Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3005: Change In Priorities

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Dark Realm, Gelid Alps, Snow Elven Region, Frosell District, Frosnow City

“Looks like the cavalry is here,” I muttered, watching multiple figures appear around me out of thin air one after the other.

Using the Devil Merchant Code, two entire squads of elite, Semi-Ruler class Snow Elves materialized in the air space of the Frosnow city. Leading them was a genuine, heavy-tier Ruler-class Snow Elf, their armor dripping with terrifying frost runes.

The Snow Elven reinforcements had officially arrived. I had honestly thought we would have the entire Frosell District cleared and be long gone before the high command could organize a response. But it seemed the sudden, mysterious death of the old Empyrean, combined with my clone violently knocking on the door of the Crown Prince’s secret Heathen Stone Prison, had set off every apocalyptic alarm in the empire, severely hastening their response time.

The only reason I wasn’t actively scrambling to defend the spatial grid right now was because, unlike Thalorien’s frantic clones, these military squads didn’t immediately attempt to shatter the district’s space or stop the mass teleportation.

Instead, every single one of their weapons, attacks, and killing intents locked directly onto me.

It wasn’t hard to read their strategy here. To the high command, trying to salvage or trap the remaining 20-30% of the fleeing Frosling population was a waste of resources. They wanted to capture me—the masked curse master who had single-handedly orchestrated this massive, impossible exodus right under their noses.

Their logic was cold, simple, and entirely military: if I possessed the spatial coordinates, knowledge, and the authority to help an entire slave race vanish from their region, then capturing and breaking me meant they could easily force me to bring the Froslings back—or, at the very least, extract their new location.

They weren’t wrong. I could do exactly that. The strategy was flawless on paper. But the real question was if they could capture me.

I looked at the Ruler-class general hovering at the front of the formation, as his divine frost aura flared to pressure me, I caught a distinct, incredibly familiar ripple radiating from his energy signature.

I couldn’t help but chuckle under my mask, asking aloud, “Just how many of the Frosell Realm’s will fragments do you Snow Elves actually have lying around?”

The general didn’t deign to answer. He merely stared down at me with cold, aristocratic disdain, as his runic blade hummed. While the two squads of Semi-Ruler class elites surrounding me, with mechanical precision interlocked their auras as they entered a high-tier suppression battle formation, completely sealing off my paths of retreat.

They didn’t need to speak, though. Sansa’s voice immediately echoed inside my mind through the Hive Spirit, laying out the exact how many and where they got their Frosell Realm’s will fragments from.

The will fragments of the Frosell Realm were a hot commodity in the Dark Realm, after all it granted immunity to Glacier Fever to those who acquired it, giving them access to the coveted Winter Valley filled with unexplored dangers and treasures. So, it wasn’t the turn of the Snow Elves, a mere semi-ruler class force, to own not one but three of them.

According to Sansa, that priceless first will fragment was the wedding gift from his wife, while the other two were seized by hunting down and assassinating the devil merchant hoarding them. Keeping one for his clone, he used the final fragment to buy the absolute loyalty of the Ruler-class general currently standing right in front of me.

The moment my clone violently dismantled his subterranean Heathen Stone lab, the true Crown Prince had abandoned the ruins, fled upward into the fortified structure of the Heathen Stone Prison, and immediately contacted the ruler class before me, summoning and his people to the front lines with a singular, frantic order: Capture the masked curse user alive.

Sansa had laid bare Thalorien’s desperate endgame. I couldn’t help but smile beneath my mask. Digging up his buried trauma and throwing his failed conquest of the Winter Valley in his face had worked like a charm. His cold, calculating logic had completely dissolved into sheer, unadulterated obsession. He was completely prioritizing my capture over the remaining Froslings.

Whether it was obsession or military strategy, they were clinging to the desperate hope that breaking me would allow him to reclaim his lost livestock and figure out what the heck was going on.

But he was too late. The Froslings were already 80% gone, slipping through the teleportation hubs into a future where the Snow Elves could never touch them again. By the time this battle concluded, the entire race would have officially left the Dark Realm behind forever.

I looked at the Ruler-class Snow Elf and his elite squads, their battle formation humming with an eerie rhyme.

“Curse Master, surrender and recall the Froslings back to their homes,” the elderly Ruler-class general ordered.

His voice boomed with the heavy weight of centuries of absolute authority. Around him, the intricate battle array formation brimmed with a terrifying surge of frost rule power, lighting up the sky in a blinding, freezing blue. It was a deliberate, overwhelming show of force—a blunt reminder that I was completely surrounded and that I should comply if I didn’t want to suffer a fate far worse than death.

At first, I was genuinely looking forward to trading blows with this old veteran. I wanted to see exactly how much power a Ruler-class warrior could be and how much power he could draw out of a Snow Elven Bloodline fused with a Frosell Realm will fragment.

But looking at him now, the anticipation completely died, replaced by a wave of cold amusement.

Before he had even finished his grand speech, I had already quietly activated my Reality Isolation Seal. The shift had been so smooth, so utterly flawless, that the general and his elite squads didn’t even realize the original reality had already been seamlessly swapped out for my own sub-reality.

They were trapped with death on their doorsteps, yet there he was—floating in the center of the sky, acting high and mighty, delivering grand ultimatums without a single clue that they had already lost. They were entirely disconnected from the Dark Realm, completely unaware that their lives were now resting entirely in the palm of my hand.