Chapter 14
Seong-Hwi summoned his D Weapon, Old Tarot Deck, and shuffled it—a habit when he was deep in thought.
[Old Tarot Deck (Destiny Weapon)
Rank: F(56)
Description: A deck of 78 tarot cards. (Rule available.)
Unique Skills: None.]
“Hmmm,” Seong-Hwi pondered.
His D Weapon was just a normal deck of tarot cards because he had yet to establish a rule for it. Before his return, Seong-Hwi thought his D Weapon was a dud and even thought about giving up on it. Countless people did not rely on their D Weapons and used only items they got from cubes. However, he believed there was a reason why a deck of tarot cards was his D Weapon, hence he decided to use it as auxiliary gear.
At first, I established an enhancement rule.
It had been part of his trials and errors. At the time, Seong-Hwi had no idea what type of D Weapon user he was, and enhancers initially had a higher chance of survival. Enhancers could enhance their D Weapon’s physical properties. The ordinary cards became sharper than a razor blade and harder than a steel plate.
However, their reach soon became an issue. Therefore, Seong-Hwi added a transformation rule, which was directly beside the enhancement category on the Web of Categories. It allowed him to stretch the tarot cards as long as a sword or as wide as a shield.
Soon after, he also added an emission rule, which was also directly beside the enhancement category. It allowed him to use the tarot cards like throwing weapons, reducing the number of injuries he suffered during battle.
It was amazing enough to use three categories adeptly, but Seong-Hwi’s talent with his D Weapon did not end there. He even added rules for conjuration and manipulation, the two categories furthest from enhancement. The tarot cards could now be infused with various elements, and he could freely control them without touching them.
Seong-Hwi realized he was not an enhancer after noticing he had perfect control of the five categories. Because he had mastery over all five, he couldn’t be categorized into any of them—such individuals were known as specialists.
Seong-Hwi desperately searched for a rule befitting his D Weapon once he realized he was a specialist. Specialists were rare because the category was reserved for exceptions. Because they were rare, their abilities were unlike regular D Weapons. It took him a while to figure out what made his D Weapon special.
After much thought, Seong-Hwi realized that he had only been using his tarot cards as physical weapons, such as a sword, shield, knives, and more. He had been using all seventy-eight tarot cards, each with different drawings on them, as the same weapons.
Hence, Seong-Hwi broadened his view to ask himself a more fundamental question: What are tarot cards?
There was a time when Seong-Hwi had been hooked on learning about anything related to destiny, such as physiognomy, horoscopes, and constellations. He also studied tarot cards and learned about the theories on the origin of the name tarot.
One theory was that it arose from Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The words Tar, which meant road or path, and Rog, which meant king, were combined to write Tarrosh, meaning the king’s path. Another theory was that it originated from Latin. The word Rora meant wheel, and Orat meant to handle or navigate. A theory connected it to the Hindi word Taru, meaning card, or another theory that it came from Hebrew words like Tarah, which meant law, or Troa, which meant gateway.[1]
Just like how there were various theories about the origin of the word tarot, each drawing on the seventy-eight tarot cards was different, and so was what they symbolized. It was why the cards could show endless crossroads of destiny based on how they were combined.
Yes, tarot cards are tools that navigate one’s destiny through various symbols. That is their essence.
Seong-Hwi was ashamed that he couldn’t even understand the true essence of his weapon despite his life’s goal to grasp his destiny. From then on, he divided his tarot cards into categories.
He named the first category Major Cards—twenty-two cards from No.0 to No.21, representing the major destinies of life. The other fifty-six cards were more detailed, representing daily life, situations, elements, and personalities. He subdivided them into forty Element Cards and sixteen Court Cards.
Element Cards came from their association with the four major elements, with ten cards for each. Wands were associated with fire, Cups were water, Swords were air, and Pentacles were earth. These later changed into clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds, becoming the root of French-suited playing cards.
The name Court Cards came from the fact that there was a Page, Knight, Queen, and King card for each element; these also influenced the French-suited playing cards.
These divisions were specifically to allow Seong-Hwi to establish a rule for his D Weapon, which resulted in the formation of his two signature skills: Symbol Embodiment and Borrowing Destiny.
