Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2982: The Great Frosling Migration – II

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Dark Realm, Gelid Alps, Snow Elven Region, Forsell District, Frosnow City

“Your Highness, you are being too generous with your praise. All of this was possible because of your gift and vision for our race; I was just the messenger,” Moon Fright humbly replied, giving me all the credit. She walked over to stand slightly behind my chair, her head lowered.

But as she moved, I caught a glimpse of her expression. A heavy shadow loomed over her face, her brows knit tight with a silent, gnawing anxiety.

“What’s worrying you?” I asked, leaning back and resting my chin on my steepled fingers. Seeing her hesitate, I let out a small, amused huff. “Tell me. I’m in a generous mood right now. If you want, you can even ask for your specific tribe’s freedom from the covenant. That is, if that’s what’s eating at you.”

“No! Your Highness, please stop teasing me,” Moon Fright hurriedly clarified, her head snapping up in sheer panic before she quickly bowed it again. “Without you, we have no future. If we were to leave your shadow, we might as well kill ourselves. It’s not that.”

She took a deep, shaky breath, balling her hands into fists against her robes.

“I’m worried about the Snow Elves,” she admitted, her voice dropping into a tense whisper. “I don’t doubt the capabilities of your subordinates, Your Highness, but I deeply fear the weakness of my own people. Over the centuries, some Froslings have utterly sold their souls to the Snow Elves in exchange for a scrap of their grace. I don’t know all their names, but I am certain that even some of the tribal heads we just saw cannot be fully trusted. I’m terrified they might have already leaked our talks to their Snow Elven masters.”

I narrowed my eyes. For Moon Fright to speak such blasphemous words against her own kin, especially right after watching those very leaders slice their palms and sign a bloodline-binding Covenant on behalf of their entire race, could only mean one thing — the Snow Elves had their own deeply entrenched, artificial means of ensuring absolute obedience.

A blood covenant binds the soul and the lineage to the name invoked, but Moon Fright’s worries weren’t unwarranted. If the Snow Elves already implanted something inside their souls before tonight—like a slave brand, a cognitive curse, or a loyalty hex tied to Elven blood arts—that they could trigger at will, killing them or worse, force them to speak and act against their own will.

I turned my head slightly, looking at her from the corner of my eye. It was clear to me that she was worried one of those tribal heads, or even the Chieftain himself, was a walking wiretap.

Moon Fright wasn’t the only one who had considered this possibility. I had too. However, unlike her, I wasn’t losing any sleep over it. And that was entirely because I had Sansa with me.

Right now, every single Frosling who had seen her face, or even vaguely learned of her existence now carried a pristine memory of Sansa inside their heads. And that memory wasn’t just sitting there idly—it was actively digging through their minds.

Unbeknownst to them, the Froslings were spreading Sansa across their entire population like a virus via simple word of mouth. That was the truly terrifying part about Sansa’s Origin Card. Just knowing she existed was all it took to implant a version of her in their memory initiating the infection. What was baffling was that she had yet to unleash her innate calamity.

The moment a mind registered her, it brought the mental projection of Sansa within their subconscious to life. From the inside out, she could access their deepest memories on her true self’s behalf, instantly alerting the real Sansa the second she found a concerning anomaly, a hidden slave brand, or a traitorous thought.

In a few hours, as these tribal heads went back to brief their people, they would inadvertently pass the contagion to hundreds of thousands of Froslings. If the Snow Elves had planted spies, Sansa would be the one listening in on it before the elves even realized their spies had been compromised.

“Relax, Moon Fright,” I said smoothly, a cold, reassuring smirk playing on my lips. “I appreciate your vigilance, but I don’t walk into a snake pit without knowing how to handle venom. If there is a traitor among the tribal heads, or if the Snow Elves have anchored a cognitive curse to their souls, they are already playing a game they’ve lost.”

Moon Fright blinked, her anxious expression freezing as she tried to comprehend the absolute certainty in my voice. “You… you already accounted for this, Your Highness?”

“Let’s just say that the moment your leaders looked upon my retinue, their secrets stopped belonging to them,” I replied, tapping the armrest of my heavy chair. “Right now, my will is everywhere in Frosnow City. Not a single soul would attempt to leak a breath of our plan to the Snow Elves, and even if they did, it would only be because I wanted them to.”

Through our shared mental link, Sansa, who had already meticulously combed through the memories of every single Frosling she had encountered tonight, informed me of the surprising results: not a single one of them was compromised. Their loyalty to their own kind, and now to me, was entirely genuine.

She had yet to find a single spy. In fact, we were actually hoping to catch a hidden mole. If we did, Sansa wouldn’t just kill them; she would subtly alter their memories, turning them into unwitting double agents to feed the Snow Elves a massive stream of misinformation. But so far, the line was completely clean.

As baffling as it sounded for an entire subjugated race to have zero leaks, Sansa’s deep dive into their minds revealed the bizarre reason why: the extreme, borderline insane transparency measures used by the Frosling high command.

To completely eliminate paranoia and ensure total unity under the oppressive elven regime, the Chieftain and the thirty-six tribal heads regularly shared their raw memories with each other and their closest aides without any gaps. It was a brutal, raw psychological exposure that laid bare their entire lives, leaving absolutely no room for hidden agendas or Elven conspiracies.

In ordinary circumstances, such an extreme method to ensure trust was simply not possible. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Their shared suffering and vision had made this radical method possible, turning it into an impenetrable mental firewall.

Actually they wanted Moon Fright to undergo same memory sharing ritual, but didn’t not wanting get on my bad side.

Moon Fright let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for centuries, her shoulders visibly slumping as the crushing weight of suspicion evaporated. “They… they really are all clean? Even Tribal Head IronFrost? There are rumors about his recent secret meetings with the Elven overseers…”

“He was negotiating for extra heat-stone elixirs for infants and pregnant women of his tribe, nothing more,” I cut her off gently, dismissing her lingering doubts. “He hates them just as much as you do. Your people are more unified than I originally assumed, Moon Fright. The Chieftain amd other tribal heads knew. They were all in on it. Trying to trick the Snow Elves out of few batches of elixirs. Honestly, I’m impressed by the resolve of your people.”