Slay the Spire: Carrying the School Beauty, I Am Invincible

Chapter 16, 666, and a hidden level.

"Let me tell you first why you should never choose to rest unless you're at low health."

"Look at my [Burning Blood]; after each battle, it instantly restores my full health, right?"

"In other words, as long as we finish a battle, our health will be fully restored, and we won't need to rely on the campfire to rest and recover health."

"Even if we're low on health right now, as long as there's a room with regular mobs ahead, we can be fully healed after defeating them. There's absolutely no need to waste a chance to rest at the campfire."

"For ordinary players who don't have any way to recover health, resting is a way to save their lives, but for us, resting is a pure waste of opportunities."

Su Qingyue instantly realized what was happening and nodded subconsciously.

She only saw the safety of resting and recovering health, but forgot about the existence of [Burning Blood], which can completely replace the health recovery function of the campfire.

Lin Ye paused for a moment, then continued to explain the second option, why upgrading always has a lower priority than deleting the card.

"Let's talk about upgrading cards."

"Upgrading a card definitely provides an improvement. For example, your [Deadly Poison] increases from stacking 5 layers to 7 layers after the upgrade, which seems like a significant improvement, right?"

"But this improvement is linear and limited."

Even if you upgrade all your cards to the maximum level, if you can't draw them in the crucial rounds, it's still worthless, and you'll still die from bad draws.

"It's like having a top-grade sword in your hand, but you can never draw it; then it's no different from a piece of scrap metal."

Su Qingyue frowned, her eyes showing less doubt and more understanding.

She finally remembered the countless complaints from players in the world chat, all saying things like, "I got a terrible draw in the crucial round and was instantly killed."

Among those players, there were many who held a bunch of max-level rare cards, but they still couldn't escape the fate of losing their lives.

Lin Ye's finger landed on the card deletion option, his tone resolute, firmly stating the core snowball logic of tower climbing.

"Removing cards is the only way to permanently improve the stability of your deck from the root, and it is the core snowballing method for climbing the tower."

"I told you before that Slay the Spire is a game of probability. The thinner your deck is, the higher the chance of getting key cards."

"You currently have 8 cards in your deck, draw 5 cards each turn, and have a 100% draw rate for your core cards. That seems pretty good, right?"

"But don't forget, we still need to buy core cards and get the cards from events later. The deck will gradually become thicker, and with each additional card, the probability of drawing your core cards will decrease."

"Removing an extra useless card now will give you more room in your deck later on, ensuring you don't get a bad draw from start to finish."

"This kind of improvement is exponential, it snowballs until you clear the level, it's more than ten times greater than the improvement from upgrading a card."

He glanced up at the player in the world chat who was still relentlessly mocking the player who deleted the card, a faint sneer curling at the corner of his mouth.

"90% of the players on the entire server made the wrong choice starting from the campfire."

"They only saw the immediate relief of healing and the slight damage increase from upgrading cards, but they couldn't see the permanent, consistent stability improvement brought about by deleting cards throughout the entire tower-climbing process."

"That's why, the further they fight, the more likely they are to die suddenly and violently, losing their lives faster and faster. That's the root cause."

Su Qingyue stood there, suddenly enlightened, all her previous doubts and confusion vanished in an instant.

She finally understood why Lin Ye had never had a bad draw since the beginning of the game, and why his actions in every round had been as steady as a rock.

It wasn't that he was lucky; he maximized the density of his deck, reducing the probability of drawing a bad card to zero.

Without the slightest hesitation, she looked up at Lin Ye with unwavering determination in her eyes.

"I understand! So what should we delete now?"

Lin Ye's finger landed on the remaining two [Basic Defense] cards in her deck.

"You have two basic defense cards left in your deck. Remove one, leaving only one."

"Your core strategy is to stack poison. Once the poison is stacked up, the monster won't survive more than a few rounds, so you don't need that many defensive cards."

"Keep one card as a safety net, delete the rest, and maximize the deck's strength."

Su Qingyue immediately did as instructed, opened the card deletion interface, and without the slightest hesitation, locked in a [Basic Defense] card.

[Deleted Card: Basic Defense]

[Current deck has 7 cards remaining]

Seeing that she only had 7 cards left in her deck, Su Qingyue's heart skipped a beat.

Defense x1, Neutralize x3, Deadly Poison x3.

All seven cards are core poison stacking and defensive cards, with not a single useless card and not a single redundant card!

She subconsciously conducted several card-drawing tests, and each time she refreshed her hand, she drew only usable core cards, without even a single bad draw.

That incredibly smooth feeling was something she had never experienced before with a deck of 11 cards.

"My God! It's true! Every card I draw each round is usable; there isn't a single useless card!"

"I used to think that upgrading cards made a big difference, but now I realize that deleting cards is the real game-changer!"

Only then did Lin Ye nod, signaling her to proceed with the upgrade.

"Now, you can upgrade the cards."

"Max out your [Deadly Poison] skill to maximize your poison stacking efficiency."

Su Qingyue immediately locked onto the [Deadly Poison] in her deck and clicked to upgrade it.

[Upgraded Card: Deadly Poison+]

[Effect: 1 mana cost, inflicts 7 stacks of poison on the enemy target]

The upgraded card increases the number of poison stacks from 5 to 7, raising the maximum poison stacks per turn by 40%!

Meanwhile, Lin Ye had also completed his operation.

He first removed the only redundant utility card from the deck, reducing it to a mere 5 cards.

Then, he used all his resources to upgrade the core divine card [Corruption].

[Upgraded Card: Corruption+]

[Effect: 1 cost, Ability card. During this battle, all your ability cards cost 0. At the start of each turn, you lose 1 health point and gain an additional 2 strength.]

The upgraded [Corruption] not only reduced its cost from 2 mana to 1 mana, but also added a starting power bonus, increasing its burst damage and startup speed, directly elevating it to a whole new level!

Just when Su Qingyue thought the operation was over and was about to leave the campfire camp, an accident occurred.

Lin Ye did not move immediately, but instead used his mind to precisely point three times in a row at the flickering embers in the campfire.

Upon first click, the campfire flames flickered, but nothing else changed.

Upon the second click, the warm yellow flame instantly turned pale blue, radiating a cold metallic sheen.

The moment the third click landed, the campfire's interface refreshed instantly!

Below the original three options, a brand new hidden option with a dark gold glow has appeared—[Forging]!

Su Qingyue was completely stunned, her eyes wide with disbelief, and she instinctively screamed.