Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2610: Anne Heatsend

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Northern Region, Northern Capital

"I shouldn’t have listened to her, damn it!" the golden-haired woman cursed as she hovered above the massive crater where a manor once stood. Just as she prepared to leave, city guards swarmed in from all sides, surrounding her in an instant.

"Halt. Identify yourself. What happened here? How are you connected to this incident?" the city guard captain demanded, firing off his questions one after another without leaving her any room to respond.

When he finally paused and waited for an answer, the woman abruptly dissipated and vanished, much like a clone or summoned entity being recalled into its card. The guard captain’s eyes widened at the sight, and he immediately barked orders. "Seal the city. No one enters or leaves. The Southern Emperor has infiltrated the city in disguise!"

"Sir, what about Dalton Wyatt?" the captain’s deputy asked hesitantly. "Eyewitnesses reported seeing him at the scene, and the entire city heard his voice." He voiced his doubts, clearly unconvinced that the Southern Emperor was responsible for the massive crater now carved into the heart of the city.

"He should either be with her or come for her eventually. For now, focus on locating the Southern Emperor," the guard captain ordered, all the while praying they would not cross paths with the boy who had butchered nearly four dozen elite demigods, each equipped with time-related cards or runes.

Yes, he loved his motherland, but not enough to throw away his own life or those of his men for some no-name, cheating bastard who survived on his looks and deceived women at every turn.

...

On the outskirts of the Northern Capital.

"Stop struggling and cursing. I’m letting you out," a woman clad in combat attire muttered under her breath as she summoned her diamond grimoire and conjured a female figure, the golden-haired woman.

The golden-haired woman instantly morphed to resemble her summoner, yet her attire and hairstyle differed, giving her an entirely distinct aesthetic and presence from the woman in combat gear.

After glancing around, she spoke anxiously, "Anna, why did you leave the city? Wyatt told me to find him at the place where we first met. We met at the corner café. We need to go there now. He’ll be waiting for me." She paused, a conflicted smile tugging at her lips. "The thought of making him wait makes me feel bad, but it also excites me. Wyatt is waiting for me. Let’s go!"

"Hold your horses, Anne," Anna said, grabbing her look-alike by the collar. The sudden restraint made Anne yelp, "What gives?"

"He wasn’t talking to you. He doesn’t even know you exist," Anna said flatly. "He was talking to me. That means he’s waiting for me at the place where I first met him, that old warehouse of the Guild Association Mall back in Sky Blossom City."

Anna understood her triplet well. As intelligent as Anne was, the moment the boy of her dreams was involved, she became no different from a lovesick fool, a hopeless simp in every sense. Anna despised both of her triplets. One was an incurable mama’s girl, and the other was this idiotic romantic. Yet somehow, both of them were still smarter than her.

If not for this love-drunk fool, Anna would have never broken past the Northern border or infiltrated the Northern Capital, let alone relax in a cafe and begun planning the assassination of her scumbag father in his own home.

"Don’t be smug. He may not know I exist, but I’m the one he loves," Anne snapped, a fanatical glint burning in her eyes. "I was born from Anna’s love and obsession for him. That means I am the Anna he loves, the one he came all the way to this damned place for." Her dissatisfaction with Anna’s words was so intense that she referred to her in the third person. If they were not one and the same, she would have already come to blows with her.

"Let’s return to the Southern Region. This trip was a waste because of that whimsical boy," Anna said coldly, venting her frustration over the wasted trip to the Northern Region. Failing would have been one thing. At least then she would have had the satisfaction of trying. But this? This was nothing short of childish. She found it hard to believe that the man who had discovered silver milk powder and created the VR-universe, along with several other groundbreaking inventions, could behave so immaturely. Had she known he would react like this, she would have answered his call.

Yes, she regretted ignoring his calls.

"Don’t you dare talk about him like that," Anne suddenly snapped at Anna, the outburst catching her off guard. "If you hadn’t insisted on killing that jerk who ran away abandoning us instead of going to meet him like I wanted, Wyatt wouldn’t have had to risk his life by coming all the way here to meet us. You’re lucky nothing happened to him."

"Some jerk who ran away abandoning us?" Anna shot back, her voice sharp. "He didn’t just run off and abandon us. If that were the case, I would’ve been grateful to him for keeping his filth out of my life. Instead, he ruined it." Her eyes burned as she continued. "You have no idea what Ann and I endured at Morningstar University. The mockery. The insults."

She scoffed coldly. "You’re fortunate you were only born now, when we finally have the power to kill him and erase one more problem from our lives permanently."

Anna’s fists clenched. She despised how easily Anne dismissed Gainover’s sins. She wanted nothing more than to punish that lying scumbag with her own hands.

"Hello, we can share memories. I know every little detail," Anne said sharply. "It was horrible, yes, but it’s been so long. Stop living in the past. There are far more important things demanding our attention right now. Stop wasting our time on that trash." She tried to pull Anna away from old wounds and toward the present and future, toward the one thing that truly mattered to her, her sole obsession, the love of her life.

"Also, there’s something that’s been bothering me," Anne added, her tone suddenly suspicious. "Wyatt should have had the dummy ring on him. How did you not recognize him? If you hid it from me, so help me god—"

"I swear I did no such thing," Anna cut in immediately. "His transformation skill is bizarre. He morphed the dummy ring so flawlessly that even the card within my grimoire couldn’t sense it."

Anne paused, then nodded as she sifted through their shared memories of her beloved. She knew Anna was telling the truth.