Chapter 736: Are the Corporation and the Legion Fighting Among Themselves? (3/4)

Chapter 736: Internal Strife Between the Enterprise and the Legion? (3/4)

“Shut up, all of you!”

The rules of this game were a bit like Tian Ji’s horse racing—once the opponent knew your hand, there was no way to win.

Seizing that fleeting mistake, Tang Feng, sitting across the table, yanked out the magic card he’d been clutching for ages and flung it down with a sneer.

“Finally, it’s my turn!”

“Activate magic card! Revive! My Blue-Eyes White Dragon!!”

Mosquito, perched on the referee’s seat, leaped up and shrieked at the top of his lungs.

“Blue-Eyes White Dragon! Upon summoning, it can launch an attack on the field! Remove one card from the opponent’s melee zone with an initial combat power no higher than its own!”

Without any buffs, both cards had a combat power of 100 points.

The moment the words fell, Mosquito, quick as a flash, swiped that Super Mutant card and stuffed it into his own pocket.

Seeing his ace card destroyed, Damon, sitting across, widened his eyes and couldn’t help but curse.

“Damn it!”

Debt-Eyes, standing by the card table, also couldn’t help but blurt out a curse.

“Holy shit, that works?!”

Mosquito, from the referee’s seat, winked at him and said in Mandarin.

“Heh, the battlefield changes in the blink of an eye…”

With that, he coughed and turned his gaze to the stunned Varlent.

“Still playing a card? If not, this round’s over.”

He had to play, of course.

But one look at that darkened face told him the rest of the fight was a foregone conclusion.

And just as he’d predicted, the Varlent played every card left in his hand, but still couldn’t turn the score around.

The winner was decided.

Mosquito stomped one foot onto the card table, raised Tang Feng’s arm, and loudly declared the victor of this duel.

“The winner is the brave warrior of the 100th Mountain Division! Tang Feng, Second Platoon, First Company, First Battalion!”

The whole place erupted in fierce cheers.

Except for the players who knew the original rules and the Varlent who’d lost the match, almost every wastelander had enjoyed the show.

As Mosquito climbed down from the table, Debt-Eyes, who’d lost his money, grabbed him and snarled.

“You call this Gwent?!”

Mosquito clicked his tongue, utterly unbothered.

“You don’t get it—it’s called product localization. Besides, how much could I make from those Gwent cards? A few packs and you’d have them all—how the hell would I keep milking you?”

Outlaw, too, fumed with rage.

“You’re butchering the original!”

Mosquito grinned shamelessly.

“Who cares? The original’s not my dad. Those NPCs never played it anyway, so I make the rules. Call it Kunpai if you want—pretend it’s not that thing. Same to me.”

Outlaw: “@#%&!”

Suddenly the center of everyone’s attention, Tang Feng’s face was full of embarrassment, but seeing so many people cheering his victory, his vanity swelled with satisfaction, and he waved modestly to the crowd.

Watching the big-nosed guys’ sour expressions, Mosquito, after dealing with his own buddies, chuckled.

“Don’t get worked up, pal. Winning and losing in games is normal; one match doesn’t mean a thing. You can always get your revenge next time—unless you lose every time. I’ll be here tomorrow at this hour. As for these cards in your hand, consider them a gift.”

“You just wait!”

Staring hard at Tang Feng’s victorious smile, Damon spat out a harsh threat, then turned to Mosquito and muttered.

“Got any other cards? Mine are crap.”

“Sure, but you’ll have to buy card packs for those… Don’t worry, they’re cheap—10 silver coins a pack, twenty cards inside!” Pausing, Mosquito added with feigned sincerity, “Honestly, the cards aren’t the key—it’s the player, just like gear. I’d suggest you master these cards first before building a new deck…”

That was total bullshit. No card game could reduce randomness to zero.

Especially one leaning more toward entertainment than competition.

The Varlent couldn’t be bothered to listen and just tossed a hundred-silver note onto the table.

“You’d better have enough.”

At one silver for two cards, he could buy two hundred and take his time figuring them out.

Why waste his breath?

Seeing the note land on the table, Mosquito snatched it up and stuffed it into his pocket, then called over a shill mingling in the crowd, directing him to drag a sack into the middle of the gathering.

“Pick whatever you like! Hope you build the deck of your dreams! Next time, don’t blame the cards!”

Damon, face dark, reached into the sack.

“Shut up!”

Mosquito grinned and fell silent, watching the guy pick and choose, his heart singing with joy.

Each pack cost him less than one silver—he was selling them for over ten times that!

What really got his blood pumping were the eager eyes all around him.

This one sack wouldn’t even be enough to meet demand!

Thinking it over, Mosquito started mulling the idea of hosting a Gwent tournament, maybe with a prize pool…

And just as he’d predicted, the several sacks of cards he’d prepared sold out in no time.

Especially those guys from the Ideal City—none of them were short on cash, and they spent without a second thought.

Desperate to pull that Blue-Eyes White Dragon with 100 combat power, they tore through half the packs.

But what they didn’t know was that this invincible god card they coveted would be a joke in the next patch.

100 combat power?

Ha, that’d be nothing!

Mosquito had already dreamed up what a 10,000-power card would look like.

He was even scheming to add a few Alliance legions into the card packs!

In no time, the tavern’s main hall was filled with the sound of card games and wastelanders’ shouts.

Flipping through the colorful stack of cards in his hand, Tang Feng sighed with emotion.

“I don’t get it—why didn’t something this fun catch on in the Ideal City?”

Such a small, elegant game was rare on the Endpoint Cloud; those virtual worlds spanning entire planets were vast, but too empty.

It’d be even better if they could turn the duels into a virtual reality.

For instance, projecting battle scenes and skill effects with holographic computers and such.

Sitting at the table beside him, Mosquito, busy counting money, chuckled and said.

“I told you, that brother of mine isn’t cut out for business—the era of just selling products is long gone. Marketing isn’t just about strategy; you have to tell a story.”

Tang Feng was taken aback.

“Tell a story?”

Shuffling the cards in his hand, Mosquito said leisurely.

“Exactly, like today—a single game of Gwent stopped the infighting between the Legion and the corporate alliance… What do you think of that story?”

He paused, then cast a confident gaze out the window.

“Speaking of which, this village doesn’t seem to have a name yet… ‘Nameless Village’ sounds too lame. Why not call it Gwent Town?”

Or just Gwent would be fine.

I think this place was called Fuzhuang before, also a monosyllabic name.

Hearing these meaningful words, Tang Feng froze, then suddenly snapped back to reality.

Good grief.

So they’d been used as pawns all along?!

……

While the tavern not far from the front lines was bustling with noise, on distant Broken Blade Mountain there was an eerie silence, broken only by drones flying overhead, quietly spying.

A middle-aged man in a white cloak stared at distant Black Cloud Mountain, his face utterly expressionless.

But then again, no human could ever “see” his face.

Except for his kind—

The “Human Emperor” standing behind him.

If that creature could still be called human.

“Too weak…”

With his back to his comrade, who was also already in paradise, the Beast King said in a very soft voice.

“At this rate, we won’t even need the flying beasts Luo Qian helped us develop—just those greenskin mutants with stronger regeneration can hold them here.”

He was never good at naming things, especially after giving up his own name.

Even terms like greenskin mutants and goblins came from the players who fought the mutants.

But that didn’t matter.

Names themselves were just labels; once paradise descended, everything would start anew.

“…These weak and useless creatures have stayed in the cradle too long and forgotten how to hunt.”

“They’ve already felt the cruelty of the universe at Alpha Centauri, yet they still squabble endlessly over trivial matters.”