Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2533: Time Expansion Chambers

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Central Region, Central Academic City, Morningstar University District, Morningstar University Campus, Garden of Beginning, Time Vestige, Morningstar University 2nd Campus

"It’s too late for that. Stop arguing. I don’t understand why you’re so resistant to my treatment. If something goes wrong, at best you’ll lose your life, and at worst you’ll lose your memory and spend the rest of your days as a loon living off the good will of the people," I said, trying to get Lucine to willingly cooperate.The next step of the treatment required her full participation to achieve the best results; forced cooperation would only distort the outcome irreversibly. And knowing myself, if I could achieve better, I would never settle for merely good.

Therefore, I needed her to stop resisting and wholeheartedly cooperate with the treatment. Just because she had sworn an oath before the Card World’s will to undergo and comply with my plan didn’t mean she had to like it. I could have added a clause requiring her not only to like it, but willingly participate in it, but I doubted she would have sworn the oath if I had. Just because she had caved didn’t mean I could force her to swear unreasonable oaths; that would be counterproductive.

"Easy for you to say when it’s not your life on the line," Lucine shot back as she got to her feet and walked over, her curiosity overriding her fear. Her eyes lingered on the mutated four-petal vines, and she couldn’t help but ask, "What did you do to them? They look even more sinister than before."

"So, you’re afraid of death. Is that it?" I asked, not bothering to wait for her response. I continued with a sneer laced with disdain, "So the entire Morningstar University will face the backlash of your oath simply because you’re too afraid to die. Impressive. I didn’t expect this from the last living descendant of the Morgenstern family. If your ancestors could hear this, their bodies would be rolling restlessly in their coffins."

"Who said I was afraid of death? Why chase death when I still have a few good years left?" Lucine shot back. "Wyatt, don’t think I don’t see what you’re trying to do. But fine—I’ll bite. Out with it. What do you want from me?" she asked with a smug grin, refusing to fall for my trick. She had fallen for them enough times to know better now.

She had seen through me. She was beginning to understand that if I bothered to take an interest in someone, it meant I wanted something from them. Otherwise, I wouldn’t waste my breath. She now knew I wasn’t a con artist—just overly calculating and practical acting only to protect my interest, unless the other party had proved themselves worthy of my trust and time. She had once done that, but then ruined it by pushing her luck with me.

"That’s the Triunion four-petal demonic vine I just created. I’ve shared all the information about it, along with the instructions for what I need you to do with it. Go through everything now, and ask me if you have any questions," I said, pointing at the three mutated four-petal vines.

Lucine eyed the mutated vines with clear skepticism, repeating the name I’d given them under her breath as she summoned her grimoire and opened the file I’d shared. It took her less than a minute to scan through and fully grasp the few hundred pages of introductions, followed by the instructions detailing exactly what she needed to do with the mutated vines.

"You want me to help them grow to the devil realm by feeding them my blood inside the time-expansion chambers? Even if I overlook whether that’s remotely possible for a mutant four-petal vines to achieve devil realm, do you have any idea how much time-rule power it would take to elevate them to the devil realm? That’s more than what Morningstar University earns in net profit over three whole years!" Lucine exclaimed in utter disbelief. She couldn’t believe I had the audacity to shamelessly ask her to do something that would cost Morningstar University its three years’ net worth. Even if she were willing, it wasn’t a decision she had the authority to make. And beyond that, such an astronomical amount of capital wasn’t something the university could mobilize at a moment’s notice, let alone inside the time vestige.

Even though they were in the Temporal River, surrounded by time-rule and temporal forces, those energies were far too raw and violent to be used directly.

They had to undergo a refinement process before they could power the time-expansion chambers or applied for numerous other things in the time vestige. And while their source of time-rule power was technically limitless, there was still a cap on how much they could refine within any given period, an unfortunate limit due to their lacking level of their arrays.

Most of these arrays were established by their ancestors and have aged. Despite the timely maintenance the time was taking a toll on the arrays and their efficiency was decreasing. It was a growing concern for Morningstar University. Therefore, about a third of the research in the time vestige was based on reverse engineering their ancestor’s array formations or creating new array formations to replace their ancestor’s array formation.

Many strategies were proposed to handle the situation, but the most viable one was to search their Labyrinth of Myriad Pasts for a timeline where their ancestors’ teachings remained intact and had been passed down for generations—or, even better, a past where their ancestors were still alive. That way, they could directly seize the information they needed from that version of the card world’s past. And since the array would be used within the time vestige, they didn’t have to worry about that version of having past having altered time rules; they could apply the knowledge here without worrying about any such constraints.