Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3108: World Devouring Celestial

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Lil’ Red Storm Realm

While Dalia focused on saving her two suns, Thalorien immediately seized the opportunity.

The clone’s self-destruction had put an end to the void guzzler and forced Dalia to devote a significant portion of her attention and Celestial force toward preventing the suns from freezing. The Frost Rule lingering from the explosion continued spreading across their surfaces, while their rotation gradually slowed despite Dalia’s efforts to sustain their momentum.

Though they escaped the pull of Void Guzzler, Thalorien and his Frost Rule Stream Spirit were still trapped within the range of the celestial array formation and remained under its influence. Escape was not an option. So, they attacked.

The Frost Rule Stream Spirit rushed toward the suns, intending to make use of the cold left behind by the clone’s explosion before Dalia could completely purge it. Meanwhile, Thalorien quietly approached the Celestial Treant. He had learned his lesson about competing with Dalia in physical combat. This time, he had no intention of exchanging punches.

Suppressing the presence of his Frost Rule as much as possible, Thalorien approached through the scattered snow and frozen debris left behind by the previous exchanges. His massive body moved through the void until he was directly behind the Celestial Treant.

Then he struck. Thalorien’s arm shot toward Dalia’s chest. His intention was simple. Drive his hand through her body and release the accumulated Frost Rule inside her, freezing the Treant from within before she could react.

But just as his hand was about to pierce her chest, one of the half dozen moons suddenly broke formation.

*CRACK!* The moon crashed into Thalorien’s arm. His Frost Incarnation’s hand shattered and broke cleanly away. Before he could even react to the loss, another moon broke away from the celestial formation and rushed directly toward his head. Thalorien immediately retreated. The moon tore past him, forcing him to abandon the attack entirely.

“I told you to butt out!” Dalia shouted aloud. Her expression was filled with frustration. The moons hadn’t moved according to her command. Hive Spirit had automatically intervened, overriding her instructions to remain uninvolved in the battle. No matter how much Dalia argued, Hive Spirit refused to obey because her younger brother had left it with a higher-priority order to protect her, even if that protection was required against Dalia’s own decisions.

That only made her angrier. Dalia wanted to prove to her younger brother that he could depend on his elder sister. Not that she was so helpless that, even while her younger brother faced his own Celestial-level threat elsewhere, he still needed to remotely babysit her through Hive Spirit. She had accepted this fight. She wanted to win it herself.

Turning her furious gaze toward Thalorien, Dalia quickly made a decision. If Hive Spirit insisted on interfering, then she would give it something useful to do. She left the Frost Rule Stream Spirit to Hive Spirit.

Assigning it to protect the two suns from the growing frost and intercept the approaching Stream Spirit, Dalia finally freed herself from having to divide her attention between Thalorien and the celestial bodies behind her.

Then she turned, her gaze landing on the Frost Rule Incarnation. Thalorien had already retreated to a safe distance. The broken arm of his incarnation was rapidly regenerating, new frost, snow, and Rule Power gathering around the severed wrist until an identical arm formed once again. Their eyes met. Neither spoke. But both understood.

The battle had reached the point where neither intended to back down. Dalia hadn’t forgotten her mission. She still had to capture Thalorien alive. But at that moment, her resolve remained unchanged. If it came down to choosing between her life and completing the mission, she would rather die than fail.

Meanwhile, Thalorien had reached the end of his patience. He possessed millions of Frost Rule Meanings, each with its own property and application. Among them was a particular Frost Rule Meaning responsible for the unnatural characteristics of the Tarnished Glacier of the Black Sea.

He had been using that Rule Meaning since the beginning of the battle. Not to directly attack Dalia. But to explore.

The Tarnished Glacier’s Frost Rule Meaning allowed his senses to spread through and interact with foreign structures in ways ordinary frost could not. Through it, Thalorien had been carefully probing the celestial array formation, searching for weaknesses, hidden nodes, structural flaws, or anything that could reveal how the formation truly functioned.

The more he explored, the more shocked he became. Because the celestial array formation wasn’t merely active. It was alive.

At first, Thalorien thought he was mistaken. An array could react automatically. An advanced formation could adapt to attacks. A Celestial array could even alter its own structure according to changing circumstances.

But this was different. The formation didn’t merely react. It behaved like a living organism. His frost encountered resistance, but that resistance wasn’t fixed. The array adjusted. When he identified what appeared to be a vulnerable point, a new defensive mechanism emerged around it. When he attempted to exploit a weakness, the surrounding structure shifted to compensate.

His frost in this form was capable of freezing energy, but it would freeze the Celestial Will of the Lil Red Storm Realm. It broke out and took a massive form looking like a Celestial Trent controlling all the celestial bodies in its surrounding.

Attacking it was no different from attacking a living creature. A creature could have vulnerable organs, but those organs weren’t left exposed. Bone, muscle, skin, blood, and instinctive reactions all existed to protect them. The celestial array formation possessed something similar. Only on an absurd scale.

And eventually, Thalorien discovered that the Lil’ Red Storm Realm’s Celestial Will wasn’t merely the core of the formation. It was the formation’s soul. The entire celestial array formation was one enormous living entity on the level of a powerful celestial. The realization sent a chill through Thalorien.

Unfortunately for Thalorien, he had seen nothing yet. Until now, he had been facing the Array Formation Celestial, but what awaited him was the World-Devouring Celestial.

…

AN: Some readers reported that this month’s giveaway code was showing as incorrect when they tried to redeem it. The code was indeed incorrect. I used Google Lens to copy and paste it, and it mistakenly interpreted Q as O. I should have double-checked it.

Here’s the correct code:

P.S. Please redeem it as soon as possible, as the code will expire at the end of the month. Reminder, code can only be redeemed by the first ten users.