Chance to obtain information about targets special characteristics. Air Blast Unique Cooldown: 1 Second Air element crushing attack. Knockback effect. Reflect Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Air element petrification. Stops targeted attack and returns it. Air Jet Unique Cooldown: 5 Seconds Air element piercing attack. Ignores armor. Space Cutter Unique Cooldown: 10 Seconds Space element slashing attack. Severing space always inflicts bleeding, chance of amputation on target. Twister Rare Cooldown: 5 Minutes Air element area of effect attack. Knockback in the upward direction. Amplify Rare Cooldown: 30 Seconds Basic mental attack. Some empowerment chance. Sleep Rare Cooldown: 20 Seconds Basic bashing attack. Some sleep chance.

Now that he actually has access to cards again, Kiba stacks the deck to have five unique Air Blasts on top and draws them all. The Demon King continues his inexorable approach, and before he gets into range, Kiba charges forward. Grabbing onto the blade of the rapier embedded within the Demon King’s chest, Kiba chains the five Air Blasts into the Demon King, who snaps forward to bite Kiba’s face off. Every single bit of air mana generated by the rapier shoots into the Demon King at once, blasting him off through the sky into the burning town.

That was probably fine. Kiba didn’t actually have enough attack power to overcome this boss fight anyway, since he hadn’t managed to get any real offensive upgrades.

Fortunately, the rapier was only sharp at the tip.

Back past the warehouse, ships sail up from the outer sea. The black shapes cut over the waves in the darkness, flowing smoothly into the harbor. Kiba figures that a quick help request wouldn’t be amiss, so he runs to to where the first boat is starting to dock, only to have his path blocked by three figures.

“Hello demon initiate, how about you go back to your sect and let them know that the Primordial Grandmist Sect is raiding this town?”

The one speaking is a fairly tall youth, muscular and tossing a ball of purple up and down with his right hand. To his left, the next person seems like a completely ordinary person, other than the vines crawling up his neck, and the last one is circled by a trio of red spheres. A group of sailors jump out of the ship, and run up to circle the three and Kiba. While they do so, a constant stream of additional people rush past the bubble of space locking the four into an arena, all heading into the town.

It looked like running away wasn’t actually an option.