Chapter 15. The Second Ancient Knowledge (2)

The Ancient Knowledge Sanghyuk was planning to get for his 2nd Soul Hole was very rare regarding scarcity. However, its popularity was extremely low, and in fact, was probably among the bottom 5.

Of course, this was in his previous life. Right now, nobody knew such a thing existed.

Having logged into EL, Sanghyuk went to the Six-Nine street within the entertainment district of Falcon City. This street, like it’s blatantly sexual name, was a place that presented the greatest pleasure to the users.

EL was an R-18 game. In the first place, Dream Network could only be accessed through a fingerprint sensor and a facial recognition, so there was no way minors were able to access EL.

With that being the case, adult contents in EL was very vivid.

Of course, there weren’t any illegal contents, but there were some that went borderline illegal. It was just that adult-only Dream Network contents had restrictions on the duration of time it can be used per user per day so it was impossible to indefinitely live there.

Sanghyuk was also a man, so he naturally had experience with those adult contents as well. However, he didn’t have a lot. He was just around average.

And today, he hadn’t come here to enjoy adult content, but to acquire something.

‘Where was the gambling den again…….’

Sanghyuk was looking for one of the three famous spots(?) in Six-Nine street, the ‘Falcon Casino’. After a little bit of time passed, Sanghyuk could enter Falcon Casino past some NPCs that had barely any clothing on.

The reason he was here?

That was simple.

The Ancient Knowledge he wanted could be gotten here.

Ancient Knowledge ‘Card User’.

After upgrade and fusion, this would eventually become ‘Card Master’ and could only be gotten in this place

***

Card User.

It took a little time for the users to find out about this Ancient Knowledge. It was known to be shared among some users before that, but that didn’t mean anything.

Just because an Ancient Knowledge was scarce didn’t mean that it was good. Especially, something like ‘Card User’ was thought to be interesting by many users when it was known, but everyone shook their heads after its abilities were known.

It was no wonder since the Ancient Knowledge ‘Card User’ had no meaning just by itself.

The only Soul Skill that came with the Ancient Knowledge was called ‘Card Fusion’. It sounded cool, but in fact, no one knew how to use that skill.

Of course, people found out how Card Fusion worked after a little time, but the problem was that it couldn’t be utilized in any way even after it was known.

In the end, the Ancient Knowledge known as Card User was abandoned after being judged that it could not be used. There were quite a few Ancient Knowledge that were abandoned like this so it wasn’t something of note either.

The one that revived it after 10 years was Sanghyuk.

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Tap tap.

Sanghyuk lightly tapped on the cocktail twice and checked again. As soon as he entered the casino, Sanghyuk kept playing ‘Seven Poker’ that had the lowest minimum bet.

Normally, people came to casinos in order to enjoy or to win some money, but Sanghyuk was playing for a completely different reason.

‘This one’s no good either.’

Sanghyuk flipped the cards over after checking the 5th card. The method to acquire the Ancient Knowledge Card User was to complete all possible hands through seven poker on the seven poker table.

To be exact, ‘one pair, two pairs, triple, straight, flush, full house, four cards, straight flush’ – a total of 8 hands had to be completed.

It looked easy at a glance, but it actually wasn’t. Seven poker wasn’t a popular game in the casino so there weren’t many users on the table either.

It wasn’t easy to complete all the possible hands in seven poker because of that. Especially in the case of four cards or straight flush.

Due to this reason, Sanghyuk was sitting on the seven poker table with the lowest minimum bets, betting the minimum amount of money, focusing on creating his cards.

In the first place, what Sanghyuk wanted wasn’t money but to create the 8 combinations so he daringly killed the cards once he judged that he couldn’t make the hands.

‘Phew, I only have the four cards and the straight flush left…… but it sure doesn’t appear easily.’

It had been two days since Sanghyuk came to the casino, and he was sitting on the seven poker table whenever he wasn’t resting.

‘Well, they will appear eventually.’

Sanghyuk didn’t get hasty. This was a leisure that could only be found in people that knew exactly what they were doing.

***

‘The last card……’

Sanghyuk nervously flipped his 7th card.

An ace of hearts!

Sanghyuk nodded his head when he saw that.

‘Done.’

Four cards appeared 3 days ago, but he had to suffer because the straight flush didn’t appear for the past 3 days.

‘Has it been exactly a week now?’

Sanghyuk had sat inside the casino to the limits of what law allowed him and finally got the results he wanted.

After the betting was over, Sanghyuk showed all of his cards to the other people and they were surprised.

However, Sanghyuk was focused more on the system message that appeared in front of him rather than their reactions.

You are qualified to become a Card User.

You have fulfilled all the required conditions to acquire the Ancient Knowledge ‘Card User’.

Will you absorb the Ancient Knowledge ‘Card User’ into your second Soul Hole? Please decide within 5 minutes.

‘Absorb!’

Because there were people around, Sanghyuk shouted in his heart and nodded his head.

The Ancient Knowledge ‘Card User’ will be absorbed into the second Soul Hole.

You have ‘2’ empty Soul Holes left.

The ancient Knowledge filled the empty hole in the soul, and Sanghyuk stood up from his seat with a satisfied smile. Since he had gotten everything he needed here, there was no need to stay here anymore.

Although he had lost quite some money during the past week, he didn’t think it was a waste.

‘Card User is the core of the Quadra Soul that I have thought of.’

