nucmednet Chapter 5 The Shock of Corruption
Chapter 5 The Shock of Corruption
[You have triggered the card effect: Corruption! For the rest of this battle, all your skill cards cost 0! At the start of each turn, lose 1 health!]
The moment the notification tone ended, Su Qingyue was completely dumbfounded, her eyes wide open and her mouth agape.
All skill cards cost 0?!
What does this mean?
In other words, Lin Ye can play as many skill cards as he wants without spending any money!
Others only have 3 mana per turn, which isn't enough even with careful budgeting, but he gets all his core skill cards for free!
Before she could recover from her shock, Lin Ye had already seamlessly followed suit.
He raised his hand and played his first skill card – [Unyielding]!
[Card effect triggered: Unyielding! Gain 5 Block points. Gain an additional 2 Block points for each Skill card played this turn!]
Because of the Corruption effect, this card costs 0 mana!
Next up, the second skill card—[Hardening]!
[Card effect triggered: Harden! Gain 2 Strength! Gain 4 Block!]
Similarly, it costs 0!
With the two skill cards played, Lin Ye's block instantly reached 11 points, and his base strength increased to 7 points!
His initial 3 points were still fully paid up; he hadn't spent a single penny!
Su Qingyue watched in stunned silence, forgetting even to breathe.
She finally understood just how outrageous the hidden cursed blessing that Lin Ye had risked his life to obtain at the beginning of the game truly was!
This isn't a curse, this is clearly a god-level cheat!
With this card, as long as you draw the core skill card, you can stack up devastating attributes and block in one turn, and no one can break through your defense!
Lin Ye did not stop.
Looking at the 3 points of maximum mana he had left, he immediately played two basic attack cards.
With the boost of 7 points of power, the basic attack cards that originally dealt 6 damage for 1 cost now deal 13 damage each!
The two cards slammed into the medium-sized slime with a force that seemed to cut through the wind!
[Medium Slime took 26 damage! Defeat!]
The medium-sized slime, which originally had 24 HP, was instantly killed in two hits, without even being able to land a second attack!
Even the one layer of poison on its body didn't have time to be triggered!
[Monster turn begins!]
Only one small slime with low health remained on the field. It hopped and bumped into Lin Ye, but it couldn't even break through his block and still took zero damage.
[Poisoning triggered! Small slime takes 1 point of damage! Current HP: 11/12]
Round three, your turn!
Lin Ye didn't even bother to play any more skill cards. He casually played a basic attack card and took down the small slime that was only half health left.
[Battle over!]
You have defeated all monsters without taking any damage!
[Rewards: 20 Gold Coins, Card [Shrug and Ignore]]
The moment the system notification sound ended, the stone door to the room reopened, and light from outside shone in.
Throughout the entire process, Lin Ye and Su Qingyue didn't bleed a single drop!
Even the 1 point of health loss per turn caused by the Forest Corruption was only triggered once because the battle ended too quickly, so it was completely insignificant.
Su Qingyue stood there, completely stunned, and couldn't come to her senses for a long time.
She had just seen countless players on the world chat being beaten to death by these two slimes, some losing their lives, others barely alive, and the whole place was filled with cries of despair.
When it came to her turn, she only played two cards the whole time: a poison card and a defense card, and then she won?
Still unharmed?!
She turned her head and looked at Lin Ye, her eyes filled with unbelievable admiration, her voice trembling with excitement.
"This...we won? Without losing a single drop of blood?!"
"That corruption just now was outrageous! All skill cards cost 0 mana, that's practically cheating!"
Lin Ye smiled, put the newly acquired [Shrug and Ignore] into his deck, his tone calm and without a trace of pride.
"This is just the beginning."
"Just two low-level monsters, nothing to be surprised about."
He found a clean rock to sit on, gestured for Su Qingyue to come over, and his smile faded, replaced by a serious expression.
"You saw the battle just now. The key to how quickly I could defeat the monster is that I drew the card I wanted in the first round."
"This is the core, the most fundamental rule of the game—Slay the Spire is essentially a game of probability."
Su Qingyue quickly moved closer, sitting up straight like a primary school student listening attentively in class, afraid of missing a single word.
She knew all too well that Lin Ye was teaching her the true way to play this game, the core secret that 99% of players worldwide would never be able to figure out, even in their lifetime.
Lin Ye continued, using the most straightforward language to break down the complex deck logic clearly.
"Tell me, how many of your deck's core, truly viable cards are there?"
"Take your Silent Hunter for example. The core is stacking poison cards and defensive cards, right? At most, you only have 5 or 6 cards."
"The remaining basic attacks and defenses are all trash cards, useless cards that will only take up space in your deck and pollute your card pool."
He paused, then gave a very simple example that Su Qingyue could understand at a glance.
"To give you the most straightforward example."
"You have 10 cards in your deck, one of which is a core poison card, and the other nine are all junk. So, if you draw 5 cards each turn, the probability of drawing the core card is only 50%."
"But if you remove all the junk cards from your deck, leaving only 5 cards, one of which is the core poison card, then the probability of drawing the core card each turn is 100%!"
"Do you understand?" Lin Ye looked at her and asked in return, "The thinner your deck, the higher your chances of drawing key cards, the more stable your actions each turn, and the higher your margin for error."
"This is the core logic of deck concentration."
Su Qingyue was instantly enlightened, her whole being became clear, as if a brand new door had been opened for her.
She finally understood why Lin Ye had let her choose 80 gold coins at the start, instead of 10 health points.
Gold coins can be used to delete cards, purify the deck, and maximize the probability of drawing core cards from the very beginning!
As for those players who chose 10 points of health, their decks were full of useless cards, and they couldn't draw the key cards every turn. Even with 10 more health, they would still be killed by monsters, and it wouldn't change the outcome at all!
"So that's how it is..." Su Qingyue murmured to herself, her eyes filled with sudden realization. "I finally understand. Those players kept dying not only because they chose the wrong class, but also because their decks were all garbage; they couldn't draw any usable cards!"
"That's right." Lin Ye nodded, his tone resolute and unambiguous.
"Therefore, all our operations and reward choices from now on must revolve around one core principle—purifying the deck and removing all useless and trash cards."
"Basic strikes, basic defenses—delete every single one if there's a chance."
"Only with a thin enough deck and a high enough density of cards can you truly be in control of the game in this tower. No matter what monsters you encounter, you can take your destiny into your own hands instead of relying on luck to draw cards."
Su Qingyue nodded heavily, engraving every word Lin Ye said firmly in her heart.
As she watched Lin Ye's retreating figure, her admiration for him deepened.
There are 70 billion people in the world who are still struggling to survive in the newbie room, and some can't even save their lives.
Lin Ye had thoroughly grasped the core underlying logic of the game and even taught it to her step by step without reservation.
To be matched with such teammates in such a dangerous place is incredibly lucky.