Literature / All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG

The clasp was simple but his fingers shook so badly he fumbled it twice before he finally got the lid open.
When he saw what rested inside, he nearly dropped the box.
It was a spell card.

Arthur lives in a prison village at the edge of the kingdom, toiling away to till life back into dead soil. All he wants is a spell card, a magical card that grants health, vitality, and immunity to the scourge—as well as a magical power, unique to each card.

One day, he follows the Baron's carded men in the hopes of seeing them use magic. Instead, he sees a riderless dragon ambush and kill them all. The dragon plucks the treasure out of the wreckage and gives it to Arthur, under one condition: The card can never, ever get back to the Baron, or the dragon will kill Arthur and his entire family. The problem is, if anyone ever finds out he has the card, he will be killed for it.

It's not just a spell card, it's a Legendary spell card. Master of Skills, a card that allows him to learn almost any non-combat skill imaginable, growing more and more powerful.

Arthur tries to give the card to his father, but instead his father has him sent out of the village, hoping to give him a better life outside their prison. Along the way, Arthur finds himself embroiled in the plots of bandits, dragons, and royals. He finds himself in the middle of a scourgeling eruption, then a dragon hive. Every way he turns, he finds more traps and enemies. If he wants to survive, he'll need to learn more skills. All the skills.

All The Skills — A Deckbuilding LitRPG is published on Royal Road (here), and on Amazon.

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Due to your card's bonus traits, you automatically start these tropes at level 3:

