Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2797: Rewriting Cause And Effect

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Blossom District, Three Mischief Encampment

’Where am I?’

I could tell that I was—that much remained undeniable—but everything else slipped through my grasp like water. Where? When? Why? Who? How? The questions formed, only to collapse before they could fully exist, as if even thought itself had lost its structure. The last thing I remembered was reality unraveling around us, not shattering or exploding, but quietly unwinding, like a thread being pulled loose from existence itself.

It hadn’t been destruction in the usual sense. There was no violence, no rupture—just a failure of the rules that held everything together. Cause no longer led to effect, and without that chain, existence had nothing to anchor it. Everything regressed, peeling back layer by layer toward its most fundamental state.

Nothing.

Not darkness, not emptiness—those still implied the presence of something. This was deeper than that, a complete absence where even contrast ceased to exist. And yet, somehow, I remained.

That was the part that didn’t make sense.

If everything unraveled its fundamental state... then why am I?

Though even my thoughts felt like a foreign concept, something that shouldn’t exist in a place like this. There should have been no ”me” left to question anything. No observer, no identity, no continuity to hold it all together.

But there was.

I could feel it—faint, incomplete, like a fragment that had escaped being erased. Something within me hadn’t dissolved when everything else did, as if I had been left behind when reality returned to nothing.

Which could only mean one thing—the unraveling hadn’t finished, not because it couldn’t, but because I hadn’t.

’I exist.’

The realization settled into me with quiet certainty. It wasn’t defiance or desperation, just a simple truth that refused to disappear. If I was still here, then the process that had erased everything had met its limit—and that limit was me.

’If I exist... then this isn’t over.’

The nothingness around me didn’t react, but it didn’t need to. The moment that thought took shape, something shifted. The unraveling, which had been absolute and indifferent, began to slow. Not because it was resisted, but because something had taken its place. Where cause and effect had collapsed, my will filled the gap.

’I am the cause.’

The words didn’t echo in the void, yet they carried weight. The instant they formed, they became real. And from that point, everything else followed.

The undone strands of reality responded as if they had been waiting for direction. What had unraveled began to intertwine again, not restoring what once was, but rebuilding itself along the line of my will. Each fragment that had regressed into nothing found its way back, anchored to the single thing that still remained.

Me. I was the origin, I was the cause. Because I was everything else was.

Like a chain re-forging itself link by link, causality returned. Cause led to effect once more—but now, I stood at the beginning of that chain.

”I lead... and reality follows.”

And just like that, existence returned—soul pathway by soul pathway, rule by rule—until it settled back into the exact moment it had begun to unravel, as if nothing had ever happened.

”Hahaha, you think I’m boasting?” the Emissary of Light laughed, as he and the Supreme Leader invoked their time rules simultaneously.

”...” Moments passed but nothing happened.

The world didn’t pause. Cause and effect didn’t get messed up. Spacetime didn’t unravel. Rules holding everything together didn’t stop working. Reality didn’t give away—only silence stretched across the battlefield, thick and unmoving.

Yes, one action demanded two completely different outcomes at the same spot. Yes, reality couldn’t deal with that kind of paradox so it didn’t unravel instead it rejected it. It was as if their power had been acknowledged... and then quietly denied.

The two of them glanced at each other, the confidence in their eyes cracking just slightly. This was their ultimate combination, a technique that had never failed them. A perfect contradiction of time that forced reality itself to break—a move with a flawless record.

With it, they had erased half a dozen supreme beings and wiped out over two dozen devils without exception. And yet, right now it failed them.

But the truth was far from what they understood. Their technique hadn’t failed. It had simply lost the right to happen. As their cause no longer leads to any effect.

I looked at them, steady and unmoved, as the restored flow of causality settled firmly under my will, replacing their cause and undoing their effect.

I turned to look at the Field Marshal. She, too, didn’t seem to have any idea what had actually happened. The duo’s ultimate combo was supposed to be inevitable. I had no idea how I survived, but I did, and I didn’t know if I could survive it again.

Honestly, I had a bunch of assumptions and speculations, and the Hive Spirit was looking into it, but nothing concrete yet. So I couldn’t guarantee that if the duo used that ultimate time rule combo again, I would come out unscathed.

So I mentally informed the Field Marshal, ’We have to split them. Together, they’re an even greater menace than when they are alone. Get your mystic dimension ready. I’ll send you and the Emissary of Light out now.’

The Field Marshal agreed immediately because she had never planned to leave her young lord alone in the company of someone as dangerous as the Supreme Leader. Even though she chose to fight the Emissary of Light, her first priority had always been protecting her young lord.

She had seen the Clown Mask’s memories of her future vision, and she knew the extent of terror the Supreme Leader was capable of. She had full faith in her young lord’s strength, but the person he was facing was the notorious Supreme Leader.

However, her young lord threw her and the Emissary of Light out of his domain without waiting for her response. Left with no choice, she could only continue with his arrangements, finish her task as fast as possible, and return to her young lord’s aid.