Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2487: Celestial Disease

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Central Region, Central Academic City, Morningstar University District, Morningstar University Campus, Garden of Beginning

Lucine eyed the teenage card apprentice before her. She found that the way he looked at her had suddenly changed. His eyes had the same pity her staff had in their eyes when looking at her. Though the pity in his eyes for her was mixed with envy and longing.

She knew that she knew why they were looking at her like that, but she couldn’t remember. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember. Just then the boy asked her not to push herself for him and return, trusting him, to her staff. What does he know that I don’t seem to remember—- wait — who’s that kid? What’s he doing standing on the temporal anchor? What am I doing here? Aaaahhhh!

”Madam Dean, are you alright!” Dean Faust asked in panic, seeing that Lucine appeared to be in discomfort and about to collapse.

I watched and recorded Lucine’s soul pathways and arrangements as her time rule dementia flared up, causing her to collapse, losing consciousness. Nothing life threatening. It’s just that most of her brain’s soul pathways and arrangements had moved to the past, so it wasn’t able to function normally, so it chose to shut down. She was just unconscious and not in a coma.

Yes, a coma and even death was possible if more of her brain’s soul pathways and arrangements had moved to the past. But before that happened, her brain automatically shut down as a protection mechanism. I observed that the parts of soul pathways and arrangements that had moved to the past were slowly returning.

After checking her condition and making sure she was recovering, Dean Faust signaled one of the female demigod staff to take her to her chambers. Amidst all this, I didn’t let my guard down. I didn’t want some ambitious demigod staff of Morningstar University taking advantage of my distraction.

Sending unconscious Lucine away, Dean Faust finally paid his full attention to me and expressed appreciation for my understanding towards Lucine’s disease even though it might only have made things worse, ”Thank you, young friend.”

Taking a deep breath, he continued, ”Seeing you figured out our old dean is not doing well. I am guessing you know what Time Rule Dementia is.”

”A little bit,” I answered even though I had witnessed it for the time by observing Lucine’s soul pathways.

”Ahalya’s doctoral project is based on time rule dementia. She hopes to find a cure or at least a way to suppress it. Anything to help her mentor,” Dean Faust informed, not getting the reaction he expected from me, he changed the topic, ”I promise you, things are not as they seem. Ahalya is not here against her will. She was at first. I mean, what child isn’t when they are enrolled in a boarding school. But that changed with time. Honestly, I don’t know what happened for Denise Johnson to reach out to you about this, but we are conducting an internal review. I’m sure it’s just a bit of miscommunication.”

”...” My brows grew narrower the more I listened to Dean Faust. I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I came here to reunite Denise and her daughter and while at it, use Morningstar University as a stepping stone to announce my big plans. However, nothing was going according to my plan and things were only getting complicated.

I thought now that Lucine had been carried away, Dean Faust would get down to business, but he did not. Instead, he began telling his sob story and I let him, hoping to learn more about Lucine and how she got time rule dementia.

The first time I read about time dementia was when I was reading about the various time zones of the various realms across the myriad realms. My curiosity stemmed from my need to understand the various sectors’ time zone in the devil merchant code’s inter-realm city to take advantage of their soul energy and rule power rich atmosphere.

Apparently, Time Rule Dementia has been a very rare disease that was only seen among celestial beings whose comprehension and understanding of the Time Rule was skewed. As a result, that particular celestial being gets stuck in a time loop where different parts of its celestial body are in different times—past, present, and future—similar to what Lucine’s brain was suffering from.

Honestly, Lucine suffering from time rule dementia was like a virus that only affects bats but suddenly got mutated and was now infecting humans. Thankfully, unlike the viruses, time rule dementia wasn’t contagious.

I would really like to know how a mortal not only managed to get a disease that only affects celestial beings but lives to tell about it. Hive Spirit has copied all of her soul pathways we could get and concluded that there was nothing special about her; she was a regular card demigod.

Therefore, I didn’t bother to interrupt Dean Faust as he told his sob story, but so far I have heard nothing of value. It didn’t take me long to understand that he was just trying to invoke the understanding I showed with regards to Lucine’s condition, to morally and emotionally manipulate me into taking a step back and reaching a compromise. That was a win for them because I had made it very obvious since beginning that I was here to pick a fight and Ahalya was just an excuse.

”All I am trying to say is wait till Ahalya returns from the time vestige. She will make everything clear to you,” Dean Faust concluded, asking me not to resort to something rash and proposing the same thing he has been since the start, that I wait till Ahalya was back from the time vestige. If I didn’t know better I would think the Dean was stalling for time or laying a trap.

It didn’t matter because in Ahalya’s absence, I wanted to use her unavailability to kick up a fuss and create a stage for my big announcement to the world.