• Adaptive Ability:
  • Arthur's "Empathic Resistance" and "Telepathic Resistance" skills steadily level up as he's exposed to hostile influences. The Mind Singer encounter takes him from Empathic Resistance level 5 to 14.
  • The Master of Body card operates similarly for toughened skin and resistance to damage. Getting beaten to a pulp by his cousin is overall a win for Arthur, as he gains nine levels of toughened skin and twenty levels of blunt force resistance, which also comes with an improved Healing Factor.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The scourge will attack all life, without exception. They're mostly mindless, but Arthur encounters a mindsinger that ate a Rare mind card, and is both intelligent and malevolent.
• Booby Trap: The Mind Singer sets a trap for Brixaby. She sends out a dragon with a card designed to explode if stolen from the heart deck, killing the thief. Fortunately, Brixaby's danger sense warns him away from taking it.
• Clingy Macguffin: Any card, once added to a person's heart deck, becomes part of them. They can remove it, but it leaves an aching void inside them until it's put back. Arthur encounters this with his Return to Start card, which is so two-edged that he needs to take it out, but he feels wounded afterward until he finds a solution that lets him restore it. Furthermore, no one else can remove a card from a heart deck without first killing the owner. Or, at least, that was the common wisdom, until Brixaby proves to have a Legendary power that allows card theft. Typically this results in the victim collapsing on the ground from the rip in their heart. For this reason, card anchors have been created that allow most cards to be used without adding them to a heart deck and becoming attached to them; however, anchors don't get the protection from theft.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The lower a card's rank, the more overspecialized it is. Common cards, in particular, tend to be either weak, high mana cost, or have extremely limited effects—or all three. However, Arthur repeatedly reminds himself that every card has a use, and finds a few. For example, a card that can activate or deactivate any card, but only in its user's Heart Deck, sounds useless. Unless you happen to have a Trap card with an annoying activation.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Dragon colors usually determine their powers, though there are always exceptions.
• Confess in Confidence: Arthur undergoes mind-magic healing after his encounter with the mindsinger scourgelings. The mind mage discovers at least a few of his secrets, but immediately keeps them quiet.
• Didn't See That Coming: It's regrettable but normal for the power and presence of a new Legendary dragon egg to be overwhelming to the prospective riders, even to the point of being lethal. Thus, there are shields, clearly marked danger zones, and opportunities to back away from presenting oneself for linking. But no one expected a newly hatched dragon to go on a rampage, stealing cards from the hearts of all the recruits instead of linking with one.
• Disintegrator Ray: The red dragon that Arthur first meets attacks a carriage by breathing out a cloud of tiny purple flames that Arthur describes as undoing whatever they touch — spells, wood, clothes, even flesh...
• Doomed Hometown: Subverted. It's teased several times that Arthur's village could be destroyed; the red dragon threatens to, and the Baron bluffs that he'll do it. But the dragon will only attack if the Baron gets Arthur's card, and the Baron can't lose an entire village of workers for no good reason. In the end, Arthur is sent away, but the village is fine. When he returns years later, things are a bit worse, but his father and most of the people he knows are still alive.
• Doppelgänger: The Echo card allows its holder to shapeshift into a copy of someone else — even including card powers, although without getting full information about exactly what those powers are, only a general feel. For example, copying Master of Combat gives a sense of "some kind of fighting card".
• Dragon Rider: Dragons are sapient, and each is born with a card at his/her heart, which can bond with someone whose heart deck holds a compatible card, resulting in a third card power formed from their synergy. Dragon riders are an important strategic asset in fighting back scourge infestations. Arthur bonds with a Legendary dragon, but the newborn dragon is shoulder-sized, not immediately ridable. Still, their combined card powers are potent, allowing them to temporarily copy powers used nearby — and Master of Skills can sometimes make the copy permanent.
• Experience Booster: The "Master of Skills" card lets Arthur pick up new skills at level 3 and then improve them unnaturally fast through practice, to the point where he can sometimes pass off his skills as if they were minor card powers in their own right.
• Failed a Spot Check: Despite Valentina nudging him with the resemblances between "Ernest Kane" and Lottie Rowantree, Whitaker still doesn't catch on to the fact that Arthur is Lottie's son.
• Five-Finger Discount: Arthur's "Card Shuffling" skill lets him swipe a single card from someone else's card anchor (not their heart deck), although he doesn't know in advance what he'll get. It's effective enough that Prince Marion assumes it's an actual card power.
• Hammerspace: When Arthur assembles a Rare card from collected shards, what he gets is a "Personal Space" power that gives him access to an extradimensional storage room. Not only does it let him carry everything he owns, securely and all the time, it also time-locks whatever is placed inside, so no time passes for that object. It even works on people, although he needs their permission first.
• Hoarding the Profits: Scourgeling kills in Texas have to be tagged by the adventurer responsible in order to claim the card shards from their hearts. However, Bradley's card power lets him flood an area with opaque poison gas that doesn't affect himself, so when he arrives, everyone else backs off as the scourgelings die — and then Bradley walks into the cloud, and when it clears, all the scourgelings have his tags on them, and everyone else's tags have been removed and piled up in a corner. Bradley just sneers and claims that since no-one saw what he did in the cloud, no-one can prove anything. Arthur doesn't intend to take that lying down, though.
• Honor Before Reason: Arthur's father refuses to take a new card because he swore not to. He signed a Magically-Binding Contract with other stipulations, but the cards are only on his honor.
• Hour of Power: The "Counterfeit Siphon" card copies powers used nearby and grants them to the holder for a fixed amount of time depending on the rank of the power, eg just one second for a copied Mythic power, but twelve hours for an Uncommon. When copying a skill, Master of Skills can activate, giving three bonus levels immediately and making it permanent.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Prince Marion gives up his future sensing card, even knowing he'll be disowned by the king, because he doesn't want the power or stress or responsibility.
