Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2517: Slay’s Horror

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

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

Lucine was slowly inching toward the stake driven into the space-time fabric of the physical plane, despite my clear warning not to. Thankfully, she didn’t try to remove it. It seemed Slay’s earlier burst of full power had left a mark on her—a lingering trauma that wouldn’t fade so easily. She only felt safe when she believed she had some measure of control over the situation.

I couldn’t blame her. I’d probably feel the same if Slay had used her racial ability to turn my own strength against me. Being betrayed by your own power—your own body—wasn’t something a mind could recover from easily.

Lucine no longer felt safe in her own flesh, nor in her mind. I honestly couldn’t imagine how anyone could cope with that kind of violation.

She would have to work through that, just as she was doing now.

As Lucine listened to my exchange with Slay, her expression kept shifting—curiosity, disbelief, then something sharper. She was clearly startled to realize that I knew far more about the Ten Commandments and Slay than I had ever let on. It dawned on her that my secrets went deeper than just hidden strength.

A flicker of grievance crossed her face; she couldn’t help but feel as though she’d been used, deceived even. But it wasn’t my fault she had underestimated me because of my age—and talked more than she should have in hopes to have me enroll into Morningstar University.

However, she got over it quickly—at least outwardly. When she realized I was planning to recruit Slay, her shock was almost comical. That was the kind of idea people whispered about but never dared to attempt.

It wasn’t that no one had ever thought of it before. Many card apprentices had tried to subdue or enslave a devil, but such attempts usually ended in tragedy. Devils would rather embrace death than serve a lowly card apprentice from some backwater corner of the Myriad Realms. After all, they couldn’t truly die outside the Dark Realm—it merely sent their souls back into the embrace of the Dark Realm’s womb waiting for an opportunity for revival. That simple fact made enslaving them nearly impossible.

Sure, a card apprentice could force open a gate to the Dark Realm and destroy a devil there permanently, but that was a gamble no sane person would take. The risk far outweighed the reward—especially when facing a creature armed with powers and schemes most couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Lucine couldn’t help but wonder how I actually planned to pull it off. Still, she wasn’t entirely in the dark—she had caught fragments of the exchange between Slay and me and seemed to have pieced together part of the picture. From what she could tell, I was using the imminent arrival of the Card World’s Will as leverage, turning it into a leverage against Slay in my plan to enslave her.

What puzzled her, though, was how seriously Slay seemed to take the threat. Devils didn’t truly die outside the Dark Realm; at worst, their essence would disperse and eventually return to the womb of the Dark Realm’s will. Yet Slay’s unease was unmistakable—she was genuinely afraid.

Lucine frowned, realizing there was more at play than she understood. There had to be something hidden—some detail that only Slay and I knew—something that made even a devil fear death outside her own realm.

”Unless... no way,” Lucine whispered under her breath, her mind racing. Could the realm’s Celestial Will truly possess the power to kill a devil outright? The more she thought about it, the more it seemed possible. After all, the might of a Celestial Will was something far beyond her comprehension—something that transcended the laws she knew.

’No wonder he told me not to pull out the stake,’ she realized, her pulse quickening as the pieces began to fall into place. After all, the stake was one thinking keeping the Celestial Will’s power from influencing this past.

Understanding that, Lucine’s awe grew. ’Maybe—just maybe—he really could pull it off.’ Perhaps she was witnessing history in the making: the moment a mere card master succeeded in doing what no one else in the card world’s history ever had—subduing a devil.

Under Lucine’s astonished gaze, I summoned a Primordial Calamity Daughter Gem and held it before Slay’s lips. ”This gem,” I said calmly, ”is the crystallization of my essence. It contains everything you need to conceive yourself a new body.”

Slay didn’t hesitate. She parted her lips and accepted the gem without a trace of suspicion. She knew well enough that if I’d intended to harm her, I wouldn’t need her consent to do it. She wasn’t worried about swallowing the essence now because as an Ovumite, she could simply store the essence and choose to conceive her new vessel at her convenience.

However, the moment she tried to swallow it and store it within her body, her confidence faltered. To her shock, the gem instantly dissolved in her mouth, flooding her body with its essence before she could react.

Her eyes widened in horror as she realized her body had already become pregnant, the process of growing her new vessel in her womb beginning on its own.

But her terror wasn’t born from the act itself—it came from what it meant. The body being nourished within her was tainted by the temporal laws of this timeline. When she eventually returned to her original timeline, this vessel would disintegrate into ash for breaking the taboos of the time rule. Even if she abandoned it and regenerated another, that one too would be marked by the same curse of time. By being born in this past and not the original present, the very origin of her new body would be breaking the taboos of the time rule.

If things continued as they were, she once gain stuck in an endless loop—a slow, suffocating curse that would force her to shed body after body until she finally surrendered her flesh altogether.

As an Ovumite, her body was her greatest pride—the purest expression of her strength, lineage, identity, and her existence itself. Every curve, every cell carried the essence of her race’s perfection. To be forced to abandon that... to watch it wither and crumble away under the punishment of time—was a fate far crueler than death for her.

If she had to give up her body, she might as well die. For an Ovumite, losing their form wasn’t just a loss of power—it was akin to losing their purpose, the breaking of the very core that defined their existence.