Chapter 289: Hard to find
Irwin felt relaxed and drained as he finally struck the final blow.
The card flashed brightly as the ambient soulforce that had been blocking his vision either surged into the card or seemed to drift away. As his surroundings cleared up, the card's previous red color drained away into a crystal clear pale border.
Irwin let out a breath of relief, sensing just how weary he was. His soulscape barely had a quarter of its soulforce left.
This isn't just twice as hard as a Ruby reforge, it's on a whole other level, he thought.
His soulscape self unsummoned his soulstrum guitar before grabbing the thin booklet and raising the tablatures. Flipping through it for a moment, it began slowly examining the song.
The part of him in the real world took the card, sensing the immense bottled-up power inside of it.
So this is how strong my hammer card was just before it became a heartcard, he thought.
The image of the spear seemed to almost pop out of the image, while a forest of hazy flaming spears surrounded it. Irwin wondered who he should give the card to. Anyone slotting it would need to have cards with a very strong synergy.
Wishing he had the time to inspect it more closely, he knew there were more important things first.
He looked up from the card to see Dahlia staring at him, eyes wide, a card forgotten before her. She seemed almost frozen in place, staring at the card in his hands. Her face was slightly ruddy due to his fiery night vision having kicked in, which was what finally caused him to snap out of it.
What is going on? he thought, looking around worriedly.
Tentacles were wrapped around their barrier, which had turned into a dense silver that looked more like solidified translucent metal than energy. Only a few cracks remained through which he saw the world around them, and those showed explosions of energy and swirls of fire.