Chapter 262: Chiaki, Why Did You Get Taken Out By Dark Magician Again?
The vehicle ride. What Amano had not expected was that the northern village where Albaz and the others had lived was a full two days of travel from the Supreme King's Castle.
This was a Chronicle sub-instance. Did that mean he was going to spend the night inside the Chronicle?
He had only taken one day off.
At least Kit had retrieved this particular "vehicle" from the village before they left, which cut a significant amount of time off the journey.
"Is this a Chocobo?"
Amano was riding something that looked like a large flightless bird, the kind of creature that would not have seemed out of place in certain classic Japanese RPG franchises.
"It is not a Chocobo." Kit maintained this position firmly throughout the entire ride. "If we admitted it was one, the licensing fees would be extremely complicated, okay? It can't be a Chocobo."
A deeply adult kind of problem.
Amano: "I Tribute Blue-Eyes White Dragon for a Ritual Summon! Descend with the whip of absolute defeat! Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon! 'Full-Power MAX Burst!'"
Supreme King's Army Commander: "NOOOOOO!!!"
Supreme King's Army Commander LP: 4000 -> 0
Ecclesia: "That's the third one now, isn't it?"
The third. As in the third Supreme King's army commander Amano had swept off the road on the way here.
Kit: "The Fusion world really is completely under the Supreme King's rule. So many villages we've passed have been hit by the army."
Even from the back of the not-a-Chocobo, Amano could see the ruins where villages of card spirits had once stood. Village after village, abandoned or burned.
This was nearly a replay of the original anime plotline, but if Amano had to evaluate it, this world felt worse than what he remembered. The Supreme King of this timeline seemed more twisted and fixed in his darkness than the Supreme King from the anime.
Come to think of it, his own companions who had entered the Chronicle were not just Jaden. Kikawayu, Chiaki, and Finesse should have been transported into this alternate world as well.
Would those three run into the Supreme King's army too?
Based on the pattern Amano had observed on the road, the Supreme King's army patrols attacked anything that moved: human or spirit, transmigrator or native. Equal opportunity hostility. Like the random encounter rate in an RPG, except mandatory and impossible to avoid.
Still. Even if they ran into army units, Amano was not too worried. These army grunts were not exactly putting up much of a fight. Those three would handle it easily.
That thought aged quickly.
A notification chimed from the Eva system: someone had lost a duel and been ejected from the Chronicle.
And the person who had lost was, out of the three, the one Amano had been least worried about.
[Kaiba Chiaki has been eliminated from the Duel Chronicle due to defeat by "Dark Magician's" effect.]
...
How did that happen?
Was this another Kaiba family tradition of taking hits for someone else?
And defeated by Dark Magician's effect specifically? That was very Kaiba of her.
Still. Even as unexpected as it was, the notification itself came with a faint silver lining for Amano. If losing an alternate-world duel, even in a life-or-death context, just ejected the loser from the Chronicle rather than erasing them permanently like in the anime, then Finesse and Kikawayu were safe no matter what happened.
That meant he could focus entirely on clearing the Chronicle.
But the Dark Magician that had just casually sent Chiaki packing was not something he could simply move on from.
Albaz, from within the deck, spoke up: "There's a duel happening ahead."
He had been quiet for the whole ride, and his voice surfacing now brought Amano's attention forward.
Albaz: "About five kilometers, southwest. Do we go around, Amano Rei?"
If the goal was to clear the Chronicle as efficiently as possible and reach the Supreme King, the sensible play was to do exactly what Albaz suggested and avoid unnecessary detours.
But the system notification about Chiaki had appeared minutes ago. And this whole journey, they had not crossed paths with any other Duelist.
"We're going to look. If something needs handling, we handle it."
If it was another Supreme King's army unit attacking a village of spirits, helping out would not be much of a detour anyway.
When they arrived at the location following Albaz's directions, Amano was glad he had come.
"Direct attack, Elemental HERO Phoenix Enforcer! Destiny Phoenix Fire!"
In the moment they arrived, what Amano saw was a Fusion monster standing with arms folded, driving one Phoenix-fire kick into a Supreme King's army Duelist and burning them to nothing.
"That Fusion monster's strength is something else." Even Albaz, former strongest Duelist of the Fusion world, felt the quality of that card immediately.
Kit: "And whoever's using it seems to be fighting the Supreme King's army, so the enemy of our enemy is a friend here."
She was more than a friend. That was the person who called herself his girlfriend.
