As soon as Kartikeya spoke Sam felt like he recovered all his strength, then only he understood that this guy just wanted to talk to him and the recovery time is just an excuse.
"Since you are from Planet Earth, you must be familiar with this game," Kartikeya spoke and snapped his fingers and the stone table transformed itself.
A large square groove appeared and the groove transformed into a chessboard. The grid is black and grey. The chess pieces are also Black and grey and made of stone. Sam picked up a pawn and looked at it carefully. It is an extremely beautiful sculpture.
He hadn't seen such a sculpture in a long time. He was amazed and attracted to it and went on to check the rest of the sculptures.
Saying he was impressed was an understatement.
"Although the game we are playing is chess, it is not exactly the same. There are some new rules which I would like to add so that the game becomes more interesting." Kartikeya let Sam examine the pieces and continued to explain the rules.
"The basic movements of the pieces are the same as the one you know. The pawn, the rook, the knight, the bishop, the queen, and finally the king. The names are the same, but their purpose and power is completely different in this game.
I will simplify the explanation so that you could get a hang of it easily.
Since you are a Nascent stage cultivator at Level-6, your king will have that cultivation level and your queen will be having the cultivation level of Level-5 Nascent stage.
As for the bishop, they will have Level-2, the Knights Level-3, and finally the Rooks Level-4.
The pawns are all Level-1 Nascent stage cultivators.
You will move the pieces in the exact same way as you would in a normal game, but when you want to kill my piece, that means, if you want to remove my pawn with yours, there will be a battle between the two.
And you will be battling in the place of that pawn and a soldier from my army would be battling in place of my pawn, your cultivation will be suppressed to Nascent stage Level-1.
After the battle is over, whoever wins occupies the place and the loser's piece will disappear. But the damage to the winner piece wouldn't disappear.
Every pawn has five health points and when two pawns fought and yours won but only has two points left, the next battle, you will feel weary and will only have forty percent of your original strength at that level for the next battle.
As for the real you, who is sitting here, you don't have to worry about any form of physical injury.
In similar ways, the Bishop has ten health points, the knights have fifteen and the Rooks have twenty, the queen twenty-five and finally the king thirty.
There are no checks and checkmates, everything will be decided by the battle. As for the battle rules, you would understand once you start the game.
Any doubts?"
Sam looked at the game with a curious look.
"What is the name of the game?"
Sam asked he looked at Kartikeya and the latter looked at him and said.
"The Cultivator Chess."
Sam felt like he was looking at his long-lost alter ego. How can someone be as bad as him at naming? He felt like the person who named the Black star Gold is dumb enough in the naming sense, but even the god himself?
This is something he didn't expect.
"If you don't mind me asking, what are the rewards of this Palace of Inheritance? I didn't see a single reward since the start."
"Well, everyone will get a reward based on their performance. Don't worry, since you are the winner you have a different reward system altogether and you have more variety to choose from. Only after you are done with them, the rest will get to choose. Currently, the rest of the people all are going through enlightenment and cultivating since this is a superior environment."
Sam nodded his head and looked at the game.
"Who goes first?"
Sam asked as he eyed his pieces. His pieces are black and their positions are also the same as modern chess.
"Of course, I will be going first. I am the one testing and I am the one going to invade."
With that Kartikeya made his first move. He moved the pawn in front of the knight that was on the queen's side first and made two steps. Sam didn't think much and just moved the pawn in front of his bishop on the queen's side for two steps. He let the piece go because he wanted to see how the battle goes first.
And Kartikeya made his move and placed his grey pawn in the same grid as the black pawn by moving it diagonally.
The grid has large squares and each square has big enough space to place three pieces at least.
As soon as Kartikeya placed the piece, Sam felt like he was being sucked into the board and when he opened his eyes he could see himself in a large Grey stage.
The large stone square is floating in the void and he couldn't see anything but darkness beyond the stage. On the stage apart from him, there is another person standing. His body is covered with armor and he even wore a Corinthian helmet protecting his head with a Spear in his hand.
Both of them exchanged a glance as a piece of Information entered Sam's mind.
He got the gist of it. The battle will go on until one of them is defeated and the defeat would be either being killed by the opponent directly or being thrown off the stage.
Sam looked at the soldier with the spear in his hands and made his move. Since it is a battle to the death, there is little point in waiting.
The whole stage is in square shape and it would around 100 square feet and it is neither too large nor too short.
Sam launched a head kick right from the start, which was blocked by the spear. But Sam didn't stop there, he took advantage of the recoil and used the wind element to spin and gave a spinning back kick to the left temple.
The soldiers are not fast enough and the kick connected.
The helmet distorted from the kicks and there is a large crack on it.
The eardrum seemed to have burst open and blood started seeping out from that crack in the helmet.
Sam didn't stop there and leaped lightly before giving a crane kick straight to the chin of the opponent who is already wobbling on his feet. The man knelt down and Sam took a step back.
As he looked at his opponent intently, he saw five green bars appearing over the head of the opponent and four green bars disappeared one after another. These seemed to be health points.
Sam felt like this is some sort of video.
He didn't wait and finished his opponent with another kick to the head.
He disappeared from the spot and reappeared back in the chair. All of this felt so surreal, but he clearly felt nothing to his body.
When he looked at the table once again, the grey pawn was moving out of the board on its own and went out of the chess grid.
"Your Move."
Sam was about to make it when Kartikeya said.
"You can move the pieces without touching them. You just have to place your hand on the table and use your spiritual sense."
Sam did as he was told and moved the same pawn forward. Since the game is not regular chess where every piece can be killed by any other piece, this would demand the player to play differently than usual. After all, even if he was able to bring his pawn to the king, so what? He would die all the same.
So, he wanted to probe further and see what he can do and how he should proceed with the single pawn until the point that it can go.
Kartikeya moved the pawn in front of the rook, two steps forward. Sam didn't change his move and once again placed his pawn forward.
This time Karthikeya let the pawn in front of the queen kill this pawn.
Sam once again entered the stage which is Grey in color.
There is another soldier standing in front of him with a sword and shield in his hands.
Sam focused on him and the health bar appeared and when Sam focused on his own hands, he also saw his own health bars. But the fifth bar is not complete, it looked like it was chipped a bit.
Although it is minute, it was still reduced. Maybe that was because of the effort he made in the fight earlier.
Sam once again lunged forward and used the same attack, but this time, it didn't work, this soldier blocked the kick that was about to land with the shield and Sam felt his leg go numb a little bit. But he still used the same trick and gave a spinning kick to the head on the other side, but he was blocked once again.
It is almost like the soldier knew Sam's tricks already. Sam frowned at this. He wished that his conjecture was wrong and took the reaper sword to attack.
After a series of clashes, Sam finally managed to get rid of the shield and finally made a critical hit. But in this process, he suffered some minor scratches. He could see that the skill level of this soldier is not much different than the first person, but this time, the other party is a lot more cautious to avoid any surprise attacks that caused the first person to lose.