Symbol Embodiment allowed him to conjure symbolic objects scattered throughout the tarot cards. The skill could be considered his masterpiece, conceived through his experience using the five categories.
The symbols in each tarot card were endless, earning him the alias Thousand Skiller, meaning he could use a thousand skills. However, he could only use a hundred at most—the thousand part of his alias came from his surname Cheon, which meant thousand. However, a hundred was still extraordinary enough to impress even High Rankers.
But no matter how talented Seong-Hwi was, he couldn’t find a way around the perpetual rule of D Weapons—all abilities must have a corresponding restriction. Symbols with weak effects came at a low price, while powerful symbols came at a high price.
Seong-Hwi, like many others at the time, established mana as the restriction to use this skill. However, although he could use inferior symbols without issue, he couldn’t bring out even a quarter of the superior symbols’ power. For example, the Harvesting Scythe, one of the symbols he could embody from the card No.13 Death, was only embodied as a scythe overflowing with Deathly Aura. It did nothing close to what he envisioned—instant death of a target in certain conditions.
Seong-Hwi was stumped by this issue. If Symbol Embodiment was the best car engine, it also required the best fuel. He tried to set various restrictions, such as paying a certain amount of Karma when embodying superior symbols, or putting a penalty on a certain stat for a certain duration, but it was never enough.
Only a few ever master their D Weapon. Now I understand why people say it’s nearly impossible for a specialist to do it.
Seong-Hwi had fallen into despair at the time. The task was even more difficult for him because specialists needed to find their golden ratio without being able to reference others’ abilities. As he was about to give up on mastering his D Weapon, the words of a fellow Calasanz clansman, Park Tae-Jin, gave him a game-changing hint on the day Tae-Jin returned without his left eye after his battle against a vampire High Ranker.
Bleeding profusely from his face, he shouted frustratingly, “Damn it all! I knew this place was unfair, but this is too much! The other races are born with secondary forces like Draconic Mana, Nature Force, and Blood Force, so what about humans? Is it true that we failed to evolve?”
Just then, Seong-Hwi felt as if the neurons in his brain were tased.
Yeah, why don’t humans have a secondary force? he wondered.
It was the first time he had ever questioned it. Secondary force was a power that various races were born with. Dragons had Draconic Mana, elves had Nature Force, and vampires had Blood Force. These powerful secondary forces were what allowed them to reign at the top. Even orcs, an inferior race like humans, had Battle Force.
Humans were granted D Weapons in exchange for their lack of a secondary force. They simply weren’t born with it, and hence accepted it like a stereotype.
Why can’t humans have a secondary force? If we don’t have one... can’t we just make one?
The gears in Seong-Hwi’s mind, ignoring traditions and customs, turned rapidly to find a way to overcome destiny. He then took a gamble to rebuild his D Weapon rule from scratch.
“I change my rule. The restriction for activating Symbol Embodiment is not restricted to mana. I include a new power—a secondary force exclusive to humans. Let’s call it... Destiny Force.”
[Rule conversion complete.]
[Adding Destiny Force stat to the Status Window.]
[Destiny Force F(0)]
[Destiny Force is a stat created by a human who questioned the legitimacy of predetermined destiny to overcome it.]
...
Seong-Hwi successfully created a secondary force by incorporating it into his D Weapon’s rule. No one had even thought of trying something so simple, only because they weren’t born with it. He had ignorantly never thought of soaring through the skies because he had no wings.
However, his joy was short-lived. Creating a secondary force did not necessarily guarantee success. It was like the story of Brunelleschi’s egg—one couldn’t build a building with broken eggshells, but one would only know that once they tried.
Seong-Hwi pondered even more. He already had to upgrade the five basic stats and the stats attached to his countless skills and items. He wondered if it was worth investing his Karma into yet another stat. The other races would have the leeway to do so since they were born with high stats, but that wasn’t the case for humans.
Most of all, Destiny Force was shrouded in mystery. Seong-Hwi had no idea what powers it held. If he failed, he would fall behind everyone else so far that there would be no return from it. Despite all these worries, Seong-Hwi took a massive gamble and invested an ungodly amount of Karma into Destiny Force.
