Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3016: Comprehending Ice Rule

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Void, Hundred Frost Domain, Frost Maze

Suspended safely within the churning vortex of the red and black mists, I activated my specialized ‘If you see me, I see you’ ability. Instantly, my clone appeared outside of the maze. With the help of the Hive Spirit, I go a perfect, detached third-person view of the entire Frost Maze.

From this aerial vantage point, I could observe every single desperate countermeasure the Snow Elven Crown Prince was throwing at the Maworm to stop it from systematically devouring his Hundred Frost Domain. The sheer scale of the destruction was absurd. The Maworm had grown so obscenely massive, burrowing and biting its way through the structural grids of the domain, that it felt like I was watching a bizarre, high-stakes real-life version of the retro snake game.

To keep a precise handle on the chaos, I constantly kept switching my perspective—toggling between the raw, ravenous first-person view of the Maworm and the strategic third-person view of my clone.

Down in the foundations, the living maze was throwing a frantic, multi-layered tantrum. It tried to violently cut the creature with localized spatial shears, crush it beneath collapsing glaciers, and contain it by freezing it to its absolute core.

But in the end, the prehistoric nightmare simply refused to die.

Any tissue damage it sustained was regenerated in a flash of viral bloodkin energy. Its petrified skin and rotating thorns possessed a terrifying level of temperature resistance; they didn’t even show a microscopic crack when subjected to the maze’s near-absolute-zero environment.

Furthermore, the Maworm’s terrifying, primordial metabolism was generating an astronomical amount of internal thermal energy. It wasn’t just surviving the cold—it was actively counteracting it. The beast was operating like a colossal, localized living furnace, specifically designed by celestial irony to incinerate and dispose of Thalorien’s colossal living maze.

Realizing that trying to kill the Maworm was like trying to punch a black hole, the living maze finally abandoned its futile counter-attacks and redirected its full, wrathful focus toward me.

Gigantic spires of compressed ice, spatial localized blizzards, and freezing curses rained down on my position in a desperate bid to crush the source of the plague who seemed to have not been affected by the Maze’s near absolute zero environment in the tiniest bit.

Also my innate calamity not only survived in this environment but thrived as it stood as an unyielding shield, aggressively devouring every single spell and rule-construct Thalorien threw at me. While the red mist wasn’t processing the matter as blindingly fast as the Maworm’s bottomless stomach, it got the job done with absolute, mechanical certainty.

Protected inside my impenetrable cocoon of devouring mist, I found myself completely bored. With nothing better to do while the maze slowly digested, I quietly tapped my consciousness into the local Ice Rule Source and began to comprehend the Ice Rule itself. I thought it would help me if I happened to face the Crown Prince himself. It seemed inevitable if I wanted to take the Frosling subjects and Half-bloods with me.

It didn’t take long before my rapid comprehension brought me to the Rule Bifurcation Point.

I found myself in a bit of a bind. Unlike the native Snow Elves and Froslings, I didn’t possess an ancestral, specialized bloodline that granted a passive, innate understanding of the Ice Rule’s various meanings.

The purer one’s bloodline, the wider their instinctual range at the bifurcation point of the ice rule, allowing them to instantly recognize the true names and functions of multiple rule meanings within the range. Because of their racial legacy, almost every single elf and Frosling historically chose the Frost Meaning as their foundational ice rule meaning. It was the exact reason they collectively preferred to call it the Frost Rule rather than the Ice Rule.

However, I too wasn’t completely helpless, I had my own cheat code to help me choose rule meanings suitable for me, rather than blindly trying. Using my own existing set of abilities as a compass, I tried to sense which of the branching ice rule meanings naturally resonated and aligned with my current suite of abilities.

To my satisfaction, the cheat worked flawlessly. I detected a total of eight distinct matches lighting up within the bifurcation point. But what sent a jolt of absolute shock through my consciousness was the nature of the final match: one of the ice rule meanings resonated with my Soul Pupils.

This was the first time it was happening. I was only comprehending the ice rule out of caution and to pass time, but now it seems I had to see it through.

Just as I was about to dive deep into the bifurcation point to carefully assess this ice rule meaning alongside the other seven matches, a violent, high-priority alarm blared through my soul link with my daughter gems and bloodkins. It was a frantic warning from the Maworm down in the foundations.

The Hundred Frost Domain was about to detonate with all of us trapped inside.

Most would never resort to such a measure unless they were truly desperate. For a Rule Domain to detonated its creator must remain within it as its core, making it no different from a suicide bombing.

I couldn’t believe the Snow Elven Crown Prince was willing to sacrifice a hundred of specialized snow clones just to kill Maworm and me, ensuring we would never return to the Gelid Alps.

That was when my clone observing the maze caught sight of the true situation. The Snow Elven Elder, his squad, and several of Thelorian’s precious clones had already escaped the domain and left the Void, returning to the Dark Realm.

Meanwhile, in a secluded corner of the maze, the Mirror Devil, Uno, who was watching the developing situation through the reflections, cried out in panic, “This is bad! That bastard prince is planning to detonate the domain!”

Under normal circumstances, they could have escaped through the Reflection Dimension, even from within a domain as powerful as this one. But they were stranded in the Void. There were no reflections beyond the domain for them to anchor to, leaving them with no exit out of the domain.

They were trapped.

…

AN: Wyatt was initially unable to comprehend Rules directly from a Rule Source. That changed only after he transformed Dalie into a Bloodkin and a true Celestial, then received her Celestial Baptism. This significantly increased his synchronization rate, deepening his celestial linage, allowing him to comprehend Rules directly from their Rule Sources, just as Celestials do.