Card Apprentice Daily Log

Date- 2 April 2321

Time- 20:03

Location- Sky Blossom City, Guild Association Mall, Warehouse no.234

"Big sis, let me," said Ann, "I promise I won't speak about the privileged stuff."

"Fine, but watch out for that boy, he has very thick skin for someone his age," Asong warned Ann who nodded hearing her words.

"Master Wyatt, since I cannot go into details about this let us use an example, assume that the world's will is similar to a company, card apprentices as its employee, and the grimoire is your employment contract. Consider the card apprentice's active soul control percentage as the achievement made by the employees and power borrowed by the world as the employee salary.

The company gives more benefits to employees with more achievements. That is, the world will give more access to its power to card apprentices with a higher active soul control percentage.

As employees climb higher in their company they are asked to renew their employment contracts with more benefits. Similarly, when the card apprentice achieves a certain percentage of active soul control, they are asked to renew their contract with the world's will for better terms with a higher grade of a medium allowing the card apprentice to borrow more power from the world.

Therefore based on the different achievements in active soul control percentage one can renew their contract with the world's will using a higher grade grimoire to access more power." narrating that Ann peeked at me to see if she was able to answer me without leaking the privileged information.

"Contract renewal, to access more power from the world you need a higher grade of medium to renew your old contract with new terms based on your new active soul control percentage. I understand that but my question is why do that? What is stopping us from depending on the same old medium to renew contracts with the world's will, Why do we have to keep renewing the contract with different medium, Why can't the world give us direct access to its power like it did with ego gems." In order to avoid revealing something privileged, Ann came up with a half-backed way to explain why the grimoire was divided into grades. But it had a lot of holes in it. Especially, why can't the world give complete access to the grimoires as it did with ego gems?"

"First, Ego gems too have grades, they are graded based on the card apprentices' natural talent. Lower the talent fewer rules available to comprehend and slower the comprehension of the rules, likewise higher the talent more rules available to comprehend and faster the comprehension of the rules.

Second, we have to keep renewing our contract with the world as our achievements in active soul control increase because our soul is not strong enough to directly handle complete access to the world's power. So as our active control progresses, we have to keep renewing the contract to gain more access to the world's power.

Third, the creation of grimoires is not cheap, we can't just hand over diamond grimoires to everyone to access the full power of the world. When we don't even know if their soul would ever grow strong enough to access even a quarter of the world's power.

Therefore keeping all this in mind the first of us to walk this world divided the grimoire into five grades based on the talent of the people." Ann finally explained where the crux of the issue lay, it was our soul, it wasn't strong enough to hold everything the world had to offer. Hence we practice our active soul control to slowly make ourselves strong to bare the burden of accessing the world's power.

As for why we don't use the same grimoire to keep renewing our contract with the world was because the creation of the highest grade grimoire, the diamond grade grimoire, for everyone was impossible as it was expensive and it was a waste of resources because not everyone would be able to persist the practice of active soul control and achieve the highest there is to achieve. So instead of wasting precious resources the ancestors— the first to walk this world decided to separate the grimoire into five different grades based on the average talent of the people.

"So, I take it you understood why the grimoire is separated into five grades," Ann said feeling satisfied as she was able to answer without leaking any privilege in formation.

"Yes, but why do you keep saying 'the first to walk this world' and not 'our ancestors'?" I asked Ann, noticing that she didn't call the predecessors of this world her ancestor but the first of us to walk this world.

"..." hearing my new doubt Ann panicked and hurriedly explained to Asong and Anna, " I didn't lead him to this. I didn't know he would catch on to this."

"..." honestly, I would not have felt something was amiss here if I hadn't heard Anna, too, call the predecessors of this world 'First of us to walk this world' before.

"It is okay Ann, it is not your fault. It appears Master Wyatt, is very detail-oriented. Others would still be trying to digest the information you just unloaded but he is sharper. Master Wyatt, please stop making things difficult for the little girl." said Asong indirectly asking me to stop asking Ann questions whose answers were above my privilege level.

"Fine." I agreed with Asong and asked her, "what did Ann mean by 'first of us to walk this world'?"

"..." hearing my shameless question Asong rolled her eyes at me and said, "Master Wyatt, the answer to your question is the taboo secret of this world. So please refrain from searching for answers, as it may have adverse consequences that even you cannot bear. And I also hope you understand that what you learned here is not something you can reveal to another soul."

"I will keep that in mind." Saying that I turn to glance at Anna but she looked away clearly she too didn't want to answer my question and I didn't want to put her in that position.

"Your highness, I too swear to not reveal everything I have heard here to another soul." while Asong was making sure neither Ann nor Anna would dare to open their mouth to answer me, Susan's meek sound sounded enveloping the warehouse into an awkward silence.

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