SNAPCRAFT | Ch. 13 - The People of the Bonfire

Spring of 346, A.D.

Albert had made a partial recovery. Despite Trudy’s insistence, he was back to teaching. Instead of taking them to the section of the museum that celebrated all past exams, though, he had brought them to a very simple room, filled with chairs, that had one single flame burning in it. Kai had never been here before.

“Today, our class will be slightly different. It’s important to study the past to improve our chances of doing well in Daisy’s exams.” He didn’t forget to stick his tongue out to the nearest cyborg, to make sure that Daisy heard his contempt. “It’s just as important to do so to remind us of why we fight to preserve the culture of our sector.” He pointed to the flame in the middle of the room. “This is our sector’s flame.”

Kai looked at Alex with a questioning gaze. He shrugged. It didn’t look like Alex had been here before either.

“When Daisy took over, we remained the same. We remained the same selfish society that only cared about instant gratification. Those were dark days. But then, one hero emerged. His name was Balin.” Kai now recognized the name. It was the record holder for the sector. He had made it to the quarter-finals of the 43rd exams. There were statues of him here and there throughout the city, and several streets were named after him.

“After the exams, Balin made use of his prestige and shared his vision for the sector. He said that, way before humans destroyed the Earth, there were simpler days. Better days. There was a time when humans sat around the hearth to share stories and tales. His idea was that, by returning to those days, we could regain something humanity had lost.”

“So he founded the firekeepers?” asked Ariel.

“That’s right, Ariel.”

After she spoke, Kai’s eyes and hers met. She smiled, and Kai smiled in return. He was expecting Alex to make fun of him, as he usually did whenever he saw Kai make a fool of himself, but his friend was staring at Albert with an intensity that he rarely saw in his friend.

“Since the days of Balin, we have been feeding this flame. It is a symbol of our way of life. It’s the symbol of our culture, and our people. We are the people of the hearth, the people of the bonfire.” Albert let his voice resound in the empty room. After a few moments, Albert still hadn’t said anything. Kai had assumed at first that it was a pause for emphasis, but now he realized that he had just gotten stuck again.

“Albert, what do you want us to do?” came the prompt from Trudy.

“Oh, right. Split into focus groups. I want you to list why our culture has potential and is worth fighting for.”

*

From what Kai remembered, to fashion flint into blades, he had to use something hard and pointy, like a sharp piece of bone or a metallic nail. Then that was pressed against the flint’s edge to flake off little pieces of it, serrating it. That’s how flint was sharpened. He went through his collection of cards, looking for something that would help him knap the flint. He scratched his head. There was nothing. He knew that there was the potential for him to create new cards, but he was missing a key ingredient!

Even though it was frustrating to be missing cards, he had to work with what he had. His pickaxe still had one hit point left, and there was no sense in just letting it go to waste. He grabbed it again and also picked up another card he wanted to try merging.

Block of Granite (Common)

Hp: 1

Vp: 2

He put both cards in the engraving patterns and let the table merge them together.

[Pickaxe] + [Block of Granite]

Pickaxe | Hp: 1→0

Block of Granite | Hp: 1→0

Crafting Successful! You've crafted 2x[Granite Brick].

New recipe added to your recipe book.

Granite Brick (Uncommon)

Hp: 2

Vp: 2

Kai appreciated the results. With this move, he had essentially tripled the points from the [Granite Block] card. He studied the picture in the [Granite Brick] card. It looked like a smaller, neatly cut piece of rock. He was sure there was some recipe that used this.

Unfortunately, with this, his pickaxe card was as good as gone. He sent it to the pile that he was starting to think of as the ‘graveyard.’

“So long, little pickaxe. You have served me well.” He was starting to go senile from spending so much time alone with his thoughts. Knowing his opponent had two pickaxes in their inventory was driving him nuts, but he made an effort to get his head back into the game.

He still had a [Flintstone] card with two hp. What would happen if he used it together with one of the granite cards? Granite was hard rock. He remembered that one of the houses he had lived in had granite tabletops in the kitchen. That thing was tough. Was flint hard enough to work granite? Should he try it?

He grunted and put all flint and granite cards to the side. He still had other recipes to try, and he would run this kind of experiment toward the end of the stage. He had to explore recipes that had a better chance of working.

He picked one of the cards he got minutes earlier.

Spark (Common)

Hp: 1

Vp: 2

He had two of these now. There was an excellent merging candidate for this one that he felt pretty confident about.

Dry Pine Needle (Common)

Hp: 2

Vp: 0

He took a deep breath. How many times had he started the fire in the square? Dry pine needles were wonderful tinder. He got both cards ready and threw them onto the respective slots in the table.

As the table activated and it erupted into light, Kai's heart raced. He wasn’t sure why. Was it because of what it meant to him? Was it because of all the memories he had from his sector?

[Spark] + [Dry Pine Needle]

Spark | Hp: 1→0

Dry Pine Needle | Hp: 2→0

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Fire].

New recipe added to your recipe book.

Fire (Rare)

Hp: 2

Vp: 2

Yes! As Kai saw that he had crafted a rare card, he jumped with joy. This was the first time he could merge cards collected from different arenas. The results were fantastic. He had gotten a rare card! He had gotten a… Kai paused and blinked a few times. Something was not right about the notifications in front of him.