• Improvised Weapon: Arthur uses his Fabric Snipping skill to multiply one cut into a dozen, instantly killing a scourgeling with a tiny thread-cutting knife.
• Instant Expert: Prince Marion has an "Instant Tool and Weapon Competence" card that gives him an effective level 10 skill with whatever he picks up. However, the skill is lost if he puts down the weapon or card. When Arthur temporarily steals it, he discovers that it has powerful synergy with Master of Skills; tools, but not weapons, gain an extra three levels, and moreover, they don't lose the proficiency when the competence card is removed, allowing him to quickly gain 13 levels each in wielding spoons, forks, trowels, letter openers, rope, and whatever else he has on hand.
  He had no idea what a fork and spoon competency would grant him, why he hadn’t gained these before, or even if any of these skills would stay with him once he gave up the card.
• Internal Reveal: When Arthur gets into a semi-friendly duel with his cousin Penn, he discovers that Penn knows — or at least confidently suspects — that Arthur has the Master of Body card that was stolen from Penn's family. Penn doesn't realize that Arthur personally stole it, but he does intend to beat some answers out of him. Arthur finally persuades him that he was mistaken — until Arthur publicly reveals Master of Body in order to link with Brixaby the dragon.
• Kangaroo Court: The royal Inquisitors have the goal of "learning" that Wolf Moon Hive is to blame for the scourge training exercise going bad, and they will twist any answers they get until that is the result. Arthur is unhappy about the politics, and tries to push back, but when it becomes clear that he'll achieve nothing except unfriendly royal attention, he reluctantly plays along.
  They were not a real investigative force. Their job was to simply lend weight to whatever the king's objectives already were.
• Killer Rabbit: Brixaby the dragon is tiny enough to perch on a human's shoulder like a parrot, and his four wings let him flit around playfully like a hummingbird. His core card lets him pluck cards out of other people's heart decks and consume their power, and he's callous and arrogant enough to freely use it.
• LitRPG: Various cards can impose different RPG-like interfaces on their owners. "Master of Skills" divides skills into discrete categories, and allows them to increase rapidly through leveling up. "The Quest of Life" gamifies life by assigning quests to different activities and granting rewards for completing them.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Arthur's father swore an oath "on the king's own Card" to never leave the village without express permission. Most of the adults made similar oaths, though usually to lesser cards or with fewer restrictions. This is one of the main reasons that Calvan can't leave the village, and Arthur tries to find a way around it.
• Magikarp Power: Most cards have a fixed effect, like throwing fireballs, or growing plants twice as fast. Master of Skills, on the other hand, doesn't give any immediate benefits when equipped, but it's a Legendary-ranked card because it has huge growth potential; skills can be trained further and further every day.
• Meaningful Name: The royal children are assigned their Legendary cards at birth, though they don't receive them until they are twelve. Princess Echo was destined for the Echo card; apparently her mother thought she was being funny.
• Mind Control: One of the most feared scourgeling types is those with mind magic. At one point, a "Mind Singer" manages to make dozens or even hundreds of people calmly feed themselves to another scourgeling, with all their card powers being harvested for its rampage.
• Mundane Utility: Most of Arthur's card deck is focused on utility, making him a magically expert chef, cleaner, tailor, etc, although he does realise that he needs some kind of combat capability. When he gets his Personal Space card, though, he doesn't immediately test out combat uses, he tests out whether he can use it to purchase marked-down avocadoes, time-lock them, and then resell them at high prices when they're out of season.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: This is part of Arthur's reasoning for sticking with Wolf Moon Hive, even when larger hives would be happy to take him, and he invites Carley along on the same basis. There are potentially more opportunities when there's less competition.
• Occam's Razor: Valentina considers the official story of bandits stealing Master of Skills to be far fetched. Presumably the truth, of a wild dragon attacking the carriage, would seem even more outlandish. Instead, she assumes that Arthur is Baron Kane's illegitimate son and was given the card because of it.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Arthur is given a choice between keeping Master of Skills away from the Baron, or having a red dragon hunt down and kill himself and everyone he cares about.
• Pent-Up Power Peril: Spell cards need to regularly spend time in a heart deck or at least an anchor, or else their power will rot, forming scourgelings with the card powers. Arthur and Cressida visit a scholar's guild to look for cards worth stealing, but discover that many of them have already rotted — including Rare cards that form scourgelings with intelligence and Mind Control magic.
  He made an inarticulate sound of protest, hand jerking away. It was too late. That light touch was enough. In a moment, the card was dust.
  The smell that came up from it was death.
• Personality Powers:
  • A common belief is that cards in the Heart Deck (and especially the very first one) will affect a person's personality. Arthur worries about accepting the Thief class he obtains from his skills because he worries this will make him more likely to steal.
  • Likewise, personally building a card out of shards will manifest a card related to the person who made it—though not necessarily what they actually want. Because of this, it's traditional for people to build their first card for their Heart Deck themselves.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Legendary card holders can reshape the landscape, and Legendary dragon riders are even worse. The King is the only known Mythic dragon rider, and it is his express duty to personally annihilate a region that has been lost to the scourge.
• Power Copying: The "Counterfeit Siphon" card temporarily grants its holder a copy of any card power or skill used nearby. Master of Skills can make that copying permanent, for appropriate types of skills.
  New Counterfeit Spell obtained: Ultimate Wind Control
