The group left the forest and came into a clearing not thirty minutes after stepping through the warp-gate. The only monsters they'd come across had been quickly dispatched by Steph, and Daniel was beginning to feel the tension setting in.
Not much was expected of him honestly, but even then there was a good amount of pressure on him to prove himself, and a more than healthy amount of stress from the monster hiding just out of sight in the woods.
Only a few short days ago he'd been living on his parents farm, exploring caves and taking college classes in geology. It was a rather sharp transition to make in such a small amount of time and he was almost worried about how well he was handling it.
'Maybe I just haven't fully processed it all yet?' Daniel thought idly. 'That's probably not good for the ol' mental state, but eh… who cares? If it keeps me moving forward that's all that matters. I can't really afford to have a breakdown in a place like this. Hell, somebody broke into my room last night. I doubt he's the only one who's that interested in me. I'd honestly be concerned about disappearing in the night if all the upper class here didn't seem to be so terrified of Anton. Suspiciously terrified. Either way there's more eyes on me than I'm comfortable with.'
Daniel was pulled from his thoughts when the group finally left the relative safety of the tree line and stepped out into the wide clearing. No grass grew in the dust covered expanse and only small, weak trees grew dotted the horizon. Though all of it paled before the gargantuan red mountain several hundred meters ahead of the group. It stretched upwards and pierced the clouds with jagged peaks that can to knifelike points.
"I'm guessing that this is it?" Daniel said.
"You'd be right," Jonathan said from his spot next to Daniel, snugly in the middle of the group.
The group didn't slow down as they trekked across the expanse towards the mountain, but Daniel was able to voice a question that had piqued his interest.
"Why is there no grass growing here?" And Jonathan, being the closest to him, answered.
"There is grass here, just very little of it. The trees are simply easier to spot because they're bigger. Any plant that grows in the Riese's shadow needs to be carded or it withers."
"Plants can have cards?" Daniel asked. He honestly hadn't expected card ownership to extend all the way down to the plants.
"Anything with the will to have a card can obtain one. Though most everything besides humans are born with one, and are stuck with that one until they die. Though, in rare cases they can be obtained by the things that were unfortunate enough to come to exist without a card."
Daniel got the impression that that last sentence wasn't referring to carded plants but chose not to dig any deeper for the moment. The issue seemed... emotionally charged for the man judging from his tone.
The conversation grew silent for the moment, up until the group trekked past one of the aforementioned trees, and at a glance Daniel couldn't see anything abnormal about them. If anything, they looked weaker than normal trees, more decrepit.
"They don't look very impressive, do they?" Jonathan asked.
Daniel nodded, "I'd be lying if I said they did."
"Look at it this way," Jonathan said, "They've survived because their will was strong enough to do so. They faced a certain death and in their hopelessness, their strength, they formed a card from nothing. They only look weak because they're fighting to stay alive where nothing else could."
Daniel nodded at the comment as a rather obvious idea formed in his head, "Can they be harvested for cards?"
"Yes," Jonathan admitted, "but the rate at which they drop cards is not any better than that of the monsters."
"But they do drop cards, right?" Daniel asked.
"Yes, they do, I'm sure that Anton has some greenhouses back in the city trying to exploit that little facet of them, but I doubt it will go anywhere."
Daniel raised an eyebrow, "And why is that?"
"I can answer that one," Stanford said.
"Plants don't form cards often, and with the drop rates that we have it's not really feasible to try to farm them for cards. Now don't get me wrong, monster farms are a different story. They're way more effective, but they all suffer from a very big problem. Eventually, no matter how long it takes or how carefully the creature being farmed was chosen, a rare or legendary card will appear amongst them that's capable of destroying the entire operation."
That seemed to pique Jonathan's curiosity, "Where did you learn that, Stanford?"
Stanford waved his hand nonchalantly, "Harold up at the card vault told me about it. A good bit of the cards there come from monster farms, but they need to be kept outside the walls due to how volatile they can be."
Up at the front of the group Gabriel whisper-yelled back towards the trio, "Quit your yapping, we're here."
