Chapter 13: Chapter 13: Limestone Card•Bone Armor
Left arm crossed over his chest, his body subtly leaning to the left, Gu Ran used his left shoulder as a point of impact, charging fiercely towards the Dark Skeleton ahead.
During the full-power collision, the Dark Skeleton staggered violently, thrown back several meters. For a moment, it couldn't even continue its attack on the Goblin – the skeletal head swung around abruptly, its hatred shifting completely in that instant.
But Gu Ran wasn't as simple-minded as the Goblin. He didn't give it a chance to attack, flipping agilely on the ground, and in an instant, he was back in front of the Dark Skeleton, his right hand raising the short cleaver.
Whoosh!!
A cold light flashed, and the blade's edge struck the Dark Skeleton's neck bone for the third time. This time, the bone was no longer as sturdy as before.
With a crack, it completely broke apart.
As the neck bone shattered, the head of the Dark Skeleton lost its support and fell to the ground with a clatter. Moreover, Gu Ran noticed that as the flickering flame within the skull went out, a white light, symbolizing pure energy, conspicuously integrated into his own body.
From this, he surmised that the extinguishing of the flame within the Dark Skeleton's skull likely indicated its total demise.
[Slain Dark Skeleton, achieved an over-leveled kill, and gained 8 points of source energy.]
The notification that rang in his ears was incredibly exciting – to gain 8 points of source energy in one go was, without doubt, his largest acquisition in these past few days.
In an instant, the level section on his personal attribute panel had changed to Level 1 (12/20), which meant he was only 8 points of source energy away from his next level-up. Just one more Dark Skeleton kill would raise his Card Master level to 2.
In his excitement, Gu Ran glanced over and patted his cheek, quickly closing the attribute panel floating before his eyes. He rushed over to the corpse of the Dark Skeleton, gathered the loot, and then cancelled the summoning of the still not fully cooled Goblin Warrior.
He wondered if this would count as using up a resurrection opportunity.
After gathering everything, he returned to the apartment building.
.......
In his apartment on the third floor, Gu Ran locked the door behind him and couldn't wait to inspect the cards dropped by the Dark Skeleton.
But the first thing he checked was the attribute of the "Chieftain's Whistle" in his mind's core card book.
Seeing that the number of resurrections in the active ability section was still marked as 3 times, he was satisfied and closed the property panel of the Chieftain's Whistle card, then started to look at the loot from the kill of the Dark Skeleton.
......
There were only two dropped cards, one Card Fragment, and one Miracle Card each.
However, as expected, the Miracle Card was also a fragment, but it provided quite a few card points – a full 5 points.
With the addition of these five card points, Gu Ran found that the card points accumulated in his card book had impressively reached 17 points. Although it was not a lot, it certainly increased his confidence.
At the very least, he no longer needed to worry about the awkward situation of running out of card points during battle.
After using the Card Fragment, his gaze shifted to the last piece, the Miracle Card Fragment. To be honest, Gu Ran had quite some expectations for the Miracle Card dropped by the Dark Skeleton, considering it was far stronger than a Goblin.
[Azurestone Card•Bone Armor•Fragment] *1
[Quality: Green Stone Two Stars (Rare)]
[Passive: Equipping this card will grant your skin a special protection, reducing ranged damage by 15% and melee damage by 20% (Note: passive does not consume card points)]
[Active (Bone Shield): Consumes 4 card points to conjure a Bone Shield in front of you, blocking attacks from the front, with a duration of 3s (cooldown time ten minutes)]
.....
His eyes suddenly lit up, as Gu Ran hadn't expected it to be a defensive Miracle Card—a prized item meant to save lives, and certainly one that everyone would want to prepare for themselves.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a complete card, and it seemed it would take some time to assemble the full one.
He stored it in his mind's card album, and with that, five out of the seven card slots on his core card album had been filled.
Apart from the two complete Miracle Cards (Eye of Insight and Chieftain's Whistle), the other three slots were occupied by fragments of the Black Rock Axe, a basic storage card, and the recently acquired fragment of the Bone Armor Card.
After checking his loot, Gu Ran leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes to rest.
Although he had killed the Dark Skeleton, it had greatly exhausted him physically, to the point that even his right arm felt somewhat sore, so he took the opportunity to recover.
He was going to have to continue the mission soon.
.....
Half an hour later, once the Chieftain's Whistle card's active ability had cooled down, Gu Ran stepped out of the residential building once more.
Still repeating the previous strategy, he used the Goblin Warriors to attract hatred, while he attacked from a safe position. The battle lasted only a few minutes before he successfully took down the second Dark Skeleton.
With another 8 points of primal energy, Gu Ran's level climbed to level 2, and his body received another enhancement.
After flexing his muscles a bit, Gu Ran quickly estimated his current state; without using any card abilities, he should be able to manage a one-on-five fight against his common self from before.
At the same time, another slot was added to his core card album, bringing it up to 8, and three empty slots appeared once again on his album.
However, the only unsatisfactory part was that this second Dark Skeleton only dropped 4 card points, and not a single Miracle Card Fragment.
Back on the third floor of his home, while waiting for the Chieftain's Whistle card's active ability to cool down, Gu Ran lightly accessed his attribute panel and glanced at the level section.
[Level: 2 (0/40)]
"So, leveling up to 3 requires 40 primal energy points."
.....
Another half-hour passed, and Gu Ran ventured out for the third time, picking another fight with a Dark Skeleton.
His repeated excursions naturally caught the attention of some survivors nearby. Besides the two people in the building behind him, Gu Ran also noticed survivors in the residential building about several tens of meters to the left.
On the fifth floor, near the center window, a man had tied a white cloth to a coat hanger and was vigorously waving it left and right, trying to attract attention.
Gu Ran certainly saw, but he didn't react, for the short tens of meters between the two buildings were home to at least four or five visible monsters, not to mention how many might be inside the other building. It wasn't that he was cold-blooded, it was that he was genuinely powerless to help, at least for the time being.
.....
A few minutes later, at the street entrance in front of the residential building.
"Damn!"
Gu Ran cursed in his heart as his expression turned incredibly ugly. It seemed that the noise from the attack had been too loud and had actually attracted another Dark Skeleton. He saw the rapidly increasing wounds on the Goblin Warrior's body as it was caught between attacks from two Dark Skeletons.
After a moment's hesitation, Gu Ran decided to put down his Mechanical Bow, drew the short-handled cleaver at his waist, and charged out.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone