Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 232: Means of Survival

Date- 27 Mar 2321

Time- 9:30

Location- Sky Blossom City, The Sky Blossom Card Stadium, Set 4 Arena 37

The duel on arena 37 was the stoplight of set 4 of the first round of the tournament. As all the upper echelon and VIP audiences were focusing on this arena, after all, they went through all the trouble to promote a school level tournament into a city level tournament on a signal day just to get this young man killed. Many had gratitude for the young man for helping the city by making a revolutionary discovery using one of the dungeons near the city. This meant the city was going to enter a rapid developing phase. If it were any other time this young man would be awarded as the hero of the city but he had to get on the bad side of the southern emperor. Now he could only sacrifice his life despite his achievements for the greater good and to save the city from the wrath of the southern emperor.

Many people did not stand to gain much from my death but they all banded together to kill me because they thought that as long as I was alive the wrath of the southern emperor would spread from me to them. According to their puny brains since I had the soul contract the southern emperor could do me no harm. So instead she would take out her anger on the city which gave birth to the source of her shame. They were not wrong, the history as their evidence their fears were true to some point as many strong card apprentices have done many unspeakable and horrifying things in name of revenge and vengeance to warrant such thoughts from these people, even though the echelons and bureaucrats knew what they were doing was wrong they still proceed ahead justifying their act as means of survival.

…

With 2 minutes left on the clock for the duel to reach its time limit, I no longer held back. I moved the stone disc floor to the most concentrated places of the 300 men coil formation to deal the heaviest damage in a minimum amount of time. Blood, shredded mead, bones, brain matter and innards of fairy guards flew everywhere in the arena with its floor stained blood red.

Since the duel was reaching its time limit why was I not aiming for Vivian instead going around the arena attacking the expandable fairy guards? The reason was I wanted to recruit Vivan as one of my calamity daughter cores. Why did I want to recruit Vivan had two reasons behind it,

1.The Cale family and its method of creating potion cards. Recipes for portion cards were available for a price but techniques of creating a position card required me to join a college or enter one of the top 10 universities. Recruiting Vivien I could easily get my hands on the Cale family Potion creation technique.

2. Her origin card Forbidden Garden had piqued my curiosity. As back on earth I and a few of my colleagues dwelled on creating clones but were never able to create fully functioning and sentient clones. Unable to form perfect clones we used the gained knowledge to clone organs from stem cells but our success rate was very low meaning it almost cost a sports car to grow a fully functioning clone organ. Maybe Vivian’s origin card can help me achieve further success in this field.

Thanks to the almost immortal body as a result of the calamity soul core I did not require a healing card or organ cloning card but something that would help me create a homunculus. If I was able to create fully functioning homunculus, these homunculus combined with calamity daughter core I could create an immortal army that could bring the entire government to its knees and help me live the peaceful life I am seeking. Therefore Vivian was more useful to me alive than dead.

How did I plan to recruit Vivian when the whole city is watching? Wouldn’t I be revealing the only secret I wanted to take to my grave? To recruit Vivian while maintaining the secrecy of my calamity soul core I came up with a special move, “Stone Hook”

I planned to create a stone hook connected to a stone chain and launch it at Vivian. The hook will snag Vivian while dragging her into the dome where I can do my business with Vivian maintaining my secret even though the whole city is watching.

For this to work first I had to clear the arena a bit so that there are very few obstacles when I launch the hook at Vivian. The act of catching a mobile and alert prey with hook and chain was a move that required skills and precision, thankfully Vivan seems to be in a state of shock seeing the carnage that my spiked spinning top had unleashed upon her reverse harem.

In the process of getting rid of all obstacles in the arena, I shredded a tree in the forbidden garden. As soon as I destroyed that tree the space inside the arena which had expanded by 12 times suddenly shrunk. As the area in the arena retired to its normal size every one of us the fairy guards, Vivian and the spiked spinning top spread across the arena were pulled to the centre of the original arena. Giving me a huge fright and forcing me into stopping the spin of the dome, I could only hope that Vivian was safe and sound for my sake.

No wonder Vivian summoned the Forbidden garden before activating the elderspace woodfairy array, she used the trees in her forbidden garden to activate the array. Wait I heard the tree let out an agonising scream as the spiked spinning top cut through it, are these trees living. Are these trees Treants? Nah Treants do not have the ability to produce humanoid creatures from their branches. This must be some kind of rare mystic tree monster with high intelligence to master an A-rank space array. Not all monsters can be used in a formation or array by their summoners. The summoned creature should have a certain amount of intelligence to understand the info given by the formation or array or Martial skill cards to activate them. Thanks to Hive AI I did not have to worry about the Stone Viltronian’s understanding of the A-rank Southern Watch Combat Arts.

Now that the elderspace woodfairy array has been broken the area in the arena was very narrow so I had to stop the spinning dome but just in a few seconds, the damage was already done. Since all of us were forced to the centre of the arena, most of the fairy guards and the mysterious trees were shredded to pieces. Now I can only hope that Vivian is not one of them. I had huge plans for her origin card and her family potion card creation techniques.

I used my soul pupils to search for Vivian in the messed up arena filled with blood, meat and other innards of the fairy guards. Fortunately, she was safe as the fairy guards protecting her became the meat shield to protect their master from the spinning stone of death, traumatised by the blood, gore-filled massacre Vivian had lost consciousness and fainted on what’s left of her fairy guards.

“Stone Hook” Finding Vivian I used the stone hook to drag into the stone dome. Dragging the blood-soaked and innards covered Vivian into stone I fed her the daughter core and threw her out of the arena bonds.

“Set 4, Arena 37, Winner Dalton Wyatt”