Chapter 208: The End of the King's Battle! A Light That Pierces a Thousand Years
Jack Atlas's face said everything.
One moment he had been on the verge of ending it all, LP at sixty-six hundred, a board full of dragons and Resonators, the duel's outcome decided. The next moment a meteor had fallen from the sky and wiped it clean. The expression Jack made in that instant would probably haunt him for years.
In the aftermath, both sides of the track had exactly two monsters left on them.
Amano's side: Nibiru, the Primal Being itself, a Level 11 LIGHT Rock-type at three thousand attack points, sitting in the space the meteor had carved out for it.
Jack's side: the Primal Being Token, summoned from the crater, which had absorbed the combined values of every monster that had been tributed. The tally of everything Jack had built this turn, all of it folded into one enormous formless creature with four thousand six hundred attack points and five thousand one hundred defense.
"How am I supposed to attack with a Defense Position token on my own field?"
Eve had a comment ready. "Why did I get eaten by the meteor too? I was doing my job! I was defending!"
She had a point. Without her two thousand one hundred defense points being consumed alongside everything else, that token would have come out with considerably less frightening numbers.
Because the Primal Being Token had landed in Defense Position, Jack was locked out of the Battle Phase entirely. The turn was gone. There was nothing left for him to do.
"I end my turn." Jack's voice carried nothing pleasant in it. "But don't mistake this for the end of anything. My burning soul has not gone out yet, Amano Rei."
The End Phase arrived, and the dimensional rift tore open on schedule.
Scar-Red Nova Dragon, Assault Mode burned its way back onto the field at four thousand attack points, and it did not come back quietly. Six Tuners were sitting in Jack's Graveyard now. If Amano activated any card effect on his next turn, the Assault Mode could chain immediately and remove up to six of Amano's cards from the field.
Nibiru. Speed Chase. Whatever he drew. All of it would vanish.
"Think you can work around that?" Jack called across the track. "Six Tuners in my Graveyard. Every card you touch is going to cost you six cards in return."
Amano held up his hand and raised five fingers at Jack.
He was smiling.
"Five summons, Jack. I counted every single one. Thank you for making sure the number was enough."
Jack felt the anger arrive before he could stop it. Every taunt, every cheerful push over the course of that turn, all of it made sense now. Eve's defense wall had not been laziness. It had been a measuring stick. One monster short and Jack could not break through. One monster too many and the meteor would land.
The number was never going to come out any other way.
"You set me up for that," Jack said, and it was not a question.
"I activate my face-down card." Amano reached for the surviving set card on his side of the Duel Disk. "Trap card: Speed Chase!"
The effect was precise. Discard one Speed Spell from the hand, then activate a Speed Spell from the deck with the same Speed Counter requirement, bypassing all standard activation conditions.
"I discard Speed Spell: Silver Trail from my hand to activate Speed Spell: Synchro of Death from my deck!"
Synchro of Death required five Speed Counters and delivered a trade: use the Graveyard as a Synchro field, bring out the result as a Synchro Monster, but the monster would be destroyed when the turn ended. A single turn. One bloom and then nothing.
One bloom was all Amano needed.
"I use Synchro of Death with Maiden with Eyes of Blue from my Graveyard as the Tuner, plus Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Yuyu, both also from my Graveyard! One plus eight plus one!"
The Synchro ring that opened on Amano's side of the track was not a standard formation. The Level 10 combination pulled from the dead, three cards rising out of the Graveyard and converging into a pillar of rose-red fire that stood on the track like something that had been waiting for this exact moment.
Every Dragon Mark in the building reacted simultaneously.
Amano had been feeling the heat in his left arm for the entire duel. Now it crossed the line from background pressure into something he could no longer ignore. He pulled back his sleeve.
What he found on his wrist was not what any of the Signers wore.
The Dragon Mark that had been building there across the course of the duel was not a fragment. It was a full circle, a complete ring of the Crimson Dragon's mark, running all the way around his wrist with no gap in it. Half of the circle was lit with red light. The other half sat dark, waiting.
The positions that had already activated: the Dragon Head, which belonged to Yusei. The Dragon Wings, which belonged to Jack. And now, lighting up as the Synchro column continued to rise, the Dragon Foot, which belonged to Akiza.
