Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3021: Nothing!

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Spiritual plane

I question what I don’t understand.

I don’t trust what I don’t understand.

But here’s the thing—my second life is one of those very things I don’t understand.

Why me? Why young Wyatt? Why the Wyatts?

I don’t understand a single bit of it. But that mystery never stopped me from living this life. It didn’t stop me from seeking a better life, fighting for it, and working myself to the bone for it.

So, why now? Why was I suddenly doubting the Causality Certainty Curse?

Especially when I was the one who specifically chose this curse to guide me through the dark. If I trusted the curse enough to meticulously weave it into my roster of 1,024 ruler-class curses, why was I hesitating at the path it just laid out for me?

It is human nature to fear what we don’t understand.

But I understood enough to make an educated choice. That was the entire reason I equipped the Causality Certainty Curse in the first place—to act as my compass when my own analytical mind hit a wall.

There was absolutely no logical reason to doubt it.

Realizing this changed everything. The hesitation vanished, and the weight of the decision lifted. This was no longer a choice. I knew exactly what I needed to do.

Regardless of how tempting the idea of upgrading or unlocking a new function of the Soul Pupil was, I had to rise about it, and logically. Even though I didn’t fully understand this logic. I had to comprehend the combination suggested by the Causality Certainty Curse.

Dual Existence.

If you see me, I see you.

Primordial Resonance.

It was time to begin.

At the Ice Rule bifurcation point, I stepped into the Rule Meaning that resonated with my Dual Existence soul trait and began comprehending it.

Almost immediately, something within me began to change. It wasn’t my body, nor was it the Rule Stream around me. The change was happening to my very being. The strangest part was that I never noticed it.

Hive Spirit did.

Despite the risk of disrupting my comprehension, it followed protocol and immediately reported the anomaly. According to Hive Spirit, the changes were initially so subtle that they were nearly impossible to detect. As an observer detached from my consciousness, however, it noticed every deviation.

The first change appeared in my thoughts.

Each thought took slightly longer to transition into the next. The difference was almost imperceptible at first, but it became increasingly apparent as my comprehension deepened. My comprehension of the Rule Meaning itself remained flawless, yet the rate at which every other process within my consciousness changed was steadily decreasing.

Soon, the same phenomenon spread throughout my entire being. My thoughts slowed, my perceptions slowed, even my awareness of my surroundings slowed.

It wasn’t that any part of me was being suppressed. Rather, every process that relied on change was gradually slowing because change itself was diminishing.

According to Hive Spirit, everything within me had slowed to the point where I should no longer have been capable of comprehending the Ice Rule Meaning. My consciousness had already fallen into a state where comprehension should have been impossible. Yet, inexplicably, my comprehension continued to deepen as if the Rule Meaning itself was carrying me forward.

The deeper my comprehension became, the more dormant my entire existence grew. Cold and stillness swept through my being, but I instinctively understood that they were merely consequences of this Ice Rule Meaning’s true nature.

The essence of the Ice Rule was not cold. It was a slower change in state, slower vibration of soul energy in soul pathways.

Every heartbeat was a change, every breath was a change, every thought, every perception, every action, every moment of existence was nothing more than one state transitioning into another. Without transition, there could be no perception of time, because time itself only possessed meaning through change.

Hive Spirit pushed itself to its absolute limit, desperately continuing its reports to my fading consciousness while simultaneously attempting to interrupt my comprehension in accordance with protocol. But I was no longer the one in control, the Rule Meaning was.

As my comprehension deepened, every transition within my being slowed further. The interval between heartbeats lengthened, each breath took longer to complete.

Even the Hive Spirit slowly reached its limit. Even with its terrifying processing power, it could no longer keep pace with the accelerating transformation overtaking me. One by one, its analyses, projections, and emergency protocols ground to a halt. The endless stream of notifications that had accompanied me for so long fell silent. For the first time since its birth, the Hive Spirit had nothing left it could do.

Right now, a single thought remained within my consciousness for what felt like an eternity before another could arise. Then even longer. Nothing had stopped. Everything was simply changing more slowly than before. Gradually, an unsettling realization dawned on me.

I wasn’t becoming slower. I was approaching the complete absence of change. If I continued, there would come a point where there would be no next heartbeat, no next breath, no next thought, not because they had been frozen, but because there would no longer exist any transition capable of producing them.

Without transition, awareness could not continue. Without awareness, existence itself lost meaning. Thought, life, time, causality, and existence itself were all processes born from change. As change approached perfect equilibrium, they naturally faded with it.

It was like witnessing the universe’s final destiny, the Big Freeze, unfold within my own being.

The universe did not perish in an instant. Every process simply became slower as it approached perfect equilibrium. Change diminished endlessly until it approached zero.

At that point, nothing needed to stop. There would simply be nothing left to change.

That was to say, I would no longer exist.

I was dying.

The moment my comprehension and mastery of this Ice Rule meaning reached the Ultimate Tier, I would become… nothing.