Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2519: Card Celestial’s Tantrum

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Central Region, Central Academic City, Morningstar University District, Morningstar University Campus, Garden of Beginning

”By the way, you don’t happen to have a high-rank dimensional storage card—one that can hold an alive egg, do you?” I asked Lucine, my eyes fixed on the massive wooden stake that was moments away from burning halfway through.

Now that the Evil-Sealing Thousand Curse Coffin and Slay had, in a way, fused into this grotesque egg before me, I no longer needed a delicate unranked storage card to carry it. Any storage card capable of storing living things would do.

This was my last chance—my only shot at salvaging at least half of the gigantic stake carved from the twig of a ruler-class World Calamity Tree so that I might still be able to use it to unlock the evolutionary condition for my fifth transformation.

”Huh, why—” Lucine began, but she stopped midway as realization dawned on her. Summoning her grimoire, she asked quickly, ”Do you want me to store the egg for you?”

”Would it be possible if I were to equip it to store the egg— Yes! Just store it, hurry!” I shouted, cutting myself off as I rushed toward the burning stake. Every second mattered now. I had to pull it out of the space-time fabric before the embers consumed it precisely halfway through—before the last chance to use it as an evolutionary catalyst went up in smoke.

Just as I pulled the stake free from the space-time fabric, my eyes met Lucine’s—we had moved in perfect sync. She had stored the grotesque egg away in her card at the exact moment I secured the stake and fed it to my primordial calamity soul gem. But before I could sense the chances in my mutated ego gem, the world itself seemed to shudder.

The Celestial Will of the Card World surged into the timeline like a tidal wave of divine fury. Its wrathful presence pressed down on us, crushing the air from our lungs. It wasn’t just me who felt it—she did too.

Lucine had met the Celestial Will before during her venture into the spiritual plane to comprehend rules and their means. This time, however, was nothing like her past encounters. She stiffened under the suffocating weight of its attention.

During her previous encounters, the Celestial Will had always regarded her with distant indifference—neither cold nor kind, a force greater than her that watched over her existence, giving her a sense of security in this vast expanse. Now, it was different.

”Wyatt, what’s going on?” Lucine asked, her voice low and strained, eyes darting around as the air itself quivered under the crushing weight of divine pressure.

Her heart raced. For the first time, she personally felt its attention. However, this time... it was different. Now, she could sense unexplained anger from it. She could feel the Celestial Will’s gaze on her—not distant or detached as before, but focused, seething. Its fury was unmistakable.

Was it because we tampered with time rule knowing the time taboos? No, that wasn’t it as the Labyrinth of Myriad Past had existed for centuries, the Celestial Will had never reacted like this before.

Then it hit her—the egg. The grotesque, pulsating mass she had just sealed inside her SSS-rank dimensional storage card. That had to be the reason. The Celestial Will was after Slay.

Her pulse quickened as the oppressive presence pressed harder against her spirit, demanding her to hand over the egg and she turned to me, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. ”Wyatt... is it because of the egg?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, hesitant but needing to know before making her next move.

”Yes, it is. Give me a second—I’ll work something out,” I told her, keeping my tone steady even as the divine pressure bore down on us harder.

Closing my eyes, I used my dual presence, one anchored in the physical world, the other extending into the spiritual plane. To help project my celestial voice across the fabric of both realms.

Through that resonance, I tried to convey my intent to the Card Celestial: that I had already disposed of the stake carved from the World Calamity Tree’s twig, and that Slay had been subdued. Neither posed a threat to it anymore.

It was my first time using the celestial voice and vision to communicate with another celestial. The only other time had been with Dalie, who—lonely and seeking kinship—had welcomed my hybrid presence rather than rejected it. The Card Celestial, however, was different. I couldn’t find it on either plane; it had concealed itself deliberately. Yet I could feel it watching, its will pressing against mine, vast and incomprehensible.

’Fuck, where the heck is it?’

Unable to locate it, I had no choice but to cast my voice into the void—a cry across the planes, earnest and desperate. I shouted my explanation, hoping the Celestial Will would listen... and that it would calm down before it decided to bring down its wrath on us both.

’it’s stupidly strong and unreasonably stubborn.’

As the moments dragged on and I got no response from the Card Celestial while its divine presence continued to press us, I began to regret my greed for the stake. If I had known that just speaking with a celestial—let alone persuading it to forgive Slay—would turn into such a nightmare, I would have risked everything to procure it.

I felt this way now that I had the stake and had no way to return it—even if I wanted to. That’s how greed works: when you don’t have something, you crave it desperately, convincing yourself it’s worth any cost. But once it’s in your hands, the thrill fades, and all that’s left is the weight of what it cost to get it.

It was times like these I couldn’t help but wonder if I was a gambler — a thrill-chasing adrenaline junkie. I wonder if that’s the adventurous spirit the people speak of.