Chapter 170: Kaiba, I Am Actually Going to Take Control of You!
Clearing two hidden reward conditions had bumped the card selection count up by one compared to last time. Counting the possible random card that could come through on exit, Amano was looking at a potential total of three cards this run.
Every one of the Spell and Trap Cards from Kaiba Seto's arsenal on the reward list was genuinely useful in the Eden environment, even without any banned cards in the pool. Whichever two he chose, he would not come away shortchanged.
But card selection could wait. The Chronicle was not over yet.
Same pattern as the GX run: even with the duel settled, Amano did not immediately exit. The story was still in motion.
While it was in motion, he moved quickly: pulled his deck and cards from the Duel Disk, then got the overheating test unit off his arm at maximum speed.
A second later, accompanied by a sharp crackling explosion and a spray of sparks, the Duel Disk finally caught fire in earnest.
That was the thing that had truly burned to its limit in this duel.
Across from him, Kaiba Seto had removed his own prototype as well. He stood in silence, not having said a word since the duel ended, turning the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon fusion card over in his hands.
"Was I too dependent on the god's power?"
He stared at the card.
If his final Monster Reborn had targeted Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon instead of Obelisk the Tormentor, would the outcome have been different?
What came after the stone was placed was always unknowable. Before the move, across all possible futures, you could never be certain another choice would have been better. The only way to know was to play it out.
That said, this applied only to this single duel. Battle City was approaching, and Kaiba still needed the Egyptian God Cards to clear the path ahead.
Amano knew perfectly well that one duel was not going to reshape a personality as deeply stubborn as Kaiba Seto's.
But things that have happened leave their mark, the same way a butterfly beating its wings in South America sets off a chain that eventually reaches the other side of the world. Small, imperceptible, compounding over time.
Maybe this duel had planted something different in this Chronicle's version of Kaiba Seto. Something that would show its shape slowly, in the future ahead of him.
None of that was Amano's concern right now. Whatever came from it, the version of himself living inside this Chronicle would deal with it.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was triggering the exit condition and getting back to Eden with his reward cards.
"Amano Rei."
"Kaiba?"
Amano looked at Kaiba Seto watching him in silence and caught himself thinking about something unexpected.
Kaiba Seto was technically his employer in this Chronicle. He had just beaten his employer in a duel. In his previous life, there had been a certain understood etiquette about competing against people above you: play hard, look like you meant it, then lose by just one move at the end. Win the game gracefully. Everyone saves face. Everyone goes home satisfied.
He had not done that. He had played at full strength and walked away with the win.
"The assignment to stress-test the Duel Disk, Amano Rei. You performed well enough."
Getting it blown up and on fire presumably exceeded Kaiba Corporation's expectations for the prototype.
Then again, Kaiba Seto was not the kind of person who would hold a grudge because an employee beat him. The only real consequence of winning against Kaiba Seto was being permanently locked onto his radar as a rival. Between now and the day Kaiba Seto got his revenge, there would be no shortage of rematches.
Hang in there, alternate me.
"As for your compensation for this assignment..."
Kaiba Seto stepped past Amano and moved toward the rooftop exit.
"Come discuss it in my office. Just you. Leave the irritating entourage behind."
Kaiba clearly had something to say to the Chronicle version of Amano that he did not want Yugi's group to hear.
Rin Seiya went red immediately. "Wait. Is this some kind of CEO secret office invitation arc? Amano, you absolutely cannot go. This is extremely dangerous!"
Senpai. The Soulswindler would call you repressed.
He is a man.
Not that Rin Seiya's protest changed anything. The 59th floor, where Kaiba's private office was located, required iris recognition to unlock the elevator's access. Rin Seiya found herself locked on the wrong side of the elevator doors, entirely unable to follow, and could only watch with impotent fury as Amano was escorted away.
"The two of us are not finished here, Rin Seiya."
One Kaiba had left. Another one was waiting.
Kaiba Chiaki placed a hand on Rin Seiya's shoulder from behind, her expression carrying the very specific quality of a smile that was not quite a smile. "Let's settle the tab from all that taunting you have been running since we arrived."
"Ha. Kaiba Corporation president can't take a joke?"
"I was not going to make it an issue. Now I am."
After watching that duel, Kaiba Chiaki had made up her mind.
The video could not be allowed to circulate.
A historical recording of Kaiba Seto, founder's heir and the man who had led Kaiba Corporation to its legendary status three thousand years in the past, summoning the Three Phantom Gods and then losing the duel: if that footage reached Mizuki's hands and ended up on Pilipili as a narrated video, the downstream effects on the corporation's current standing would be severe in ways that did not require imagination to predict.
Kaiba Chiaki dragged Rin Seiya back onto the rooftop.
"Contract Duel. If you lose, you send me that recording and delete your own copy."
"And if you lose?" Rin Seiya crossed her arms.
"Then you can do what you like with me." Kaiba Chiaki's confidence was absolute.
"Deal! If you lose, you publicly admit on the record that Synchro Summons are superior to Fusion!"
Both Eva Terminals activated simultaneously, confirming the Contract Duel's formation. Even inside a Duel Chronicle's virtual world, a Contract Duel was still bindable.
