One Day Early: My Infinite Card System

2 - Blast the Eagle

Even if he has no great ability, William was still a veteran of thousand spats, and the worst ones at that. 

Unfortunately for the eagle, he was quite well prepared. 

The moment William saw the eagle, he brought the gun out. 

It had no silencer. It won’t need any, for the world would dissolve into mayhem very soon. 

He shot straight into the eagle’s head at point blank. 

Yet, the bullets only caused minor dents on the eagles’ skin. At best, they cut off it’s feathers. 

Meanwhile, the eagle was not a soft target. 

It lunged at William, biting off his gun mid shot. 

The gun got crushed, like it’s made of rubber. 

However, William gathered all his power, and punched into the eagle’s head. 

It is a do or die method. It’s another skill he picked up as it was floating near him. 

[ Kong punch ] 

[ punch out with all your attack value, using mana. Limited by the lower, attack value (or) mana. Caution: Use only as last resort, for host will have neither mana, nor vitality after the move. ] 

No matter what, as long as this eagle has a single ounce of strength, he has no choice but to die. Thus, it’s better to go all out when his opponent is still underestimating him. 

The punch landed right on the eagle’s open eye. 

Williams fist went straight through the eagle's eye. Blood and brain matter dripped down his hand. The next moment, the torch lit up with the brilliance of a thousand suns. 

William extended his hand to touch the card. 

Even if he was going to faint dead, he was going to do so in the direction of the infinite mana card. 

Fortunately, that is exactly what happened. 

His extended pinky finger touched the bottom left corner of the card. 

The next moment, William fainted dead in the torch of the Statue of liberty. 

In a few minutes, the entire city of New York was in uproar. 

The red and blue lights lit up all over the city, surrounding New Jersey, all the way till the foothills of Appalachian, for the police everywhere came out to control the crowd. 

Thus, unless a skill card fell right in your backyard, the people to get the skills were the cops. 

Fortunately, among all this commotion, there wasn’t enough time to check what’s happening with the torch of the Statue of liberty. 

The skill cards could be held by not just men, but also animals. 

When the animals die by the hand of a human who has initiated a skill set, the skills are automatically acquired by the killer. 

The animal which has accepted a skill would not have a corpse. 

Instead, all usable parts on the animal would become material cards. 

These material cards could then be accepted into host space directly, where they would stay forever without losing their efficacy. 

If the host does ot have an item box type skill, then, he could collect and carry these cards physically. However, they stand the chance of being lost and stolen, just like physical cards. 

Fortunately for William, this process takes some time. 

Even more fortunate were the skills he received from the eagle. 

Both of them are passive skills, yet, their simplicity and power hungry nature was the best kind for the possessor of infinite mana cards. 

[ Iron skin (passive ) ] 

[ Automatically activates with the mana possessed by the host in case of danger. Could take an attack up to the value of mana provided. Host could not deactivate or remove this skill. Applies only to outer skin or equivalent. Eyes, ass hole, mouth, nostrils etc, are exempt from this defense effect. ] 

On another kind of person, this is ten times a debuff, and occasional life saver. 

However, on William, who possessed infinite mana now, this is the perfect sort of skill he needed. 

[ Auto heal ( passive ) ] 

[ Automatically activates when host’s mana / life values fall below fifty percent. Doubles the healing rate by consuming mana/power, whichever is in excess. The healing could be actively increased, applying exponential mana. Fourtimes mana means thrice the healing speed, eight times mana means four times healing speed, so on and so forth.]

And there is the crown jewel of his current cards. 

[ infinite mana ] 

[ what it says. ] 

That’s all there is to it. No restrictions. Simple, and absolute. 

No matter the commotion, the Statue of liberty is a well guarded place. Thus, the moment the torch lit up, there was an army and police dispatch both of whom were ordered to check up on what’s happening. 

However, half way through the flight, the entire city is lighting up with various lights all over the place. 

In some places, the lights are extinguished. 

In others, the skills got attached to people driving through the cars, and accidentally touched them in their faces only to die next. 

There was more than one accident in the city all of a sudden. 

These skill holders, who died accidentally, all turned into a bunch of cards and items, including their cars. Only the human remained, becoming an unidentifiable creature, black from head to toe, wicked sharp nails on both hands and feet. The cards all were absorbed into this zombie, while the zombie set off to attack the nearest living human. 

The people who died without touching a single card collapsed in a pile of blood and bones. Their faces were forever frozen in terror at the hellish creatures that are slaughtering them. 

In the red states, the mayhem spilled over as almost every cowboy wanna be armed themselves with rifles and patrolled the roads. 

Fortunately for William, he was in Newyork city, where the concentration of skill cards is highest in the country. 

In light of the events that spawned the length and breadth of the county, neither the army helicopter, nor the police helicopter investigated the torch thoroughly. 

Thus, they missed William, who was lying unconscious in a corner.

He woke up at one in the night. 

The first thing he did was to check his status. 

William smiled from ear to ear as he saw the skill cards. 

Finally ! 

He has the strength. 

He did not have great ambitions like other overlords. 

He wanted his daily life back in some manner. 

The most important step of the plan to achieve that is to grab resources. 

The food that vanished from the entire world is not lost forever. 

It’s just got sealed in cards just like every other resource in the world. 

He had no idea how and where this mana apocalypse had come from, but it had a way of learning about what’s useful to humans very fast. 

At this stage, the industrial chains, the weapon making industries, trains, cars, gas were all not sealed into cards. 

However, it will not remain the same in future. 

Mana is like a sentient being which wants everything and everyone in the world to depend on itself. 

The worst part of the apocalypse was loss of knowledge and history. 

Once a generation passes, computers, internet, even bicycles could very well become part of long lost history. 

The stone age could well and truly return to the earth once more, as it becomes reshaped in a copy of a game world. 

Yet, there are ways to avoid this. 

William had it figured out. 

No matter books, machines, or houses … the apocalypse would not or could not seal them as long as they belong to a single person. At least, not on the first day of the mana awakening. The owner has to die, along with all the successors. When the ownership returns to an organization, that is when they get sealed. 

It’s as if the game respects privacy above all. 

It’s like an iron clad rule of the apocalypse that all things belonging to a single individual would not be touched, or at least, they will belong to the owner until he dies. 

In the coming days, the food resources will sharply decrease while the price of all other commodities will fall beyond comparison. 

All Wlliam had to do was grab the food resources. 

Best thing is, he had a great plan to achieve that. Or a very simple plan. For this is a brute force work best kind of situation. 

The beings of night, i.e. the dead people who got turned into Venom style symbiote wannabe would gather in groups of ten where food cards will materialize. 

These spots would happen randomly all over the country. 

However, given the way things are, the concentration of such occurrences in the city is highest compared to suburbs. 

Most of the time, these groups occur in or nearby where food has vanished from. 

Fortunately for William, he works in one such market, albeit an asian one. 

The Mitsuha supermarket thankfully exists in one of the commercial parks, which contain gigantic groceries of almost all ethnicities. There’s a ninety nine on one side, Costco on otherside, and a Wegmans and stop and shop in opposite corners. 

William is absolutely sure these events will start happening from almost twelve o’clock. 

Police’s first priority is to save citizens. 

Thus, if there is a random vigilante killing the symbiotes, he is sure they would not pay that much attention. 

Even if they pay attention, he could always get lost in crowds of monsters. 

After all, he got iron skin, cops are fighting in bare clothes. 

As long as people are not involved, William was sure they would not pay as much attention to him. 

For now though, he needs to start climbing down.