MTLNOVEL Chapter 1792 Distracting Lily with Cards
--- Lily ---
"There, there," said Kress it what perhaps was meant to be a calming gesture but the fact he was just saying stuff and vaguely waving in Lily's direction didn't help the gesture at all.
"Look, do you have any REAL advice for me?" asked Lily. "I'm stressing out here and I don't want to just complain to Kat about it because I did enough of that before and I promised to do it less if she was careful but… I just… I feel like I have this bubbling nervous energy trapped inside me that I need to get out,"
"Could be indigestion," suggested Kress.
Nixilei didn't open her eyes, but still managed to throw her shoe off her foot and directly at Kress' head. He didn't bother to dodge but it was an impressive shot. "Don't worry about him too much. He's a bit insensitive like that," said Nixilei.
"I was trying to make a joke," retorted Kress. "You know, lighten the mood up? Lily's worrying over nothing. I'd bet that the city has more chance of being destroyed then Kat,"
"You're probably correct but I feel the joke was in poor taste and the facts aren't that comforting either considering we are currently STUCK in that same city," grumbled Nixilei.
"Look, did you want me to let you sleep or something? I've got a deck of cards Lily and I can use to play games with," offered Kress.
"No. I don't actually want to sleep here. It's too much of a risk," groaned Nixilei.
"Counter point. I had a decent enough nights sleep and I'm not Green. You can trust me to stay awake and on watch. It'll be fine," said Kress gently. "Besides, there's only one entrance,"
"Only one entrance we can see," groused Nixilei. "I'd bet there is at least one hidden entrance or exit here, probably more than one. And I just… I don't trust that it will be safe enough to sleep here. Maybe I need it but I'm just not feeling it. I'm just trying to relax and get as much rest in as I can without actually falling asleep,"
"Sorry," apologised Lily.
"It's not your fault," said Kress at the same time as Nixilei responded with, "Don't worry about it."
Lily grimaced a bit and turned to Kress. "So… um… what sort of cards do you have?"
"Normal playing cards. They're not cheap, but they're pretty sturdy because of the durability enchantments on them," said Kress as he took out a deck. They were also quickly revealed to not be 'normal' playing cards at all. Instead of the usual four suits based on the clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds it was instead a five suit deck with each suit based around one of the main races of the world. Jokers were dryads. Of course, though there was five of them instead of two, as expected.
"Huh… decks back at home only have four suits. Do you guys just play games with five?" asked Lily.
Kress shook his head, "Nope. Sometimes you need an even number of suits. Traditionally you're meant to take away the suit that matches the dealer's race but in practice a lot of people remove either the fae deck or the elven deck,"
Lily frowned. 'That's… oddly specific. Why is that?"
"Well… it really does depend on where you buy your cards from. There are plenty of places that sell decks with a different set of five suits. Usually they'll do the five most important nobles in a particular country or sometimes they do really fancy ones with powerful adventurers. As for the elf and fae removal? Well… it really depends on where you're from. See, the 'standard deck' is agreed upon by all the races and the artwork is redone every few years to keep things fresh.
"It makes the decks collectors items, helps encourage trade, and it just gives you a nice talking point. Plus I imagine the people making the decks get a bit bored after a while. The reason the elves and the fae are usually removed is that they get a bit… lewd with their suggestions. Sometimes. It depends how involved the elf and fae rulers are in any given set. But it means that they oscillate from really boring to really scandalous on the different sets and it's usually decided not to take out the lewd ones where kids can see them, and the boring ones are easy to exclude," explained Kress.
Lily frowned, a little niggle of worry about Kat popping up in her mind when Kress finished his explanation… but it had distracted her so… why not ask for more. "Well… you said the others were more interesting? What sort of stuff do the other races normally do?"
If Kress noticed Lily's momentary panic he didn't say anything. "Well the dwarves always get 'cool armour' though more recently the Monarch cards have been showing off Oditr alongside some invention or another. There was even a special edition made once that had different inventions on each of the dwarven cards. All the way up from ace or one to ten and beyond. Sadly I don't have that set myself, I'm hoping another one comes out if she ever perfects the flight machine she's working on.
"The beastkin usually pick one tribe, or type, of beastkin to be the poster child for each given set. I think the sets with multiple different beastkin tribes on it are always cooler, and it's the reason I picked this one over the others," Kress flicked through the cards until he got to the beastkin section. Lily had been expecting just the 'face' cards to have something fancy on them but nope. It was almost like Twelve Days of Christmas where each number added an additional tribe with the final card 'thirteen' or monarch as it was known in the deck being twelve different tribes all reaching for a crown floating above them. It was indeed. Very fancy. It also probably meant that the dwarven cards had a LOT more armour on it then just three sets.
"Finally the humans… don't always have the best. I mean, we do try and because we don't always live as long as a lot of the other races we tend to get different famous figures on the various cards. I…" Kress shrugged. "I don't find these guys particularly cool. They picked a bunch of famous architects and have them ordered based on how many famous projects they completed in their lifetime but they had to cheat a bit because the guy on the ten card only finished nine of them but… I guess they ran out of people? I dunno.
"It's still pretty neat and…" Kress flicked through to the human section and when he passed over the dwarves Lily noted that rather then having dwarves on them each card had a number of armoured suits done up in various styles. Each card was a different style though it was a bit busy when you got the larger numbers and a lot of the detail didn't really come through at that point. "The architects all got their buildings on the background with a bit of flair," and he was right. Each card had a building shaded into the background and included some large number that told you what card it actually was, in addition to a 'H5' or whatever in the corner to say it was 'human five'.
Lily pondered for a moment if she really wanted to know what was on the elf and fae cards. She… did… if only as a distraction. Totally not for any other reason. "What about the elf and fae cards for this set?"
"Well, the elf cards a bunch of Auctifer's wives and his kids. Not all of them, and it's sort of funny how it's done. Like, odds always add the queens in, and the evens add in the daughters. Marigold isn't on any of them if you were going to ask… but they're sort of just standing around in nice dresses?" Kress shrugged and showed off the cards. Each queen got a spotlight section as they were added, and one posing with their children before getting moved into the background. Each dress had specific patterns on it to show off what number card it was. So like, the first elven queen had a bunch of ones hidden on her dress.
"Finally the fae one… it's… well…" Kress shifted to the bottom of the deck and revealed Titania in just about all of her glory. Each of the different cards were Titania contorted in such a way as to show off what number card it was, sometimes with props to help… and only just barely hiding the important bits. Lily blushed and glanced away.
"They… they SELL those?" asked Lily.
"Yeah all the time," admitted Kress. "She does this for like… every second set. I'm pretty sure it's not EVERY set so that they can still sell child friendly sets and the elves only do stuff like this… every fifth or sixth time? I mostly use it to make fun of Nixilei when she's playing because she gets so embarrassed about it," A huff from Nixilei confirmed his words.