A couple hours later, Olivia had gotten over the fact that her mother was coming along with them and had a huge smile on her face.

  “Welcome, everyone, to the first official meeting of my party!” Olivia said. Though she was very much not the hero, Rowan let her language stand.

  For one, the four of them were stuck in a small room with barely enough space for everyone to sit down. And more importantly, the hero was still lying in bed. He had been planning to get up and greet the day. But before he could conquer the warm confines of his bed, Olivia had barged into his room, chairs in hand and the twins at her heels.

  “If you keep saying stuff like that, I’ll totally kick you out of my party, you know,” Rowan teased.

  “You’ll never kick me out. You like me too much.” Olivia sounded very self-assured when she said that.

  “I don’t know. Try barging in on me a couple more times. See what happens,” Rowan grumbled.

  “Alright. I’ll make sure my parents know you made that offer,” Olivia said, her smile growing in proportion to his dread. “I’m pretty sure my mother made her stance on grandkids known.”

  “Olivia!”

  The gremlin cackled and collapsed on top of him, ignoring the fact that she’d gone through the effort of actually dragging a chair into the room. Rowan sighed, acknowledging that he’d definitely lost this particular round of squabbling.

  “What exactly was it that you wanted to do?” Rowan asked.

  “Well, I thought we might put our cards on the table. Literally and figuratively,” Olivia said.

  That made the two new party members stiffen a little. Rowan watched as they exchanged glances with each other and decided to be the first to share.

  “That’s… definitely a build.” Marcus winced a little, reading over the class description and the details of Rowan’s cards. “How is it that I’m the tank and you somehow managed to make a build more masochistic than my own?”

  “Here, I’ll go next!” Olivia offered.

  Rowan choked a little when he saw the experience counter. And then he saw the mana pool. If he was reading things right, she was getting a whopping twenty mana for every single point she had in intelligence. He had known that she was dangerous, but he didn’t realize exactly how much so until he saw her stats.

  Did that class suit Olivia? Honestly, yes, yes it did, and Rowan was more than willing to admit that it made her very, very scary. And whether it was an intentional choice by Olivia or accident, he could see the descriptions of her class cards.

  Olivia had apparently chosen to keep her Stable Creations class card in her deck, which, considering how often she grumbled about it, definitely surprised him. Other than that, she was running both Flash Freeze and Waterlogged Abyss. The two attack cards were a bit of a surprise.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Flash Freeze because he thought she’d replace it with some more alchemy focused, but she seemed fond of the card. Waterlogged Abyss, meanwhile, was something she’d recently synthesized, and was possible only thanks to the wraiths dropping enough copies. And Olivia loved it the moment she laid eyes on it.

  “That’s a very impressive build.” Milena admitted, eying up the status windows in a bit of a daze. “I have to admit, the fact that we have a party full of epic heart cards is a minor miracle.”

  A minor miracle or meddling from the divine? Rowan thought.

  “Well, I guess I’ll go next.” Marcus grinned.

  Rowan was pretty sure someone was playing a very crude joke on him because Marcus’s stats were, frankly, insane. The sheer fact that he’d somehow managed to hit one hundred and four wisdom was enough to make him wonder what he was eating for breakfast.

  And there it was, the big reason behind why Marcus’s stats were all inflated by a significant amount. Twinned Nature was so powerful that Rowan half-wished that he could trade Keen Spear for the card.

  But as Rowan looked through the rest of Marcus’s deck, he realized how rare cards were for people not a hero or born to nobility. Marcus was still using his common tier class card in his deck and the only two non-class cards, Rot Shield and Wrath of the Storm, were things they’d earned fighting together against demons. The former had been thanks to the scouting demon while the latter was from the flying demon mount.

  “That heart card, what do I need to do to get something like that?” Olivia grumbled, obviously sharing Rowan’s own feelings on the subject.

  Milena, meanwhile, was looking incredibly shy and hesitant. “Guess I can’t avoid this now, huh? Just don’t judge too much, okay? Shaman can be a little creepy as a class upgrade path.”

  Rowan nodded, surprised that Milena seemed a tiny bit ashamed of her class in spite of how much she’d praised it earlier. After all, she had chosen to go against tradition just to pick it up.

  Rowan was a bit too tired of big numbers to really react to that mana pool. That, coupled with her mana regeneration, actually put Milena miles ahead of what Olivia could sustain in battle.

  Though, it did make him wonder how tiring and demanding shamanic rituals actually were. Milena was constantly taking mana potions and even with the chance to prepare, she usually stuck to one or two rituals.

  And her shiny new Epic card wasn’t going to massively help with that.

  Rowan had actually never outright seen her use the Rotveil card, though he now had a pretty solid idea of where all the floating skull clouds were coming from.

  “I kind of feel the need to close my eyes and not think about anything for a while,” Rowan muttered. “That was… a lot of information all at once.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing not thinking comes to you naturally, then,” Olivia teased, poking his side. “And that you’re already in bed.”

