Date- 4 April 2321

Time- 00:16

Location- Sun Blossom City, Circle Headquarters

“Kid, I am not the shameless one here you are. You invade my house and attacked me, yet when I try to defend myself you have the galls to call me shameless, so what if you are in a lower realm than me? Am I to just allow you to kill me? Where’s the justice and righteousness you speak of in that?” Mike gave a fitting reply to me for calling him the most shameless person I have ever met as he distanced himself from Ji Feng while moving sides trying to get closer to me.

“Vengence justifies my actions, what about yours?” I once again revenge to shield my real motives. Not that revenge wasn’t the motive, it was but just a part of it. Mike seems to have decided to go after the weakling of the herd. And according to him, I was the weak link in my group. So I moved behind Ji Feng.

“Strength, my strength justifies my actions,” Mike answered. Still trying to near me. At this point, I and Mike were going around in a circle with Ji Feng in the middle. Then Mike added, “Revenge, is that enough reason for you to come to me seeking your death?”

“Yes,” I said stalling for time. But what worried me was why was Mike acting along with my charade was he also stalling like I was?

Or maybe he did not plan to kill Ji Feng and still hoped to capture him to interrogate him about the puppeteer behind his betrayal. That could be the reason why he had fixated on getting rid of me first. Mike still counting on capturing Ji Feng would explain a lot. That would mean, he did not plan to attack me instead Ji Feng when Ji Feng happened to be more focused on protecting me than himself. So I was the distraction and Ji Feng was Mike’s real goal.

Just when I thought of this, I saw, Mike suddenly rush at me. Following his moment, Ji Feng came forward to intercept him like the previous time but this time Mike was prepared instead of attacking me he abruptly turned to face the incoming Ji Feng, and channeling his rule power he took Ji Feng’s attack head-on. At this point, it was already too late for Ji Feng to make use of his rule power to defend. When Mike’s rule-powered fist slammed into Ji Feng’s palm, the force behind the attack crushed the bones of Ji Feng’s arm and sent him flying to crash into a bunch of rubbles.

If it was some other card lord they would have been rendered unable to fight having taken a rule power attack unprepared at point blank. But Ji Feng was no ordinary card apprentice, he had a calamity daughter gem, and its viltronian physique was strong enough to keep him to get back on his feet but he was severely wounded after he had taken a rule-powered attack head-on, not to mention the gem’s restructure ability, with it he could reconstruction his wounded body parts with a thought in seconds.

Ji Feng soon rose from the debris, his clothes were no longer neat, they were torn and blood-soaked. Most of Ji Feng’s body was also stained with blood. But his wound seem to have closed and was no longer bleeding. Which was a huge surprise to Mike who thought that he had rendered Ji Feng immobile and unconscious therefore he could not help but mumble, “It seems fearing that my attack would kill him I held back a lot. That must be it.”

Ji Feng was angry, he failed his master’s task. For a being whose world revolved around his master, failing to protect his masters was a huge failure in Ji Feng’s books, so his anger right now normal for a calamity daughter gem but he would not dare to act on it unless he was ordered by his master. So dusting himself off Ji Feng immediately rushed to his master’s side.

Mike did not stop him or continue to attack him, he was really flabbergasted by seeing Ji Feng doing fine after taking a rule-powered attack at point blank range. It seemed as long as Ji Feng did not try to run Mike would not take desperate measures. Right now, above all, all he cared was about finding the force responsible for Ji Feng’s betrayal because of which Ji Feng was his priority. Mike was about to say something but feeling a bunch of unknown but decent powers gathering towards his location he searched for them vigilantly.

“You guys are finally here, what took you so long?” I said looking at the extermination team that returned after dealing with the last of the Circle’s elders and the last of its minions. Yes, I was stalling for the extermination team’s arrival. Together with them, I planned to take on Mike.

It may not look like it but Mike was the most pain in the ass card lord realm, unlike other card lords I had faced so far Mike had forged an ego gem and had his grimoire upgraded to platinum grade. Putting Mike on a level far above the card lords I had fought so far. I was not sure if I could win against him single-handedly. Therefore I had to wait for the extermination team to face him together and stand a chance to kill him.

My lineup would have been daunting to someone else but not Mike, seeing the powers gathering toward his location were my subordinates, he loosened up a little. Then turning to look at me he said, “Looks like your people managed to kill all the members of my branch.”

“Not all, we have one remaining,” I said while my team of calamity daughter gems surrounded him and began summoning the ego elemental card that I had gifted to them.

“Summon Fire Rule Ego Elemental”

“Summon Water Rule Ego Elemental”

“Summon Wind Rule Ego Elemental”

“Summon Earth Rule Ego Elemental”

Seeing the ego elementals being summoned one after the other, the expression on Mike’s face finally changed to the extreme. His carefree face immediately turned to a grim face, having realized that his advantage of owning a platinum grimoire was no longer an advantage enough.

Then with a gloomy expression, he began to analyze each of the card apprentices surrounding him. To his surprise quite a few of them were very young, they seemed to be of the boy’s age. Though their realm was low they had forged an ego gem at their age and also created ego elementals. But he did not feel right about this, on second thought he felt that these ego elementals that surrounded him should have been mass produced by a high realm card apprentice.  As it was plausible for one or two of them to form ego elementals but not all of them. Not to mention these ego elementals did not seem to be complete. That is when he became sure that these ego elementals were definitely created by a capable card apprentice.

Coming to this conclusion Mike could not help but turn to look at the boy wanting to ask him how did he manage to get so many ego elementals. For a card apprentice was a lot harder o create an ego elemental out of a broken rune than to create an ego elemental out of their own rune. Only someone truly powerful and capable in the creation process would be able to create soo many ego elementals out of broken runes. But why would someone with such capability waste their precious time making so many broken rune ego elementals for the boy? Was it an old senior from the southern royal family? Did the southern royal family value this boy so much that they were willing to risk indirectly participating in the boy’s revenge?

No wonder this boy dared to make a deal with Ji Feng despite knowing that it might potentially become deadly to him. It was clear to Mike that the boy was important to the southern royal family when he learned from the sources from the headquarters that the southern royal family had arranged three semi-demigods to act as the boy’s bodyguard. But this discovery added new meaning to how far the southern royal family was willing to go for the boy. So a part of him could not help but think maybe Ji Feng defaulted to the Southern royal family but thinking of this he shook his head not finding a reasonable motive for JI Feng to switch camps to the southern royal family. Without a proper motive, this theory did not make sense so he could only let go of his suspicion of the Southern Royal family being the puppeteer behind Ji Feng. Soon Mike let go of his thoughts as whatever the heck was going on behind the scenes was no longer that important when his life was in danger at the present.

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