"The S-rank material card we need is the Time Key."

"The ways to obtain it are..."

1. Go to the Listening to the Wind Card Club headquarters and steal or snatch the Time Key from the acting Curator’s hands.

2. Seduce the Collection God and deceive him into giving up the Time Key.

3. Complete any main mission of a Time World, gain the recognition of the World Will and comprehend a part of the truths about time.

4. Encounter a space turbulence and randomly travel through it to gain a serendipitous opportunity.

The methods of obtaining it made Ree Shil too lazy to complain any further.

But speaking of which, he was actually a little intrigued by that Collection God.

It felt like it had a lot of stock and seemed easy to deceive.

The only reliable methods seemed to be 1 and 3. There was no need for theft or robbery at the Listening to the Wind Card Club; a good talk could possibly provide a solution.

Comprehending the truths about time sounded quite challenging.

He wondered if having read "Relativity" would count since he had looked at it out of boredom before and got the gist of it.

"Let’s see the promotion mission first. If it’s too harsh, there’s no point in considering it."

[S-rank task: "Time Hammer Washing"]

[The growth of a Time Species cannot do without the immersion in the long river of time.]

[To become the king among them, even more time must be dedicated.]

[Place this card in the House of Time and Spirit for 10,000 years]

[And the task will be completed.]

[0/1]

"The House of Time and Spirit?"

As he continued reading, Ree Shil spotted a term that was both unfamiliar and somewhat familiar.

And there was the daunting figure of 10,000 years.

Unfamiliar because he didn’t know about it.

Familiar because it seemed like something he had heard people mention.

So, he looked it up online and found out that this thing wasn’t mysterious at all.

The so-called House of Time and Spirit is a special space that has a differing rate of time flow from reality.

If he were still a native of Blue Star, he would have found it marvelous.

But having traveled to various worlds and experienced various time differences, he felt it was just so-so, nothing unusual.

The real trouble was that 10,000-year time limit.

He tried to look up all the publicly available Houses of Time and Spirit, and the highest time ratio was 1:1000.

One day in the real world was equivalent to 1,000 days inside.

This time ratio was already quite astonishing.

And the price—as one might expect—was astronomical.

Put it this way, all of Ree Shil’s current fortune combined wouldn’t be enough for him to stay inside for even one real year, or 1,000 years in there.

And keep in mind that "Time Hammer Washing" requires 10,000 years, which is 10 years in reality.

Ten years for an S-rank card, for regular card players like Museum Director Phoenix, was actually pretty normal.

But it’s hard to shift from luxury to frugality. Ree Shil had recently acquired too many S-rank cards easily, and the idea of paying a substantial fortune and then waiting 10 years seemed hardly worthwhile.

"Change for me."

But now he had mastered the rhythm.

He pointed at the mission panel, just in time for the [S-rank Expert] to offer a simplified preview.

[Place this card in the House of Time and Spirit for 1,000 years]

[And the task will be completed.]

[0/1]

It directly reduced by 90%, becoming 1/10 of the original.

"That’s more acceptable. The tougher part seems to be how to obtain the Time Key."

That was something Ree Shil could only make a note of for the time being.

He didn’t have the conditions to obtain it currently.

"Since that’s the case, let’s preview those A-level Dragon cards first."

Going by intuition, A-level Dragon cards seemed to have more potential and were easier to promote to S-level.

Sure enough, the next A-level Dragon card was also one that could be achieved in one go.

Just a single Card-Making is needed to complete the S-level promotion.

This card is the Mechanical Sin Dragon.

Upon becoming an S-rank card, its mechanical structure became more complex.

Just standing there, it emitted a daunting energy presence.

[Mechanical Sinful Dragon]

Listening to the Wind, 20 points, S

Attack 20, 100/100, 0/5

[Perpetual Motion - Passive]: The Mechanical Sinful Dragon’s Attack and Defense can gain 0.5 Point Energy.

[Electrical Power Theft-Passive]: When the Mechanical Sinful Dragon damages a Mech card target, it includes 1 point of Quantum Theft.

[Cyber Curse - Passive]: When the Mechanical Sinful Dragon attacks a target, it labels the target with the Mech card tag.

[Guided Strong Electricity - Passive]: When the Mechanical Sinful Dragon attacks a target, it deals 10 points of Fixed Damage to all mechanical Reveal Cards among enemy forces.

[Dragon Roar - 5→4 Point Energy]: The Mechanical Sinful Dragon inflicts 30 points of Fixed Damage to each card in a row, and triggers the roar-style skill of one’s own Dragon Reveal Card.

([Quantum Theft]: The effect is the same as Quantum Entanglement, and gains the opponent’s lost amount.)

The changes in this card were tremendously significant.

The biggest change was the first entry flipping entirely.

Keep in mind that the previous negative entry [Solar Energy] required the consumption of 0.5 Point Energy for either Attack or Defense.

Now, it’s undergone a complete reversal, turning from a negative entry into an excellent energy recovery mechanism for a Wind listening card.

This round mechanism is somewhat similar to half breaking force and half Determination.

No, Determination is about recovering energy when taking hits, now it is about gaining energy just by [Defense].

The Guardian Card in the New Species Cards recovers energy based on the number of [Defense] actions on the field.

[Mechanical Sinful Dragon] appears like a combination of half breaking force and half Guardian.

The rest of the skills, while the core mechanisms remained unchanged, received numerical boosts from various aspects.

Furthermore, it gained an almost exclusive special effect—I’ve never seen it on other cards, at least Ree Shil hadn’t.