Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2963: Creator, Protector, and Destroyer

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

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

“I knew it!” Seraphina’s eyes lit up as though she had finally won a long and exhausting battle.

She celebrated far too early. The mere fact that Southern Hope had complimented her deduction was enough for her to treat it as absolute confirmation. Honestly, it was a little embarrassing.

Also, the first thing she did when she thought that she and her friends might be trapped in an artificial reality was celebrate solving the mystery, it was painful to watch.

It was painfully obvious that she desperately needed a win, any win. It seems, after the disastrous series of events today, even a moral victory seemed enough to lift her spirits.

“What?” Aqualas blinked. “We’re in an illusion? But it doesn’t feel like an illusion at all.”

For the first time, Aqualas genuinely began wondering whether Seraphina had finally cracked under the pressure. The day had been rough, extremely rough. People had broken under far less.

“Wyatt,” Petra suddenly turned toward me. Her expression was unusually serious. “Are we really in an illusion?”

Of everyone present, Petra was perhaps the most confused. Her innate ability had repeatedly denied the existence of any illusion, again, and again, and again. Every instinct she possessed insisted that the reality before her was genuine, real, authentic.

Yet at the same time… Something felt wrong. Fundamentally wrong. The rule power flowing through her. The soul energy permeates the surroundings. Her ability kept detecting subtle irregularities, tiny inconsistencies, but not enough to declare the world false. But enough to whisper that something wasn’t quite right. It was like tasting a familiar dish prepared with slightly different ingredients.

The flavor remained almost identical. Yet something deep inside you knew it wasn’t the original. If this wasn’t an illusion… Then what was it? The question gnawed at Petra only when Seraphina asked it. Before that she knew something was wrong but had no idea where to begin.

But now that she did, her ability no longer warned her but revealed the truth to her that reality wasn’t fake, but the reality itself had changed. And those were two very different things. One meant deception. The other meant something far more terrifying. That they had never been seeing an illusion at all. They had simply stopped standing in the same world they thought they were in.

Now that she knew the truth, for a split second, Petra felt a toxic surge of satisfaction watching Aqualas suffer. That serves her right. The thought flashed through her mind before she could stop it. Then came the cold dread, if Southern Hope could do this to Aqualas… Then he could do the same to her.

That realization sent a chill through her. She was no different than Aqualas in this reality, what chance did Petra have if Southern Hope ever decided to turn against her? Forcing down her frustration, Petra cautiously approached him.

For perhaps the first time since they had formed their strange alliance, she genuinely felt its foundation beginning to crack. It wasn’t even a matter of broken trust. That implied trust had existed in the first place. Aside from being absurdly powerful and occasionally useful, Southern Hope had never given her many reasons to trust him.

He shared information only when it suited him, ignored her when it suited him, disappeared when it suited him, and somehow expected everyone else to simply keep up. What exactly was she supposed to make of him from that? An ally? A friend? Or merely a convenient companion until circumstances changed?

Petra didn’t know. And that uncertainty bothered her more than she cared to admit.

“Wyatt.” Her voice carried unusual seriousness. “Then what exactly is this place?”

I glanced at her. Then at the others. Finally, I answered, shaking my head, “No, this is not an illusion.”

“It’s a sub-reality identical to the original,” I spoke casually, as though discussing the weather. “Only here…”

I spread my arms slightly announcing, “I’m the creator, the protector, and the destroyer.”

Silence, absolute silence followed as the weight of those words sank into everyone present.

Aqualas’ pupils contracted and Seraphina’s face lost all color. Even Veerott stared at me with widened eyes. Petra simply stood frozen because she could tell, I wasn’t boasting I was stating a fact.

“I swapped the original reality with mine during the heat of battle.” I shrugged. My gaze drifted toward Seraphina. “Honestly, I expected you all to notice sooner. I’m actually surprised Seraphina was the first to catch on. Especially you Petra.”

Petra blinked. “Me?”

I nodded. “I really thought you’d be the first.”

Her ability had already sensed the inconsistencies, the altered rule power and soul energy. She had been closer to the truth than anyone else. Yet somehow, she had stopped just short of the answer.

Petra lowered her gaze. For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, my words didn’t feel like praise. They felt like disappointment. And strangely enough… That bothered her far more than she expected.

“What do you mean you changed reality?! That’s impossible—stop lying! This is an illusion” Seraphina shouted, her voice cracking as her brain finally processed the terrifying implications and sheer scale of what I was claiming.

She flatly refused to believe that someone could just swap out reality itself without any of them noticing. Worse, he claimed this entire realm was his. It wasn’t that reality-manipulating card apprentices didn’t exist, but what the Southern Hope claimed to have pulled off was simply beyond her comprehension. If he was telling the truth, it meant that even before Veerott chose to ally with him, there was absolutely nothing—nothing at all—stopping him from launching a campaign for world domination.

There would be no stopping a being like that.

A cold realization washed over her, making her question her own sanity: What the hell was I thinking, challenging someone like this? She hadn’t just challenged him; she had threatened him and everyone he cared about. For a demigod, she suddenly found herself sweating profusely just thinking about the repercussions. It was sheer survival instinct that made her desperately cling to denial—she simply refused to believe such a terrifying feat was possible, claiming all of this to be an illusion.