In the GX era, the only Duelist who could Fusion Summon Elemental HERO Phoenix Enforcer was Finesse, who had come from Eden's future.
"Finesse!" Amano pointed the not-a-Chocobo toward her and slid it to a stop in front of her.
"Amano!" Finesse's silver-grey eyes lit up in unmistakable relief. "You're alive!"
Plenty of things she could say and she leads with that.
Kit: "Your friend is real, Amano! That means our party just got bigger! No time to waste, let's get her into the deck too!"
Putting a person into a deck was not something to say out loud, no matter how casually.
Though it was hard to fully blame Kit for mistaking Finesse for a card spirit. Because Finesse was currently in her "transformed" state: the hero costume that the Wein family tradition mandated for every duel. Every single duel, she had to suit up.
Even against a Supreme King's army attack in the alternate world, she had kept that habit. And honestly, suiting up as a hero to fight the villains who were attacking innocent villages suited the situation rather well.
From behind Finesse, a small girl appeared, a little uncertain on her feet, reaching out to tug on the red cape of the hero costume.
"Finesse-nee-sama, who is this? And what happened to the army that came?"
Finesse had de-transformed back into her red-haired self, and she gave the small girl a thumbs-up. "The bad guys have been taken care of. And this cool-looking older brother is my boyfriend."
"Wow, it's a boyfriend!" Amano had not been expecting Finesse to introduce him that way, which left the small girl staring up at him with an expression that mixed genuine curiosity with a degree of enthusiasm he could not quite account for.
The army's defeat may have been the signal. Villagers who had been sheltering indoors began filing out one by one. Looking around, this village was striking for a different reason: most of the inhabitants were children. Adults were sparse. And most striking of all, this was a human village.
Even in the alternate spirit world, human settlements existed. That had come up in the anime.
Still, Amano needed to understand the situation. "Finesse, this place is..."
"Most of the people in this village seem to be children who fled here and were taken in by the village elder. I landed here when I entered the Chronicle, and a Supreme King's army attack happened right away, so I stepped in."
As she explained, children had already clustered around Finesse in a small crowd. She had somehow become their obvious center of gravity.
Even in the alternate world, his companion pulled that off effortlessly.
"Finesse-nee-sama is so strong! She cleaned them all up so easily!"
"I feel safe just knowing Finesse-nee-sama is here to protect us!"
"Finesse-nee-sama, your boyfriend is really handsome! Have you two kissed?"
"Of course we have!"
"Have you two gone further than that?"
Children say the most direct things.
"By the way, Finesse." Amano remembered something. "When you landed in the Chronicle, were Kikawayu and Chiaki with you?"
"I didn't see Kikawayu. Chiaki did land with me, but after a while of not finding you, she went off on her own. I stayed because I didn't want to leave these children."
That was the companion he knew. To Finesse, a Duel Chronicle functioned like an immersive game environment, and these children would be closer to NPCs than real people to her. But that had not been enough to make her look away from them.
That was what it meant to have a hero's resolve.
"When exactly did Chiaki leave?"
"Not long ago." Finesse tilted her head, thinking. "About half an hour ago?"
Half an hour. Amano felt something shift.
"Finesse, did you get a system notification? About Chiaki being eliminated from the Chronicle for losing a duel."
"A system notification? Nothing at all." Finesse looked surprised. "Chiaki lost? Who did she lose to? The Supreme King's army units seem really weak, I took care of them without much trouble."
Lost to... Dark Magician?
If Chiaki had left half an hour ago, accounting for travel time and the duration of a duel, the Duelist who used Dark Magician should be nearby.
Albaz, from the deck: "Something's coming. A dangerous force is approaching."
Ecclesia: "A dangerous force? Is it the Supreme King's army?"
Albaz: "No. Far stronger than any regular army unit. This is an enormous power, and even the air around it feels wrong."
Everyone turned to look toward the distance. The man arrived with the desert wind, kicking up a wall of sand across the alternate world's horizon.
Amano knew who this was. He had the memory from the GX anime: a Duelist who had used Dark Magician in a duel. Amon Garam.
A character who had defeated both Manjoume Jun and Edo Phoenix in the original anime's storyline. He had appeared in a later arc, after the Supreme King's defeat, but this timeline had clearly diverged far enough that he was already here.
From the drifting sand came a tall man, close to two meters, wearing large round glasses. Amon Garam stepped forward and stood before Amano's group.
"You two are the Duelists who hold the power of the gods?"
Amano and Finesse exchanged a glance.
Albaz and the others were in the deck, with only their spirit presences floating near Amano, which meant the only two visible Duelists in the village were Amano and Finesse.