They'd made it to the base of the Riese. The stone-like walls of the long dead fable were semi translucent, and Daniel could easily see three or four feet into the stone before it started to become blurry. Even then, Daniel could easily make out his reflection within the smoother parts of the Riese.
Not that there were many flat surfaces on the Riese. The wall was covered in jagged knifelike shards that jutted out in random directions, but beneath all of that it was clear that large chunks of whatever material made this thing up had been chipped away over the years.
"Keep a sharp eye out," Gabriel said. "This is splinter territory. Everyone get in position, and Stanford, go ahead and ring the dinner bell."
Stanford grinned brightly before unsheathing his sword and responding, "With pleasure."
In one fluid motion Stanford's sword was swung towards the Riese. The blade never touched the dead fable, but nonetheless a large, jagged section of the wall fell away acompanied by the sound of a blade striking something metallic.
And almost immediately the ground around the group began to shake, and Daniel stepped into Limbo. He figured that he'd would be safer there, it wasn't like he had a great way of fighting back without utilizing the strange place anyways.
Within the cool embrace of Limbo, the ground didn't shake, and Daniel could see the smoky figures of his team preparing to fight whatever showed up to face them.
It wasn't long after entering Limbo before Daniel got to watch as his entire team scrambled away from something that he couldn't see. Intent on seeing what was happening, Daniel jogged over to one of his teammates and left Limbo. And what he saw was chaos.
The ground surged up and down like an ocean during a storm and falling from the sky wreathed in fire chunks of stone rained down.
Rather than dodge or panic, Daniel simply slipped back into Limbo. Having an exit button had its perks. Monsters had been hidden amongst the volatile earth, and now that he was back into the relative calm of Limbo, he could spot them fairly easily.
The everpresent smoke that coated the ground worked to obscure them somewhat, but they stood out as small lumps among the smoke that were easy enough to spot now that he was looking for them. The smoke stirred, and Daniel watched as several humanoid creatures rushed the group before dropping back beneath the smoke like a marionette with cut strings, presumably they were dead.
The ground in Limbo was as calm as ever, which Daniel found odd, and when he watched his team they seemed to still be dodging the flaming boulders despite Daniel not seeing a thing in the sky. The beginnings of a hunch formed in Daniel's mind, and he left Limbo for no more than a few seconds before retreating back into its waiting arms.
Chunks of stone still seemed to be appearing out from nowhere in particular and were being launched towards the group in conjunction with the roiling earth. Daniel could see how that would be rather distracting, and how it was odd that he couldn't see any of it in Limbo.
Everything he'd learned about this place pointed it to be a somewhat warped mirror of the real world. He should have had chitinous boulders raining down upon him and a floor moving like the sea.
Instead, it was calm, suspiciously so.
Daniel took a moment to scan his surroundings. He paid no heed to the ever present burning in his lungs. It was something he could easily ignore, especially with distractions like this.
And then he found it, a smokey figure amongst the battlefield that nobody seemed to acknowledge. Monsters rushed past it and died from blade or card, but this one remained untouched.
'Time to earn that paycheck,' Daniel thought as he moved behind the monster and lifted up his spear.
And then he waited. Several monsters rushed past the hidden creature before finding themselves in the meat grinder that was the rest of the team. One even ran through Daniel before collapsing lifelessly to the ground moments later.
Only after the general area around the monster was clear did Daniel leave Limbo, and after all that all he saw in front of him was a mound of dirt no bigger than an anthill. It wouldn't have stood out at all if he hadn't seen the little bastard hiding right there in Limbo.
So with a deathgrip on his spear Daniel thrust it towards the earth, and before it even hit the ground he felt the blade of his weapon sink into something soft as blackish-red blood sprayed from the wound.
Immediately the shaking earth and hurtling boulders ceased to exist as a creature no bigger than a child resembling something akin to wet clay appeared out of nowhere with the tip of Daniel's spear buried into its chest.
The monster looked surprised, and tried to swing an arm at Daniel, but quickly found that he was no longer there. It looked around in confusion, but just seconds later it collapsed lifelessly to the ground with an arrow piercing through the glowing red core in its chest, just inches above where Daniel's spear had struck.