<h4>Chapter 449: Rule Affinity</h4>


    Date- 28 Mar 2321


    Time- 19:41


    Location- Sky Blossom City, Dungeon Highway, Barren Lands, Blood Rock Cave Gate Dungeon


    Van left toplete the task I had given to him, leaving us three in the Blood Rock Cave. Turning to Cortney, I asked, “What are the descriptions about the mutated ego gem and the Innate rune given in your grimoire?”


    “The description for Mutated Ego Gem is not detailed. It just says that my Ego Gem has mutated and has a high-level affinity to Blood rule.


    As for the Innate Rune, it exins it as the rune born with the formation ego gem. That’s all it rifies about the two. Making it really hard to guess the cause of mutation and the formation of the innate rune.” Cortney answered to the best of her knowledge. Without hiding anything showing how much she trusted me.


    “It’s not hard to guess the reason for mutation in your ego gem. It had to do something with Bloodette possessing you during your ego gem formation. The Innate Rune Blood Supreme is evidence enough.” Seeing that my words caused Bloodette’s expression to deem. So I exined to myself, “I am not saying the mutation in the ego gem is bad. I just want to explore why the mutation happened in the first ce and how we can use it to our advantage.”


    “I understand.” Cortney nodded in understanding. And Bloodette followed suit.


    “Good, now tell me if there was anything out of the ordinary when you were forging the ego gem?” I had to understand what led to a mutation in Cortney’s ego gem because I wanted to make use of it to my advantage.


    Cortney’s mutated ego gem caused the Blood rule stream to manifest to the physical ne and bestow an innate rune to her ego gem. If I were to find the reason behind that, I could uncover a way to get the rule streams to manifest to the physical ne and give enlightenment.


    This was just my first thought, but after hearing Cortney narrate the description of the Mutated Ego gem. I discovered that ego gems could have an affinity towards a specific rule. This led to another question in my mind, how many rules can one ego gem have an affinity with? Two? Three? How many? Are there other card apprentices with ego gems with affinity to rules? Does Anna know about this?


    Too many questions, but I was clear where I was headed with these questions. How to manifest a Rule Stream into the physical ne? Is there a way to create ego gems with an affinity? Either way, all these questions led to one ambition to be the master of the rules, rather than being a student of the rules trying toprehend their mystic. But for now, I would be satisfied with knowing how to gain an affinity to a rule.


    Synchronization rate and affinity are two different concepts. The synchronization rate represents the Card apprentices’ connection to the World and the spiritual ne. In contrast, the affinity represents the fondness of Rules to the Card apprentice.


    Higher the Synchronization rate deeper and easier you connect with the World, the Spiritual ne, and the rules within them. Higher the affinity with a particr rule, higher the rule’s affection towards the Card apprentice.


    My Cmity Soul gems synchronization rate was near perfect, but it had zero affinity with any particr rule. This, to someone like me, who seeks perfection as much as possible, was a concern. And as a person in search of strength, I had to understand how this affinity thing works. Having dedicated my past life to science, even in this bizarre world and its mystic, I tried to exin everything with a logical exnation. And my soul pupils made it easier for me to exin the why and how of this world’s Bizarre mystic.


    “Now that you mention it, something abnormal did indeed take ce when I was forging my ego gem,” Cortney recalled the process of forging her ego gem and did remember something of concern.


    “Don’t hesitate. Whatever it may be, let me be the judge of it. You just narrate what happened in detail.” I motivated Cortney to speak up, whatever it was that made her feel concerned about the process of forging her ego gem.


    “It was when I fed my ethereal spirit with my refined soul energy.” Cortney spoke about which part of the forging process she felt out of the ordinary.


    “Did your Ethereal spirit show resistance to feed on your refined soul energy?” I asked, thinking about the possibility.


    “No, it did not. But what happened next was weird. After swallowing the refined Soul energy that I fed it. It slowly turned into blood-red color, just like Bloodette here. The ethereal spirit still maintained my appearance, but its ethereal body took shape simr to Bloodette. Is that normal?” Cortney asked, having exined what happened while feeding her ethereal spirit with her refined soul energy.


    “You are talking about little red Cortney? Awe, she looked so adorable despite her grouchiness. What’s abnormal about her?” Bloodette seemed to have liked the blood-red look of mini Cortney. And couldn’t help bute to her defense, saying that nothing was abnormal about it.


    “No, that’s not normal, and I think that is the reason behind the mutation of your ego gem.” Hearing Cortney’s exnation about the abnormality in detail. I concluded that the mutation was indeed due to that event.


    “You two are out of your mind. Little red Cortney is not the problem. Please don’t me her.” Bloodette, despite hearing our conversation, seemed not to have the slightest idea of what Cortney and I were talking about.


    “Bloodette, honey, watch something fun in my grimoire.” Cortney opened her grimoire and handed it to Bloodette, trying to keep her busy and not let her intervene in something she did not understand.


    “Wait, are you trying to get rid of me? I don’t care. It’s been a while since I have been online in the grimoirework. Let’s see if there is something new there.” Bloodette took the grimoire and hopped to her bed.


    …