Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2428: Crafter’s Dilemma: The Best Or Nothing

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Lil Red Storm Realm, Seed World, Trophy section.

Wyatt knew this even before he began the creation of a dozen Forsling corpse puppet cards. Yet, he did not make arrangements to acquire a dozen ruler-class cores to serve as the common core to house all the modified and edited soul pathways and arrangements that would later be morphed into a card because he couldn’t afford even the lower ruler-class cores being sold or auctioned in the Devil Merchant Code.

The demand for ruler-class cores was very high, while the supply was very low. Therefore, even the lower ruler-class cores were priced or auctioned at an exorbitant rate that woke Wyatt, the richest card apprentice, up to the bitter reality that in the Myriad Realms, he was poor.

Wyatt had even planned to pool all his net worth together to buy at least one ruler-class core to use to create a single unranked card capable of summoning a dozen unranked Forsling corpse puppets. However, he learned that doing so would mean he would have to halt all his side ventures and return to being a poor card creationist offering his services to the highest bidder.

Wyatt felt a pang of nostalgia for those days, but not enough to relive them.

Despite not having a ruler-class core to perform the final card transformation in the card creation process, Wyatt decided to start the creation process anyway. He believed that with the help of his soul pupils and depending on the effect of pixie dust and primordial energy on the soul pathways of the Forsling corpse puppets, he could use semi-ruler class cores to achieve a similar effect. If not, he could abandon card creation and switch to soul crafting to gain a dozen semi-noble class Forsling corpse puppets with awakened spirits instead of a dozen unranked Forsling corpse puppet cards.

However, now that he was almost at the climax of the card creation process, he knew that, forget semi-ruler class cores, even lower ruler-class cores wouldn’t suffice. They would increase the star rating of the card significantly, potentially reaching three digits. He needed upper ruler-class cores to contain the entire potential of the dozen Forsling corpse puppets he was crafting and to create the unranked cards with the lowest star rating. Otherwise, his only option would be to switch to soul crafting to gain items with awakened spirits instead of unranked cards of these items.

Before starting the card creation process, Wyatt had thought he would decisively switch to soul crafting if card creation wasn’t feasible. But now, seeing the potential of these dozen Forsling corpse puppets he was creating, Wyatt hesitated. He felt it would be a waste if he didn’t turn them into unranked item cards and instead allowed them to be born as items with awakened spirits.

There were only six item card slots in a grimoire, regardless of its grade. The same was true for Wyatt’s unranked grimoire. Yet, he was refining twelve unranked item cards. Why? Because he only planned to keep one for himself and give the rest to his friends and subordinates.

Yes, he was the only card apprentice alive with an unranked grimoire capable of equipping unranked cards, but he planned to address that during his next visit to the Card World.

One might ask why go through all that trouble. Couldn’t he just hand them the item instead of the item card? Aren’t the two one and the same? That would be a huge misunderstanding. In the hands of a card apprentice, an item card is far more efficient than the item itself. When a card apprentice equips an item card, they can not only summon the item in physical form but also gain a basic understanding of the item.

For example, what was the item? What was the purpose of the item? What was the item capable of? How to safely use the item? How to use the item so it would not lose its durability quickly with every use? This understanding came to the card apprentice along with the card creator’s own knowledge, if any were added to the card, such as in the case of the Field Marshal’s combat training card.

Because of this advantage of item cards, Wyatt believed his friends with lower realms would be able to use the Forsling corpse puppets much more efficiently. Especially considering that these Forsling corpse puppets were bound to have spirits. After all, items with spirits tend to be very picky about their masters, but not in this case, as they were made using primordial calamity daughter gems. But there were other problems the calamity gem could not solve. So, if he could, he would want to give his friends the unranked item cards, which they could use instead of the items themselves, which might prove to be a burden due to their lacking realm.

All this aside, the real reason for Wyatt’s hesitation was that he knew a place where he could acquire upper ruler-class cores as easily as picking up fallen apples during a leisurely walk in an apple orchard.

Wyatt, who had always strived to give the best to his customers, would not settle for subpar for himself and his friends when he knew he could obtain the best.

However, this time, giving his best might end up costing Wyatt his life because the location where he could get upper ruler-class cores was temporarily being used by the strongest being he had ever faced in the myriad realms, the Deviant Devil Prince Mamas Mulias. That was to say, the place he was thinking of was the origin of the blood rule in the entire myriad realms, the Blood Rule Source.

To be accurate, the battlefield in the Blood Rule Source was where Wyatt and Dream Assassin Raukaul Maar had escaped the blood regression meaning blood rule domain of Deviant Devil Mamas Mulias, while he prepared to fight the incoming Celestial Blood Rule Slave.

Now, that place was littered with the ruler-class cores of the Blood Rule Slaves that Mamas had killed in his attempt to capture Raukaul and fight the Celestial Blood Rule Slave.

Wyatt had always planned to return to that battlefield in the Blood Rule Source to collect the cores of the slain Blood Rule Slaves, but to his surprise, the last time he checked, Mamas was still fighting the Celestial Blood Rule Slave.

No, Wyatt did not return to the battlefield to witness it. He wouldn’t dare, as the aftershock from the battle alone was enough to trigger his various super survival arrangements in case of instant death. Instead, it was feedback from the pseudo-calamity soul gems he had buried deep within the Blood Rule Source under the battlefield. The clones of Hive spirits within these gems were constantly monitoring their surroundings and reporting to Wyatt on the progress of the battle based on the tremors generated in that part of the Blood Rule Source by the aftershock of the exchange between Mamas and the Celestial Blood Rule Slave.

The Hive Spirit had deduced a lot from the tremors: that Mamas wasn’t just fighting the Celestial Blood Rule Slave but was also constantly being besieged by other blood rule slaves.

The ruler-class cores on the battlefield were just piling up, some even being crushed to powder by the fight. The only problem was whether anyone dared to go and clean the battlefield of all that waste.

Previously, Wyatt had not given this much thought because he did not have any particular need for ruler-class cores significant enough to risk his life. But now that he did, he was pondering various unconventional ways he could fetch a dozen upper ruler-class cores from the battlefield in the Blood Rule Source without dying.