The Legendary Fool

[Congratulations, your Soul Power has increased by five.]

[Soul Card: The Fool.

Rank: Ephemeral [Legendary Unique]

Level: 2 [5134/ 25000]

Ability:

Shroud, Level 1

Passive Shroud:

Makes the wielder invulnerable to all detection/scrying/location cards. Displays a False [Player Statistics] screen to anyone with an [Identification] type card.

Active Shroud, Maya

Deceive oneself to deceive the world.

Fool’s Gold, Level 1

To the [Grand Illusionist], the greatest illusion is one that is indecipherable from reality. One’s grandest desires amplified to the point where they lose themselves in the depths of their mind. One’s greatest fear made so visceral that the battle is won before the swords are drawn.

To [The Fool], the greatest illusion in the world is to deceive the very laws that govern this land. To make the impossible, reality.

To give shape, form and weight to an illusion.

Mimic:

Record any [1] non-living, non-consumable weapon, equipment or item within [20] levels of the Soul Card’s current level and upto a maximum of [Rare] rarity. Recreate an illusion that can mimic upto 10% of the object’s ability and copy [1] still.]

Despite the limitations imposed by [The Fool] card, Tom had to re-read his newly acquired skll’s description multiple times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Firstly, he had gotten an actual skill description instead of useless proverbs and equally frustrating platitudes. Adding on, despite the severe limitations tacked onto his one useful skill…. It was still beyond anything he would’ve dreamed of.

To give physical form to an illusion decidedly felt like a power that quite frankly, he didn’t believe that he deserved.

That was the vestigal remains of ‘old’ Tom, or rather, his old personality speaking, such was the shock he felt. The recording part was something he understood naturally, or rather instinctively— he simply had to come into physical contact with the item he wanted to mimic for an extended period of time and activate his [Soul Card]. The main allure of the skill that he’d noticed was that it let him mimic items that superceded him both in level and the rank of his [Deck Cards]- if his desire to get to civilization was strong before, it was now an almost invioable yearning.

[Please allot your vacant attribute points:.

Physical: 6

Mental: 9

Proprioception: 5]

This decision was a tricky one, especially for someone like Tom who tended to be on the indecisive side. The thought that this might be the only chance he got to distribute attribute points in a long, long time haunted his psyche. As Tom had continued to hunt in the forest, he had noticed a steep decline in the beast’s population, the time between each hunt stretching from the original one to two hours to three, even four if he was unlucky. The twenty five thousand experience he needed to get his Soul Card to the next level…. Well, it definitely wasn’t happening in this forest.

So Tom asked himself: What was it that he needed the most right now?

He thought back to his fights, the dances with death he had engaged in throughly unprepared and outmatched. Like the moment where the [Elfinclaw] had leapt at him through his makeshift wall of flames, what was his thought process in that moment?

Tom had wished to be faster.

No… that wasn’t quite it.

He’d wished he could react faster.

There were few feelings that were equally as frustrating as they were frigtening, and having a hostile entity blitz past you without even being able to react was definitely one of them.

Gritting his teeth, Tom inputted one point into [Proprioception].

His eyes widened as a jolt of electric current flowed through his body, through sinew and bone alike. Or atleast that was how the sensation felt— a zap to his consciousness, not painful in and of itself but a little disturbing. It was over almost as soon as it began, though Tom could have been standing there for minutes and not have realized it.

He slowly unfurled his arms outward with the grace of a dancer, an invigorating energy flowing through them that felt unlike anything he’d ever perceived before. An idea took hold in his mind, and a few minutes later Tom had gathered three cricket ball sized rocks, albeit jagged and misshappen ones.

Without hesitating, he tossed one in the air, soon to be followed with another. His vision felt clear, far clearer than anything he’d felt before in his life. As if a veil shrouding his senses, a natural limiter than every human was born with, was ever so nonchalantly torn away.

A few seconds later, Tom was juggling three incongruent objects with the ease of one who had practised the skill for years, if not decades. A chuckle escaped him as he released control over the stones, propelling them upwards. It only took him one glance to evade their downward arc with two quick sidesteps.

This sensation… he wanted to feel more of it.

It was far better than any form of intoxication human civilization had to offer and before Tom had even realized it, he had inputted another four points into the [Proprioception] stat.

[Proprioception: 10]

“Fuck,” Tom uttered, panting heavily as a melange of emotions coursed through his soul— exultation, fear and a twinge of uncertainty. He couldn’t afford to lose himself like that again… but he couldn’t bring himself to regret his decision either.

Standing under the forest’s canopy, Tom’s hand shot out with explosive acceleration. A second later, pinched between his index finger and his thumb, was a falling leaf.

This was… crazy.

Now, even with one hand, he could deftly switch out one card for another. That added an entirely different level of versatility to his skillset, though Tom would still much rather prefer a different alternative.

[10] points seemed like a good, rounded number to stop, and he didn’t want to put all his eggs in one basket.

Next, he dumped three points into physical.

“Oh, that’s weeeeird,” He groaned. His muscle tissue began to wriggle and writhe under his skin and if Tom had to guess, it was following the same principles as bodybuilding— creating small tears in the muscle, repairing and rebuilding them in real time, creating faster, stronger and leaner muscle tissue in real time. Or… it was simply magic, but Tom preferred to cling to his earthen knowledge.

When the process had concluded, Tom clenched his fist, flexing his newly acquired muscles. He began throwing a flurry of jabs, with a few hooks mixed in. Even though he didn’t have a complete measure of his strength, he could tell that a single punch from him would hurt, and his high [Proprioception] meant that he could throw a lot more than a solitary punch in a short timeframe.

One point went into [Mental], and Tom immediately regretted it.

It didn’t make him smarter, which was in fact, something Tom was dreading more than looking forward to. It was more a philosophical question than a matter of pragmatism— if his intelligence increased by a hundred, or for that matter, even my ten times, would he still be functionally the same person? Would a being that intelligent have the same thought processes, thought patterns and desires as Tom? To him, it seemed more a curse than a boon.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to answer that question. He was still smarter, in a manner of interpretation of the word. His thoughts were clearer and Tom was able to… process information faster. He understood the necessity of the [attribute], because [Proprioception] meant little if he couldn’t process the information his natural reflexes were conveying. The ratio probably didn’t have to be 1:1 but still, he understood the reason for its necessity.

The problem was…. It also made him remember things, memories that he had buried deep within the recesses of his mind. The distraction was something he could do without but…. It was necessary.

Clenching his fist hard, Tom inputted the last point into the [Mental] stat.

There was a saying in his town, one whose exact wording Tom had long forgotten, but its ethos,had stuck with him. It was something along the lines of ‘when the scales of fortune are finally tipped in your favor, keep going and all your dreams will come true.’ He supposed that it was one of those platitudes small town folks liked to believe, but he was also self-aware enough to accept that he was a cynic.

Tom was out hunting, but it had been six, mayhaps seven hours since he’d last encountered a beast. He’d switched back to hunting in the day, mainly because he was begining to feel the first effects of extended isolation, and the daytime seemed more pleasant to be wandering around in the forest.

It was then, that he heard a series of odd, garbled voices with an unfamiliar inflection, a strange, foriegn rhythm that made it sound like gibberish to his ears. Tom immediately dropped down to his knees, stealthily positioning himself behind cover with practised, clean motions.

“Zenthrum akar zel rahn mok deralun ke kerak snah,” intoned the voice, and it was that moment when goosebumps rose on Tom’s pale white skin.

It was a language.