Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2622: Battle

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Southern Capital, Guild Association Mall, Warehouse No. 234, Limitless Celestial Domain, Gainover Manor, Mirror Maze Dimension

"What the?" Gainover exclaimed, turning to see Anna not only break free from the replica Annas’ restraint but also begin destroying them as though they were mere decorations. He immediately realized that Anna had been hiding her strength and faking it from the start.

After capturing Anna, he had considered such a possibility. That was why, when he ordered the replica Annas to bring her to him, they delivered her only to his incarnation, far from the center of the maze. It was a test, to see whether Anna was feigning weakness in order to get close enough to assassinate him. He had even gone so far as to insult her family to provoke her, knowing that if she were faking it, she would surely react to defend them as lacked the patience and endurance to pull this level of planning.

She passed all his tests, leading him to believe that she was not faking it and had truly been captured. After all, he knew Anna lacked the patience to endure or plan ahead; this was evident in how she continued to charge like a bull, blinded by rage, through an unknown dimension, even though she knew it was getting her nowhere.

Now that he thought back on it, Gainover realized she had been playing him from the moment she charged at his dimension door, despite the Southern Hope warning her that it was a trap. She had pretended to be a short-fused, reckless girl solely to lower his guard. As he began to scrutinize Anna’s actions up to this point, he realized something far more troubling: she seemed to know about his Mirror Maze dimension even before she entered it.

Rather than worrying about Anna, who was steadily and relentlessly reducing the size of his army of replica Annas, his thoughts fixated on a single question. How did Anna know about his Mirror Maze? Even the Davis family, who had given him the diamond grimoire belonging to an unparalleled descendant, possessed only limited knowledge of it. So how did Anna know?

However, recalling his conversation with Anna, he remembered how she had revealed that she knew the Davis family had offered him a diamond grimoire that once belonged to an unparalleled bloodline predecessor who died at the hands of a devil. From this, he realized that Anna did not know about his Mirror Maze dimension itself, but rather about the mirror-scape dimension of that unparalleled bloodline predecessor, whose diamond-grade grimoire he had used to upgrade his own.

At that moment, Gainover understood that Anna had been planning this for decades. She had been steadily gathering information about him and those associated with him. A sudden fear gripped his heart as he realized that, in hoping to sow a seed that would one day grow into a tree to shelter him, he had instead planted the seed of his own death.

I noticed that Anna was relying solely on her physical strength to contend with the hundreds of thousands of replica Annas. However, it was worth noting that her physical strength had been boosted to the extreme limits of her physique and bloodline by her extreme divinity, turning each punch and kick of hers into a decisive death blow.

Death Blow: It was believed that when cornered by death, a creature that manages to overcome the fear of death can mobilize its absolute peak strength into one final strike with maximum critical rate and critical strike as a single act of defiance against death itself before they were embraced by the ever forgiving death. This attack was known as the Death Blow.

Each of Anna’s strikes was a Death Blow, further augmented to the extreme by her extreme divinity.

The physical strength of an unparalleled descendant was renowned across the five regions. With the Extreme path added to the mix, the force behind each of Anna’s strikes had already surpassed the limits of the Chivalry class and was bordering on the semi-noble class. It was no wonder that Gainover’s replica Annas stood no chance against her. They, too, could only rely on physical strength, as Anna never displayed her cards or runes. Although they replicated her raw power, they failed to replicate the other advantages granted by an unparalleled bloodline and extreme divinity. The maximum critical strike and critical rate effects of extreme divinity were a perfect example of this disparity.

Gainover soon snapped out of his contemplation and immediately ordered his replicas to assist the replica Annas in subduing Anna. Unlike the replica Annas, who were limited to physical strength alone, the replica Gainovers employed his cards and runes. Unfortunately for them, they could not display their full power for fear of friendly fire, which gave Anna enough leeway to continue resisting.

From where I stood, it was clear that Anna would soon have to resort to using her cards and runes before these replicas fully grasped the battlefield and started coordinating with one another.

Yes, Anna was strong, but in the end she was still a single person facing an entire army.

Gainover did not participate in the fight directly, instead continuing to issue orders to his replicas from afar, carefully ensuring they did not kill one another through friendly fire and inadvertently aid the enemy.

What surprised me was that he hadn’t tried to hide elsewhere within the Mirror Maze, deliberately avoiding the center, but instead had chosen to remain nearby. It made me wonder if there was a reason a coward like him was fighting through his pawns in open rather than staying concealed.

I checked the center of the Mirror Maze dimension for array formations or hidden traps, but found none. This only deepened my doubts about the source of his confidence. And then, the replicas attacking Anna in a haphazard manner began to slowly organize themselves into a proper battle formation, especially the replica Gainovers, putting immense pressure on Anna, who fighting them all alone.