Chapter 259: Next Episode! Amano Rei's Death?
Wait, did he die?
This was Amano's first reaction upon absorbing the Chronicle's backstory, a solid wall of question marks.
What exactly did "died alongside Sartorius" mean?
As Amano remembered it, in the original storyline, Jaden Yuki had voluntarily forfeited the Genex Championship finals to fight Sartorius himself, which meant Jaden ended the arc without any championship title or official King of Games status.
In this particular timeline, Amano had been there to take Jaden's place in that fight, leaving Jaden free to compete. As a result, Jaden had gone on to become the King of Games.
But the cost was that Amano had vanished without explanation, and rumor had apparently spread that he was dead.
He had disappeared, but somehow he found himself oddly more worried about Jaden than himself. With Jaden's personality, losing a best friend would have hit him far worse than losing a championship title.
The subsequent backstory memories confirmed exactly that.
[Because you were gone, Jaden Yuki was in a dark place for a long time.]
[It was a boy named Johan Anderson who finally brought light back to Jaden when he had fallen so deep.]
[Perhaps because he saw a little of you in Johan, Jaden found the strength to pull himself back together.]
[But then, in the event that caused the Academy to be swept into the alternate world, the Rainbow Dragon served as a bridge to return the students, but Johan Anderson was left behind in the alternate world.]
[Jaden Yuki, who had now lost a second best friend, found something changing inside him. He turned back toward the alternate world and committed to a path: he was going to bring Johan back.]
[But in the dark duels of the alternate world, with his teammates taken over by the Sacred Beasts' influence, and with people who had once been his friends turning on him with baseless accusations, Jaden lost everyone around him and finally broke completely.]
[With his heart sealed shut, pursuing only the strongest power he could find, Jaden became the Supreme King: the leader of an army bent on conquest.]
[As for you: what actually happened was that your duel against Sartorius generated far too much energy when it collided with the power of the Light of Destruction. The force accidentally tore open a passage to the alternate world, and you came through it alone, into the world where the card spirits live.]
[Chronicle clear condition: Defeat the Supreme King]
[Chronicle hidden clear condition: None]
Good. He was not actually dead.
A second later the falling sensation disappeared and his consciousness officially entered the Chronicle.
What greeted him on arrival was a violent headache. When he managed to open his eyes, he was looking at a completely unfamiliar ceiling made of thatch.
"You're awake! You're finally awake!"
The voice, on the other hand, was familiar. Girlish. And it sounded like someone who really enjoyed eating.
Amano sat up on the wooden bed, pressing a hand to his head against the lingering dizziness, and turned to look.
"Ecclesia?"
It was unmistakably Ecclesia's face. But why was a card spirit just appearing out of nowhere at his bedside? And she was holding a cup of water. Card spirits weren't supposed to have a physical body.
While he was still working through the confusion, Amano reflexively reached out and touched the girl beside him.
Partly habit. He had tried to touch card spirits any number of times back in Eden. The result was always the same: his hand went right through them like a projection.
This time, though, his hand made contact with the girl's cheek. It was soft and had exactly the give of bread dough fresh from rising.
The Ecclesia whose cheek had just been inexplicably grabbed looked at him with an expression halfway between resignation and confusion. "Would you care to tell me what you're doing, sir? That's rather rude, you know."
"You're calling me sir. Ecclesia, you don't know who I am?"
"I'm quite curious how you know my name. Though I was the one who found you unconscious outside the village and brought you in." She crossed her arms. "I'm not in the habit of recognizing everyone I rescue."
Eve's voice surfaced: "This is the alternate world's Ecclesia. Obviously she doesn't know you. You're inside a Duel Chronicle, remember? And by the way, from the moment we entered, the Ecclesia card has vanished from the deck. That's what parallel exclusion looks like."
Right. The Chronicle. The sudden, disorienting headache had nearly made him forget he was inside a Duel Chronicle.
The physical reality of touching alternate-world Ecclesia's cheek had planted an instinctive impulse to check if Eve herself had become tangible too, so Amano reached out toward where she floated.
He passed clean through her breastplate and hit nothing. On any level.
Eve: "Amano. Have you chosen a path to death?"
Ignoring Eve doing her best to physically kick him despite having zero ATK, Amano had a brief conversation with this world's Ecclesia to get his bearings.
The situation was simple. She had found him unconscious near the village and brought him in to recover.
What genuinely surprised Amano was that this was the first time he had ever met Ecclesia. In the regular timeline, their first meeting had been in Eden. But in this alternate world he had now, apparently, met her here, thousands of years before that, at a point that counted as the historical GX era. His relationship with Ecclesia had technically started earlier than he knew.
