Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2565: Lucine’s Embarrassment-II

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Central Region, Central Academic City, Morningstar University District, Morningstar University Campus, Garden of Beginning

"Thank you for helping Madam Lucine despite our differences. Please know that all academicians involved in the Southern Capital incident have been stripped of their tenure and ordered to vacate the university premises at the latest. And rest assured—whatever promises Madam Lucine made with you will be honored by Morningstar University to the fullest. I will personally see to it. If there is anything else the university or I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to command it."

Dean Sam had overheard my conversation with the mentor-disciple pair through his intent sense. Learning that Lucine’s time-rule dementia had been cured genuinely pleased him, and he sincerely thanked me for making it possible. In his relief and gratitude, he didn’t hesitate to offer me what was essentially a verbal blank check—completely unaware that Lucine had already blabbed their core secrets to me.

I wondered if he would be able to say the same knowing this or when he learned the price Lucine had agreed to pay me. I didn’t bother myself with that, it was up to Lucine now. Yet, I wondered if Dean Sam was on the time vestige council and one of the key bears to the vault hidden in the second campus of Morningstar University. He should be. If he genuinely meant his words to me, then it shouldn’t be hard for him to help Lucine come through for me.

"Lucine is my friend. I only did what any friend would do," I said before turning to Henricks, signaling him to take me to the coordinates I’d just sent to his grimoire. I completely ignored the furious glare Lucine shot my way—she had told me very clearly to treat her like an elder in front of others, and she knew I’d deliberately done the opposite just to get under her skin.

Dean Sam was a very perceptive man, he understood more than I said from my words, my behavior, and Lucine’s reaction. He could tell that if anything, I was understating my relationship with her. He also knew that while only a few hours had passed here, it could have been months—or even years—for us inside the temporal river. With time involved, he kept an open mind, convinced that almost anything was possible.

Ignoring the glint in his eyes, I gave Henricks a subtle signal. He opened a space gate to the coordinates I had shared with him, and with a brief nod to the trio, we stepped through and left.

"Master, I’ve shared the dossier on Wyatt with your grimoire," Ahalya said, passing along the file she had personally compiled on me. She knew that in the past few months—while her condition had been deteriorating—her master had been in seclusion trying to keep it under control and had missed everything happening in the outside world, including my rise and my growing influence across the Five Regions. So she handed it over without hesitation, almost like a proud older sister bragging about her younger brother.

Even though Ahalya had never met the young Wyatt, she had always seen him as a little brother because of what his parents had once done for her and her mother. She had even planned to use her master’s connections to enroll me into the university through the back door, fully prepared to risk Lucine’s reputation if needed. In her heart, nothing she did for young Wyatt could ever come close to what his mother had done for the two of them.

"He’s Ellen Duskborn’s child!" Lucine exclaimed, stunned to learn I was a legacy student. Before continuing through the dossier, she turned sharply toward the Dean and demanded, "Sam, if he’s a legacy applicant, why hasn’t he already been recruited into the university?"

Having been freed from her time-rule dementia, Lucine’s next ambition was simple: get a talent like me—or just me—into her university, whether as a student or a teacher. She didn’t care which. As long as I became part of the Morningstar University family, she would consider it a victory. So when she discovered that I had already been connected to the university from my maternal side of the family and yet somehow had not been admitted, the shock hit her hard. For the first time, she was genuinely disappointed in Morningstar University.

"I’m sorry, Your Highness. I failed to manage the staff under me properly," Dean Sam said at once, assuming full responsibility for their oversight when it came to me.

With Lucine’s deteriorating condition keeping her in seclusion and his own attention absorbed by research, the university’s administration had clearly slipped. He had only recently learned that one of the most wanted criminals was, in fact, a senior professor at Morningstar—someone who had not only manipulated the university from within but had also orchestrated the conspiracy against me.

Morningstar University had punished the staff involved in the Southern Capital incident, all to appease me, but in the end they had shifted most of the blame onto Sansa Baylor, a.k.a Senior Professor Sansa Orian.

For the first time, Lucine felt genuinely disappointed in Morningstar University. Yet even with that sting in her chest, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the dossier—especially the part confirming that I was Ellen Duskborn’s son and that assistant professor recruit Kate Duskborn was my aunt. My maternal grandparents had attended the university, and my great-grandfather had even held tenure there. The Duskborn family had a long, storied connection with Morningstar University.

"This changes everything," she murmured, unable to hide the shift in her thoughts. If anything, the revelation only strengthened her determination to bring me into Morningstar’s fold.

With renewed enthusiasm, she continued reading through the dossier Ahalya had painstakingly compiled, absorbing every detail of my achievements. And when her disciple’s neatly written conclusion described my meteoric rise across the Five Regions, she repeated under her breath, "This changes everything."

Her enthusiasm dimmed as she read through the list of my creations and achievements. There weren’t many, but each one had contributed far more to the advancement of the card apprentice society than anything the top ten universities had managed in the past century. Only now did she begin to understand why I kept calling her ignorant—and why her disciple had such unwavering faith in my abilities.

Remembering how she had spoken to me and behaved earlier, her cheeks warmed with embarrassment.

"Is it true that he once planned to attend Morningstar University?" Lucine asked, confirming the detail with both her disciple and Dean Sam. She didn’t touch on how the university had used that information to conspire against me. After seeing how strongly I now rejected the very idea of enrolling, it was hard for her to believe that I had once wished to attend Morningstar—defying even the Southern Royal Family’s plans for me.

"Yes, Your Highness," Dean Sam replied with a solemn expression. He knew that if he were to die now and his soul were to enter the World’s Womb, he wouldn’t be able to face his master or the other elders and founders of the university. By neglecting his duties and burying himself in research, he had unknowingly cost Morningstar a chance that could have elevated it into the greatest university in the Five Regions—finally putting it on the path its founders had once dreamed of.