After entering the game, Xie Mingzhe, who had never played a holographic game before, was stunned by the image in front of him.
The vast starry sky and the brilliant Milky Way greeted his eyes. He also saw a meteor shower while traveling in a spacecraft. Countless meteors, leaving silvery white trails of light, dotted the night sky, resembling gorgeous fireworks in space.
Xie Mingzhe was thrilled to take in the scene outside the window. He felt like "granny Liu visiting the Grand View Gardens"—a simple person stepping into a whole new world.
After a period of traveling through space, a "ding" sound echoed in his ear, followed by a crisp prompt: "Welcome to the Binary Star. Your assigned residence here is: No. 7498 Apartment in G District. Please enter your personal space."
Landing on his feet, Xie Mingzhe took a deep breath to calm his rapidly beating heart and turned to look at the so-called "personal space."
The design of the three-bedroom apartment was similar to a real-world home. There were sofas, tea tables, and an LCD TV with a large screen—probably the world channel—on which various messages flashed, making Xie Mingzhe dizzy.
After leaving the living room, he followed the arrows beneath his feet to the bedroom. The system's voice said, "You can rest in your bedroom if you're tired. You can also change its décor and furniture. Additionally, you can invite friends to your house."
The game designers had incorporated a "Homeland Design" feature, allowing every player to have their own apartment, which they could decorate and design, creating a virtual space for friendship.
Xie Mingzhe praised the design in his heart and followed the instructions to the study room.
The study had three walls lined with light blue metal display cases, divided into neat rows of small sub-boxes. Each sub-box was a square of 20x20cm, similar to a backpack in online games where you could store cards and materials.
There was a metal console in the center of the study. As Xie Mingzhe approached, the system's voice said, "This is the [Card Console], where all cards are made, decomposed, leveled, and evolved. Please read the card instructions carefully."
As a game newbie, Xie Mingzhe knew to pay attention to the instructions—he had learned this from his past gaming experiences.
With a gentle touch, an animated version of the card instructions appeared in front of him.
Star Card Storm, of course, was centered around cards.
The strength of Star cards depended on upgrading and evolution.
The initial card was a level 1 one-star green card, which could evolve into a level 20 two-star blue card, level 30 three-star purple card, level 40 four-star orange card, level 50 five-star silver card, level 60 six-star golden card, and level 70 (the highest level) seven-star black card.
Every time a card leveled up, its skill power would increase by a certain percentage. When it evolved, its base attributes would double. To evolve, the card needed to reach a certain level first, then it had to devour three cards of the same star level or one hundred fragments of a higher star level.
For example, to evolve a six-star card into a seven-star card, players needed to raise the card to level 70 and then feed it three six-star cards or one hundred seven-star fragments to evolve it into a powerful seven-star card with doubled strength.
Leveling up was easy to understand: it just required accumulating as much experience as possible. Xie Mingzhe understood the evolution of the card as a "level breakthrough" in online games. Each evolution consumed a lot of resources, but the high star-level cards would repay players with doubled strength.
In the late game, seven-star cards dominated the instances and arenas. A level 70 seven-star card was extremely expensive to cultivate as it required a lot of experience and resources, so how to cultivate cards was an essential skill for players.
Xie Mingzhe now had a basic understanding of the game rules.
After reading the beginner's guide, Xie Mingzhe heard another system prompt: "Now that you've read about card upgrading and evolution, let's get into battle! There are countless fascinating lands of illusion in the World of Star Card. You can gain experience and material rewards by challenging them. There are alien creatures in these lands, so use the cards the system has given you to defeat them!"
"Ding-ding," went the prompt again—Get card [Icy Snake] × 1, [Thunder Bird] × 1.
A display case on the left lit up, revealing two green cards. The level 1 one-star green cards were the initial cards in the game.
Xie Mingzhe picked up the cards and carefully examined their details.
[Icy Snake] (Water)
Card Level: 1
Evolution Level: ★
Available Uses: 1/1
Base Attributes: Health 100, Defense 100, Attack 20, Agility 10, Critical Strike Chance 1%
Additional Skill: Freeze (Causes 20% damage of Water attribute to the target and freezes the target for 2 seconds.)
[Thunder Bird] (Metal)
Card Level: 1
Evolution Level: ★
Available Uses: 1/1
Base Attributes: Health 100, Defense 50, Attack 100, Agility 30, Critical Strike Chance 5%
Additional Skill: Interlinking Thunder (Causes 80% Thunder attribute damage to all targets within range.)
A control card and an AOE card.
The two cards the system gave to him were likely enough to handle the instance in the novice stage.
Xie Mingzhe took the two cards and entered the first instance, where the scene suddenly changed.
He found himself in an empty square with a stone pillar in the center. As he entered, he heard a woman's eerie voice: "Hehehe, here comes fresh food..."
Looking up, he saw a creature with a human-like upper body and a snake-like lower body twisting near the stone pillar. Several small snakes slithered around her—she was obviously the BOSS, accompanied by her followers that he had to defeat.
System Prompt: "Please pay attention to your Inner Spirit points. Your current level is 1, with a total of 10 Inner Spirit points. Summoning a one-star card requires 5 Inner Spirit points. The system will automatically restore your Inner Spirit points every second."
As an experienced player, Xie Mingzhe quickly understood—the Inner Spirit was like the MP (Mana Points) in online games. Summoning cards consumed Inner Spirit points, which prevented players from summoning too many cards at once.
With 10 Inner Spirit points, Xie Mingzhe could summon a maximum of two cards. No wonder the system had given him just two cards.
Xie Mingzhe summoned [Icy Snake] and [Thunder Bird] simultaneously.