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"Hmm," Zhongli peered over the shoulder of the green-haired teen with curiosity, "What are you doing with those cards?"
Collei jumped, hugging the case to herself. A flighty and introverted child that visited the rehabilitation home from time to time for her stem cell treatments, Zhongli had taken heed of what he'd been told about her from a good friend of his, and had kept a careful eye on her since. Even then, watching her once again carefully sleeve the cards with shaky hands, he couldn't help but wonder why he'd not seen a game like that before.
"Oh, it's, uh, nothing, really-- it's just Genius Invocation, my master really likes to play with his-- his friend," Collei stammered out, coughing lightly to herself as she showed Zhongli a picture card of an Aranara with some numbers and text written on it, "I use a very simple Jadeplume Terrorshroom deck when I play with them, it was a precon that we bought while the General Mahamatra went to pick up his singles. Have you played this before, Mr Zhongli? You seem to know everything about everything, this must be childish to you."
Zhongli shook his head, examining the Aranara card with curiosity. What would Rukkhadevata had thought of her familiars being transformed into little cards, designed for children to play with? The protector of childhood dreams being now commercialised for them seemed interesting enough. He smiled a quiet smirk to himself, returning the card to Collei. "Actually, I haven't quite gotten to try this...what did you call it, Genius Invocation?" he commented lightly, tilting his head in curiosity, "Would you mind teaching me?"
"Oh. My. Archons," a familiar voice rang out from behind Zhongli, and he glanced up to see Hu Tao with her eyes wide and a grin that could only mean trouble - she'd slid the door open with arms akimbo, staring at them both intently, "The stuffy old consultant of my Wangshengtang, being interested in Genius Invocation, the hot new thing from Sumeru? Look, listen, if you want to play games, you could totally just ask me. Why bother someone else to learn about it?"
Collei hurriedly kept the cards laid out in front of her, face reddening at the new arrival. "Um, it's alright, I think you've found a great teacher," she quickly added, placing the deck case in her satchel before pulling her crutches towards herself, "I'm sure you two would have a wonderful time! I...I think I should head downstairs to see if my master and the General are here to pick me up. See you, Mr Zhongli!" She bowed hastily, before hobbling out of the common room they were just relaxing at, seeming more than happy to get away from someone as boisterous as Hu Tao.
Zhongli's face fell, turning to Hu Tao with minor disapproval. "Now you've scared her off. I was just getting her to open up a little and here you go running your mouth. Sooner or later I will become your next client, and I mean it unironically," he complained, gesturing to the space next to him, "This Sumeru card game did pique my interest, though. I usually know of most games, but this seems to have slipped under my radar."
"Yeah yeah, that's because you only bother playing xiangqi with Guizhong-ayi like the stuffy old people you two are," Hu Tao's tone was derisive, "Get with the times, old man. They just produced an awesome new 4-pack foil edition of the archons deck, I was just about to pick it up! I'm super excited to see the new meta, and I'm sure you'd love to see the ones I'm about to get."
The archons being playing cards? Zhongli rubbed his brows. He wondered what they thought his stats were going to be. "Well, lead the way," he confirmed, waving a hand towards Hu Tao, "Less about me and more about you, though. Weren't you here for your pain-relief treatments for your migraines?"
"Unlike you, I can drop dead on the streets from brain damage and nobody would be any the wiser," Hu Tao was sarcastically cheerful, "Let's not talk about the sad medical things. I have some delicious cardboard crack to pick up, and I can spare you and Guizhong-ayi the gory details when we get home."
At this, Zhongli leant back, raising a brow. "I hope that means you have actually been taking care of yourself," he sighed, before unlocking the wheels of his chair to allow Hu Tao to navigate, "Well, lead the way then. I suppose I could probably step away for a bit."
Wanwen Games was about as crowded as Zhongli expected the place to be, and after nodding to Jifeng, Zhongli had parked himself next to one of the tables, browsing the bustle of players that were engaged in the "Genius Invocation" game as well as people laying around in beanbags browsing the latest updated series of "The Traveler Who Caught the Wind". He politely turned down Xingqiu and Chongyun's suggestion to join them for a game, mostly content in observing how others strategised before watching Hu Tao approach again, this time with her arms full of several well-packaged boxes filigreed with the four elements of Anemo, Geo, Electro and Dendro.
"Here's the box for Barbatos, here's the one for Morax, here's Baal and this one is...unreadable, whatever the Dendro Archon's name is," Hu Tao rattled off the names and placed the boxes on the table, "Barbatos's deck is all about stealing other players' cards. His ability is to take an entire player's board of items and characters for his own use and deals damage for every turn he has them."
"Seems about right," Zhongli let slip absently, picking up the deck with Nahida stamped on its cover, "What does this one do?"
"Oh, I didn't bother reading her decklist, but it's probably something with crowd control and ensuring everyone takes passive damage," Hu Tao shrugged, reaching towards another box, "Baal's deck is huge DPS. She's what you'd commonly call a deck full of combos, because you want to build up enough Elemental Energy to unleash her super booba sword attack and essentially remove one player completely from the game every time her ability triggers. Even before that, she blasts you too with passive Electro pings until you have no more life points to keep up."
Zhongli rolled his eyes. Ei would've killed Hu Tao for "super booba sword attack", but he refrained from commenting as he placed the deck boxes to the side.
"You can have this one, it's Morax's deck. He's all about outlasting people by being so defensive he's completely bulletproof. Seems your type of thing," Hu Tao tossed the box into Zhongli's lap with an underhanded toss, "He's got some damaging effects but it's not crazy like Baal's. Most people say he fell off the meta due to power creep, and now that nobody plays shield counters anymore due to the Riftwolf token being introduced to the game, it doesn't matter if he starts with the best shield counters of the game."
