Date: Unspecified Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹⟡𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮⟡𝙣𝙚𝙩
Location: Myriad Realms, Lil Red Storm Realm, Ceed World, Trophy Section
"Settle down!" Dalie used her celestial voice to command the dozen card spirits that were circling her little brother unruly.
The cards paused for a second, but they reduced the radius of their activity before continuing to scrutinize me out of curiosity as they could feel a weird connection with me. I felt it too. It was my crafter’s sense and primordial calamity daughter gems that I used in their creation.
However, their blatant disregard of Dalie caught us by surprise. Because even powerful demigods and devils wouldn’t be able to resist her will carried by the celestial voice. So, I guess they were not only unranked cards but high-class in unranked without having to go through their card info.
"How are they able to do that? They were born just recently. How can they resist my will?" Dalie asked in disbelief. She recalled the time when she had just been born as a celestial array spirit.
At first, she just existed, trapping and extracting resources from passing meteorites. She knew nothing but her duty. She had no concept of freedom or loneliness until one day she suddenly began to hear the voices of nearby celestials communicating. She learned many things by listening in on them. It took a while, but she finally managed to join in, yet their ’Will’ immediately pushed her out of the conversation without telling her why.
It took her millennia to grow her will to resist the celestials’ will and ask why they wouldn’t talk to her. That was when she learned what she was, not a celestial. Then what followed gave birth to her kinship complex. Because of which she went as far as to put her life in the hands of someone who not only trespassed on her property but stole from her.
Back to the matter at hand, as a celestial array spirit, it took Dalie millennia to grow her will to become capable enough to resist the will of the other celestials, but the spirits of the frosling corpse puppet cards they created were able to resist her will, the will of a true celestial, right after their birth. This was just incomprehensible to her.
"Looks like they managed to retain most of the realm of the blood rule slave cores used to create them. Meaning, unlike other spirits that slowly grow stronger, they are strong from birth," I explained to my stupefied celestial elder sister.
I was proud to see that my trick to fuse the blood rule slave cores to the soul pathways of the corpse puppets then condensing them into cores and transforming into cards instead of just using them as common cores to move the soul pathways into before transforming them into cards worked out as I hoped it would.
But I know better than to use this trick in regular card crafting because the card wouldn’t have chances of forming card spirits to retain and guide such energy, which will go rampant during the transformation step, causing the card crafting to fail.
That was to say that while crafting these dozen corpse puppet cards, I was prepared to see the crafting fail than successfully craft cards that failed to develop card spirits. I guess without such conviction I wouldn’t have managed to craft a dozen miracles.
"I don’t like them," Dalie said honestly, sternly glaring at the cards hovering around her little brother like birds hovering around a tree.
"Don’t say that. They are my best creations till date. And you helped me make this happen. I think we should commemorate this," I said, feeling that the creation of these dozen card spirits was a big breakthrough in my card crafting career worthy of celebration. If Susan were here, she would have brought it up before me.
"Since you put it that way, they do seem pleasing to the eye," Dalie nodded, no longer seeing the card spirits as runts that defied her but as a symbol of her progressing bond with her little brother.
"And yes, you are right. We should commemorate this by throwing a huge banquet at Freedom Megalopolis. Everyone is invited. Don’t worry about the details. I will handle everything. Just make sure you will attend it and not skip it for work," Dalie declared enthusiastically, leaving me no room to refuse her, not that I planned to. It was my idea after all.
"Sure, but don’t be shy about assigning others tasks or seeking ideas. After all, everyone needs to enjoy themselves for it to be a banquet," I agreed to let Dalie be in charge of the banquet. Usually, I would turn to Susan for stuff , but now that I was giving Susan the space she asked for, I let Dalie do as she pleased. Hopefully, she wouldn’t go overboard.
"Trust me, Dalton. I will contact you once I have decided on the time," Dalie assured before leaving the Ceed World and heading to her penthouse at the center of Freedom Megalopolis.
Shaking my head, I decided to trust Dalie on this one, recalling the wise words, ’One learns by making mistakes.’ I had to let Dalie make her mistakes so that she would grow. My only concern was her bankrupting us by going overboard. Well, this wouldn’t be the first case where someone went bankrupt by throwing a party beyond their means.
"Are you guys done?" I asked the restless card spirits applying my crafter’s sense. They paused and finally lined up before me side by side. Showing their obedience towards me, their creator. They were the same cards, but they used everything at their disposal to highlight that they weren’t. Like posing differently or wearing different types of glacier armor. It became apparent to me that these duodecaplet sisters were trying their best to stand apart from each other.
I let out an impressed chuckle at their attempt to highlight their individuality by showing me twelve different styles to use each one of them.
I strongly believed that a card was only as strong as how you use it. And these card spirits just showed me twelve different ways to use a frosling corpse puppet that were cut from the same cloth. Then I reached for one on the far left and began to go through its card info.