Card Apprentice Daily Log

Date- 3 April 2321

Time- 23:35

Location- Sun Blossom City, Fine Gold carrier floaters

Diana’s gaze meets with Cindy’s. As if she had heard Cindy’s warcry she nodded at her as if acknowledging Cindy as her rival and implying, ‘Game is on, bitch.’ With this, both Cindy and Diana had come to a tactical understanding about which the fool Jaya was totally oblivious being lost in her puppy love.

The small actions of the trio did not escape my watchful eyes and I nodded in satisfaction getting the reaction I was hoping for. This excluded giggling Jaya, I don’t know what was wrong with this girl.

I had just gifted each of them two extraordinary cards worth a small fortune, I would be stupid if I did not bother to check to see if these people were grateful about it or if I was just raising a bunch of Scorpions. Thankfully they seem to understand my efforts and appreciate them. But Jaya acted spoiled, I guess she was ignorant, Diana needs to work on her.

“Are we there yet?” I asked. Since we were floating above the city, the carrier floater’s speed was restricted, in order not to affect the infrastructure of the city. For our exuberating motives, this was one slow ride.

“At this speed another 5 to 6 minutes,” Daina answered before Cindy could.

“Why aren’t we using stealth to surprise the enemy?” instead of the slow speed I was worried about the enemy taking action knowing that we are coming.

“Association master Cheng said that the city will ring the warning sirens if warship-sized carrier floaters were to enter the city in stealth mode. So he advised us that it would be in our best interest not to use stealth on our big vessels which can easily be mistaken for a warship by the city array formation prompting it to take predetermined actions planned against invasion. Therefore he has arranged for these air traffic cops to lead us to our destination without having to worry about the city array attacking the carrier floaters after finding that we are not in the permitted area i.e the airstrip,” Diana explained which once again pissed Cindy. As the new head who replaced Diana on this mission, Cindy felt it was her duty to answer the boss’s questions but she was being outdone by Diana. This could not be more depressing for her. Having figured out her stuff Diana brought her A game, increasing pressure on Cindy.

“I see,” I was not familiar with the city’s air traffic rules for big vehicles but inside the city, there were indeed speed limits on all vehicles.

We were going to attack a local force why do we care about the city’s laws now? It was because we were here only to make an enemy out of the circle, not the entire city. As long as they did not interfere with my attack on the circle’s headquarters I will roll with their rules but once they do not I would have no choice but to fight the entire city if they wanted to.

Shaking my head I added, “Are all the preparations made as we discussed before?”

“Ye-“

“Yes, boss. All preparation has been made accordingly, I personally saw to it and double-checked them,” Diana was the first to respond again but Cindy cut her off in the middle by hurriedly yelling out the response in a single breath so that Diana does not get a chance to break her off in the middle as she did to her.

“Good, if not, check it once again, we have a few minutes left to spare. I don’t want half of my forces to die at the start of the war because their parachutes mall-functioned, or something sillier,” I ordered Cindy and Diana.

“Parachutes?” Cindy said in puzzlement and looked at Diana to see if she knew what their boss meant.

“Don’t worry boss. We have enough card apprentices with hovercar cards on each carrier floater they will get our forces to the ground,” Diana immediately answered feeling the boss’s concerns were about how their forces would land.

“…” Cindy decided to give Diana this one but did not plan to make it a habit of it.

“You must have practiced this already in the drill, right? How much was their response time?” I asked because there were nearly six hundred card apprentices on each of the carrier floaters. If they all were to be dropped to the battle one by one then that would not be efficient and easier for the enemies to act against them.

“Boss, their response time is 2 minutes, within that time they will have completely surrounded the array formation and be ready to move in at your command,” Diana replied having personally attended the joint training between the Fine Gold Guards, Tiger squadron, and TSR guild, The fast deployment of the soldiers was the main goal of the joint training since all the forces will be mixed during the war there will be confusion not knowing which chain of command to follow. In order to avoid this, all 3 forces needed to learn how to collaborate with each other as the situation demands them to.

“Excellent, what about the carrier floater shields? How dependable are they?” Since we were arriving on a carrier floater at a minimum speed limit we were easy targets for our enemies to shoot us down from their base. Hence we needed powerful shields that were capable of handling whatever the enemy threw at them.

“We have to arrays on all the floaters, one for stealth and one as the shield for the carrier floater. Since we will not be using a stealth array, it can also be used as a secondary shield by carrier floaters in case the primary shield array is breached. But I would not trust the sheath array as a secondary shield array. I would not worry about that because I don’t think that we will be needing them to act as one on this mission,” Cindy answered as she was in charge of this.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” If my plan went accordingly all this preparation would be unnecessary but if it did not then we would be grateful that we did all these preparations.

“We are here,” Jaya announced standing at the edge of the deck as she looked down at the headquarters of the circle sun blossom branch. As for the air traffic cops that guided us here, they were nowhere to be seen, they split the second we reached here without saying goodbye.

“Cindy,” I signaled Cindy asking her to commence with the plans.

“Carriers, Fan out,” upon my signal, Cindy yelled, following which the six carrier floaters behind the carrier floater I was standing on moved to circle the Circle’s headquarters. Within seconds, seven carrier floaters surrounded the entire Circle’s sun blossom city branch complex. Unfortunately, these were not warships, otherwise, this scene would be more epic. But if the carrier floater were a warship then we could not have made it past the city wall till here.

“Boss, If I may,” Diana asked my permission to use her origin card.

“Go ahead, there was a reason why I gave you wind ego elemental,” I granted Diana permission for her to use her origin card.

“Summon Origin Card – Phantom Fleet,” With Diana’s chant 15 huge ass warships manned by phantom sailors were summoned. Then the warships moved to fill the gaps between the carrier floaters.

“…” I waited to see if there would be any response from the Circle’s side but it was totally quiet despite all this commotion, so I used my soul pupils to check what was going on, only to find that the desolate punisher array wasn’t the only array covering the circle’s headquarters, there was this other array dome above the dome of desolate punisher array. Though I did not know what the first array above the desolate punisher array did. From what I could deduce with my expertise in array formation, this array happened to be shielding the inside world of the array from being spied on by the outside world by casting a prerecorded mirage of sorts to those on both sides. The people inside will see a beautiful sky or sunset according to the time or their preference and the people on the outside will see that headquarter was deserted and there was hardly any human activity in it. This way this array not only stopped us from peeking inside but also hide the desolate punisher array under it.

‘Master, you have arrived,’ My three calamity daughter gems inside the array contacted me. It seems the people on the inside were able to watch us surround them.

I immediately asked back, ‘What is happening in there?’

‘They are waiting for your forces to enter the array,’ Roy answered.

‘Do they not know that we know that their headquarters is protected by a desolate punisher array?’ I asked Roy confused as I thought that the Circle having a Desolate punisher array was common knowledge to all. This could only mean that I had underestimated the intelligence given by Rami. That old bastard, he should have been keeping tabs and eyeing the Circle ever since they moved to his city. After all, two tigers can’t live in one mountain.

😉