Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2534: Time Tribute

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

"No, that can’t be right. I already calculated the output of your time-rule power refineries. With your current consumption rate, if you divert even a small portion of the time-rule power you’re sending to the reserves, you can easily supply the amount needed to elevate the Triunion four-petal demonic veins to the devil realm. You wouldn’t even have to touch your main reserves," I said, baffled by how unreasonable Lucine sounded. I didn’t doubt that she was lying to me. She could be many things, but a liar wasn’t one of them.

The moment I stepped into the time vestige, the Hive AI—assisted by my primordial soul pupils—was already scanning and recording everything: the entire structure of the vestige and every modification Morningstar University had made. That was how I knew all of this. I was gathering the data because I intended to build an artificial time vestige of my own.

Was it even possible?

I believed it was. Especially with the help of the devil merchant code. After all, it was the architect and builder of the inter-realm city in the spiritual plane, and the Dual World that existed in both the spiritual and physical planes.

Why would the devil merchant code help me?

It was no secret that any demon or devil merchant could hire it, as long as they were willing to pay the proper offering. I had already employed its services several times to construct SSS-rank array formations at a low cost, mostly because they were based on my own personal designs. But if you wanted it to act as both architect and builder, then it would certainly make your wallet bleed.

"How did you reach that conclusion?" Lucine asked, stunned. But she knew it was pointless to expect an answer from me, so she shook her head and said, "Never mind. Just understand this—there are no reserves of time-rule power. That’s tribute. Now, redo your calculations and you’ll see I wasn’t lying to you."

"Tribute? To whom—the Central Government?" I asked at once.

She was right. If I stopped treating the time-rule power stored by the refineries as reserves, then the amount needed to elevate the triunion four-petal demonic veins to the devil realm would indeed equal nearly three years of their net profit. Which meant I would have to restructure my entire treatment plan for Lucine.

"That’s not something you need to worry about. All you need to know is that we can’t touch the tribute. No matter how much you threaten, it’s not going to happen. You might as well try it yourself and see what happens," Lucine said, her tone firm as her lips curled into a mocking sneer. She practically dared me to destroy the time vestige. Her confidence was unsettling—she sounded certain that the vestige wouldn’t be harmed, and that I would be the one to face the consequences.

If she was so sure, then why had she caved to pressure earlier and sworn an oath before the card world’s will? Maybe that whatever gave her courage now had been her last resort, something she never wanted to rely on. And now that I had touched that boundary, she was suddenly being cryptic and even provoking me to test my luck.

Noticing my thoughtful expression as I tried to figure out what made her so confident, she smiled and said teasingly, "How about I make it a little easier for you? The tribute isn’t for the Central Government."

I had already ruled out the Central Government. This wasn’t the Five Regions—this was the temporal river, the time-rule stream of the card world, where they held no authority at all. The idea that the Central Government or its Masters could protect the time vestige here was absurd. And the fact that Lucine dared me to destroy it now, while we were sailing the temporal river itself, only confirmed it.

So who was giving Lucine this sudden confidence?

Who was the tribute of refined time-rule liquid meant for?

It clearly wasn’t anyone inside the time vestige. The strongest person here was Lucine, followed by a handful of elite demigods. None of them could guarantee protection in a place like this.

Only one existence could—

the spirit of the card world’s time-rule stream itself.

No, that didn’t make sense. I had met the spirit of the blood-rule stream before—by copying the blood-rule power resonance Bloodette used to comprehend the blood rule meanings and communicate with it. From that encounter, I learned that the rule-stream spirits of the card world were indifferent to card apprentice. If not for its need to address its herald’s wellbeing—Bloodette’s condition—it would never have answered my call. In fact, it had slapped me out of the time-rule stream for daring to mimic its herald’s resonance in the first place.

So it definitely wasn’t the spirit of the time-rule stream.

Then who could it be?

Yes... that was the only answer. It had been right in front of me the whole time. No one else would dare to guarantee protection for someone within the temporal river.

It was the herald of the time-rule stream—the Time Supreme.

If Morningstar University had the support of the Time Supreme, then everything suddenly aligned: the time vestige, the temporal anchors, the time tunnels, the Labyrinth of Myriad Pasts, even the immense tribute of refined time-rule liquid. All of it made perfect sense now.

I finally understood why Morningstar University—despite creating the Labyrinth of the Myriad Pasts—wasn’t ruling the Five Regions and was only considered one of its top forces. It was because they hadn’t built the Labyrinth themselves. Someone else had constructed it for them, and that same being was maintaining and protecting it in exchange for a hefty tribute.

But that raised an even more puzzling question:

How did they find the Time Rule Supreme and convince it to help them in the first place? Especially when there had always been deep, long-standing tensions between the supreme beings and card apprentices.