Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2768: Rune Spirits

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Zhongguo (China), Liaodong Province, Shuntian Prefecture, Shenyang City, Imperial Palace

"Great. Then show me what your wrath looks like," Corey said, her voice sharp with challenge. Still, a faint crease formed between her brows as she studied the devil. Something about its behavior felt off.

From her experience dealing with demons, she knew one thing for certain. If they believed they were stronger, they didn’t waste time talking. They simply took what they wanted and crushed anyone in their way.

But this devil was different. No matter how many times she taunted it, the creature didn’t attack. First, it praised her. Then it tried to buy her loyalty. When that failed, it threatened her... yet still held back.

The more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed. So she asked bluntly, "Why aren’t you attacking me when I’m standing right in front of you?"

The devil’s beady eyes burned with rage at her question. Without warning, the massive thorns covering its cactus-like body shot outward in every direction, filling the sky like a storm of jagged spears. Down below, the captains instinctively flinched.

But Corey, standing right before it, didn’t move. She simply stood there in the air, completely indifferent, as the storm of thorns passed through her without a scratch. Her twin vision had already told her the truth. They were illusions. The moment she realized that, everything clicked into place. The devil wasn’t trying to kill her. It was trying to make her attack first.

Corey didn’t know why a powerful devil would bother with such a trick, but she had seen enough strange abilities to guess the reason. Some powers, especially curses used by witches or certain knight orders, could twist causality itself, returning any damage inflicted upon them back to the attacker with interest.

If that was the kind of ability the devil possessed, then attacking first might be exactly what it wanted.

"You truly are a smart one," the devil said, its tone shifting from rage to a grudging admiration. "He really undersold you when he told me about you... his obsession."

Its glowing eyes narrowed as it studied Corey more carefully before it continued, "If he had been more honest, perhaps things would have turned out differently. Maybe he wouldn’t have died... and it would have been you lying in the grave instead."

The devil was impressed to see that Corey had managed to keep her fear and emotions under control long enough to see through his trick and grasp the core of his ability. And that realization irritated him.

In his mind, the blame fell squarely on the emperor. The fool had not been completely honest when describing Corey’s capabilities. If he had known the full picture, the devil would have given a far more powerful broken rune spirit to evolve his martial spirit to face her. Then perhaps this confrontation wouldn’t have turned into such a troublesome affair.

Still, in hindsight, the signs had been there all along. Anyone who dared to defy and challenge death itself was never going to be an ordinary person. He should have known that someone like the emperor wouldn’t be able to defeat someone like Corey even if he was stronger than her.

In truth, the Chivalry, Martial Spirits, Djinns, Yakshas, and other powers awakened by humans in this world were not unique beings at all. To the other beings of the myriad realms, they were simply runes. Runes forged through the comprehension of rules and their meanings. The only thing fascinating about them was they were able to house these runes in their bodies instead of a core.

Some runes were simple, formed from the understanding of a single rule. Others were complex, forged by combining multiple meanings of the same rule. And a rare few were hybrids, created by fusing entirely different rules together.

Knights and martial artists cultivated these runes throughout their lives. When a rune was nurtured and refined enough, it would eventually give birth to a rune spirit. As the spirit matured, it allowed its wielder to draw out the rune’s full potential. More importantly, the rune spirit would continue guiding its master toward deeper understanding of the rules that birthed it.

What the locals proudly called enlightenment was, in truth, nothing more than this gradual comprehension of the rules. The deceitful devil had exploited that system.

When the emperor sold his soul in exchange for power, the devil used a broken void-rune spirit to forcefully evolve the emperor’s dragon rune. The result was a hybrid rune known as the Void Dragon. The power it granted was immense. But it came at a cost. The fusion introduced rule contamination into the emperor’s rune. Once tainted by foreign rules from another realm, the rune could no longer advance through the natural rules of their world.

Its growth had been permanently crippled. It had no future. However, considering that not many knights and martial artists could achieve that strength given their entire lifetime, it seemed worth the bargain.

"Fuck it," the devil cursed, his patience finally snapping as it lunged at Corey. Until now, he had been deliberately holding back from striking first.

The reason was simple. His realm and abilities were being heavily suppressed by this world’s will. In most realms across the myriad worlds, a world’s will could restrain an outsider’s strength, but it rarely interfered with the methods or abilities they used.

This world was different. Its power system was strange, even by the standards of the myriad realms. Instead of merely suppressing strength, the world’s will actively restricted how foreign powers could operate.

Because of that, devils and demons rarely appeared openly in this world. They usually worked through its ancient vestiges, places where the world’s will was weaker and their influence could spread more freely. From there, they gathered followers and slowly extended their reach into the outside world.

But here, above the imperial palace, the devil had far less room to maneuver. Worse, Corey had already seen through its trump card. His ace ability, the very trap he had tried to bait her into triggering, was now useless. Without that advantage, the devil could no longer be certain about its victory and knew that what awaited it was a brutal, drawn-out fight that could end inconclusively.

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