Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2543: Secret’s Out

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Central Region, Central Academic City, Morningstar University District, Morningstar University Campus, Garden of Beginning, Time Vestige, Morningstar University 2nd Campus

”I don’t know. I still feel that way. Fearing your strength, I have no choice but to resign myself to fate,” Lucine said, shaking her head with exaggerated helplessness.

Even without Future Finding, she was still a formidable opponent. The way she handled me without relying on her trusty time rule meaning was proof enough. She didn’t win, but she managed to change my stance—from planning to declare war on the top ten universities to seriously considering forming cooperative ties with them instead.

”Out of our friendship,” she added with a dramatic sigh, ”if you do end up killing me because of your insanity, I promise I won’t haunt you.”

”Please haunt me—I’m begging you,” I said with a grin. ”I’ll catch your soul and use it as an ingredient to craft an undead summon card. An undead that can wield time rules... now that’s a dream.”

I stared at her with exaggerated intensity, and Lucine actually shuddered, taking a step back in genuine fright. Seeing this, I couldn’t help but sigh, ’Woman, you really have a very low opinion of me.’

”On a serious note, do you think there’s something wrong with me?” I asked, trying to get a sense of how natives of the Myriad Realm would instinctively react after discovering I was an unforeseen variable in their timeline. I needed to know what kind of response to expect if I ever crossed paths with someone who had the ability—and the rule meaning comprehension—to peer into the future. That way, I could at least prepare myself.

Lucine was kind, and she was weaker than me, so this situation was manageable. But if it were a ruler-class being with a personality... I would be caught completely unprepared.

”I don’t think so,” she replied. ”If something were truly wrong with you, the timeline wouldn’t be adjusting to accommodate your presence. It would be trying to kill you or force you out—just like how a body destroys harmful pathogens that slip in, yet accepts the antibodies we introduce.”

”Timelines have their own mechanics,” she continued calmly. ”There’s no point worrying about it right now. If the timeline considered you dangerous, nothing and no one I can think of could stop it from reacting however it wanted. Besides, if you were harmful to it would have destroyed you already.”

Listening to Lucine, I let out a quiet breath—not because I fully agreed with her, but because she didn’t show even a hint of hostility toward me after learning I was a time variable. That alone was reassuring. It suggested that other future seers might also react without fear or aggression learning the impact of my existence on the timeline.

My reasoning was simple: people instinctively find puppies and kittens adorable, but recoil in disgust from feces regardless of their race across the globe. Instinct comes first. And if future seers didn’t instinctively feel threatened by someone like me, then their first thought toward me wouldn’t be to deal with me. That was all I needed. Curiosity I could handle—hostility was the real danger. As long as they didn’t perceive me as something poisonous to the timeline, I had nothing immediate to fear.

Thinking along those lines, my mind drifted back to my first encounter with Librarian Jr. Zaltan. We had met only once, yet for reasons unknown to me, he went out of his way to help me—just enough to make me owe him a favor. Not only that, he entrusted Dredre to me as my personal book guide and even slipped information on how to evolve a Pixie into an Elder Pixie into one of the books, as if he wanted me to find it and use it to help Dredre become an Elder Pixie.

I never fully understood why someone with his status would bother with a non-native demon merchant. Why make a mortal owe him anything? Why hand over something from his father’s treasured collection? Back then, he led me to believe it was because I treated the Pixies fairly, unlike the other demon and devil merchants.

But now... I couldn’t help but question that assumption and wonder if he was like Lucine—a Future Seer—then things made a lot more sense. Maybe he saw that I was a time variable. Maybe he noticed how the timeline became murky around me. If so, that would explain his sudden interest and his willingness to invest in me despite it being that either of us has met the other for the first meeting.

It explained a lot—but it was still only speculation. All I could do was accept things as they were. Even if I learned the truth, it wouldn’t change anything. I owed him, and when the time came to repay that debt, I would—so long as it didn’t go against my interests.

After all, he did help me when I needed it most. His small investment had made my life far easier and far brighter. Honestly, I doubted I could have achieved even a tenth of what I had without Dredre. She was my miracle—my little lucky charm.

’My god, I miss her laughter.’ Just thinking of Dredre made a wave of homesickness crash through me. An urgency welled up inside me—a need to finish everything here as quickly as possible so I could return to my little wind chimes.

When I glanced at Lucine, I caught her frozen in place, staring blankly into the void. She was trying to use Future Finding again. And failing. Still. I had no idea when she would finally take the hint. She was definitely curious—probably bursting with questions—but she kept them to herself, knowing she wouldn’t get any answers out of me and that her curiosity would only give me more leverage.

”Hey, Lucine,” I called out casually. ”How attached are you to your human demigod body?”