"Ok then," Zhongli wondered why he suddenly felt very seen with the deck box in his hand, "How do we start?"
"Right!" Hu Tao strode over and placed the remaining boxes into her bag before pulling out her own deck case with peach blossom filigree on it, "I'm playing my own deck, with my beautiful proxied face on it as the commander. Most of my power is from going all-out at the expense of all my life points, but I've got ways to not lose the game entirely from life drain. The lower my life total is, the stronger my deck ramps. It's just how it is, the scene is so competitive."
Zhongli watched Hu Tao place a hand daintily over her forehead in a dramatic show of pretending she didn't want to utterly crush him as a beginner. "Doesn't this seem unfair considering I'm so new to the game? Using such a competitive deck against something that fell that far off the meta feels...undesirable. A hollow victory, if you will," he admitted, placing his commander card aside and shuffling the deck fluidly, "Does that make you happy, oh great and wise owner of Wangshengtang? Does so thoroughly thrashing me make you happy?"
Hu Tao narrowed her eyes back at the subtle passive-aggression she felt rolling off the man. "That's exactly why I'm using a competitive deck. I don't trust you to not outplay me even with a shitty starter deck even if it's your first time. I've seen you thrash Ningguang-jie at the game she invented, I'm not taking my chances," she retorted, "I'm not giving you senior citizen privileges on this one. It's the only way I can stay ahead of the curve."
To this, Zhongli nodded somewhat sadly, still shuffling his deck with a trained thoroughness. "A pity. How unscrupulous of you, utterly destroying a completely new player to the game," he commented, drawing his first seven cards and already mentally planning his first turn, "How do we begin then? You have to tell me how these turns are expected to be taken."
"You use Elemental Energy to summon artifacts, weapons and characters," Hu Tao flashed her ornate foil Pyro Energy card at Zhongli, in between her fingers, "Tap then for 1 Energy by turning them horizontally. There's some colorless artifacts that give you energy too such as the NRE Menu 30 that gives you 3 energy when tapped - staple for most decks really. Same deal with attacking, I can declare to block, most of the time we trade and they both die without damage taken."
Zhongli nodded, setting down a Geo energy card before he tapped it fluidly and produced the NRE Menu 30 card mentioned just moments ago. "Like this?" he asked, raising a brow as he tapped the card and played the first monster: a humble Geo Samuchurl, "Seems easy enough for me. I get a shield counter for Geo Samuchurl, reducing any damage dealt to me by 2. Can I attack now?"
"I-- that's bullshit. Beginner's luck," Hu Tao grunted in annoyance, before she shook her head, "You can't do that unless the character indicates they are hasted. Haste means that they can attack the moment they hit the board, like the Geo Rifthound or an Anemo Slime. If I block you, some mobs have trample so the damage carries over. You have to read your cards properly."
"Noted. The Geo Samuchurl would give me another Geo energy on my next turn," Zhongli nodded, somewhat content at his hand, "Would you look at that. Morax is only 2 colorless energy and 3 Geo energy. It would be a shame if I could summon Morax on my 2nd turn."
Hu Tao placed her Pyro energy card down and played a Pyro Slime across Zhongli, her face now devoid of any sort of joy (as expected from playing against an elder), "You wouldn't," she warned, before tapping the Slime card, "My Pyro Slime attacks you for 1 damage."
"I reduce my shield counter by 1," Zhongli turned the dial while looking at Hu Tao dead in the eye, "You're right. I'm having so much fun."
"I hate you," Hu Tao hissed through gritted teeth as Zhongli placed a second Geo energy card in his lane, tapping that and his Samachurl to produce a Stonehide Lawachurl card on his side of the field, "Having three shield counters on turn 2 is illegal, not to mention a trampling creature that allows you to draw more cards."
"You gave me this deck, Master Hu," Zhongli only used honorifics around Hu Tao when he knew it annoyed her, "I didn't choose the cards seeded into it."
"My Pyro Whopperflower deals 2 damage, and it's unblockable," Hu Tao tapped her Black-Back Perch Stew and Pyro energy cards, "You can't use shield counters against that. Take that for size. Also, because of that, I get a free Whopperflower Nectar I can use as energy for later because the Whopperflower attacked. Soon you'd be begging for mercy."
Zhongli shuffled his hand idly. "All this nectar and nowhere to use it on. I call your bluff- you have no more Pyro energy cards so you're summoning as many mobs to block my Morax when he does come out," he scoffed, setting out a few more tokens, "I use Divine Body of Guyun to grant an additional shield counter to every new mob that has a shield counter entering. Then I use Memory of Dust and sacrifice it for 3 Geo energy, allowing me to play my Vortex Vanquisher to gain the ability to trample before I use my remaining energy to--"
"Mercy, mercy," Hu Tao had started clearing the cards on her side of the field, "I scoop shamefully as a free action. You win, you win, ok? Archons, you're so fucking brutal. What is wrong with you? Did someone hurt you when you first started learning to play games or some shit? Did you have to do this?"
"I had to prove a point," Zhongli scooped his own cards and shuffled them back into his deck, "This deck is certainly interesting. I just had beginner's luck to start the chain off is all. Does anyone else want to play?"
Xingqiu had slid in, tugging Chongyun along with him before pointing at Zhongli. "Zhongli-xiansheng, you want to take us both on?" he asked, grinning as he set his deck down beside him, "I'm telling you, my Oceanid deck doesn't hold back!"
"Very well," Zhongli raised a brow, but a smirk tugged on his lips once again, "However, I promise I'd put up a good fight."