My Cards Have No Numbers

They say the rules of Blue Star are fair. Everyone awakens a card at eighteen. The lower the number, the more precious your life; the higher it is, the more insignificant you are. I awakened card No. 899, an appraisal card that could only show the durability of objects: a useless piece of junk. I accepted my fate. I thought that as long as I stayed behind my senior sister, quietly playing the deadweight, I could get through life in peace. Until the day of the tournament, when I was carrying a bowl of her favorite beef noodles and watched her get cut in half at the waist by the Grim Reaper’s Scythe, card No. 94. The people around us laughed, mocking her for overestimating herself and me for losing my meal ticket. I didn’t cry or shout. I just crouched in the pool of blood and picked up her completely rotted, deathly aura-soaked dark card. At that moment, my No. 899 changed. The world before my eyes changed. I could not only identify the weaknesses in high-level cards. I could also piece the cards of the dead into my own collection. Later, someone asked me why I dragged a blade around alone, killing one arrogant tycoon and so-called genius after another. I lowered my head and wiped the blood from my hands. “I just think there’s something wrong with the rules of this world.”