  “Yes, well, the fact that I was rudely woken up isn’t exactly helping anything here, you know?”

  “You were already awake, and we both know it.”

  “Nuh uh.”

  “Uh huh!”

  “Um, you two, not that I don’t like sitting here watching you flirt and all, which by the way I don’t, that would be weird, but should we finish our discussion first?” Marcus said. Immediately, Rowan and Olivia straightened up, and although they were blushing up a storm, they were at least acting like adults again.

  “You know, we have a very solid party on our hands, here,” Milena ventured. “We have a damage dealer in Rowan, a damage sponge in Marcus, a versatile damage dealer with some utility options in Olivia, and a support debuffer with me.”

  “True, we cover each other’s weaknesses rather well,” Olivia murmured, shooting Milena a thankful glance for being acknowledged as a true combatant.

  “We just need to touch up our builds, all of us.” Rowan sighed, collapsing back into bed for the moment. “I, for one, am kind of in an awkward spot. I really want a better damage card but I can’t remove my regeneration combo.”

  “Well, you did get the Ravaging Lightning Lance card out of our fight with that flying cambion,” Marcus mused. “But, I unfortunately have to agree. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re going to be our main damage dealer, yeah, you need more destructive potential.”

  “You can’t ruin your combo.” Milena stepped in immediately, partially because Olivia was starting to look cross, and partially because she actually believed that. “Besides, you’ll be at the rare tier, soon. You might get a high damage potential class card.”

  “Maybe,” Rowan said, feeling the effects of having to choose the spear more keenly than ever. The lack of freely available high-damage cards meant he couldn’t just ask the baron for spear-related cards.

  “Hey, cheer up! Didn’t you get a bunch of Rapid Regrowth cards from that last battle?” Olivia said with a smile, only for it to go plastic when Rowan loudly groaned.

  “Yeah, but I fought a whole army of demons and monsters and I'm still uncommon.”

  All three of his other party members flushed. It was often easy to forget that Rowan was a couple of steps behind them despite his combat prowess.

  “Well, um, you’ll get there soon, right?” Marcus tried, he really did, and Rowan was thankful for that.

  “With where we’re going, I’ll be shocked if I’m still uncommon for long. At least that’s a good side of this entire mess. Still, what are you all planning with your own builds?” Rowan asked, trying to change the subject.

  “I need more support cards for my build. Stuff that decreases damage taken, maybe even outright blocks a couple of attacks,” Marcus replied.

  “I need to look into replacing Flash Freeze and Stable Creations. I’ll keep Stable Creations in my cardholder and swap it in when I’m crafting potions. Same with Reduced Cost, really. I don’t really need any of them in my deck on the regular.” Olivia sighed.

  “I know it sounds like a lot, but remember that you’re basically completely switching your class around,” Rowan ventured, trying to get Olivia to cheer up a little. It was funny how seeing Olivia in the dumps immediately distracted him from his own problems.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s just a lot, and it’s not like it’s particularly easy to get a ton of high rarity cards. Still, moving on, what about you, Milena?”

  “I want some direct cards. I love my class and deck, but they’re mostly passive cards and abilities so far. I need a way to more directly contribute to battle. Sometimes, I wish I had a more typical caster class, really,” Milena said.

  “What even is the real difference between ‘typical’ caster classes and shaman?” Rowan asked.

  “Well, as you’ve seen, we mostly rely on rituals. We’re really not that great at casting on the spot. But if you give us time to prep, and if we can work long-term on securing a territory, then we’re powerful.”

  “Oh yeah. Back home, you basically couldn’t touch any of the areas that ‘belonged’ to the shamans, be it of our own tribe or otherwise,” Marcus confirmed.

  Olivia was interested. “I’ve heard a little about how shamans fight. Magical creatures, summons and traps, right?”

  “Sounds about right. Traps are curses upon curses upon curses. You can watch a person wither away between two breaths if they venture into the lair of a powerful shaman. Summons and creatures mostly come down to undead and spirits.”

  Rowan wasn’t one hundred percent sure he liked that. “Like necromancers?”

  “Sort of. Except we deal more in souls than corpse reanimation.” Milena shrugged. “I’m honestly unlikely to do much of that.”

  “Lack of means or lack of will?”

  “Both. The answer is definitely both.” Milena wrinkled her nose. “Do you have any idea how much undead creatures smell?”

  “Probably worse than Marcus’ socks,” Olivia joked.

  Rowan laughed, surrendering himself to banter between friends. They’d stress and plan and worry about things later. For just a little while, he just enjoyed the moment and got to know his new friends.

  After Blake and Kayla, Rowan was glad that he finally found his own community. And he’d fight like hell to keep them all together.

  Patreon where you can read the next 4 chapters of LSS. You get to read ahead + support us at the same time.