Amano understood it immediately. Every Red Dragon descendant he summoned in this Chronicle lit a corresponding section of the complete ring. Majestic Shooting Star Dragon for the Head. Red Dragon Archfiend Tyrant for the Wings. And now this.
Across the stadium in the spectator stands, Akiza gripped her own wrist as the heat poured through it. She stared down at the track below.
"Amano. You can summon my dragon too?"
"Take this, Jack Atlas! This is Red Rose Dragon's effect, and it burns everything down!"
The Synchro column resolved and Red Rose Dragon descended onto the track, fire-red and petaled with burning crimson, the evolved form of Black Rose Dragon carrying the legacy of the rose along with it. Amano's Mark blazed with three lit positions.
On Synchro Summon, Red Rose Dragon's effect swept both Graveyards clean. Every card from every pile was banished at once. Tuner after Tuner from Jack's side disappeared, the fuel for Scar-Red Nova Dragon, Assault Mode's banishment effect going with them. With the Graveyard empty, the effect that scaled with Tuner count was sealed to zero. With no monsters in the Graveyard, even if Scar-Red Nova Dragon, Assault Mode was eventually destroyed, the original Synchro version could not be called back.
"Using Akiza's dragon to drag me down with you at the very end?" Jack called, jaw set.
"Nobody's dragging anyone down," Amano said back. "You're the only one going."
At End Phase, Red Rose Dragon destroyed itself as promised. The Synchro of Death's terms were met. The card was gone.
The three sections of the Dragon Mark on Amano's wrist stayed lit.
"Final Synchro. Let's end this. My turn! Draw!"
Speed Counters: 6 to 7.
Speed Spell: Synchro Return came down from his hand.
"With six or more Speed Counters, I select up to three of my banished Synchro Monsters and return them to the Graveyard!"
The two cards he called back were the ones that mattered: Majestic Shooting Star Dragon and Red Dragon Archfiend Tyrant, both settled back into the Graveyard where they could be reached.
"Running out of cards, Amano Rei?" Jack's voice had found its footing again. "That draw did nothing for your field. The Fortune of the King is not on your side!"
"That wasn't my last draw."
Amano pressed his hand to the top of his deck and felt the accumulated weight of every Speed Counter they had traded across this entire race.
"Speed World 2's effect activates. I remove all seven Speed Counters to draw one card from my deck."
Speed Counters: 7 to 0.
The entire board went quiet. Both D-Wheels still raced. The air still moved. But something about the track and the riders on it seemed to pause around that single draw.
Amano lifted the card.
Cosmo Spell Rabbit.
Level 1. LIGHT. Spellcaster-type Normal Tuner. Zero attack, fifteen hundred defense. A card that had sat in his deck waiting for a moment exactly like this one.
"I Normal Summon Cosmo Spell Rabbit!"
The small monster materialized at the front of Amano's D-Wheel, white and slight and completely out of place next to the enormous planet that had dropped from orbit a few turns earlier.
Nibiru, the Primal Being was still on the field. Level 11.
Cosmo Spell Rabbit was Level 1.
"I tune Level 1 Cosmo Spell Rabbit with Level 11 Nibiru, the Primal Being!"
The Synchro ring that opened this time was not like any that had come before it. It was enormous. It stretched across the full width of the track and kept going, the arc of light reflecting off every surface in the stadium until the whole arena was caught inside it. One star ascended through eleven, and the total made a sound that had not been heard anywhere in this world until this moment.
Every Dragon Mark lit simultaneously.
Yusei's Hand at the prep area railing. Crow's Claw going still. Jack's Wings blazing on his racing arm. Luna in the stands. Leo beside her. Akiza on the opposite side, her expression beyond words.
Amano looked at his wrist.
The full circle of the Dragon Mark had come alive, every section of the ring burning at once, the complete form of something that was not quite any one Signer's mark but contained all of them inside it. It burned with the kind of light that old things emit when they finally wake up after a very long sleep.
He raised the Synchro card above his head.
"Star king that commands all dragons, shining crimson crown of creation! Burn away the embers that pierce a thousand years!"
His voice carried the full length of the track.
