Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3149: True Evil: The Darkest Part Of Myraid Realms

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

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

Going through the books detailing how various civilizations across the Myriad Realms transferred their Runes and Unholy Cores turned out to be far more informative than I had expected.

There were thousands of methods.

Some were perfectly reasonable. Some were questionable. Others were downright diabolical.

A few methods were so grotesque that even I had to stop and wonder what kind of civilization had considered them acceptable in the first place.

Apparently, there were corners of the Myriad Realms far more savage and brutal than the Dark Races. Thankfully, those civilizations hadn’t developed enough to spread their particular brand of cruelty throughout the rest of the Myriad Realms like the Dark Races did.

I had always known those parts existed. The Dark Races loved talking about them.

For the longest time, I assumed they were exaggerating.

The Dark Races had a rather convenient habit of describing themselves as the lesser evil whenever they compared themselves with someone just as worse. I had always figured they were simply polishing their own reputation by pointing at those abominations and saying, ’Look, we’re not that bad.’

After reading the records in the Infinity Library, I realized they weren’t exaggerating.

If anything, they had been underselling it.

Compared to some of the civilizations described in those records, the Dark Races practically qualified as good people.

And I was saying that while fully aware of what the Dark Races were capable of.

These were races that traveled across the Myriad Realms, enslaved entire populations, stripped realms of their resources, slaughtered natives who resisted, and even destroyed realms simply to harvest their will fragments.

Yet after reading what some of those other civilizations had done, I found myself mentally putting the Dark Races on the opposite side of the moral spectrum.

That should give some indication of what kind of evil was hiding in those forgotten corners of the Myriad Realms.

The title demons or devils actually felt more appropriate for them.

The Dark Races had at least developed enough civilization to establish rules, markets, contracts, and certain boundaries around their cruelty. Their atrocities could be organized, monetized, and, in some cases, restrained by practical considerations.

These civilizations had methods that made cruelty itself look like a form of technological advancement.

And perhaps that was the most disturbing part.

They weren’t necessarily more powerful than the Dark Races.

They were simply less restrained.

Fortunately, their isolation and lack of development had kept most of their practices confined to their own regions. They hadn’t possessed the means to spread across the Myriad Realms and turn everyone else into unwilling participants in their brand of cruelty.

After reading enough of those records, I found myself hoping it would stay that way.

One might wonder what could possibly be worse than being enslaved alongside everyone you had ever known, watching your birthplace get looted and stripped for parts, only to eventually be killed by your master, served as a delicacy, or fed to livestock as a cheap source of nutrition.

The Dark Races had certainly perfected that kind of cruelty, but at least there was a reason behind it. To them, the suffering of other native races was simply another part of business. People were labor, livestock, resources, and commodities. Entire realms were nothing more than mines waiting to be exploited. It was horrible, but there was at least an ugly logic behind it. They wanted wealth, resources, territory, or power.

If one looked at it objectively, they treated other races no differently than we treated cattle and chickens. Put that way, the dark races start to seem human compared to our livestock industry. But hey, At least they weren’t slaughtering intelligent beings capable of thought, emotion, and understanding. However, there were beings capable of more cruelty out there.

The civilizations hidden in those parts of the Myriad Realms were different. They didn’t always need a reason. Sometimes they did something simply because they were bored. Sometimes it was because they thought it would be funny. Sometimes they were simply curious about what would happen.

I could easily imagine one of them looking at a Card Apprentice and wondering, "What happens if I poke a stick up his ass? Will it come out of his mouth?" Then, instead of dismissing the ridiculous thought, they would actually do it just to find out. Just to satisfy their curiosity they will not hesitate to massacre the entire population to the point of extinction and they most definitely will laugh about it while doing so.

That was what made them so frightening. They didn’t need profit, resources, revenge, or even a practical reason to commit atrocities. They could wipe out an entire population because someone wanted to see what would happen, then move on to something more crueler once their curiosity had been satisfied. They didn’t care about the future or whether their actions would benefit them decades later. They lived in the moment.

Their entire approach to learning was essentially, learning from mistakes. They were the ultimate example of fucking around and finding out, except they had enough power to turn their curiosity into a disaster for everyone around them.

Instead of carefully studying something for days or even years and figuring out how it could be useful to oneself or the others or in the future, they rather act on their thought, impulse, or instinct. If someone survived, they learned something. If they died, they learned something else.

There was no concept of wasted resources because they didn’t particularly care about resources in the first place. There was no concern about long-term consequences because they weren’t interested in tomorrow. They wanted to know what happened when they pushed the button, even if pressing it destroyed an entire civilization.

The longer such a civilization existed, the more its survivors were shaped by that environment. The cruel became the survivors, the survivors became the teachers, and their students became even more ruthless.

The Dark Races were monsters driven by greed, hunger, and conquest. These civilizations were something else entirely. They didn’t need to gain anything from your suffering. It’s just that their existence brought suffering on those in their surrounding.

And if they ever gained access to the rest of the Myriad Realms, I didn’t think it would be the beginning of the end.

It would be the moment everyone else finally understood why even the Dark Races had learned to be afraid of them.