As a result, Seong-Hwi’s D Weapon was perfected like the beautiful Opera del Duomo in Florence. One never knew what they could do if they didn’t try. He had finally found the final piece of the puzzle. Thanks to his success, Seong-Hwi gained perfect control of Symbol Embodiment and created another outstanding skill called Borrowing Destiny.
Heh, my past life was truly the epitome of trial and error. I could only say that I mastered my D Weapon by my ninth year.
Seong-Hwi smiled as he stared at his D Weapon, which was nothing but a deck of normal cards at the moment. Thinking back on how long it took him to master his D Weapon, waiting thirty days was a piece of cake.
Yeah. For me, the mandatory quest isn’t a quest for survival—it’s a quest for growth. A tree can only be as strong as its roots. I can’t become one of the Ten Lords and Fiends with weak roots.
There was no need to feel impatient because it was taking too long to kill a thousand Black Dogs. Leveling the ground was boring, but it was essential for construction.
I’ll hold off on establishing a rule for now, until something forces my hand. I’ll open some cubes instead.
His Health and Strength stats were fine thanks to the Silver Bracelets of Queen Consort Muryeong. The Karma he earned through hunting would be reduced if he raised the other stats too much. Hence, what he needed most right now was the Sense stat to find packs of Black Dogs more quickly.
Hm?
𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
Seong-Hwi heard rustling from deeper inside the safe zone as he was formulating a plan.
[Sense F(11) obtained.]
[Sense F(14) obtained.]
[Sense F(13) obtained.]
[Sense F(23) → Sense F(61)]
Seong-Hwi opened three Sense stat wood cubes with three hundred Karma and focused his hearing on the noise.
“Hey, hurry up.”
“What about the others?”
“They’ll come out in order.”
“Are you sure about this, Su-Yeol oppa?”
“Of course, I am. We’ll fall behind at this rate. This is a new world. We have to keep moving forward.”
They were young men and women. Seong-Hwi counted over ten of them sneaking out of the safe zone. They were driven by the fear of being naturally selected out if they stayed in the safe zone.
Good choice.
Seong-Hwi did not stop them because their choice was completely correct.
***
Morning arrived for District 8, but there was only night in the Dark Forest. The people who woke up were shocked by two things—one was the Akasha Messages that appeared as soon as they woke up.
[The safe zone is 290m wide.]
[The Chaos cannot enter the safe zone.]
[29 days remain until termination of the mandatory quest.]
“W-what?! The safe zone shrank!”
“T-there’s no way! At this rate—”
“If it shrinks by ten meters per day, that means the safe zone will be gone in twenty-nine more days!”
The people panicked once they realized the truth about the safe zone, and the missing people only amplified the panic.
“Have you seen Hyun-Su? I don’t see him!”
“Choi Min-Jeong! Where are you?!”
“Could they have left to get us food? There’s a fruit tree a kilometer away—”
Seong-Hwi bit into the fruit he had left for breakfast and interjected, “Don’t get your hopes up. They won’t be back. They left in the middle of the night.”
“W-what?”
“Why didn’t you stop them?!”
Seong-Hwi was met with various responses.
He smirked and replied, “Why should I have stopped them? They chose correctly. You people are the wrong ones.”
“We’re the wrong ones?”
“You just saw the proof of that. Everyone here is a corpse, and this is a coffin. Your deaths were simply delayed for twenty-nine days. Huuu, forget it. Why am I even wasting my time?”
Seong-Hwi would gain nothing from talking to corpses. It would be better to think of them as people who would have been killed by Kim Min-Su, and lose interest in them. He put his backpack over his shoulders and stood up, feeling the presence of life in the forest with the Sense stat that he had risen last night.
I’ll kill at least two hundred today.
Seong-Hwi left the safe zone without hesitation. The people in the safe zone could only watch him walk away. They saw the line Seong-Hwi had drawn yesterday with a branch—it matched perfectly with how much the safe zone shrank.
“Could he have drawn this... knowing the safe zone would shrink?”
“There’s no way. Did you forget that he killed Kim Min-Su? It’s just a coincidence.”
Jun, staring at the line as the others mumbled, looked up to shout, “Alright! We have to get some food and water today! The Black Dogs sound dangerous, but they’re only the size of a big dog. Anyone can take them on with some practice, so...”
1. I’m not sure if these meanings are correct. It would be great if they are, but don’t blame me if they’re wrong. ☜