Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3118: Hacking A Devil Merchant Codex

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Lil’ Red Storm Realm

“Uh? How are you tampering with my Devil Merchant Codex?” Thalorien asked, forcing as much surprise into his voice as he could manage. He had already begun to suspect something was wrong when his wife failed to respond to his third message.

At first, he tried to dismiss it. She could have been occupied. Perhaps she had not noticed the message. Perhaps there was some interference with the communication network. There were countless possible explanations, and Thalorien was not the sort of person who would immediately jump to the worst conclusion.

But three unanswered messages were enough to make him suspicious. So instead of sending another message, he began reviewing his previous conversations through the Devil Merchant Codex.

He went through every exchange he had with his wife, then with his confidants, then with the other contacts he had communicated with during his investigation. He compared the messages he remembered sending with the records stored within the Codex.

That was when he noticed it. There was a discrepancy. The messages he remembered sending after Dalia’s roots had impaled his body were not reflected correctly in the communication records. Some messages appeared to have never existed. Others showed incomplete exchanges, as though one side of the conversation had simply vanished.

Thalorien’s expression became increasingly solemn as he went through the records. Then he found the most important discrepancy. The information he had attempted to transmit about Dalia had never reached anyone. None of his confidants had received it. His wife had never received it.

The warnings he believed he had sent about discovering a Celestial-level World-Devouring Tree, an abomination born from the fusion of a Celestial, a Celestial array formation, and a World-Devouring Tree seed, had never left the realm.

That was when Thalorien understood. Someone was manipulating his Devil Merchant Codex. And considering what had happened immediately before his communications stopped reaching the outside world, there was only one possible culprit, Dalia.

For a moment, genuine astonishment crossed Thalorien’s face. Then, unexpectedly, relief followed. If Dalia had merely discovered his intentions and was monitoring his communications, that was one thing. But if she had actually interfered with his Devil Merchant Codex itself, then she had made a potentially fatal mistake.

Thalorien knew better than most what happened to those who tampered with the Devil Merchant Codex. The Demon Merchant Code was a merchant through and through. It was willing to facilitate transactions, provide services, enforce contracts, and maintain the vast commercial network spanning the Myriad Realms.

But when it came to protecting its assets, the Demon Merchant Code was utterly ruthless. Every Devil Merchant Codex was ultimately one of its assets. Tampering with one without authorization was not merely an act of defiance. It was an attack on the Demon Merchant Code’s property.

If Thalorien had not been trapped in his current situation, he might have laughed aloud. Dalia had actually been foolish enough to hack into the Devil Merchant Code’s network. Right now, all he needed to do was wait.

Eventually, the Demon Merchant Code would detect that one of its Devil Merchant Codices had been compromised by a foreign entity. Once that happened, Dalia would have to deal with a force far more troublesome than anything Thalorien himself could currently summon.

Unfortunately, there was one problem. Thalorien was not entirely certain Dalia intended to give him enough time. Her words and actions had made one thing increasingly clear. She wanted him to accept the Primordial Calamity Daughter Gem she had offered him. If he refused willingly, Thalorien suspected she might eventually force the matter. And if forcing him was inconvenient, she might simply kill him.

He could not afford to wait around and discover which possibility she preferred. Therefore, he decided to stall. If he could make Dalia believe that he had only just discovered the tampering, perhaps he could buy himself enough time for the Demon Merchant Code to notice the intrusion.

Thalorien deliberately widened his eyes and allowed his expression to become one of shock and helpless disbelief. He made the accusation sound less like a calculated revelation and more like the panicked realization of someone who had just discovered his last lifeline had been compromised.

Internally, however, his thoughts were already racing. He was praying to the Demon Merchant Code to notice his Codex was hacked and tampered with by a foreign entity.

He no longer had any intention of exposing how much he had already deduced. For now, he needed Dalia to believe she had successfully caught him off guard. The longer she talked, the longer he had. And if the Demon Merchant Code truly lived up to its reputation, then sooner or later, it would come knocking.

Dalia looked at Thalorien with an amused expression. He was undoubtedly smart. Unfortunately, he was also a fool. At least, that was how Dalia saw it.

Regardless of whether she had actually tampered with his Devil Merchant Codex, Thalorien had made a fundamental mistake. He was underestimating the very entity whose creation he believed to be among the closest existences in the Myriad Realms to achieving transcendence.

Did he really believe something like that would be unable to notice an outsider interfering with one of its own Devil Merchant Codices already? And wasn’t he underestimating an entity capable of hacking the Devil Merchant Codex too much?

The truth was far simpler. Hive Spirit had never hacked into Thalorien’s Devil Merchant Codex.

It couldn’t. Perhaps Hive Spirit and the Demon Merchant Code were fundamentally similar in one regard. Both were essentially spells that had developed sentience. But that was where the comparison ended. Hive Spirit was still a baby compared to the Demon Merchant Code.

The latter had existed for an unfathomable period of time, had established a network spanning countless realms, and had accumulated knowledge and capabilities that Hive Spirit could not hope to match at its current stage. Also, believed to be one of the entities in the known Myriad Realms closest to attain transcendence.

Dalia had no intention of provoking such an existence by having Hive Spirit directly interfere with its creation. What Thalorien had discovered was not evidence of his Devil Merchant Codex being hacked at all. The discrepancy in his communication records had been caused by Thalorien himself. Or, more accurately, by the combination of Hive Spirit and Sansa’s Innate Calamity.

They had never needed to alter the Devil Merchant Codex. They only needed to alter the person using it. Sansa’s Innate Calamity had been quietly fogging Thalorien’s memories and decisions while Hive Spirit coordinated the process from the shadows. The interference was subtle enough that Thalorien never noticed anything was wrong.

He could remember composing a message to his wife. He could remember sending it. He could even remember the information contained within it. But the message had never actually been sent.

At another moment, he might notice a conversation that should have alerted him to something being wrong, only for his attention to slide away from it before he could properly examine the discrepancy. A thought would enter his mind, appear perfectly reasonable, and then be quietly discarded. A decision he believed he had made himself had actually been nudged into place. A memory he trusted completely had been gently reshaped around the truth.

None of it was dramatic enough to trigger his instincts. That was the point. Thalorien was looking for an enemy who had infiltrated his Devil Merchant Codex. He never considered that the enemy had instead infiltrated the process by which he remembered using it.

And now, because the manipulated memories appeared to contradict the records preserved by the Devil Merchant Codex, Thalorien had naturally reached the most reasonable conclusion available to him: Someone had tampered with his Codex.

Dalia almost wanted to laugh. He had correctly identified that something was wrong, but he failed to identify the truth.