Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2510: Gravity and Blackhole Hybrid Runes

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

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

I was awe-inspired watching Lucine produce a black hole, only for Slay to casually toss it into the void as if they were playing catch with a ball. As far as I knew, there were two Hybrid Runes capable of producing black holes. The first was the Hybrid Rune: Gravity, and the second was the Hybrid Rune: Blackhole. Both were based on the same Newtonian principle that gravity is the curvature of space-time, yet they achieved similar results through entirely different methods.

Hybrid Rune: Gravity was formed by the fusion of the Earth Rule and Space Rule meanings, enhancing the user’s invisible gravitation pull on surrounding mass—much like how a planet pulls its moons into orbit.

According to Newtonian law, everything with mass exerts its own gravitational force. Hybrid Rune: Gravity allowed the user to amplify their personal gravitational field and manipulate how it interacted with other gravitational sources. This meant they could alter their own gravity to fly—or increase it to crush everything around them.

However, Hybrid Rune: Gravity could only create a black hole through self-destruction, similar to how a dying star collapses to form one. To do so, the user would have to compress their own mass inward, forcefully folding space into itself—literally turning themselves into a black hole. It was basically a more devastating form of self-implosion.

Meanwhile, Hybrid Rune: Blackhole, formed by fusing Space and Time rule meanings, allowed the user to manipulate the space and time of themselves and anything within their range. In other words, they could directly alter the curvature of space-time around themselves or any target nearby. As a result, they could control the gravitational forces acting on themselves and on anything within that range. Hence, by pushing the curvature of space and time to extremes, they could force any point in space to collapse into a black hole.

I had yet to start the comprehension of the Earth, Space, and Time rules, let alone their meanings, and fuse them to forge hybrid runes. So all I could rely on was my scientific understanding and the descriptions I had read in the Infinity Library to interpret what I was witnessing.

I could use my Primordial Soul Pupils to examine the fused rule meanings within Lucine’s and Slay’s hybrid runes—but than I would be risking rule contamination. I wasn’t willing to pay that price just to satisfy my curiosity. It was far too steep a cost to scratch an intellectual itch.

From what I could gather, Lucine had used the Hybrid Rune: Blackhole to create the tiny blackhole, while Slay had used a combination of both Gravity and Blackhole hybrid runes to stably move it atop her index finger and casually chuck it into the void so that it wouldn’t detonate halfway through.

With this, Slay not only outperformed Lucine in every aspect but also displayed flawless control over mass, space, and time. Combined with her Semi-Ruler-class realm and her racial ability of Negative Passion, she was practically invincible.

How was anyone supposed to fight something of that caliber?

Lucine’s despair was justified.

Sniff. Sniff.

Suddenly, I caught a familiar fruity scent in the air. It was the fragrance of the incense sticks I had made for Dredre, crafted from the bark and oils of the World Calamity Tree.

My gaze snapped toward the gigantic wooden stake embedded in the fabric of space-time. The flat end of it was slowly burning—no flame, just a red-hot ember glow, releasing thin trails of soot. The enormous stake, made from a twig of a World Calamity Tree, now looked like a colossal incense stick filling our surroundings with a refreshing but mesmerizing fruity scent.

Seeing this, panic surged through me and a heavy sense of urgency gripped my chest. I had planned to use that gigantic World Calamity Tree wooden stake as the evolutionary material to unlock my fifth transformation. I didn’t think I could find another evolutionary material of similar or better fit for my transformation. And even if such a material existed, I wasn’t sure I currently had the strength to obtain it. After all, World Calamity Trees were extinct, and any materials derived from them were heavily regulated and grossly overpriced.

When Slay first took out the stake, my mutated Ego Gem had reacted with a strong internal urge. It tried to tell me that I could use the stake as an evolutionary ingredient for its next transformation, but I had been taken aback by the fact that Slay was able to ignore the influence of my Celestial Blood Fate Domain to pay heed to it. But once I knew, I had been keeping my eye on the wooden stake. So, imagine my horror when I saw it slowly burning. Feeling I would lose the opportunity forever, I felt an urgency to retrieve it before it burned away to ash.

I wasn’t the only one unhappy about this—Slay was as well. Her face twisted in irritation as she said, ”It seems we will have to speed up our introductions, my prince.”

I frowned when through my primordial soul pupils I learned the stake was burning because the Card Celestial had finally noticed the oddity in one of its past and was attempting to deal with it. However, the ability of the tool crafted from a Ruler-class World Calamity Tree twig was holding it back—at the cost of slowly burning away its own durability.

If all nine stakes of the set had been nailed into the space-time fabric around the Card Celestial in a proper array formation, they would have fully restrained it and left it helpless. But with only one stake in place, the Card Celestial could still force its way through. It was only a matter of time.

No wonder Slay’s smug expression had soured so suddenly—it was like she had just swallowed a fly. Not only was the wooden stake priceless, but being noticed by the Card Celestial meant that she could no longer escape without confronting the Card Celestial.

With the combination of the gigantic wooden stake tool and the hybrid celestial, she should have known better, it was impossible for her not to attract the attention of the Card Celestial. Still, she wasn’t overly worried as she had the Devil Merchant Code backing her. As long as she was willing to pay, anything was possible.

Slay wasn’t the only one in a predicament, so was I. I had to get a gigantic world calamity tree wooden stake tool before the Card Celestial fully reduced it to ash.