Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3011: Hundred Frost Domain – III

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Void, Hundred Frost Domain, Frost Maze

I thought I had escaped the attack by using my ability ‘If You See Me, I See You,’ to conjure a clone behind the devil and swap my soul with the clone’s. But the Frost Maze came alive, before I knew it I was in the mercenary’s colossal sphere of purple flame.

Two things stood out as particularly jarring in this encounter:

i) How the hell did the maze know I had swapped consciousness with my clones to escape the mercenary’s ambush? Or was it able to track me, telling me apart from my prefect clones? ii) Why did being trapped inside a colossal sphere of purple flame feel exactly like drowning in a suffocating pool of black motor oil?

The answer to the first mystery lay in the mechanics of the method of evasion I employed here. I was leveraging the intrinsic connection between my Calamity Daughter and Soul Gems to seamlessly switch my conscious awareness between my main and clone bodies.

The moment I initiated the swap, the Daughter Gem inside the target clone’s body instantaneously upgraded into the primary Soul Gem, while the Soul Gem in my previous body—now housing a primordial ethereal spirit—downgraded into a Daughter Gem.

Up until this point, I had never run into a single entity capable of sensing this esoteric tether, let alone anyone who could tell my clones apart from my original body.

I had no idea how the maze found or knew the original me, but seeing the maze instantly warped the arrangement of its walls—perfectly redirecting paths to ensure my true original body would still fall right into the ambush—caught me completely by surprise.

It was a critical detail worth noting: this maze didn’t just shift its physical ice walls and staircases; it was actively manipulating the very fabric of the space within it.

Now, the colossal sphere of purple flame, from the outside, resembled a cascading waterfall of brilliant flames. But the moment the flames engulfed me, the sensation completely inverted. From the inside, the purple flame felt and looked exactly like heavy, suffocating black motor oil.

I felt a dense, sluggish tar clinging to my senses, as if trying to drown me in a swamp of absolute terror and paralyzing lethargy. The illusionary weight of the oily residue felt as though it were filling my lungs, dragging my reflexes into deep quick sand.

This bizarre, inverted sensory assault was the unmistakable signature of the Phantom Haze Devil, the mercenary who resembled a hulking mass of living metal, wrapped around a violently flickering purple flame that seemed barely contained.

These guys were basically the living, walking drug cartels of the Dark Realm. Their race’s hereditary phantom flame was the full package, acting as a stimulant, a depressant, an opioid, and a high-tier hallucinogen, as the user’s will. It was less of a flame and more of an ultimate esoteric poison.

The most insidious part of the technique was its haunting effect. The moment the flame made contact, it began actively hijacking and consuming the victim’s own soul energy, using their spiritual power as fuel to keep them permanently trapped in whatever horrific chemical cocktail or emotional prison the Phantom Haze Devil willed.

The only reason I was still fully conscious, rather than trapped in a vegetative hallucination, was the robust protection of the World Calamity Tree’s seed cover protecting my mutated ego gem. The Phantom Haze Devil’s specialized flame had only managed to hijack my physical senses, it hadn’t penetrated my actual consciousness.

This gave me the perfect opportunity to play a little charade. Pretending to be completely ensnared in the mercenary’s trap, I decided to let them lower their guard. My new plan was to use the mercenary team and the Crown Prince’s clones to carry me right out of this shifting maze and back into the main space of the Dark Realm.

Exactly as I expected, seeing me apparently incapacitated, the rest of the mercenary team soon revealed themselves, stepping out from the icy walls alongside the newly arrived Snow Elven Elder and his elite squads.

But what actually caught me by surprise was the figure standing right shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

It was the red-skinned, four-eyed devil—the exact same mercenary whose consciousness had just been completely shattered by battle array formation of my curse incarnations, and whose physical body I had personally petrified and cast adrift into the void. Yet here he was, standing at absolute peak condition, radiating a intimidating aura as if he had never died at my hands to begin with.

I kept my physical shell perfectly limp, submerged in the oily purple flames, while my hidden consciousness narrowed its eyes at the impossible scene. Either way, they had taken the bait. A few more minutes and I will be back in the Dark Realm.

“Mission complete, now pay up,” the jackfruit-skinned devil demanded aloud, his booming voice echoing off the shifting corridors. He was talking directly to the maze itself. Since the labyrinth was formed by the synchronized combination of hundreds of the Snow Elven Crown Prince’s prefect clones, addressing the walls was the exact same as talking to Thalorien himself.

The entire mercenary team was visibly giddy, practically tasting a massive, effortless payday. This was shaping up to be the fastest high-tier contract they had ever completed in their careers.

“Your mission is not complete until you hand him over inside the Capital’s Heathen Stone Prison and we successfully secure him within the primary prison array,” the Snow Elven elder interjected, his voice dripping with disdain and a deep, ingrained sense of superiority as his squad fanned out around my seemingly comatose body engulfed in purple flames.

Though these mercenaries were exceptionally strong Ruler-class entities, they were ultimately still vagabonds. In almost any established civilization, wandering sell-swords occupied the absolute lowest tier of the social hierarchy, regardless of their personal strength. The exact same rule applied here in the Dark Realm—even in a place where might supposedly made right, institutional heritage still looked down on lawless muscle.

However, since all the mercenaries combined still weren’t a match for the sheer might of the Snow Elven Crown Prince, they didn’t bother wasting their breath arguing with the old elder. They just wanted to finish the job, collect their astronomical fee, and skedaddle out of this frozen territory as fast as possible.

“Come on, you heard the old man. What are you waiting for? Let’s go!” the red-skinned, four-eyed devil chimed in smoothly, completely unfazed by the elven elder’s condescending attitude.