Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2939: Aqualas’s Trick - II

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Blossom District, Sky Blossom City

”Looking for these?” I casually raised my hand. Resting in my palm were his missing fists. I tossed them into the air and caught them again as though they were nothing more than toys.

Veerott’s eyes locked onto them.

While his arms had been trapped inside my body, I had combined ruler-class curses with my Myriad Devil Transformations skill to attack them directly. My flesh had become a living laboratory, flooding the trapped limbs with corrosive compounds, destructive curses, and biological alterations specifically designed to overcome physical durability. It would have killed a normal noble class being.

Veerott survived only because he was a Viltronian. His pure Viltronian physique was absurdly powerful. Strong enough to ignore most forms of damage and recover from wounds that would kill almost anyone else. Unfortunately for him, I possessed Soul Pupils.

Physical durability meant very little when I could observe his body soul pathway by soul pathway and target its weaknesses with ruler-class curses. Reducing his hands to amputated stumps was honestly one of the gentler options available to me.

I glanced at the horrified expression on his face and shrugged. He was lucky I intended to recruit him. If my goal had been to kill him rather than break his will, I could have done far worse.

I could have turned every cell in his body against itself, transformed his nerves into instruments of torture, or left wounds that would haunt his dreams long after the battle ended.

Compared to those possibilities, losing a pair of hands was mercy, even a lesson if you will.

Veerott stared at me juggling his severed fists in complete horror. He genuinely had no idea what had happened.

Unlike most people, Veerott hadn’t grown up surrounded by civilizations. He had spent most of his life in Way beyond fending for himself barely surviving until he met Aqualas. He was so isolated that many concepts others considered common knowledge had only been introduced to him later by Seraphina.

As far as he was concerned, I had somehow magically stolen his hands. So, gathering every ounce of his blunt Viltronian courage, he pointed his amputated arms at me and demanded, ”Give them back. They’re mine.”

”Sure, here you go.” I tossed the fists toward him. Veerott instinctively moved to catch them. Then, at the last moment, celestial force halted them midair and pulled them back into my hand.

I blinked innocently as I teased him, ”Oh, right. I forgot you don’t have hands to catch them with.”

The muscles on Veerott’s face twitched. For a moment, I thought he might actually explode from rage. But a voice interrupted us.

”Wyatt, this is too much!”

Seraphina was finally forced to intervene. Not because she felt sorry for Veerott. Well, perhaps a little. The real problem was Aqualas.

The moment she saw Veerott losing his hands and being mocked, she nearly charged into the battlefield herself. Her body was already leaning forward, rule power gathering around her as though she were preparing to ignore the wager entirely.

Seraphina immediately stepped in front of her. She had to. If Aqualas entered the fight, Veerott would lose by default due to outside interference. And that would create an even bigger disaster.

Unlike most people, Veerott took wagers, promises, and challenges extremely seriously. He might look like an illiterate, muscle-brained brute, but his sense of honor was surprisingly rigid.

If Aqualas interfered on his behalf, he wouldn’t thank her. He would be furious. Not only would his pride be wounded, but he would also immediately acknowledge the wager as lost. Then, regardless of how unfair the circumstances were, he would willingly accept becoming Southern Hope’s subordinate for the remainder of his life.

That was simply the kind of person Veerott was. Unfortunately for Seraphina, that same stubborn honor was exactly why Aqualas wanted to help him. And judging from the murderous glare she was directing at me, she was rapidly running out of patience.

”What the fuck is that supposed to mean? This is a duel. He’s lucky I stopped at his hands.”

I shot back immediately, glancing at Aqualas with amusement. She was glaring at me as though she wanted nothing more than to rip my head off.

The funny thing was that she seemed to have forgotten she was still trapped inside my thousand curse fields. I could have reminded her, but I chose not to.

I understood Veerott well enough to know that if I insulted or humiliated his friends in front of him, he would fight me to the bitter end no matter the odds. And that wasn’t how you recruited capable subordinates.

But I did continue to juggle the two severed fists. Turning back to Veerott, I asked calmly, ”Do you admit defeat?”

”I can still fight.” Veerott raised his amputated arms. Without hands, they resembled crude clubs made of flesh and bone, yet he held them ready to continue. The sight would have been ridiculous if it weren’t so stubbornly admirable.

”Dude, just give up already. Unless you want to lose the rest of your arms and legs too.”

I genuinely meant it as a warning. Unfortunately, I already knew it was pointless. The opportunity to break his will had slipped away.

Seraphina was pretending not to notice, but I had seen exactly what happened. Aqualas had secretly used her spiritual ability on Veerott when she cried out to him asking him to wake up and not lose.

The effect wasn’t strong enough to directly remove ruler-class curses. If it were, I wouldn’t have bothered using the curses in the first place. What it did accomplish was far more subtle.

Her ability continuously strengthened Veerott’s will power and his Viltronian physiology, that washed away the foreign influences affecting Veerott’s mind, reinforcing his sense of self and restoring his clarity whenever the curses tried to cloud it.

Individually, her spiritual ability’s effect was not enough to challenge ruler-class curses. This way, however, it created a feedback loop.

A stronger will allowed Veerott to resist the curses more effectively. A stronger body helped him endure their effects longer. And the more he resisted, the easier it became for his absurd Viltronian physique to gradually purge the lingering influences from his system.

In other words, Aqualas wasn’t countering my curses directly. She was helping Veerott counter them himself.

It was a clever solution, annoyingly clever. Had she stayed out of it, Veerott would have surrendered by now. Instead, despite losing both hands and being battered by curses from every direction, the idiot was somehow standing straighter than before with a fighting spirit stronger than ever.

Unfortunately for me, the one person who should know about her trickery had no idea. He just assumed his willpower overcame the influence of the curses. As a result, he was more pumped up than ever.