"Wait, does this count as the prohibited private-duel rule?" Rin Seiya asked.
The VR login point was still technically inside Academy City, even if the environment loaded was a virtual space.
"If anyone raises that point, I will address it personally with the principal. Under the Kaiba Corporation name."
That was not an explanation. That was institutional pressure applied directly to any objection before it could form. Worrying about school rules was the kind of thing that constrained ordinary people. Kaiba Chiaki was not ordinary people.
"Oh, are you two dueling?"
Yugi Mutou, Joey, Tea, and Tristan, also left outside the elevator, had noticed the charged atmosphere between the two of them.
Tea's eyes lit up with genuine admiration. "Amano-kun's upperclasswomen are duelists too! That's so cool, I've always been a little envious of girls who can duel!"
Joey and Tristan gave each other an excited fist bump.
Yugi looked at both Duel Disks curiously. "Your Duel Disks are different from the Kaiba Corporation model, aren't they?"
However, the moment Kaiba Chiaki opened her deck, her expression shifted. The frown that appeared was unmistakable.
The Academy City rulebook could not constrain Kaiba Chiaki. But the Duel Chronicle's own internal logic had just dealt her a direct blow.
Before the duel started, Rin Seiya spotted the opening without mercy and leaned over to peek at Kaiba Chiaki's cards.
Then she burst out laughing.
"HAHAHAHA! You are done for!"
Kaiba Chiaki's deck had no Blue-Eyes White Dragons in it.
All four copies of Blue-Eyes White Dragon in existence had already appeared in this Chronicle world. Introducing three more would fundamentally violate the world's internal logic. The mainframe Eva had simply banned them from Kaiba Chiaki's deck for the duration.
The Contract Duel was already binding. Cancellation was not possible.
Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Rin Seiya was not going to let Kaiba Chiaki find an exit. She jumped immediately into position across from her and launched the duel.
"No core cards, and you expect to beat me? You'd better start preparing your public statement. 'Synchro is objectively superior to Fusion.' Practice saying it!"
Kaiba Chiaki's teeth pressed together. "Rin Seiya. Do not get ahead of yourself."
Meanwhile, in Kaiba Seto's private office.
Kaiba Seto had brought Amano to the enormous floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the office: a view that opened out across the entire breadth of Domino City.
"You did not bring me here just to talk about compensation, Kaiba."
Amano was not anxious about this, unlike Rin Seiya's dramatic interpretation of the situation. The reason he had followed Kaiba up here was simple: the Chronicle had not finished running its storyline yet. Whatever came next was likely to be the part that actually mattered.
From the last Chronicle's experience, the process stopped when Jaden Yuki said something that did not fit the era's script. And this morning, Kuroshio had confirmed that she had carried a Millennium Puzzle fragment out of a Chronicle entirely. There were secrets hidden inside these Chronicles. Things connected to Eden Tower itself.
Kaiba Seto stood facing the glass, spoke toward the city spread out below.
"Amano Rei. This city is about to become a battlefield."
"You mean Battle City?"
"Then look upon it. The city that is about to become a battlefield."
Amano stepped up to the glass and looked out.
It was the first time he had seen Domino City from the top down. Every time the anime had shown this view, it was from ground level, from the main group's student perspective, moving through the same high-exposure locations over and over. Standing at the highest point and actually surveying the whole thing was new.
And the moment he did, something hit him like a physical sensation.
He recognized this layout.
The city plan spread out below felt intensely familiar. Not in the way a fan recognized a location from a show. In the way you recognized somewhere you had actually walked.
This was a smaller-scale version of Eden Tower's mid-level district.
If he scaled the Domino City bird's-eye view up to match Eden's proportions, the positions matched almost exactly. Domino Junior High corresponded to Academy City. The sports stadium was the Riding Duel arena Rin Seiya had taken him to. The high-end commercial block aligned with the Heavenly Dragon Tower hotel from the Kaiba family dinner.
Most unmistakable of all was the artificial lake running in a broad arc across the city. He still had a clear memory of that night: racing across the bridge over the lake with Kikawayu, the reflections of every lit window across the city scattered across the surface of the water below.
Had the mainframe Eva built the mid-level district using anime Domino City's urban plan as the blueprint?
But why was Kaiba Seto showing him this?
This city is about to become a battlefield.
Kaiba stood with his arms crossed, side by side with Amano at the glass, both of them looking down at the same view.
In that moment, Amano had the strange feeling that the relationship between them was not a boss and an employee. It felt like two people who had stood together through years of the same fight.
"The dueling future I pursue will not be stopped by anyone. So be my witness, Amano Rei. Witness whether the future I stake everything on reaches the heights we both expect."
"Kaiba, you..."
The familiar sensation arrived immediately.
The same as when Yusei Fudo's parting words had stepped outside the script. Whenever a Chronicle character said something that did not belong to the anime's preset dialogue, as though crossing into a territory beyond what was written, the Chronicle's environment began to collapse from the periphery inward: edges dissolving, data unraveling, a forced shutdown moving to eliminate the anomaly before it could propagate further.
When Amano's awareness returned, he was already back in Eden's version of the login point booth.
