Sunny floated in the currents of the River of Time, his gaze fixed on the past.

A lingering bitterness gnawed at him, the regret of the lost opportunity with the Cosmic Hand.

He had traded a mother's blessing for a crown of authority. It was a fair trade, perhaps, but the "what if" still echoed in the in his mind.

He pushed the thought away with a mental sigh. He was an Emperor, not a philosopher. He had work to do.

Below him, was the Multiverse of Arcana. And the newborn God of Cards was beginning his great work.

Sunny watched with the intensity of a student studying one night before exams.

The young God did not chant spells or used mana or faith. He reached out into the materials available in the multiverse; oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus etc.

He brought them together, and weaved or stitched them together....

Sunny activated his God's Eye, peering into the interactions of this reality. He saw the fundamental truth of this multiverse.

That every atom, every photon, every speck of dust has something in them: the Law of Cards.

Since Sunny didn't understand the first time, he rewinded the time and looked at the process again.

He watched as the God of Cards began the process once again. It wasn't like a grinder mashing ingredients into paste. It was elegant. It was Weaving.

The God used his own Soul Essence, a thread-like energy to stitch the elements together.

He created a circuit, a closed pathway for the energy to flow between the materials.

As the circuit completed, the materials began to spin. They shrank, condensing, folding in on themselves, becoming denser and more concept-heavy until, and then with a soft pop that resonated through the multiverse, they vanished.

In their place floated a rectangular card. It shimmered with a gentle light.

[Card: The Spark of Life]

"Simple," Sunny murmured, his voice lost in the timestream. "Yet profound. He created life from the materials that is the human body made up of. Upon use, it creates existence from nothingness."

Centuries bled into millennia as Sunny watched. He witnessed the crushing loneliness of a God.

To pass the agonizing time, the God of Cards began to populate his empty universe, using his cards to manifest flora, fauna, and eventually filling his multiverse with multiple of races made up of different materials that gave them different specialities.

But Sunny noticed the cost. Every interaction, every miracle performed for these mortals, drained the God's essence.

Without a system of Faith to replenish him, he was burning his own soul essense. An energy which took a lot of time to regenerate even for a God.

Then, a new variable arrived.

A ripple in the void announced the arrival of a stranger. A being who did not belong to this card-based reality.

He carried a staff made of a concept, which was direction and wore a cloak mapped with the constellations of a thousand different multiverses.

The God of Maps.

He was a Nomad God, one of the rare deities without a multiverse of their own. His path was the path of the witness.

He traveled from reality to reality, charting the unknown, selling coordinates to those brave enough to traverse the void.

Sunny leaned closer, his eyes gleaming. This was helpful for him, as it would tell him about the location and direction towards the multiverse with different power systems.

He watched the two Gods converse. He listened as they traded secrets, the God of Cards explaining the weaving of soul essence, the God of Maps explaining the geography of the greater cosmos.

From this exchange, Sunny confirmed his hypothesis. The materials of this multiverse were unique.

They possessed the law of cards, that allowed them to be bound into cards. You couldn't do this in Veridia with normal iron or wood.

You needed materials that had been touched by that specific burst of creation from the birth of God of cards.

"So," Sunny analyzed, his mind dissecting the process, "the mechanism is Weaving. You use Faith or Soul Essence, I can experiment this with mana later"

"To bind the materials. You create a closed loop of energy. You compress. And you etch."

It was a beautiful system.

A God of Cards didn't need to be a master of fire to cast a fireball; he just needed a [Fireball] card in his deck and enough soul essense to activate it. It was the ultimate utility system.

"What a strange yet beautiful power system," Sunny whispered.

He had spent a million years here in the past, a silent ghost hovering over history. He had seen the birth of billions of cards.

He had recorded every formula, every material combination, every failure and success of the God of Cards.

He watched as lifeforms eventually learned the art, creating cards that were just extraordinary, pushing the boundaries of what their creator had intended.

His task here was done. 'The remaining formulas can be analysed and discovered by Thea,' Sunny thought. 'I came to find how to create a multiverse of Cards, and I have seen it. Now I can weave my own universe'

With a thought, Sunny disengaged from the timeline. The River of Time roared around him, but he moved effortlessly, his infinite mana sustaining his journey back to the present.

He stepped out of the river and back into his body.

Sunny blinked. He was sitting on his throne in the Palace of the Emperor. The air in the room hadn't stirred. The light in his palace hadn't moved an inch.

He had lived a million years, witnessed the birth of a civilization, cataloged a trillion formulas, and returned before his heart could beat once.

"What a strange place it is," Sunny exhaled, shaking his head from the disorientation.

The River of Time was a terrifying tool, one that made the concept of 'age' meaningless.

But then, a satisfied chuckle escaped his lips. He opened his system panel and uploaded everything he had just seen.

In his mind, a vast, three-dimensional star chart unfolded. It was a map of the multiverse as it existed billions of years ago.

It showed the location of every major multiverse, every unique power system, everything that existed in the ancient era.

"The galaxies drift," Sunny mused, "but the foundations remain. This map… this is a treasure map for me."

He immediately uploaded the map to Thea. "Cross-reference this with our current star charts. Calculate the drift. Find me the modern locations of these multiverses. Now, it will be easier to find a multiverse with another power system."

[Yes Master]

Now, there was only one task left. To bring the power of Arcana to his own domain.

He turned his gaze to the guest quarters, where Merlin was currently resting. Merlin had already unknowingly pledged fealty.

When he realized Sunny was sparing him, he had offered a small prayer of thanks. That tiny thread of faith was all the connection Sunny needed. Merlin was now considered his lifeform.

He activated God's Authority.

He reached down that invisible thread of faith and touched Merlin's soul. He borrowed the fundamental understanding of the Law of Cards that was etched into the Card Master's very being.

Sunny raised his hand. The air in his God space began to shimmer.

He activated his Manifestation Affinity.

He mixed his creation magic with the law of cards.

Space folded. A new pocket dimension began to form. But this one felt different. The air inside wasn't just air; it felt heavy. The soil wasn't just dirt; it hummed with a desire to be shaped.

It radiated an otherworldly aura, the same aura that permeated every material in Merlin's home multiverse.

In this subspace materials would bind. Here, souls could etch.

"The Subspace of Arcana," Sunny declared, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

He had done it. He hadn't just copied a skill; he had copied the physics of another multiverse.

Now, he just needed to fill it with materials, and his demigods could begin their path to becoming Card Masters.

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