The Card Apprentice

That shop was not bad. It had quite a professional testing room, which Chen Mu was rather satisfied with. The crew had brought him there after he had asked for a place to test his card. The testing room was not exceedingly spacious, only about 300 square meters, but it was well-equipped.

Perhaps because he had rented a five-star card making studio, the person who welcomed him at the testing room was the supervisor, Zhan Ken. Chen Mu was shocked at first, but he soon changed his views on the supervisor. Zhan Ken’s professional knowledge was solid, and he was skilled at analyzing the data of every single card. Moreover, he had unique judgment. All of that surprised Chen Mu.

Zhan Ken had been the supervisor in that shop for five years, but he had 15 years of professional background in card testing. He had the traits of a professional card tester, which was a rigorous job. He was less likely to test the cards by himself now, but his diligent attitude in card testing had affected his crews.

Chen Mu’s card testing requests had reached him directly. When he had discovered Chen Mu was renting a five-star card making studio, he had decided to host the card testing by himself. Due to the high price, a five-star card making studio was usually rented by card artisans with definite ability.

Except for the card masters sponsored by big families, generally, the more powerful a card master, the stronger their economic backgrounds. Hence, they often were the ones who could rent a five-star card making studio. Moreover, they were the only ones who would require such an advanced card making studio. Those who were with the big families usually had their individual card making studios.

What attracted a card tester the most? It was definitely testing excellent cards! For a card tester like Zhan Ken, testing an excellent card was like having a feast. Therefore, he had requested to test the card himself. Chen Mu was surprised by his request and felt suspicious. Though card masters had the ability to make cards, the testing would usually be done by the professional crew. It was rare for a card master to personally test a card. While they might be familiar with the card, their perception might not be suitable to use it, and their card technique could be absolutely terrible.

Nevertheless, they still passed the newly made card to him. When Zhan Ken realized the card was the Bomb, he was disappointed. The Bomb was only a four-star card, and it could only be categorized as an ordinary card among the known four-star cards.

Testing a common four-star card like the Bomb was the job he had been doing ten years ago. But he didn’t reject the job since he had volunteered himself to do the card testing. It would be impolite to the card master, who was wearing a mask. He didn’t want to offend a high-end customer who could rent a five-star card making studio.

The steps of card testing were complicated. The first step was to use an instrument to test the card, which could only be done by his crew rather than himself.

The instrumentation test was only a preliminary test. After a short while, the crew brought in the test report, but they were wearing weird expressions. When Zhan Ken got the results, he was stunned.

The testing there was obviously more professional than Yang An’s had been. There were a lot of figures on the report, and it looked quite impressive. Chen Mu took a quick look, but he didn’t understand the content. After noticing Zhan Ken’s shock, he said, “Excuse me. Is anything wrong?”

He hadn’t wanted to let others test the Bomb at first, but he was impressed by Zhan Ken’s knowledge and experience in card testing. He had been wondering how well the performance of the Bomb had been improved after being optimized by the Child. Hence, he had accepted Zhan Ken’s request on the card testing after little hesitation.

Zhan Ken was a bit unsure and said, “There might be something wrong with the instruments.”

“Oh.” Chen Mu nodded. The data processed by the instrument was possibly incorrect. Zhan Ken would definitely know whether the data was correct since he had been working in that field for 15 years.

The failure of an instrument was usually a headache to the testers, and Chen Mu could understand the situation. He used to check all the instrument conditions right before making a card to prevent a failure in the process of card making due to instrument breakdown. Though he no longer had problems with the cost of raw materials, he had kept his habit.

Zhan Ken was not as calm as he seemed. He had been working in that field for so many years, and he had even been able to secure the position as supervisor. His ability in card testing was definitely undeniable.

That data was unusual! Extremely unusual! Somehow, though, it was reasonable due to the good correlation between each data point. What made the data unusual was the drastically high value in each data point, which didn’t match with the Bomb. He was sensitive toward the data related to cards. It would be common if that data appeared on a five-star card. The Bomb was just an ordinary four-star card, however. It had been created many years ago and had become structurally mature over time.

He pretended to be calm and told Chen Mu, “Let’s go to another testing room. Something is wrong with this instrument.”

Chen Mu nodded in agreement. Soon, they changed to another testing room, which was testing room 21. It was larger than the previous one and also had more instrumentation facilities. The crew started to test the card. Before the results were out, Zhan Ken left the room but quickly returned.

The test results were generated again and reached Zhan Ken the second time. He took a look and found that they were exactly the same as the previous time! He had been wondering whether there had been failure with that instrument, but he now knew that wasn’t the case.

The results blew him away. He reluctantly smiled at Chen Mu and said, “The data is not bad.”

Not bad? It was so much more than not bad! That was definitely the best data from the Bomb he had ever seen! Excellent! Just excellent! It was so incredible that he started to doubt whether it even was the Bomb. He looked at Chen Mu again, but Chen Mu did not seem to have grasped his meaning.

They could test if that was really the Bomb. By default, he knew he should explain the meaning of each data point in the report to the customer, but he automatically skipped that step. The stats were just too excellent, and he didn’t know how to explain them.

“Next, we are going to carry out the practical test. Generally, practical tests would give us a straightforward overall picture of the card,” Zhan Ken said.

A card artisan was already waiting inside a hemispherical energy shield about 50 meters in diameter. They could clearly observe everything inside the energy shield.

At that moment, a gentleman and a woman came in. Chen Mu knew the woman; she was the receptionist. But he didn’t know the gentleman. They saw Chen Mu and walked up to him.

Zhan Ken introduced them to Chen Mu. “I think you know her; she is our sales supervisor, Janet. This is Mr. Topster, the chief card master here. He is here because he heard you just made a good card.”

“Hopefully my presence is not an inconvenience to you.” Topster smiled at Chen Mu while showing a hint of regret. Janet, who was standing beside him, also smiled at Chen Mu.

Topster had the aura of a card master, which comforted Chen Mu. He waved his hands and said, “It’s no problem at all.”

Everyone was looking at the energy shield, and Zhan Ken passed the instrument test report to Topster, who took a quick look at it. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped.

Suddenly, a loud noise brought him back. When he looked at the energy shield, it had become a mess. Everyone was stunned, including Zhan Ken, Janet, the crew, and even the card artisan.

The dummy target in front of him had completely vanished, along with another one that had been three meters away from it. There was a ten-meter-wide pit in the floor.

“Five stars…” Zhan Ken mumbled.

The testing room was quiet, and Topster unconsciously dropped the report on the floor.

Five stars. The attack power of that card was comparable to a five-star card! But it was just a four-star card!

Though there was only one star difference between four- and five-star cards, it was like Heaven versus Earth. That was obvious from their attack power! The difference in damage values of a four-star card and a five-star card was so great that even the worst five-star card would overpower any four-star card. It was an extremely important criterion in card testing.

It was just like how the five flourishing districts would be more prosperous than the ordinary residential districts. There were still not many five-star cards on the current market, though. Only in large-scale markets could five-star cards be sold. However, those cards still appeared more in auction centers, and they were extremely pricey. Even a powerful and rich card artisan like Sang Hanshui would only use four-star cards. That was how precious the five-star cards were.

However, that Bomb broke the commonly accepted law of a card’s star level. How could a four-star card have such impressive attack power? Looking at the ten-meter-long pit on the floor, everyone was shocked. Even the card artisan responsible for card testing was stunned. He hadn’t been mentally prepared, so the explosion echo had almost hurt him.

Perhaps it was actually a five-star card.