But this time, Rin Seiya and Kaiba Chiaki had returned with him, and their states were dramatically different.
Rin Seiya in particular.
She was face-down on the floor, cards scattered around her, one arm extended ahead of her with her index finger pointed at nothing in particular. The pose had the quality of a death scene in a historical drama: the fallen warrior pointing toward a final unfulfilled goal.
"Senpai, are you okay?" Amano crouched down.
"She is fine. She simply lost the duel." Kaiba Chiaki put her Duel Disk away.
So while Amano had been in Kaiba Seto's office, the two of them had apparently been dueling on the rooftop the whole time.
But comparing the two of them: Kaiba Chiaki did not have a speck of dust on her. Rin Seiya was flat on the ground and not getting up.
How had it ended this badly?
Amano thought about it for a second and then thought about something else: Rin Seiya's standing in a straight-up duel. He had not been able to beat her himself during their academy match.
Kaiba Chiaki's real power was that frightening?
Then Rin Seiya, from the floor, managed a voice: "I was tricked. That era had no Yusei Particles. I could not... I could not Synchro Summon at all."
Oh.
Without Momentum Particles, Rin Seiya's Synchro-based deck was nothing but a collection of vanilla monsters with no effects and sub-par stats.
That explained the result completely.
"As the terms of the Contract Duel, I will take that recording." Kaiba Chiaki accepted the data as it was automatically transmitted from Rin Seiya's Eva Terminal.
She had gone into the duel expecting her Blue-Eyes White Dragon ban to be the biggest obstacle, and ended up winning without any meaningful resistance at all.
This was what Rin Seiya got for all that taunting.
Unfortunately, the Chronicle's internal environment appeared to be classified as outside Academy City's jurisdiction, which meant the duel result produced no ranking point changes. It would have been satisfying to take Rin Seiya's rank down a notch along with the video.
"Stop worrying about that loud one. Come collect your Chronicle rewards." Kaiba Chiaki, in a notably better mood than she had been in for most of the evening, gestured toward the login terminal screen.
The familiar golden notification was blinking: CLEAR REWARDS PENDING.
Amano stepped over Rin Seiya's extended arm and pulled up the screen.
[Hidden Reward: Obelisk the Tormentor - One-Time Use. Issued.]
He could not feel it at all. Whatever form a "one-time use authorization" took, it had apparently been delivered invisibly.
Setting that aside: the main event.
[High-Rating Clear Reward: Choose 2 cards from the available reward list.]
Available: Soul Exchange, Megamorph, Melody of Awakening Dragon, Celestial Submission, Enemy Controller, Destruction Ring, Crush Card Virus.
He had already decided before the Chronicle ended.
First pick, without any hesitation: Soul Exchange. The anime version.
Soul Exchange
Spell Card: During a Tribute Summon, you may Tribute the opponent's face-up monsters instead of your own. The monster Tribute Summoned this way cannot be Tributed this turn.
The real card had additional restrictions that made it less freely applicable. The anime version was a different proposition entirely. And combined with a Three Wicked God that required three Tributes, Soul Exchange could replicate what Winged Dragon of Ra in Sphere Mode did: Tribute all three of the opponent's monsters directly.
The moment Amano selected it, Kaiba Chiaki's expression, which had been genuinely pleasant for the past few minutes, went completely still.
"That card. It is not being selected for use against me, is it?"
Unfortunately, after selecting one Soul Exchange, the option dimmed. No duplicates allowed. Otherwise he would have taken two.
Second pick: Enemy Controller.
Enemy Controller
Quick-Play Spell:
Choose 1 of the following effects:
- Target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls; change its battle position.
- Tribute 1 monster you control; take control of 1 face-up monster your opponent controls until the End Phase.
Beyond the first effect that changed position, the card's true reputation rested on its second effect: temporary takeover of any face-up monster.
Enemy Controller was a card that no serious Yu-Gi-Oh! player could overlook. And after this card was in his deck, something Amano had been looking forward to since reading the chapter title had finally become possible.
Kaiba, I am genuinely going to take control of you.
With both high-rating selections made, Amano turned his attention to the third card: the random bring-out reward.
The anime version of Celestial Submission.
Celestial Submission (anime effect)
Spell Card: Pay 1000 LP and declare 1 monster card name. Your opponent reveals their Deck. If the declared monster is there, that card is added to the hand of the player who activated this card.
So. Following on from Exchange for the hand, Enemy Controller for the field, and Graverobber for the Graveyard, Amano now had a card that reached directly into the opponent's Deck.
The TCG version cost 1000 more LP and gave the opponent the option to Special Summon the named monster to their own field instead. Most people on the receiving end of this card would not voluntarily Special Summon their own key monster over to the opponent's side of the field, but the option existed in the real card. The anime version cut that option entirely.
Amano now had coverage across every zone.
He looked at all three cards in his hand.
Kaiba Chiaki had been watching the entire selection process. As the three cards settled into Amano's hand, her expression had become visibly, measurably heavier.
"Is something the matter, Chiaki-senpai?" Amano looked over at her with genuine concern. "You seem like you are in a bad mood."
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