The ‘Crash’ Choi Sangryul he raised in his past life was a Double Soul User. And the two Ancient Knowledge he had were ‘Shadow Knight’ and ‘Card Master’.

Choi Sangryul was a player that was practically made by Sanghyuk, so he knew all the secrets that Choi Sangryul possessed.

That was why he could only equip ‘Knight’ and ‘Card User’ into his two Soul Holes first despite knowing that he still had two more.

Having left the casino without regrets, Sanghyuk opened his information window and checked the Ancient Knowledge ‘Card User’, that he had just gotten.

Ancient Knowledge ‘Card User’

: The power of card experts, inherited from the ancient times, has seeped into your soul. Card experts can make the impossible possible through the means of cards. However, beware. This power cannot be manipulated easily…….

Effects: Card creation [Can turn all things into cards.] Restore [Can restore all cards into their original state.] Card affinity (C) [Can utilize all card items with proficiency.]

Card Fusion [Special skill]

– Create something entirely new by combining 4 cards or more.

[Registered formulae : 0]

‘It’s the same.’

Card User was just as he knew it. Everything that Sanghyuk had planned for could be said to stem from this Card User.

In fact, Card User was a very characteristic Ancient Knowledge just at a glance.

The biggest ability of card users was of course Card creation. Almost anything that existed in EL could be turned into cards. Of course, the method of turning things into cards were different for each thing.

Normal items could be turned into cards as long as he possessed ownership of it, but living monsters or animals required various conditions in order to turn them into cards.

In any case, the important thing was that card creation required some tricks as well. The Restore technique was literally just turning the card into its original state.

For example, a rusted iron sword could be created into a card and could be restored into the rusted iron sword.

The only restriction to the items that turns into cards were that it was bound to the user the moment it was made into cards, so the items could no longer be traded anymore.

If it was possible to do so, perhaps Card User might have become the greatest Ancient Knowledge for merchants.

However, creating and restoring cards was an easy way to manage equipment if it was for himself alone.

The reason he didn’t buy the expensive, but useful ‘Spatial expansion bag’ was also because of this reason.

Just looking at that, the Ancient Knowledge ‘Card user’ felt like a run-of-the-mill Ancient Knowledge that just allowed for easy carrying.

However, the true power of Card Users didn’t lay in creating and restoring cards.

The sole Soul skill, Card Fusion.

This was the most OP skill in existence in EL.

The possible combinations of Card Fusion were limitless. Through Card Fusion, he could use all sorts of skills without limitation.

When Choi Sangryul was acknowledged as the strongest EL player, his opponents always reacted the same way.

‘I couldn’t find any weaknesses.’

Card Fusion is what Choi Sangryul used.

To be exact, it was the Card combination that was based on Sanghyuk’s ‘Heavenly Dragon Card Deck’, but in any case, Choi Sangryul could rise to the top of EL with the power of Card Fusion.

Then why was the Card User abandoned by all users?

The reason was actually quite simple.

‘It’s because the card formulae were never revealed anywhere…….’

Card formulae.

In the end, this was what mattered. At a glance, one might think ‘finding formulae is easy, isn’t it?’ or something like that.

However, knowing the truth would render them speechless.

Four cards were needed to use the skill. On the other hand, practically all things in EL could be created into cards so the number of cards that can be used in the combination could be considered infinite.

If card combinations were so easily found, people would have challenged on, and perhaps the card formulae may have been shared among the users quite quickly.

However, card combinations weren’t so easily completed.

Moreover, even if there was a successful combination, there were loads of combinations that resulted in trash. In fact, some card combinations exploded upon fusion and killed the user.

Not only that, the cards used in the fusion would disappear regardless of success or failure, so it was hard to try combining cards that were expensive to make.

With that being the case, the users couldn’t try to combine cards so easily. There were many people that were rumored to become bankrupt after trying it.

Also, a success after numerous failures would make the user cherish it so they never shared the formulae with the others. Though, there were cases where they sold it for a higher price.

However, in the end, the number of users that chose to become a Card User decreased due to the inefficiency, and the people that researched into card combinations eventually died out as well.

Card Users were abandoned, so the card formulae disappeared, and more card users were abandoned…… this cycle continued until there were practically no Card Users in EL.

The one that took Card User out the trash can was Sanghyuk. He thought that he had to gamble in order to rise again after becoming a cripple.

That was why he went with the Card User.

He gathered card combinations whenever possible while crawling in the pits for 7 years. He tried combining cards for himself by logging into the game with his pitiful VRA, and looked for useful combinations by gathering materials that others had given up on.

Since Sanghyuk’s game intellect was considerably good, he had some results after toiling for 7 years.

That was the ‘Heavenly Dragon Card Deck’ that he had passed onto Choi Sangryul. The Heavenly Dragon Card Deck, with its 24 combinations of cards, brought a new wind to EL.

Simply put, it could be called the ‘Card wave’.

Everyone struggled to become a Card Master like Choi Sangryul and the publicized card combinations rapidly increased.

However, there were no combinations that surpassed Sanghyuk’s Heavenly Dragon Card Deck that he had completed after 7 years of research.

Actually, Sanghyuk used the publicized card combinations to create a card deck that surpassed the Heavenly Dragon Card Deck without anyone knowing.

Sanghyuk gathered all sorts of card formulae in case he was kicked out of Team SKY, and could achieve great results in a short time.

“That’s how I completed the deck I will use in this life.”

Muttered Sanghyuk with a smile.

He had already prepared the deck that he would use.