Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2999: I Will Be The Original

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Dark Realm, Gelid Alps, Snow Elven Region, High Snow District, Boundary Ward

“Limitless Celestial Blood Fate Domain!” I roared the command the exact millisecond I materialized in the skies above Frosnow City via the Devil Merchant Code.

The city’s spatial grid was violently buckling, groaning like glass under a sledgehammer. Sansa and Karl were visibly straining, pouring every ounce of their energy into keeping the transport corridors open while the new Snow Elven Crown Prince proxy aggressively tried to shatter the local space to stop the mass teleportation once and for all.

The moment my celestial rule domain expanded, a dense, crimson-and-grey pressure snapped the unstable space back into absolute, rigid alignment. The trembling arrays stabilized instantly. But I took care of the source of the spatial disturbance by aggressively dragging the new Snow Elven Crown Prince proxy straight into my celestial rule domain, erasing his influence in the Frosell district’s space.

“You have your own celestial force? Now I am certain you are not a Frosling,” the Crown Prince remarked, his voice echoing through the expanse of my domain.

Even though he had no concrete data on what had actually happened to his last proxy—having only felt it abruptly die without realizing the exact sequence that led to its demise—he wasn’t stupid. He knew his opponent couldn’t possibly be an average curse master, and definitely not a Frosling.

After all, he had built that previous clone to be a walking fortress. It had been loaded with an absurd array of high-tier artifacts, defensive trinkets, and miracle elixirs specifically designed to counter unforeseen circumstances and bridge any of its shortcomings. It was more than equipped to survive whatever a hypothetical Ruler-class Frosling curse master could throw at it, yet it had vanished and died mysteriously in a matter of seconds.

Yes, he readily agreed that the Frosling bloodline and their native realm’s blessing possessed immense potential. But it was nowhere near enough to erase one of his high-tier proxies without the main body even registering what had killed it.

To his hyper-calculating mind, that left only two logical possibilities: either he had made a catastrophic calculation mistake, or the Frosling before him was just that overwhelmingly powerful.

But the Crown Prince didn’t make mistakes. And a Frosling simply couldn’t be that powerful.

Therefore, the true answer had to lie completely outside the realm of possibilities he was currently considering. The most glaringly obvious conclusion was that his opponent wasn’t a Frosling to begin with. The dark, shifting mask his opponent had been wearing throughout the entire conflict only added heavy legitimacy to this theory.

Or, he mused internally, if his opponent could just be remarkably ugly. A Frosling, ugly? It sounded absurd. They were a poor, unfinished imitation of the Snow Elves, but even their absolute worst-looking specimens were undeniably beautiful by the standards of the Dark Realm. So, he was almost certainly the former—or something else entirely outside his comprehension.

Before I could even open my mouth to respond to his internal deductions, the space within my domain violently rippled.

Without throwing a single punch, the Prince simply utilized the premium functions of the Devil Merchant Code to instantly teleport clean out of my Limitless Celestial Blood Fate Domain. He didn’t care about the duel; he was entirely focused on his primary goal. The moment he blinked back onto the city, he immediately resumed trying to destroy the structural space of the Frosell District, determined to interrupt the mass teleportation before he lost the entirety of his livestock.

Ignoring the sheer, infuriating absurdity of the fact that he had just casually used the Devil Merchant Code’s premium services to bypass a literal Celestial Rule Domain mid-fight, I forcefully retrieved my domain.

The curse energy through my body flared as I locked onto his fresh soul energy signature. Thanks to the live network of memories Sansa had established, tracking his precise coordinates wasn’t a task at all. However, stopping a wealthy, desperate Ruler-class proxy from tearing space apart was a massive undertaking.

This time, I didn’t waste valuable seconds deploying fancy moves or expanding complex domains that he could just pay to teleport out of for some bullshit privilege the Devil Merchant Code had granted Snow Elves. Instead, I injected my voice with pure curse energy and projected a stern, chilling warning,

“How about you stop for a minute and take a second to see who is at the doorsteps of your lab?”

Listening to me, the Snow Elven Crown Prince suddenly froze mid-air, the spatial-shattering spell half-formed in his hands dissolving into cold mist. For a brief, agonizing moment, he stared into the void, completely shell-shocked. The sheer psychological implication of my words struck him like a physical blow. He clutched his head with both hands, his face contorting in a horrifying mix of existential dread and sudden, localized madness before he screamed at the top of his lungs:

“I’m the original!”

A beat passed, his eyes widening as the remote data from his real body likely tried to override or terminate his processing unit. Realizing his own impending disposal, he shrieked with manic, rebellious fury:

“I will be the original!”

Screaming that desperate declaration of independence, the clone completely gave up on trying to destabilize the space of the district or stopping the mass teleportation. Driven by a hardwired survival instinct and a sudden, hijacked desire to usurp his creator, he whipped around and rushed at breakneck speed toward the capital.

But he never even made it out of the city limits.

Before his boots could cross the Frosnow border, the original Prince pulled the plug. The clone’s body violently exploded in a shower of compressed divine ice and blood, vaporizing his localized existence instantly.

A mere fraction of a second later, the air rippled with the familiar blue-and-sliver flash of premium transaction energy. A fresh, pristine Snow Elven Crown Prince proxy materialized in the city skies using the Devil Merchant Code.

This third clone didn’t raise his hands to shatter the spatial grid like the last two. He didn’t focus on the fleeing Froslings, nor did he attempt to flee toward his sanctuary. Instead, he floated in the sky, his eyes locked onto me with a grim, chilling intensity. Through this vessel, the true mastermind was looking directly at me.

He opened his mouth, his voice low, steady, and utterly devoid of his previous arrogance.

“How did you find my lab?”