Chapter 3139: Not Enough Clones

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

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

While my clones were busy treating the first batch of Card Apprentice clients, I had Henricks return with the next batch. Hive Spirit had already sorted and grouped them according to their requirements, making it much easier to deal with similar cases together.

The reason these Card Apprentices had been selected for the second batch was that they had all requested help increasing the synchronization rate of their Ego Gems. And most of them were Card Lords.

They had somehow managed to forge Ego Gems despite having extremely poor compatibility with the rules available to them. After finally creating their Ego Gems through considerable effort, they had been able to sense only one or two Rules within the Card World’s Womb.

And, to make matters worse, they had little affinity for even those.

They had spent decades trying to comprehend those Rules, desperately hoping that persistence would eventually allow them to reach a bifurcation point and a meaning that would make them stand above their fellow card apprentice but to no avail.

For many of them, it never happened.

They had even deliberately halted their realm progression rather than advance blindly and risk making their situation worse. Yet despite all those years of effort, most still hadn’t managed to reach a bifurcation point in a single rule they had chosen.

They had reached the point where they understood that simply working harder didn’t matter if they didn’t possess the talent required for the path they had chosen.

There was a reason they were so desperate to comprehend a Rule that they had willingly halted their realm progression to pursue it.

It was common knowledge that an Ego Gem’s growth couldn’t keep up with the cultivator’s realm without sufficient Rule Power. As their realm continued advancing while their Ego Gem remained weak, the gap between the two would only grow wider. Eventually, they would find themselves weaker than other Card Apprentices of the same realm, and that imbalance could even hinder their future advancement.

They still had the time to fix the problem.

So they chose to stop.

Rather than blindly push their cultivation higher and regret it later, they wanted to build a proper foundation while they still had the opportunity.

Unfortunately, their talent wasn’t enough to support their ambitions.

That was where I came in.

Considering I had just helped the previous batch of clients create Soul Core Origin Cards, which could eventually be reforged into Soul Gem Origin Cards, it made perfect sense to prioritize these Card Apprentices next.

They had come to me because their Ego Gems were holding them back.

I had just created a solution that could potentially give them the foundation they needed to move forward.

In fact, the solution I had developed for the previous batch applied to them as well.

All they had to do was equip their respective Soul Core Origin Cards.

Once equipped, the Soul Core would interact with the Ego Gem already within their bodies, and use it to reforge itself into a Soul gem rather than forcing them to abandon the Ego Gems they had spent decades cultivating. They would be basically using the foundation of the Soul Core to increase their overall synchronisation rate.

With a baptism from realm break through, they could eventually erase any flaws or shortcomings in reforging of the Soul Gem, ensuring an exceptionally high synchronization rate.

If not for my shortage of manpower, I would have immediately asked Henricks to bring over the third batch as well. Yep, who knew one day even with more than a thousand prefect clones I would fall short of clones.

Their requests were closely related to the second batch. They wanted me to help them forge their Ego Gems with a high synchronization rate.

In other words, they were suffering from the same fundamental problem, just at an earlier stage.

Unfortunately, I simply didn’t have enough clones available to handle another batch while the current ones were still being treated and not mention the incoming second batch.

So they would have to wait their turn. Meanwhile, I decided to think of a solution and move on to the next task.

Just like with the previous two requests being solved with smart array formations, I decided that the solution for this requirement should also involve smart array formations, something that could eventually be used by other citizens of the New Empire suffering from the same problem.

This wasn’t merely a problem affecting a handful of old Card Apprentices.

It was a problem affecting the younger generation, the people who would eventually become the backbone and future of the New Empire. If I solved it only for the clients standing in front of me, I would merely be treating the symptoms instead of fixing the problem.

So this one had to be solved through an array formation as well.

According to the statistics, even among the influential families of third-tier cities, the average Card Apprentice didn’t forge their Ego Gem until reaching the Card Lord realm. Only a few talents managed to forge it in the Card Grandmaster realm.

That was far too late.

In second-tier cities, the average wasn’t much better across the general population. Among the influential families, however, their Card Apprentices typically forged their Ego Gems at the Card Grandmaster realm, while their more talented descendants could accomplish it around the Card Master realm.

First-tier cities were considerably better.

The average Card Apprentice forged their Ego Gem around the Card Grandmaster realm, while the more talented ones could accomplish it as early as the late Card Soldier realm or at the initial Card Master realm.

But even those numbers weren’t telling the whole story.

The statistics didn’t include Card Apprentices who either couldn’t forge an Ego Gem or simply chose not to waste the enormous amount of time and resources required to attempt it.

When I looked at the bigger picture, only around thirty to forty percent of Card Apprentices actually possessed an Ego Gem or eventually managed to forge one.

And among those who did, most forged theirs far too late. Worse, many of them ended up with terrible synchronization rates.

That meant their Ego Gems were already lagging behind their cultivation by the time they obtained them, leaving them with weaker foundations and making their future advancement considerably more difficult.

The situation wasn’t much different across the other regions either.

The Central Region was the notable exception.

Its noble clans and prominent academic institutions attracted talented individuals from across the other regions, creating an environment where talent was concentrated and nurtured far more effectively.

But even there, the problem hadn’t disappeared.

It merely looked smaller because the best talent had been gathered into one place.

That wasn’t good enough for me.

If I was building the New Empire for the future, I couldn’t be satisfied with a system where only the privileged or exceptionally talented had a realistic chance of forging a high-quality Ego Gem early in their cultivation.

I needed a way for ordinary Card Apprentices to have that opportunity too.

And that meant building an array capable of helping them through the process.

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