The Legendary Fool

132:

Years had gone by since Zeth had decided on his path. Acquiring his Rare card had been a stroke of luck that had only materialized due to his willingness to take a chance, a chance borne out of his viciousness.

The Noble he had killed for it had been young, otherwise there was no way Zeth would’ve been able to defeat a Rare Soul Card wielder with his uncommon. He had also been alone, a runaway with delusions of grandeur who had made the journey to the tower alone.

The moment he had gotten the Rare, he was certain that trouble would follow, so he fled deep into the territory of the Ironcrest Kingdom, knowing that there was little chance that the Noble’s family, whose fighting style reeked of Ravenhold Kingdom’s famed dagger arts, would be able to pursue him directly into the territory.

It had been a wise decision, for Zeth had managed to recruit good talent to his cause within the territory of the Ironcrest Kingdom. The Shadow Guild was not his end goal, but as time passed, it became a powerful tool for Zeth to amass wealth, artifacts and cards.

The reason why his Guild was able to grow when so many others failed, ending with the guild leaders betrayed due to their greed or eventual infighting when it came to distribution of resources was because Zeth simply didn’t care about what his enforcers and shadows saw as the greatest rewards.

Cards below the Rare rarity were simply worthless to him and even if he were to encounter another one in a stroke of luck, Zeth would simply pawn it off in exchange for Rare Armor or save it to exchange in the tower.

He could not even level his own Rare past level 24. There were few challenges that would give him the experience required to climb any further and it would require him to travel across Artezia in search of dungeons, rifts and towers difficult enough to help him get closer to the level cap.

But that would require him to stop his shaping exercises. While the explosive growth in control he had seen in the early years had tapered off, every day Zeth spent practicing, he still saw minor improvements that eventually cascaded into a major one, before he repeated the process anew.

It was an obsession, yes, but there was a reason why Zeth wasn’t chasing after experience. He was already far more powerful than the traveler he had lost to all those years ago, but Zeth knew that there were still too many Nobles that could decimate him in battle without even being winded.

It was impossible that all those Nobles were ambitionless cowards content with their lot in life. They knew something and it was enough to dissuade them from entering the tower of endless horizons.

Whatever challenge awaited him within, Zeth hadn’t spent all his years mastering the shadows only to step inside the tower without having hit the level cap.

That was where the Shadow Guild came in. Across the years, he had shown even his enforcers only a fraction of his strength. Enough to intimidate them, yes, but far from revealing the crushing difference between their strengths.

Two had challenged him across the years and both had failed in their attempts, both direct and an ambush, with their experience added to his own. That was how he had reached level 25.

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Ultimately, even the enforcers of the Shadow Guild were traversing the false path. They wielded their cards like a tool that they could exert control over, which meant that they could never defeat Zeth, who saw his Soul Card as a gateway to unleashing his own true potential.

The day Zeth reached the elusive goal he was chasing, either hitting a bottleneck on the control he was seeking that he could not overcome through effort or truly mastered every aspect of the shadows that his rare card exerted dominion over, was the day the rest of the enforcers would die and he would finally reach the level cap.

It was a pity that he would have to waste the subordinates he had spent years nurturing, but those who followed the false path would never have survived in the tower to begin with. He knew that to be a fact, because even now, after all those years, he did not see a single enforcer being capable of defeating the traveller that had so effortlessly trounced his past self.

Admittedly, Jerrick dying at the hands of tower aspirants had not been a part of his plan. He was even more surprised when the travellers hadn’t ascended the tower, placing themselves permanently out of his reach, but instead started hunting common carded beasts in the vicinity.

It had been quite some time since Zeth’s authority had been challenged so blatantly,but he had already given the order to have the offenders captured and brought before him so he could recover the experience they had stolen from Jerrick.

He hoped that they would at least make it entertaining as recompense for the loss they had caused him. Jerrick had been loyal to a fault and keeping him around helped him keep abreast of his enforcer’s plans and schemes.

He focused his shadows on his feet and activated his Rare Card’s second ability. His silhouette vanished from sight, only to appear near the wall that housed his armor with a flicker of motion. A blink of an eye was all he had required, but there was still a resistance he felt from his shadows as they enveloped his form that he could work upon.

Zeth began to don his three set piece bone armor before he clipped an empty sheathe to his side. He then reached forward and pulled out his blade from the void that was his inventory, revealing an icy-blue longsword that had a disproportionately thin hilt that was supported by a knucle-guard just wide enough to support a single hand’s grip.

His Rare Artefact was too valuable an item to keep in the open, so he always kept it in his inventory while he was in his quarters.

Zeth sheathed his long blade, the additional heft not bothering him as he strode forward, only to pause mid-stride.

He did not remember wearing a flimsy lanyard that had somehow been looped around his neck.

He pinched the odd rectangular piece of something that was neither metal nor glass, staring at the unfamiliar person’s printed visage that motionlessly met his gaze.

[You have failed to clear the trial of Maya, the infinite web of illusions. You have fallen into a state of temporary Zhan.

Sub-Skill: Homebound has been activated].

Back in the real world, Tom’s heart hammered in his chest as he reached for the remaining Elixir in one fell swoop, before tossing the empty bottle aside.

The Divine System didn’t force notifications mid-battle, so their ambush plan had been banking on the hopes that their opponent wouldn’t ask the system to reveal the experience they had earned while there were still enemies around.

Most people wouldn’t, but Zeth was not most people. He was an experience obsessed mad-man that was willing to go as far as to massacre his own guild for the experience.

“Aleph, I need your help!” Tom called out, gritting his teeth. It wasn’t just the fact that Tom suspected that Zeth would see an ambush from Aleph coming, but also the realization that he’d run into an opponent he couldn’t beat on his own.