Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3154: Right’s To Realm Of True Evil

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Azorheim, Temporal Cave Valley, Temporal Cave No. ES3030

If one were to ask the Devil Merchant Code to teleport to a particular realm, it would indeed take you there, but not necessarily to a specific location. Unless you provided the exact coordinates of where you wanted to arrive, the Transportation Function would select a random location within the target realm.

Previously, that had never been much of a problem for me. Whenever I used the Transportation Function, I already knew exactly where I wanted to go. I had either visited the destination before or had reliable coordinates provided by someone I trusted. As long as I gave the Devil Merchant Code the coordinates, I could arrive precisely where I wanted.

This time, however, I had a problem.

I had absolutely no idea where I should land within the Realm of True Evil.

During my research into the True Evil, their native realm, and the bizarre ecosystem that had evolved to sustain them, I had managed to obtain a few coordinates. But I didn’t dare blindly trust any of them.

It wasn’t because I doubted the intentions of the people who had shared them with the Infinity Library. The problem was much simpler.

I had no idea how old those coordinates were.

Perhaps when those coordinates had been recorded, the locations had been relatively safe. Maybe the people who shared them had used those locations as temporary footholds while exploring the Realm of True Evil. But how long ago had that been?

A year?

A century?

A million years?

I had no way of knowing.

And when it came to a realm that had spent millions upon millions of millennia evolving around creatures like the True Evil, that was a frightening amount of time.

A location that had been considered safe in the past might have become the hunting ground of some terrifying creature. A resource-rich region might have been completely consumed. An ecosystem might have collapsed and been replaced by something entirely different. Even the terrain itself could have changed.

There was simply no guarantee that the coordinates I possessed still pointed toward somewhere I wanted to appear.

I wasn’t worried about being ambushed by whoever had originally recorded the coordinates.

I was worried about everything that had happened there since.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have many alternatives.

I could have simply chosen a random location and relied on my strength to deal with whatever I encountered, but that seemed like a particularly stupid way to enter a realm infamous enough to make even the Dark Races wary.

So I turned toward another function of the Devil Merchant Code.

The Inter-Realm Explorer Function allowed Demon and Devil Merchants to scour the Myriad Realms in search of resource-rich realms, meteorites, and other valuable locations. Normally, it was an incredibly convenient but expensive function for merchants looking to discover new sources of wealth.

Except when I searched for the Realm of True Evil, I discovered something I hadn’t expected.

The realm already had an owner, the Mulias Royal Family.

Yep, The Deviant Devil Mama Mulias’s family.

Apparently, the Mulias Royal Family’s ancestors were one of first few devils to discover the realm and after a bloody battle they had claimed ownership over the Realm of True Evil through Demon Merchant Code.

They had restricted other Demon and Devil Merchants from using the Demon Merchant Code’s exploration function to freely search the realm.

At first, I found that understandable. What surprised me was what they had done instead. They hadn’t completely blocked access to the realm. They had left the Inter-Realm Transportation Function available, for a price. A ridiculous one at that.

Any Demon or Devil Merchant entering the Realm of True Evil through the Demon Merchant Code’s inter-realm transportation function would have to pay thirty percent of whatever loot they obtained from the realm.

Thirty percent.

I stared at that figure for a moment. Then I discovered the additional condition.

If the value of the loot brought out of the realm met certain minimum thresholds, the transportation fee would be reduced according to the amount obtained. Depending on how valuable the haul was, the fee could drop from thirty percent all the way down to somewhere between ten and three percent.

That was still an outrageous toll, but compared to giving away nearly a third of everything I managed to obtain, it suddenly looked considerably more reasonable.

I should have known. Nothing was ever free when it came to Devil Merchants.

But the fee itself wasn’t what caught my attention. It was the fact that the Mulias Royal Family had chosen this arrangement in the first place.

The Mulias were a powerful Ruler-class family. They had enough strength, wealth, and influence to launch a proper campaign into the Realm of True Evil if they truly wanted to. They had powerful allies. They had resources to recruit powerful mercenaries as cannon fodder. They had access to an array of knowledge that regular Dark Race clans and factions didn’t.

Yet they weren’t doing that.

Instead, they had claimed ownership of the realm, prevented other merchants from freely exploring it, and simply collected transportation tolls from those reckless enough to enter.

That told me far more about the Realm of True Evil than any research report could have.

If even a powerful Ruler-class family like the Mulias Royal Family preferred to make money by charging people to enter rather than personally sending their forces inside to harvest its resources, then there had to be a very good reason.

It wasn’t because the realm lacked resources.

Quite the opposite.

A place valuable enough for them to maintain ownership over it while charging merchants such an absurd percentage clearly contained enough treasures to make the risk worthwhile.

The problem was getting those treasures out alive.

I had initially thought of the Realm of True Evil as a place where the weak would die and the strong would survive.

But perhaps even that description was too generous.

The Realm of True Evil wasn’t a place for the weak.

It wasn’t even necessarily a place for the strong.

It was a place for the strongest.

And apparently, even the strongest preferred collecting tolls at the entrance over hunting themselves.

…

AN: Reader Give-Back Gift!

This month’s code is :

The first ten readers to redeem it will receive 10 FPs each.

You can find the redemption center under Profile → Redeem.