And the man had called it correctly. Both of them did hold divine cards.
Amano had the Wicked Avatar. Finesse held the Wicked Eraser: the divine card from the Dark Game riding duel, which Amano had placed in her deck. Because Eden's card trade system had a one-month cooldown, she had not been able to return it.
Though in practice, they did not know how to return it anyway.
Both divine cards required system occupations to use. The Wicked Eraser was tied to the Impostor occupation, which had been sacrificed. The Wicked Avatar was tied to the God-Tamer occupation, which required sacrificing three occupations to activate. These were theoretically divine cards and practically question marks: whether they could even be used in a normal duel was an open question.
And yet Amon Garam had come looking specifically for divine cards.
"Now that you are both together, this is simple. The gods born of the alternate world come to me. Let's duel."
Amano had noticed something. In this world, people really would initiate a duel at a moment's notice over essentially anything. Pure undiluted duelist brain.
Chiaki had probably been walking along the road minding her own business when this man had pulled her into a fight.
Amon Garam's Duel Disk extended from his arm. The atmosphere of a Duelist hunting his target expanded outward from him in the same instant.
"I'll go." Amano stepped forward.
Amon's canonical strength was not negligible. If this was the same person who had sent Chiaki home, letting Finesse take that fight seemed too risky.
"Duel!"
The Duel Disks responded to each other and the duel locked in.
"My turn. Draw!" Amon Garam took first turn. He drew his opening card, then threw something into the Duel Disk with obvious intent.
"Spell Card, Painful Choice!"
[Painful Choice]
[Spell Card: Show your opponent 5 cards from your Deck. Your opponent chooses 1, which you add to your hand. Discard the rest to the Graveyard.]
There it was. Another Painful Choice, the second time Amano had faced that card.
The five cards Amon revealed were exactly what Amano would have expected.
Left Arm of the Forbidden One.
Right Arm of the Forbidden One.
Left Leg of the Forbidden One.
Right Leg of the Forbidden One.
Exodia the Forbidden One.
All five Forbidden One pieces, spread out by Painful Choice's effect.
"I choose Left Arm of the Forbidden One." Amano said.
There was nothing particularly worth agonizing over. All five of those cards were roughly equivalent as a choice. The head piece was the only one that was unusual: Exodia the Forbidden One, the only Effect Monster of the five, and the one Amano still did not own a copy of.
"I then activate the Spell Card Dark Factory of Mass Production, recovering 2 Normal Monsters from my Graveyard. I recover Left Leg of the Forbidden One and Right Leg of the Forbidden One."
That gave Amon three Forbidden One pieces in hand.
"Next I activate Graceful Charity: draw 3 cards, then discard Left Leg of the Forbidden One and the Spell Card, Ritual of the Ultimate Forbidden Lord from my hand."
Recovering a Forbidden One piece only to immediately discard it again. It seemed meaningless at first, but the discards had just set up the exact win condition Amon was looking for. His first turn, and he had already assembled what he needed.
Amon raised his Duel Disk. In the Graveyard zone, a light that should not have existed in the Fusion world began to burn: the sealed light of the Forbidden One.
"Last, I activate the GY effect of Ritual of the Ultimate Forbidden Lord!"
[Ritual of the Ultimate Forbidden Lord (Anime Card)]
[Spell Card: When 5 "Forbidden One" cards exist in combined hand and GY, activate this card from the GY. Return all "Forbidden One" cards in the GY to the Deck. Discard 2 "Forbidden One" cards from your hand, then Special Summon 1 "Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord" from your Deck or hand. If a card effect other than "Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord" would send a "Forbidden One" card to the GY, that card returns to the Deck instead.]
"Now, kneel before this power. This is the force that reigns over ten million spirits!"
"Break free from your chains, gather as the absolute god that tears through causality itself!"
"Return from the gap between moments! Special Summon! Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord!"
[Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord (Anime Version)]
[Spellcaster / Special Summon / Effect]
[ATK: ? / DEF: 0]
[This card cannot be Special Summoned except by the effect of "Ritual of the Ultimate Forbidden Lord." This card cannot be destroyed by battle. This card is unaffected by the effects of your opponent's Spells, Traps, and Effect Monsters. When this card attacks, send 1 "Forbidden One" monster from your hand or Deck to the GY. This card gains 1000 ATK for each "Forbidden One" monster in the GY. If 5 differently named "Forbidden One" monsters are in the GY while this card is on the field, you win the Duel.]
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