Something else surprised him just as much: "Am I the only one here?"
He had entered the Chronicle with four people total. Where were Chiaki, Kikawayu, and Finesse?
Ecclesia shrugged. "Duelists are rare in this world. I would have loved to find more, but I'm afraid it was just you."
"Duelists? How did you know I was a Duelist?"
"Well." She tilted her head toward his arm. "That."
Amano looked down. The Eva Terminal on his wrist had, without him noticing, unfolded itself into the Duel Disk configuration and was not responding to any attempt to fold it back.
"In the world of Fusion spirits, a Duel Disk is a Duelist's mark. It also marks a warrior. Very rare to see."
The world of Fusion spirits. Was there a Synchro spirit world and an Xyz spirit world as well?
Also, Dogmatika Ecclesia was a Tuner monster, which made her bloodline in a Fusion spirit world somewhat questionable.
"The Supreme King's army is coming!"
A sudden shout and commotion from outside cut the conversation short.
"The Supreme King's army?" Amano looked up.
"Nasty bunch who've been showing up in the Fusion world recently." Ecclesia answered.
"Let's go look." Amano was off the bed immediately.
Stepping out of Ecclesia's thatched cottage, he had braced for something unusual, but the scene outside still caught him off guard.
The crowd in chaos was not, strictly speaking, a crowd of people. The majority of the figures running and shouting were the printed images from card faces, given physical form: monster spirits. Hiita the Fire Charmer. A wind spirit with gusts trailing off its form. A high-ranking priestess type in flowing robes. Even a Kuriboh, rolling around in a panic.
It was such an unusual sight that Amano stared for a moment. Even a Kuriboh? That was incredible to see in person.
This was consistent with how he remembered the GX alternate world: a place inhabited by the spirits of Duel Monsters cards. Compared to the humans, card spirits were the norm here.
"What an excellent place." Kurigalzu's voice drifted out. The small flame-wreathed figure was floating above the crowd, eyes wide with a look of pure appetite. "There's so much to eat here."
She absolutely could not eat these people. They were the native inhabitants of this world.
The center of the commotion was a duel happening at the village entrance. Two figures had their Duel Disks deployed. One was an armored warrior in heavy black plate, identity unclear as either human or spirit, looking thoroughly dangerous. The other was a white-haired boy with dark skin.
"Is that... Albaz?"
The white-haired boy was almost impossible to miss. In his previous life, Amano had played against Fallen of Albaz in the competitive format often enough to recognize him at a glance.
Ecclesia looked surprised. "You know Albaz too, Amano? You're full of surprises."
Hard not to recognize him. Fallen of Albaz and Sky Striker were both regulars in the competitive meta from Amano's previous life.
Out on the makeshift field, light bloomed and ice spread across the ground. A Fusion dragon rose from the merging energies, carrying swords of frost on every surface.
Albaz slammed the card into his Duel Disk: "Fusion Summon! Mirrorjade the Iceblade Dragon!"
[Mirrorjade the Iceblade Dragon] [Level 8 / DARK]
[Wyrm / Fusion / Effect]
[ATK: 3000 / DEF: 2500]
["Fallen of Albaz" + 1 Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, or Link Monster]
Seeing that monster, Amano had no remaining doubt about the Fusion spirit world setting. That was a genuinely powerful Fusion.
It was not a close duel. The enemy soldier had introduced himself as a commander in the Supreme King's army, but in front of Mirrorjade the Iceblade Dragon's attack and defense values matching Blue-Eyes White Dragon's ATK and exceeding it in DEF, the opposing side crumbled completely.
In the moment the enemy Duelist's Life Points hit zero, the Supreme King's commander dissolved into a flash of light and was gone.
"That's the spirit! Albaz is the strongest Duelist in our village as always." Ecclesia clapped from the edge of the crowd. "No one else even comes close."
"Strongest Duelist in your village? Why is Albaz a Duelist here? Is that how his backstory works?"
"Backstory? What backstory?"
"Never mind." Amano let it drop.
Thinking it over, applying real-world card lore to the GX alternate spirit world probably did not make sense. In the anime, this world was simply where card spirits lived together, mixing freely without any of the complex narrative contexts that individual cards carried. The alternate world had no elaborate background canon. Everyone was just a regular resident.
Ecclesia in this world was clearly nothing like the White Ecclesia who had fled the Dogmatika Order. She was simply a village girl.
