Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2697: Greed Works In Funny Ways

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Blossom District, Sky Blossom City, TSR Guild Headquarters

"Are you sure you can handle them?" Petra asked, her gaze flicking to Corey, who looked ready to report her to Bloodette at the first opportunity.

Seeing that Petra no longer intended to attack her mother, Lil’ Baem returned to shoveling blood out of the basement, easing her mother’s workload.

Meanwhile, Dredre clenched her grip around her nest in frustration. The demon merchant she had been assigned to aid was behaving completely out of character. Still, she chose to remain silent, having already made it clear that her silence was not for sale. The soothing fragrance from her hair and scalp helped by calming her significantly and steading her frayed nerves.

"For the price you’re paying, I definitely can," I replied. "But if you were to throw in a few extra rule ore veins, that would motivate me even more." I made no effort to hide my shameless attempt to squeeze additional incentives out of her. When I delivered, I planned to ask for a chunky tip too.

"Wyatt, stop being a greedy asshole," Corey snapped, turning on her boss. "Bloodette thinks of you as family. How can you even consider selling her out?" To her, it looked like I was putting profit above friendship without hesitation. Well, I was. So, can’t blame her for that one.

Before I could respond, Petra cut in and laid down her final offer. "I’ll give you twenty different rule ore veins in exchange for your silence and theirs. Do we have a deal?""

Petra’s offer immediately made Corey’s eyes widen. She didn’t fully grasp the true importance and value of rule ore veins, but she knew enough to understand that they were priceless. Hearing that Petra was offering twenty of them to her greedy boss, Corey realized that nothing she said would change his mind.

Even so, she had no intention of rolling over just because he told her to. Friends mattered more than any boss... but she had signed a demon contract. If he truly forced her to stay silent, she wouldn’t be able to resist.

"Deal. Why don’t we start building the subterranean field and move those twenty different rule ore veins over so we can surprise Bloodette when she is done dealing with her ghost? I bet she’d love to see it," I said, agreeing to Petra’s offer and proposing we begin immediately, timing it so we could surprise Bloodette once she had pulled herself together.

Now that I had a verbal contract with Petra, my plan was to make sure she paid in full before I delivered on my end.

Petra wasn’t stupid, but she was overly confident in herself and in her own prowess. Besides, these rule ore veins didn’t hold nearly as much value to supreme beings as they did to card apprentices. If rule ore veins remained in one place long enough, rule energy would naturally gather, eventually materializing into ore deposits and other resources. Simply being near supreme beings increased the concentration of their respective rule in the surrounding area, allowing others to easily sense those rules and even comprehend them.

The supreme beings themselves had no need for rule ores or such resources, but they were still part of their home, a way of marking their territory. And as it happens, you don’t just give away a piece of your home to strangers offering you trash in return. Therefore, card apprentices could never get them through trade and had to try the reliable old fashion. But I had the Stone Supreme.

"Laying twenty different rule ore veins in the same location would spell disaster. I can understand two or three with proper spacing, but twenty? No. Pick a different location for each of them," Petra remarked immediately, rejecting the idea outright and calling it insane.

Listening to her, I only smiled as she hadn’t objected to paying in full before I delivered what I’d promised. That was simply how Supreme Beings were. Once a verbal agreement was reached, payment was given. Whether it came before the work was done or after made no difference to them. Unlike card apprentices, they didn’t even consider backing out or lying as possibilities.

That said, it didn’t mean they would tolerate being cheated.

"Don’t worry about that. I plan to protect and nourish each rule ore vein with its own individual pseudo-natural array formation, specifically designed for it," I told Petra, assuring her that placing twenty rule ore veins of different rules within a single subterranean field would not be a problem for me.

Meanwhile, Corey, still dissatisfied with me over selling our silence to Petra, and Cortney, who was helplessly watching Bloodette cry a river of blood, both immediately perked up at what they heard.

"Wyatt, are you trying to build a holy ground to comprehend twenty different rules?" Corey blurted out, drawing that conclusion from my words.

She had seen such holy grounds before, in Corey Park’s memories. However, nothing like that existed in the card world. There were no array masters alive capable of designing pseudo-natural array formations that could nourish and protect a specific type of rule ore vein. At best, they could excavate rule ore veins from distant locations and barely manage to lay them properly. This inefficient process caused the veins to wither after relocation and eventually become exhausted through continuous over-mining.

Cortney seemed to have guessed my intent as well, having personally enjoyed the benefits of the blood rule rock vein within the dungeon seal. Corey’s question only confirmed her suspicion, turning her curiosity into full-blown interest. After all, she wanted to sense and comprehend rules apart from the blood rule. But her rapid mastery of the blood rule had spoiled comprehending other rules for her. She believed a holy ground to comprehend rules could solve that problem.

I didn’t bother answering Corey. I was about to press Petra into beginning the excavations beneath the city to form the subterranean field when Corey suddenly yelled, "Wyatt, I want a twenty-five percent share in that holy ground because Five of those twenty rule ore veins are mine."