Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3152: A World Capable Of Sustaining & Surviving True Evil

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Azorheim, Temporal Cave Valley, Temporal Cave No. ES3030

Learning that the entire realm had adapted to survive its own creations would be a lie if I said it didn’t make me a little worried. These creatures had essentially forced their realm’s Will to adapt to them or die.

Not in the literal sense, of course.

But when creatures with such absurd biology multiplied uncontrollably inside a limited realm, what else could happen? They would consume every available resource faster than the ecosystem could replenish it. Eventually, the forests would disappear, the prey animals would be hunted down, the rivers would be depleted, and the natural cycle sustaining the realm would collapse.

Ordinary creatures would die.

These bastards probably wouldn’t even notice.

Their bodies consumed such an infinitesimal amount of energy and stamina that they could continue surviving long after everything around them had been exhausted. They didn’t need fertile fields, abundant prey, or thriving forests to remain alive. They could simply keep going.

They had essentially created their own version of a Mad Max dystopia, except there wouldn’t even be enough resources left to fight over, with the only resource remaining being themselves.

Yep, I was talking about cannibalism.

Their physique, combined with their sheer numbers, created the perfect conditions for it to work. There were so many of them that they could keep that cycle going for several millennia, consuming one another and replenishing their numbers in an endless, brutal loop.

That would give the ecosystem just enough time to recover.

Life was stubborn like that. Given enough time, plants would return, microorganisms would spread, small creatures would appear, and eventually, an entirely new ecosystem might begin to take shape.

They could keep themselves alive by consuming one another while the world around them finally began to heal.

Only for these creatures to consume it all again before it could properly establish itself. Then the cycle would repeat. Again, again, and again.

Now imagine that process continuing not for a few centuries or even millions of years, but across countless millennia. Over the course of several million millennia, there should have been almost no chance of an ecosystem surviving these creatures’ tyranny long enough to properly establish itself, let alone thrive with them still living within it.

Yet one had. That was the part that bothered me.

Because how could an ecosystem repeatedly subjected to this kind of destruction eventually become capable of surviving alongside the very creatures responsible for it?

Wasn’t that the same as the nature of the realm itself shaping around these creatures?

Wasn’t that the realm adapting to its own creation?

Normally, it was the realm that shaped its creatures. The environment determined what could survive, what would perish, and what kind of life could flourish within its boundaries.

But after existing for such an incomprehensibly long period alongside the True Evil, the relationship had been reversed. The realm had been forced to change around them.

It had essentially been given two choices: adapt to the creatures it had created, or allow its own creation to destroy the environment that sustained it. And the realm had chosen the former, there was little choice.

That realization was far more unsettling than simply knowing how dangerous the True Evil were.

I wasn’t entering a realm where a dangerous species happened to live.

I was entering a realm that had evolved to sustain creatures called the True Evil.

That distinction made the entire situation far more terrifying. A normal ecosystem was already dangerous, with predators hunting prey, prey developing ways to escape them, and every creature evolving to survive the dangers around it.

Now imagine an ecosystem where the entire food chain had been forced to evolve around creatures that even Dark Races, beings considered among the vilest races in the Myriad Realms, had labeled as True Evil.

Every predator would have to become more dangerous to survive. Every prey species would need its own ways of escaping death. Even the creatures at the bottom of the food chain would have evolved defenses against things that were already terrifying by our standards.

This wasn’t simply an ecosystem that had adapted to True Evil. It was an ecosystem shaped by them.

A normal ecosystem would have collapsed under the existence of these creatures. Their numbers, their absurd appetite, and their near-infinite endurance should have been enough to strip a realm bare. Yet this realm’s new eco-system had survived them for millions upon millions of millennia adapting around them, developing to become capable of recovering from their consumption, their moods, and continuing to support them.

That meant the nature of this realm itself had been shaped by the True Evil’s need to live in the present. And if that was the case, then I really didn’t want to imagine what its natural environment looked like.

Every part of the ecosystem had had an absurdly long time to adapt to these creatures. Plants, beasts, microorganisms, resources, and even the natural cycles of the realm could have evolved under the pressure created by their existence. Anything incapable of surviving alongside the True Evil would have been wiped out long ago. Only things capable of enduring them, adapting fast enough would have survived.

In other words, the realm had spent millions of millennia filtering its own nature through the presence of the True Evil.

A normal ecosystem was already full of dangers, this realm’s dangers were going to nightmare similar to the True Evil themselves. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of ecosystem could emerge from that process.

The truly terrifying part was trying to imagine what the realm had been forced to become in order to keep these creatures alive. The records in the infinity library barely painted a picture.

I was about to enter an ecosystem that had spent millions upon millions of millennia adapting itself around True Evil. For all I knew, the True Evil weren’t the most terrifying things in their own realm. They were simply the reason everything else had become so terrifying.