"Witness this! The dragon roar that split heaven and earth!"
"Synchro Summon! Level 12!"
"Crimson Dragon Quetzacoatl!!"
What descended was not proportional to anything the stadium had been built to hold. The Crimson Dragon filled the sky above the track from edge to edge, a presence that made the stands, the D-Wheels, and the duelists on them seem like elements of a miniature world happening somewhere below. Its attack points began at zero, because the card had not yet counted what was standing with it.
Zero was only the starting value.
"Crimson Dragon Quetzacoatl's effect on Synchro Summon! I Special Summon every Dragon-type Synchro Monster in my Graveyard!"
Three columns of light struck the track below the Crimson Dragon.
"Majestic Shooting Star Dragon! Red Rose Dragon! Red Dragon Archfiend Tyrant!!"
The three dragons that had defined this duel from its first turns took their places beneath the Crimson Dragon's spread wings, each one enormous in its own right, each one reduced to a satellite around the thing that had just arrived. Four thousand attack points. Three thousand two hundred. Three thousand five hundred.
"Crimson Dragon Quetzacoatl's attack points rise by the combined original attack points of every other Synchro Monster I control!"
The Crimson Dragon absorbed the value of everything standing beneath it and returned it as a single measure of power.
Four thousand, plus three thousand two hundred, plus three thousand five hundred.
Ten thousand seven hundred attack points.
The announcer was barely functioning. Somewhere in the gap between professionalism and pure shock, something had given way.
"Not ending this without finishing the job, Jack Atlas!" Amano held up the last piece. "I activate Majestic Shooting Star Dragon's effect, Light of Salvation! Scar-Red Nova Dragon, Assault Mode, your effects are negated!"
The Graveyard was empty. The Assault Mode's scaling banishment effect had nowhere to draw from. And now Majestic Shooting Star Dragon's light shut down the last remaining option, the self-banishment that would have ended the Battle Phase. Both escape routes closed at once.
"This is the end, Jack Atlas! Battle Phase!"
Crimson Dragon Quetzacoatl looked down at Scar-Red Nova Dragon, Assault Mode with something that was not quite contempt and not quite anything else. Four thousand attack points. The largest thing that had stood on this track all duel.
Ten thousand seven hundred would like a word.
"Crimson Dragon Quetzacoatl! Attack Scar-Red Nova Dragon, Assault Mode!"
The Crimson Dragon gathered everything it had, every legacy and every borrowed light from the three dragons below it, and released it in one beam that the announcer later described, incoherently but accurately, as the kind of thing that rewrites history.
"Star Crown Ember: Heaven and Earth Creation Strike!!"
The beam hit Scar-Red Nova Dragon, Assault Mode with the full weight of ten thousand seven hundred minus four thousand.
Six thousand seven hundred points of battle damage.
Jack Atlas LP: 6600 to 0.
Jack Atlas had spent the whole duel telling everyone what a King was. He spent the last few seconds demonstrating that a King, when properly ousted, could still put everything he had into not going down quietly. He forced his D-Wheel on a final run across the track on pure will, pushing it into overdrive, riding the momentum all the way to the Team 5D's prep area before the whole machine crashed, flipped, and came to a stop with Jack Atlas somewhere underneath it and the rest of the D-Wheel somewhere nearby.
The stadium was silent for approximately half a second.
Then it came apart completely.
Chronicle clear condition achieved: Defeat Jack Atlas as the team opener.
Chronicle hidden condition 1 achieved: Summon three or more Red Dragon descendants.
Chronicle hidden condition 2 achieved: Awaken the Dragon Mark, Synchro Summon the Red Dragon.
Chronicle rating: SS.
Crow Hogan was the next member of Team 5D's scheduled to take the track. Per the rules, he would face Amano Rei, who had just inherited whatever remained of the current field state.
Crow looked at what was on Amano's side.
Crimson Dragon Quetzacoatl at ten thousand seven hundred attack points, still hovering above the track.
Majestic Shooting Star Dragon.
Red Rose Dragon.
Red Dragon Archfiend Tyrant.
Crow's expression bore a considerable resemblance to the one Jack had been wearing just before the meteor landed.
"They're seriously sending me out against that?"