The victorious Albaz folded his Duel Disk in silence, surrounded by the cheering spirits, and walked to the largest hill at the center of the village. He sat down at the top of it and stared out toward the village perimeter, steady and watchful as a guardian.
That was his personality in the alternate world, apparently. Cold exterior, sentinel of the village.
Amano did not have time to keep speculating about the Duel spirit characters' personalities. This Chronicle had already thrown something unusual at him: his traveling companions had vanished, and he himself had apparently been unconscious for an unknown stretch of time before waking up.
The Chronicle clear condition was to defeat the Supreme King. He needed to move.
"Ecclesia, do you know where the Supreme King is?"
"The Supreme King? Why do you need to know that, Amano?"
"I'm going to fight him."
"Fight the Supreme King?!"
The words evidently hit hard enough to shake her. Even her voice volume jumped noticeably.
"Amano, are you out of your mind? He's the one who's almost conquered the entire Fusion world!"
The noise must have drawn the attention of the aloof village guardian on the hilltop. Albaz jumped down from the hill and walked over, his expression composed and cool.
"You said you're going to fight the Supreme King." He had the tone of someone already certain the answer would confirm his low expectations. "You're the unconscious Duelist Ecclesia found yesterday, aren't you?"
"His name is Amano Rei. He's apparently a human Duelist from the outside world." Ecclesia helpfully supplied the introduction.
"A Duelist from the outside world. That figures." Albaz let out a cold half-laugh. "That explains why you have no idea what you're walking into. I'm telling you right now: give up. You'll die."
"I'll pass on that advice," Amano said, without missing a beat.
Obviously he could not give up on fighting the Supreme King. The entire Chronicle depended on it.
Albaz's cold tone sharpened a degree. "Do you know how many spirits in the Fusion world have already fallen to the Supreme King's army? That man holds the ultimate fusion power, beyond anything you can match. You cannot win."
"None of that is relevant to me. What is relevant is that I have to go."
Something in Amano's steadiness seemed to register. Ecclesia made a guess: "Amano. Is there something between you and the Supreme King? Some kind of personal connection?"
"He was one of the most important friends I've had. Now he's fallen into darkness. I'm not going to look away from that. I will fight the Supreme King and pull him back out of it."
For a brief moment, something moved in Albaz's eyes. Real surprise, or something close to it. He seemed to hear the complete absence of performance in what Amano had just said. Then Albaz reached a decision.
He extended his Duel Disk arm outward.
"Then fight me first."
"I'm sorry?" Amano blinked. "What's your logic here?"
He remembered that duels in the alternate world could be genuinely lethal. This felt a little abrupt.
"Relax. This isn't a life-or-death duel. I want to see what you're made of. If you can't beat me, then no matter how important your reason for going is, I'm not going to stand by and let you walk out of this village to get yourself killed. But if you can beat me, I'll go with you to challenge the Supreme King."
So that was how it worked. Cold on the outside, warm on the inside, classic.
"You shouldn't be annoyed at Albaz, Amano." Ecclesia moved closer and lowered her voice. "Here's the thing: Albaz himself holds a fragment of the ultimate fusion power. Because of that, he understands better than anyone just how terrifying the Supreme King is. He doesn't want to watch someone throw their life away over a friend."
Amano had no intention of resenting Albaz. He had never had a problem with people who were warm underneath all the cold. Probably because he had some of that in him too.
"I accept the duel. Fair warning, though: nothing is going to stop me from saving my friend. Not even you, Albaz."
"Then let's start."
"Duel!"
In the alternate world, a single word was all it took. The Duel Disks deployed and the duel began, right there in the middle of the village, with the crowd of spirits still mostly assembled around them.
A pink-haired head bobbed up from within the spirit crowd and found its way to Ecclesia's side.
"Ecclesia! Who's decided to challenge Albaz this time?"
"No, Kit. Albaz is the one who challenged him this time."
The pink-haired girl's mouth fell open into a perfect O. "Albaz actually challenged someone? That log of a man actually moved on his own?"
Amano took the first turn.
"My turn. Draw!"
He had already checked the deck. As Eve had predicted, Dogmatika Ecclesia, the Virtuous was gone, almost certainly the result of the parallel exclusion phenomenon. He had confirmed the same principle from Chiaki's mention that her three Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards vanished when she entered a Chronicle that contained Kaiba Seto.
Ecclesia was gone from the deck. But he had another Virtuous available.
Amano drove the card into the Duel Disk.
"I Normal Summon Blazing Cartesia, the Virtuous in Attack Position!"
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