Why had [Dry Pine Needle] gone from 2hp to 0hp in one go? Additionally, the stats of the fire card didn’t seem right. He grabbed the other rare cards he owned.

Mirror (Rare)

Hp: 4

Vp: 3

Hallucinogen (Rare)

Hp: 1

Vp: 5

[Hallucinogen] used to have 2 hp but had dropped to 1 after the end of the first round. Still, when he crafted it, it originally had 7 stat points. Mirror also had 7 stat points distributed between hp and vp. Why did [Fire] only have 4 then? If it had only four stat points, it would have made more sense to label it as an uncommon card, right?

He drummed his fingers on the table. He grabbed the [Dry Pine Tree] card with its hp down to zero, and threw it on the graveyard. He then looked at its next guinea pig.

Pine Trunk (Common)

Hp: 2

Vp: 0

It was just another card that was useless to him right now. He couldn’t think of any recipe in which he could use it, and it offered no victory points. Had he been able to craft some sort of axe, he would have tried to use it to get timber or logs or whatever Daisy was willing to give him. But since that wasn’t the case, and he had to get as many points as possible, he was ready to take the risk.

He grabbed [Fire] and [Pine Trunk], put them on the table, and waited to see what happened.

[Fire] + [Pine Trunk]

Fire | Hp: 2→3

Pine Trunk | Hp: 2→0

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Ash].

New recipe added to your recipe book.

Ash (Common)

Hp: 1

Vp: 2

Sweet! He had just discovered a new recipe. But he set it aside, as what had happened to the [Fire] card was of greater interest to him.

Fire (Rare)

Hp: 3

Vp: 3

What? [Fire]’s hp had gone up? What was happening here? How could a card's hp go up? Wasn't it supposed to go down? He retraced his steps and compared the numbers again, and then it hit him.

If he was correct, [Fire]’s victory points depended on its health. When he had fused [Fire] with [Dry Pine Needles], the [Fire] card had sucked the hit points out of the [Dry Pine Needles]. At the same time, it had just been used in a merge, so it had lost a hp point there. After that, when he had merged [Fire] with [Pine Trunk] the same thing happened. It was as if [Fire] had the unique power to eat the other cards' hp!

That meant that, with the proper management, he could keep the [Fire] card always on him. All he had to do was ensure the card’s hp didn’t reach 0. As long as he kept supplying the card with fuel, that shouldn’t be a problem. The question now was, what would happen if he merged [Fire] with a card that did have victory points? What did it do then?

As an experiment, he reached out for the [Pine Bark] card that had survived from the first round. As many things in the woodland were combustible, the cards he had saved up in his inventory proved to be the resource he needed to make [Fire] shine.

He hadn’t found any use for the [Pine Bark] card yet. Until now, that is.

Pine Bark (Common)

Hp: 1

Vp: 1

[Fire] + [Pine Bark]

Fire | Hp: 4

Pine Trunk | Pine Bark: 1→0

Crafting Successful! You've crafted [Ash].

New recipe added to your recipe book.

It was a little anticlimactic. He had hoped that [Fire] also grew off consuming victory points, but it had just sucked the last hp from [Pine Bark]. At least he had gotten a new [Ash] card, granting him an extra 2 victory points. From what Kai was seeing, at the expense of saving points for future rounds, making more [Ash] cards was a good way to boost points.

When Kai thought of all the upgrades on the console, he felt a thirst for points! He didn’t want to gain points later. He needed more points right now. He wanted to get as good snapping rounds as possible to have an advantage over his opponents.

Things would only get tougher from now on, and no single sector had made it through three centuries of Daisy’s rulership without finding a system that worked. All his opponents were well-trained, and as the exam progressed, he would be fencing against even more formidable opponents.

He regarded his healthy-looking hands and took a deep breath. How he had missed to breathe freely like this without coughing his gut out. He thought of Ariel and him and what awaited them if he didn't secure allcure. He needed all the advantages he could get. He had to match Balin's achievement at least. That was the only way for him and Ariel to stay together.

He counted his victory points. He had 91 of them so far. It was much better than what he had achieved in the first round, but not nearly good enough if he wanted to grab the [Slow Shutter] upgrade, which cost 200 vps!  He had to push harder. He would squeeze the full potential of all the cards he had.

He looked at the clock. With all this experimentation, there were still 35 minutes on the clock. He should hurry. Kai put all the [Flint] and [Fire] related cards to the side and concentrated on two other cards he wanted to experiment with. He reached for one of his legendary cards, [Light].

Light (Legendary)

Hp: +∞

Vp: 2

This card had infinite hp, but he hadn’t been able to use it in any crafting attempt in the previous round. But things now had changed. He had landed a card that should work well with [Light].

Mirror (Rare)

Hp: 4

Vp: 3

These cards appeared to have synergy, but Kai wasn’t sure what would come from mixing them. It was time to give it a go.

[Light] + [Mirror]

Light | Hp: +00

Mirror | Hp: 4→3

Crafting successful! You've crafted [Light].

New recipe added to your recipe book.

Kai’s jaw dropped. He had made another legendary card?

Ch. 12 - Flint Knapping

INDEX

Ch. 14 - Futuristic Skepticism