  Remaining Time: 9 minutes 59 Seconds
• Power Incontinence: Return to Start is an amazing card, which teleports its owner to safety when another card power is used on them, but unfortunately it doesn't give them any control over that process. Even a benign medical scan will set it off. Arthur initially removes it from his heart, but that leaves him spiritually wounded. He tries using a card anchor, which works and lets him disable and enable it at will, so he can actually make use of it, but the wound remains. Eventually he gets hold of a Common card that lets him toggle another card on and off, so he can put it back in his heart.
• Power Parasite: Brixaby the Legendary dragon turns out to have the power to rip cards out of people's hearts — and it's greedy. And there's a room full of Legendary card holders who were hoping to link with it, which means a smorgasbord.
• Raised by the Community: Dragon hives always need more potential riders, so they're generally happy to take in orphans and look after them. Arthur himself is adopted by Wolf Moon Hive, and later rescues a number of children from his home (prison) village, with their parents' consent, so they can be raised as "orphans" by the Hive rather than being trapped with no prospects and a short life expectancy.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The Legendary leaders of Wolf Moon Hive, Valentina and Whitaker. While Whitaker is a bit of a snob about rarity, they're both dedicated to beating back the scourge and improving Wolf Moon's ability to do so. When they realize Arthur is their last chance to keep the Legendary egg, they flatly ask him what he needs and make quite a few concessions on future policy decisions just to get the ball rolling.
• Riches to Rags: Arthur lives in a prison village at the edge of the kingdom, where all the adults are condemned to death. He soon discovers that his father used to be a duke, but he was sentenced and exiled for a crime that had all his lands and titles stripped from him. It's implied that his father was betrayed and scapegoated for political reasons. Arthur barely remembers the time before the village.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Valentina reveals that the king "was old when I was young" and now has dementia of some sort, making him capricious and erratic. He's still the only Mythic dragon rider, though, so nothing can be directly done about it.
• Set Bonus: Cards are sometimes arranged into sets, and are often much more effective if someone can collect the whole set — to the point where the Crown discourages it, because it's too potent. Even without being in official sets, different cards can have powerful synergies together.
  • When Arthur obtains cards for extradimensional storage space, perfect memory, and the ability to review memories on a mental bookshelf, they combine into a new set — and the combination gives him the additional ability to mentally visit his storage space as an offshoot of the bookshelf, interacting with stored items and even training skills there, without time passing outside.
  • Master of Skills also turns out to have excellent synergy with Prince Marion's "Instant Tool and Weapon Competence" card. Master of Skills does nothing for weapons, but for tools it adds an extra three levels on top of Instant Competence's ten, and makes all thirteen levels permanent even after Instant Competence is removed.
• Shoulder-Sized Dragon: Newborn dragons are always small, but Brixaby is even tinier than Common dragons, small enough to be held in two hands. He considers himself to be the perfect size (simply because it's his size, so it must be perfect).
• Shout-Out: When Brixaby dives at full speed, Arthur internally notes that "this time he wasn't just falling with style."
• Superpower Lottery: When you assemble enough shards to form a new card, there's no telling what power it will have, although it typically seems to be something that is suited to you — in a "what you need, not what you want" way.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: After Valentina reveals that she's guessed Arthur's real mother, he thinks she knows all about his origins, but then she goes on to assume that he's Baron Kane's illegitimate child and that's how he has Master of Skills. After a moment's thought, Arthur decides to allow the mistake rather than reveal that he's actually from a prison village and Master of Skills really was stolen.
• Team Killer: Arthur is horrified, during a scourge eruption, to see some of the dragon riders turn on a comrade, killing them and taking their cards.
• Throwing the Fight: Arthur deliberately loses his duel against Prince Marion in exchange for borrowing Marion's Instant Competence card again so he can grab skills for all manner of tools. Marion just wanted to move far enough up the rankings to be able to help his sister if needed.
• Time Skip: After Arthur gets settled into Wolf Moon Hive, the story skips forward four years, to when he assembles his first Rare card.
• The Undead: The scourge, essentially. They are the antithesis of life, devouring it wherever they can find it. Beating back the scourge is the kingdom's primary responsibility, which specifically falls to the dragon riders.
• Victory by Endurance: Arthur can't hope to directly beat someone holding the Master of Combat card, but his strategy is to just hang on and keep taking the hits — leveling up his body enhancement skills in the process — until his opponent is worn out.
• Walking Wasteland: Scourgelings spread death wherever they step; even the very ground under their feet rots. Anywhere there is a scourgeling eruption, the ground becomes completely fallow, necessitating a long and dangerous process of sowing life back into the soil so that it can be used again.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Common-ranked cards typically have unimpressive powers, although having any card still boosts a person's health and makes them immune to scourge-rot.
  Kenzie: Oh, look. Here's one that charms long pieces of fabric to wave in the air, even when there isn't a wind.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: When Arthur uses his combined card set power to visit his Personal Space, time doesn't pass in the outside world. He can examine his belongings, make plans, read books, even train skills, in zero linear time — but staying there for too long results in a headache when he returns to his body and has to basically re-sync with it.
• Your Mom: Arthur deliberately provokes an attack by pretending to explain how he obtained his body enhancement card as "I was having dinner with your mother the other day…" Sure enough, a moment later he's being beaten up hard enough to level up his Blunt Damage Resistance.

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New skill:
Wiki editing
Due to your previous experience and your card's bonus traits, you automatically start this skill at level 5.