The Legendary Fool : A Deckbuilding LITRPG

Tom lay flat on the ground, his chest rising and falling as he panted heavily. Air flowed into his lungs with ragged gasps, the practice crystal sword in his hand slipping out of his grasp.

“How… am….I… ,” Tom’s hoarse voice echoed out between gasps, his fresh, roughly knit linen shirt now completely drenched in sweat. “... supposed to master this.”

Aleph stood at the opposite end of their makeshift arena, a crystalline shield protectively floating before her as she gazed upon Tom’s recumbent figure.

Her expression remained as jovial as ever, though this time it was tinged with a bit of amusement.

“I learned the Control Glyph when I was nine and mastered it by the age of fourteen,” Aleph replied with the playful condescension of an older sibling.

“Way to kick a man when he’s down, Aleph,” Tom retorted as he finally managed to catch his breath.

“Honestly? You’re doing way better than I expected,” Aleph admitted, letting a little acknowledgement seep into her voice.

“But it’s not enough, is it?” Tom asked as he grit his teeth, forcing himself to get back onto his feet.

“Perhaps not,” she conceded. “You have your own reasons, don’t you?”

Tom raised an eyebrow.

“Your obsession with gaining strength.”

“I do,” Tom honestly admitted. “You’ve already established that I don’t want to be found, but that, well, it isn’t enough. Care to hear a story?”

Aleph’s eyes sparkled with clear interest, though from the expression she was making, it seemed like she was caught off-guard. It was hard to believe that someone cautious enough to change their display name would willingly be candid with her, after all.

Tom held his blade outwards, slightly bending his knees as he shifted his weight upon the balls of his feet. Without offering Aleph a warning, he shot forward.

Reading his intentions, an amused grin spread across Aleph’s visage as she rose to Tom’s brazen challenge. After experiencing first-hand the gulf in skill and experience that lay between them, Tom hadn’t tried to contest Aleph in swordplay again….that is, until this very moment.

“Reform,” Aleph commanded, causing the crystalline aegis shielding her to shatter into motes of luminescent dust that Tom was forced to shield his eyes against. In the midst of that turbulent cloud, Aleph snatched a reforged crystalline sword as it was falling to the ground and charged forth.

Shrill, ear-piercing screeches of crystal colliding against crystal rang out as Tom and Aleph exchanged half a dozen blows in rapid succession. A bead of sweat trickled down Tom’s focused expression as he took two quick steps backwards, choosing to disengage as he split his attention visualising the Control Glyph in his mind’s eye.

His actions stood in defiance of conventional wisdom—- trying to master the Control Glyph mid-combat when he hadn’t even gotten it right in practice yet was quite evidently a pursuit destined to end in failure but… well… that was precisely why [The Fool] had chosen him.

“My past is neither as intriguing or as complicated as yours,” Tom began, his tone heavy and his expression conflicted as he drew in for another slash.

A slash that Aleph gracefully evaded by retreating a single step.

“I still want to know,” she encouraged, as her mesmerising azure eyes locked onto his own.

“I was a man that used to believe in destiny,” Tom spoke in a subdued tone, a hint of self-deprecation seeping into his voice as he pledged his sword to an angled cut.

“Destiny?” Aleph inquired as she casually deflected his blow. Tom hadn’t been holding back in the slightest since the swords were blunted, but Aleph’s physical stat simply dwarfed his own by too significant a margin.

“I used to believe that a person’s upbringing, background and circumstances shaped their future,” Tom began, his words causing an influx of painful memories flashed through his mind. “Society told me who I was and I accepted it without question. Born an orphan, I never strived for the warmth and love of a family. Born poor, in a small, insignificant place I never tried to strive for more— never dared to dream beyond my station. That’s why I could never understand people like the ones in the Nameless District— those who would risk everything for a small, fleeting chance at greatness, a greatness that most of them would never see. “

Tom picked up his tempo, his blade blurring as he launched a flurry of strikes in rapid succession.

“People will come after me,” Tom admitted as his blade was locked in a contest of strength against Aleph’s. “But if that was all it was, I could have chosen to flee instead of accepting your proposal. Run far, far away from this place and spend the rest of my life in obscurity.”

“Why didn’t you?” Aleph asked as she took a step forward, exerting a fresh burst of strength that sent Tom skidding backwards.

“Because I am done letting other people— society— even the system choose my destiny for me. I’ve seen where that path leads and I would rather stake it all on the here and now instead of running away from my own desires,” Tom’s words were spoken with the conviction of a man that had experienced two lifetimes; known the consequences of relinquishing control of his life simply because he had been too afraid to struggle.

With a resolved expression on his face, Tom abruptly closed his eyes.

‘Isn’t that why you chose me? To rebuke destiny?’ he asked inwards, his question directed towards the card that was nestled within his soul as he visualised the Control Glyph in his mind’s eye.

From a single point stretched out a dozen branches that further split off into smaller offshoots in the form of twig-like structures, resulting in the creation of an intricate pattern that resembled the chaotic spread of a banyan tree. There was one exception to this rule, a single branch the size of a wide canal that stretched out in a straight line from the very inception of the glyph and the pathway Tom involuntarily utilised each time he used a [Deck Card] without trying to modulate the output.

Merely memorising the pattern had required his [Mental] stats’ aid, but visualising and directing the flow of energy down specific pathways to control the end result required months of practice, if not years.

‘I’m going to surpass the limit of what I believe myself capable of. WIth or without you,’

[The Fool] hadn’t replied to his desperate cries when he had been struggling for his life but now, at this moment, he felt a mild resonance with it. His [Soul Card] allowed a wisp of it’s aura to leak out, but even that caused Aleph’s expression to change; from relaxed to serious.

A fiery red energy flowed down five of the eleven available pathways and the twig-like offshoots lead to dead-ends that further trapped more excess energy.

Tom’s eyes shot open as he finally understood the true purpose of the Control Glyph.

Instead of the torrent of flames he had come to expect from [The Flame] card, a flame lance was sent careening forth from his open palm, possessing less than half the intensity of the original.

But in return…

Its activation time was down to half of what it usually was.

Clear shock was reflected in Aleph’s eyes as she jerked her head to the side, causing her hair to flutter in the opposite direction.

As the flame lance ratcheted past her, it singed the tips of her lustrous silver hair—marking the first time Tom had managed to land a real hit on the Noble Scion.