A Battle to the Death

After resting on the cards on the field, my gaze flickers back to the ones I hold in my hand. It’s my opponent’s turn. If I want to win now, the most I can do is evade the attacks coming my way and rely on the luck of the draw.

“I attack with Maddened Cavalry Officer and Eight-Path Serpent of Avalon…!” With those words, my opponent puts two cards into play. The table we’re battling on reads the microchips on the cards in an instant and projects small holograms of the Cavalry Officer and Eight-Path Serpent onto the field. These formidable foes were to launch an attack on my frontline guardians.

“Agh, this doesn’t look good for our hero…!”

“Kazeyuki-shi is now at a mere five health…! Is this the end of the line?!”

My friends in the audience raise their voices in a flurry.

“Trick card! I play Instant Blizzard!” I reveal the card I’ve been saving for this very moment and lay it on the table. My secret weapon: a card that renders all of my opponent’s attacks useless.

A powerful snowstorm sweeps over the field, causing the officer and the serpent to retreat in fear. With a loud click of his tongue, my opponent shuffles the cards in his hands and gives them a strong tap on the table.

“ …That kind of shuffling technique¹ is banned in tournaments here.”

“Tch! It’s just a bad habit, alright?!” He slams his cards down in aggravation.

Hm. I’ve battled with this player a number of times at this card shop. He always seems to lose his temper, to the extent that others even voice complaints about him. Card games were made to bring people together; it’s truly a shame that some players decide to treat their cards so roughly.

But that’s precisely why…

I can’t afford to lose this!

As someone who has a love for the globally acclaimed card game, Malice of the Guardians,² as someone who has full faith in the deck he poured his all into creating, and as someone who would never even dream of betraying a promise he made with his dearest friends…!

“It’s my turn now. Draw!”

I’ll believe… I’ll believe in the heart of the cards!

As soon as I caught sight of the card that I added to my hand, a smile crept onto my face.

“I summon Icicle Wurm Horde!”

The ace up my sleeve! A great number of ice pillars rise up from the field and close in on my opponent’s vanguard. “The Icicle Wurm Horde’s ability: when your life points are below ten, all of your opponent’s frontline guardians are destroyed! Go forth, Icicle Wurm!”

The Wurm surges forward with its sharply edged body, freezing the three units on my opponent’s vanguard into crystals of ice before they vanish off the battlefield. I promptly send the three ice mana cards in my hand to the graveyard.

“If the Icicle Wurm Horde is able to destroy three or more of the opponent’s guardians, it activates its second ability! At the cost of three ice mana, the Keeper of the Ice Castle is reanimated from the graveyard and directly attacks the opponent’s rearguard!”

A magnificent swordsman clad in ice arises from his grave. He lunges towards the enemy while swinging his large sword.

“Dammit…! Trick card, Binding Quicksand!”

But his play was all for naught.

“The Keeper of the Ice Castle’s ability! When he is resurrected from the graveyard, all effects from the opponent’s trick cards are nullified!”

In a split second, the pit of quicksand that my opponent placed onto the field freezes over and turns into a beautiful blanket of snow. In turn, my swordsman slices cleanly through the remaining guardians in the enemy squadron.

The crowd lets out a collective gasp.

“There it is! He countered the hell outta that fast aggro deck³ and sent it packing!”

“Kazeyuki-shi’s deck is baring its fangs at last!”

My friends send me their support.

Either way, I’ve done everything I had to do. I announce the end of my turn and wait for my opponent’s next move. To be frank, I don’t have any more cards in my hand that could counter attacks for me. If my opponent has a strategy that could bring him back from the brink of death, I would most certainly lose. I wait for him to draw, bracing myself for defeat.

But after he picks up a card from his deck, he places his hand on the table with a soft sigh.

“I surrender.”

He concedes. Which means…

“The winner is Kazeyuki!” The shop owner finally states his judgement after having watched over the battle with a keen eye.

This card shop holds many memories for me; memories of fighting battles and spending countless hours researching deck composition with people I’ve come to know as friends. Without wasting a second, those friends of mine shout in excitement at the announcement of my victory and pool around me.

“Remarkable! A battle well fought, Kazeyuki-shi…!”

“Despite being at a disadvantage, your ice deck refused to waver… Truly, a win that will go down in history!”

“Congrats on your first tournament win!”

Amidst the celebration, I spot my opponent silently standing and starting to leave.

I get up from my seat and offer my hand to him. “It was an incredibly intense game. I know this won’t be our last time facing each other. By my honor as a Guardner!”

He stays quiet for a moment. Finally, he accepts my handshake and returns the oath in a small voice, “By my honor as a Guardner…”

He leaves as soon as he lets go of my hand, but my friends seem to understand how I feel and earnestly nod their heads in unison.

“Ahh, ‘twas quite the thrilling battle.”

Ten minutes had passed since the tournament ended, and most of the crowd had already left. I gather around one of the shop’s tables with my three friends.

Although the table is meant to be used for battles, it doesn’t have a hologram projector like the field that was used for the tournament. It’s more of a free space used by us players for both games and lively discussions about our personal decks.

This being the closest card shop to my house, I’ve been visiting it for years, battling with and forming a small friend group with these three players along the way.

“Kazeyuki-shi! Wouldst thou please do me the incredible honor of allowing me to behold thine championship card once more?!”

