Finish arranging your card deck because we’re about to start the card game.

"Hm, his card deck is actually quite difficult to deal with."

But Ree Shil quickly calculated and felt it was a bit risky.

Although he had Anti-Mech Cards, they still required Warming Up.

Since the other party did not carry any Energy Cards, the "Gong Gong Beast Splice Body" could only warm up by itself.

In these 2 rounds of warming up, Ree Shil’s card deck was at a disadvantage.

To hold out until the end of the 2 rounds of warming up, he would likely need a mix of skill and luck.

The so-called skill was using [Defense] to take all the damage from the other party’s attacks for 2 rounds.

And his [Treatment] cards also needed to replenish health in the same round.

Only if both of these were achieved in 2 rounds could it barely be considered stable.

But the biggest difference between PVE and PVP lies in the opponent.

Card players are human after all; sometimes they have flaws, patterns you can predict.

But with Monster Cards, you just can’t predict their behavior.

So whether the Monster Cards’ firepower will be focused, and whether your own [Treatment] can accurately heal up the health—

All these things depend on luck.

Just a little bit of misfortune, and Ree Shil’s start could crumble.

The follow-up recovery would take a lot of effort and consume many rounds.

"What’s this situation?"

After 2 rounds, Ree Shil said he had had an eye-opener.

He didn’t expect Ree Shil’s luck to be so good!

In the 1st round, out of three first-row cards, 2 performed [Defense] and 1 joined in for DPS.

Then the opposing Monster Cards, sure enough, only attacked the 2 cards performing [Defense].

The key was Ree Shil’s 2 Treatment Cards provided [Treatment] exactly to the cards that were attacked.

This healing was extremely important.

Because it caused the 2 cards that could have been taken out in 2 rounds to survive, even if they were focused for 2 rounds, with just a sliver of health left.

The next round, the 2nd one, was equally infuriating.

The opposing Monster Cards followed the "focus the lowest health" mechanism this round.

And Ree Shil only let the card being focused perform [Defense].

Later, the 2 Treatment Cards went to heal another card that had been injured in the previous round.

Without any doubt, this was the optimal solution.

Because the card under focus had only a sliver of health left, even if it received healing, it would still be within beheading range next round.

But by giving full treatment to the other injured card that wasn’t being focused, its health could be brought back up above the safety line.

With this strategy, Ree Shil transformed a potentially shaky start into an even situation.

You must know, the "Gong Gong Beast Splice Body" hadn’t even taken action yet.

Once it did, wouldn’t that mean an outright advantage?

It must be said, Ree Shil’s performance was like cheating.

After all, other card players in such a situation would not choose a gamble-like strategy of one-sided [Defense] and reverse one-sided [Treatment], even if they involved all Treatment Cards in DPS.

"But Cube Cards can’t be cheated with, which can only mean his luck was just too good."

At this time, Ree Shil had a new judgment of the person.

Before, he thought the opposing player was someone with excellent predictive skills.

But now it seemed it was not just that.

It should be an excellent predictor with heaven-defying luck.

Just considering those 2 rounds, he felt he couldn’t replicate them even if given 100 tries.

With Ree Shil having secured victory, he then turned his attention to the next player.

The next player’s card table screen was frozen, looking as if they were in a daze.

Probably doing the same as him, "going door-to-door".

He didn’t pay much special attention to the rest of the players and casually browsed through them.

Ree Shil quickly returned his focus to his own card game.

Because of the Monster Cards’ high health and the no-cap format of this contest, each player was playing it safe—after all, the number of levels passed was more important than the round count.

At the same time, they started to feel that the original sprint-like nature of the contest was losing its essence—or rather, it was not living up to its name.

It was just an ordinary PVE progression race.

Finally, after more than two hours, the first player was eliminated from the competition.

As for Ree Shil, he was removed from the card game during the fifth hour of the competition.

Luckily, his long-term experience with The Path of the Seven Series Instance meant he found it OK, not too exhausting.

But the results were less than ideal.

Contrary to Museum Director Phoenix’s prediction, Ree Shil’s performance in that round wasn’t good.

The reason was that the strength of the Balanced Card Deck was still lacking, not well-coordinated enough.

Had it not been for the hard power of the S-rank Card supporting him, he would have been eliminated even earlier.

In any case, this performance could not be considered impressive. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

But no one blamed or criticized him for it; after all, everyone has weaknesses, and no one can be perfect everywhere.

In the end, Ree Shil’s results were even inferior to his teammates’; he couldn’t even represent the team.

The best performer in the Balance Representative Team, unsurprisingly, was Grace Spring.

His signature move, the group healing flow, maximized his survival capability.

His way of delivering DPS was special, relying on accumulated healing to build up Attack Power.

The downside was it took too long to warm up, unable to produce short round counts.

But the advantage was tremendous survival capability, able to eventually grind through the levels.

The problem, though, was that Grace Spring’s situation caused the organizers some embarrassment at one point.

While all the other players had finished their games, this guy was still continuing with his card game.

And he had only completed two-thirds the number of levels compared to the then-current first place.

If Grace Spring’s results ranked first at that moment, then the organizers could have directly stopped him.