Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3216: Conflict Of Ownership

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Azorheim, Temporal Cave Valley, Temporal Cave No. ES3030

Buying the rights to the Card World from the Seven Princes of Hell using the Snow Elven Empire seemed possible only if you assumed that the unknown Ruler-Class force wouldn’t be able to outbid me. Considering it was a Ruler-Class force, it was safer to assume that if they felt the rights to the Card World were worth it and wanted them enough, they had the wealth and resources to outbid me.

Hence, I couldn’t simply bet everything on the Snow Elven Empire to help me buy the rights to the Card World from the Seven Princes of Hell Dark Faction. It could only be one of my pieces of ammunition in my arsenal.

Which was why I planned to have Peyote appeal to the Demon Merchant Code, raising a conflict regarding the ownership of the rights to the Card World in case we lost the bid, making it so that the Seven Princes of Hell couldn’t sell or use the rights to the Card World until the conflict was resolved.

I had thought of doing this long ago but was waiting for Slay to wake up from evolution so that she could join Peyote’s appeal to the Demon Merchant Code. I believed two leaders of the Ten Commandments would give more legitimacy to the appeal raising a conflict regarding the ownership of the rights to the Card World.

However, raising the appeal with the Demon Merchant Code was easier said than done. That was because of the debt incurred by the Ten Commandments as they struggled to invade the Card World. Despite selling all the assets of the Ten Commandments after their defeat, the debt was not recovered. To give more merit to the appeal, we would not only have to pay off the debt but also the massive accumulated interest. Otherwise, the Demon Merchant Code would reject the appeal, claiming asset foreclosure.

Actually, if I didn’t play this right, instead of helping me, it would become a double-edged sword, as all those individuals, factions, and organizations that had suffered losses because of the Ten Commandments would come looking for Peyote to settle the scores. Many of them were a lot stronger than they had been several centuries ago during the era of the Ten Commandments.

Meaning, I would be making a few more enemies and gaining nothing.

That was why I was planning to keep this plan as an ultimate last resort. Not only was this plan expensive, but it would also make enemies of individuals and forces I didn’t even know existed.

Since I couldn’t think of a surefire way to deal with this situation, a much more radical approach crossed my mind: capturing the Seven Princes of Hell and having them hand over the rights to the Card World to me.

Of all the three means I could think of, I was actually leaning towards this one because my current force was more than enough to pull this off overnight. I didn’t even have to make a big move. I believed that Snow Elven Empyrean Thalorien, Truevil Scar, and I could undertake a stealth mission to kill off all the leaders of the Seven Princes of Hell, leaving one alive as my Calamity Daughter Gem so that he could transfer the rights to the Card World to me.

The biggest problem with this plan was locating all seven leaders of the Seven Princes of Hell. Except for the two leaders who were in the current rotation for managing the Dark Faction, the other five leaders were in seclusion. As such, finding and killing all of them within a day would simply be impossible. However, thanks to Belphegor, I no longer had to worry about it.

Belphegor was to take Gideon to all the faction leaders to try and change their minds about selling the rights to the Card World to the unknown Ruler-Class force by trying to establish that the Card World was not only worth the trouble of invading but also worth a lot more than what the Ruler-Class force would pay them for the rights to the Card World.

By doing so, he was unwittingly revealing the locations of all the faction leaders of the Seven Princes of Hell, including his own location, to me. This was because the faction leaders had a law that they could only meet each other in their original bodies and not through clones or incarnations.

As the leaders of the Dark Faction, they were all wary of their fellow leaders within their ranks, especially now when they could make a fortune by selling the rights to the Card World to a Ruler-Class force. The fewer of them there were, the bigger their shares would be.

It would not be the first time a group of bandits had killed each other because they wanted to keep the loot for themselves. After all, there was no honor among thieves.

Be that as it may, the more I thought about this solution, the more I felt that this was the only solution where I could get what I wanted without losing much.

The most attractive part about this solution was the fact that even if I were to fail, I could still implement the other countermeasure to ensure that the Seven Princes of Hell didn’t sell the rights to the Card World to the unknown Ruler-Class force.

I had already asked Gideon to do what Belphegor wanted of him: note the locations of the faction leaders and the security measures they had deployed so as not to let their seclusion be disturbed.

There wasn’t much to think about here. All the pieces were in place. I had made many plans to flush out the leaders of the Seven Princes of Hell, but to think that such an opportunity would drop into my lap. I would be a fool if I didn’t give it a try.

Right now, I was only waiting for Gideon to follow Belphegor, find all the faction leaders, and report their security measures, their conversations with Belphegor, etc. Once I had all the information, I could plan how to optimally kill them all and get the rights to the Card World.