This cheerful voice belongs to Hasuda-shi. He always wears a fashionable red bandanna around his head and is a master at the game with a number of meta decks⁴ in his possession. It would be no exaggeration to say that he knows practically everything about MotG.

I show him my championship card I had just received, the rarest card in the new expansion: Dragoon Dancing on Ice. Letting out low oohs in amazement, the other two poke their heads in to look at the card as well.

“Thank you for all the support. This card plays really well with the Dragon Slumbering in Ice card that I already own, so I knew I had to have it. I bought a fair number of expansion packs and went through all of the opening ceremony procedures for them, but I never pulled one…”

The group solemnly nods at my words. Hasuda-shi laments in solidarity, “I understand. I, too, failed to pull it.”

“But with the addition of these ice cards in the new expansion… I suspect the ice meta will change in due time!”

“This is gonna open so many new doors for your deck, Kazeyuki-shi! You might even be on the way to winning the regional tournament!”

Oji-shi, the smallest of the three, clenches both fists in excitement. He specializes in weenie builds⁵ that use low-cost guardians, and he could easily be crowned as the best trick card user in the shop, experienced in using them to make up for his weaknesses.

“Hm, but one card doesn’t feel like it’d be enough. You would have to whale for it, but I suggest you add another card or two to fully stabilize your deck.”

“By the saints! Dare thee suggest Kazyuki-shi cast aside his legendary Icicle Wurm and Keeper of the Ice Castle combination?!”

Himeno-shi adjusts his glasses and calmly adds his own opinion on the matter. He’s known in the shop as the Rogue Demon for his dedication to staying with the same beloved rogue deck⁶ he’s spent years of his life evolving. Hasuda-shi then retaliates, as if his own deck were the topic of conversation.

The three of them are all considerate, close friends to me. But ironically, I know nothing of their occupations or their ages. Likewise, they don’t know that I’m Kamina Yukikaze, professional figure skater, and I have a feeling my name wouldn’t ring a bell even if I told them about my true identity.

I don’t go out of my way to hide it. Kazeyuki is just the name I go by on my social media accounts I use to gather information about the game, and whenever I come to this card shop, I disguise myself the same way I do when I go anywhere in town. All I put on is a simple combination of glasses, a mask, and a baseball cap, but I wear it so often that the regulars of this shop eventually started to call me the Masked Ice Mystic.

But I have no issues with that. At the end of the day, we are all Guardners⁠—warriors of the same creed who speak with our cards over our words.

“I wouldn’t have won if it weren’t for your extensive knowledge, Hasuda-shi. I’m also grateful to Oji-shi and Himeno-shi for always helping me fine-tune my deck… Thank you all. I owe this victory to you.” After I expressed my sincere gratitude for the three, they each voiced their own thoughts in line.

“Egads! Thine flattery embarrasses me so!”

“Oh, don’t be like that. It’s what a good friend should do!”

“We’ll surely be there to help you with your new deck as well!”

It brings me pride to know that I was able to win my first shop tournament with these three by my side. It might even make me happier than the time I first made the podium as a novice skater.

“With this new card, you’re now one step closer to your coveted permafrost deck, Kazeyuki-shi!”

“You’re right… But the finish line is still far off. And the final piece of the puzzle has to be something big.”

Contemplative expressions fall on all three of their faces.

“Very true… For an utterly unparalleled permafrost deck, there’s only one card that can be the crown jewel of it all.”

“The Legacy Eight.⁷ Oh, how I long to lay mine eyes upon them before I go to glory…”

Oji-shi lets out a sigh at Hasuda-shi’s words.

You see, the reason why the four of us banded together was because we all shared a common dream. Several decades ago, MotG, the card game I have devoted myself to, released their first edition set, and within it were eight rare cards.

Most call them the Legacy Eight. Due to their scarcity, they are only sold on the market at exorbitant prices, and some even say that a single first edition Legacy Eight card can be worth tens of millions.

“Legend has it that Mister Malice, the Gatekeeper, has them in their possession…”

“But nobody even knows who they are, right?”

“Some say that they’re a beautiful young woman, while others say that they’re a wise old man whose body is half-robot…”

“And still others say that Mister Malice is the creator of MotG itself.”

“But I’d love to get my hands on one someday… Especially on Veiled Kingdom’s Imperial Command…” Oji-shi absentmindedly mutters. His holy grail within the Legacy Eight is the card with such a powerful salvage ability that it’s banned in many tournaments.

“What I wouldn’t give to attain the White Lupinus⁸ one day… If I had her, I would dedicate the rest of my mortal life to bask in her pure beauty,” Hasuda-shi pledges with a steely expression.

“I concur. I would put my life on the line if only to be with my one and only muse, the Queen of Velfaex.” Just as Himeno-shi does, Hasuda-shi also has a card he wants more than anything else.

“So Kazeyuki-san, the one you want is…”

“Icicle Palace, of course.”

I first saw it in an MotG artbook long ago. A mystifying card with a fantastical palace made of ice printed on it: Icicle Palace. Compared to the rest of the cards in the Legacy Eight, it’s relatively easy to obtain, and copies of it end up on the market every so often, given that it isn’t first edition.

It’s next to impossible to find a first edition in good condition, but still, I’d like to own it someday. That’s been my dream since the day I started my journey as a Guardner.

After all, the Icicle Palace was the entire reason I started playing MotG in the first place. All to chase after the crystalline castle of my fantasies.