Chapter 294: The Choice That Decides the Duel, Reversal, and the Descending King
Activated by tributing two monsters on the field, Obelisk the Tormentor had two possible effects, and Kaiba Seto had already shown one of them the turn before.
This turn, Amano was about to use the other.
"'Soul Energy MAX'!"
On Amano's field, the god transformed from Dark Panther swept its thick arms out, left and right, closing around Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Blade Dragon and Gandora-X the Dragon of Demolition, consuming both in an instant.
[Obelisk the Tormentor (original card name: "Neo-Spacian Dark Panther")] [ATK: 1000 to Infinity]
"What, infinite ATK?!"
Mokuba, monitoring the dimensional energy this duel was generating, was suddenly startled by a reading that looked like it was about to blow straight past the top of the gauge.
He'd told Kaiba Seto that if Amano pushed his power one step further this turn, the Dimensional Domain System on their end could deliver an even bigger payoff.
He hadn't expected Amano's idea of "one step further" to be quite this big a stride.
With nothing more than an unused Normal Summon, Amano had seized Obelisk the Tormentor's effect and unleashed the infinite-ATK option Kaiba Seto himself hadn't even used the turn before.
If energy at this level, nearly redlining the gauge, actually landed successfully, then by Kaiba Seto's own theory, bringing the Pharaoh back into this dimension might turn out to be the least of what it could do.
"Amano!"
"Amano Rei!"
Yugi and Kaiba Seto called out Amano's name at exactly the same moment.
Standing at the single most decisive fork in fate this three-way duel had to offer, Amano had already made his choice between Yugi and Kaiba.
Much like the two effects of Obelisk the Tormentor itself.
If Amano had chosen the board-wipe damage effect instead, even with Dark Panther's own 1000 ATK, dealing 1000 battle damage to Yugi would have been enough to eliminate him first.
But if Amano chose infinite ATK instead, Photon Dragon's own restriction meant Dark Panther couldn't declare a direct attack on Yugi, leaving only Kaiba Seto's 4000-ATK god as a valid attack target.
Between Yugi and Kaiba Seto, Amano had chosen to eliminate Kaiba Seto first.
Of course, this wasn't Amano acting on feeling. It was the rational outcome of calculating through a three-way duel.
Amano's reasoning was simple, and had nothing to do with whether the Pharaoh came back or not.
It came down to the fact that Yugi still had one unknown set card in his back row, while Kaiba Seto had nothing but the god standing in front.
Even with Kaiba's hand topped up to six cards, the president had never once played anything like a hand trap in the anime. The only card that qualified as anything close to one was Deep-Eyes White Dragon.
If he'd chosen to eliminate Yugi instead, Amano's next turn would have meant facing Kaiba Seto with Obelisk the Tormentor still standing, seven cards in hand, and a full 8000 Life Points. He couldn't picture a way to win that.
"Don't hold this against me, Kaiba. It's all for the win!"
After all, the task Eva's system had handed him was to survive to the very end of the duel with everything he had.
"It's also my own struggle to stay alive!"
"I'm moving into the Battle Phase this turn!"
The moment the Battle Phase was declared, the two towering Obelisk the Tormentors, filling nearly the entire dueling stage between them, roared with such overwhelming godly fury that thunder began cracking chaotically through the data sky overhead.
"No, my brother isn't going to be taken down that easily!"
Amano's homemade infinite-ATK strike was carrying enough dimensional energy to nearly max out the system's gauge. But just as Mokuba had analyzed, even a strike with infinite ATK only mattered if it actually landed.
If Amano's attack target was Kaiba Seto's own Obelisk the Tormentor, then this strike was destined to fail.
Kaiba rarely played hand traps, sure, but at this point his Graveyard held a Death Guardian sitting in plain view (Special Summoned last turn by Return from the Different Dimension, then sent to the Graveyard by the god's own effect).
[Death Guardian: During your opponent's turn, you can banish this card from your GY to activate its effect. Negate 1 attack from an opponent's monster this turn.]
Banishing this card to activate its effect could negate the opponent's very next attack.
The reason Kaiba Seto hadn't activated it yet was that he'd been waiting for exactly the right moment.
What made this card unusual was that once it was banished to activate, the very next attack was guaranteed to be negated, no exceptions.
The duelist had no control over which attack got negated once the effect was live, so the only way to avoid wasting it on some small-fry monster's attack was to control exactly when the card left the Graveyard in the first place.
Now that Amano had entered the Battle Phase, having tributed Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Blade Dragon and Gandora-X the Dragon of Demolition, the only monster left on his field was the infinite-ATK god.
And though Dark Panther had copied the god's name and effect, it hadn't copied its Level. Level 3 Dark Panther was still vulnerable to Death Guardian's effect, which was itself tied to Level 3.
"A false god is destined to lose to my real one, Amano!"
"Is that really so, Kaiba!"
After declaring the Battle Phase, Amano hadn't rushed straight into an attack on Kaiba Seto.
There was no way Amano had missed that Death Guardian sitting face-up in the Graveyard.
Even having noticed it, Amano had still chosen to enter the Battle Phase with an infinite-ATK monster.
Because the trump card that would break the deadlock had already been revealed this very turn.
Revealed by Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Blade Dragon's clean, one-cut destruction: Yugi's set Trap Card, Final Geas.
After entering the Battle Phase, Amano swept a Quick-Play Spell forward. "Quick-Play Spell: Trap Booster, activate!"
[Trap Booster] [Quick-Play Spell Card: Discard 1 card. You can activate 1 Trap Card in your hand.]
"By Trap Booster's effect, I activate the Trap Card in my hand, Transaction Rollback! I pay half my Life Points and copy Final Geas, sitting in your Graveyard, Yugi!"
Amano Rei LP: 7500 to 3750
"I see. So that's how it is, Amano!"
In that instant, Yugi understood everything at once.
The instant Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Blade Dragon destroyed Yugi's Trap Card, this exact play had already been forming in Amano's head.
Using this exact card as the final blow to send Kaiba Seto out of the free-for-all couldn't have been more fitting.
Yugi: "Then take it and use it, Amano!"
Amano: "Here it comes! Final Geas's effect, activate!"
[Final Geas: If a monster(s) with an original Level of 7 or higher is sent from each player's field to the Graveyard this turn: Banish as many monsters from the Graveyards as possible, then you can Special Summon the 1 highest-Level Spellcaster-Type monster among those banished monsters to your field.]
This turn, a Level 7 Dark Magician had been sent to the Graveyard from Yugi's field, and a Level 8 Gandora-X the Dragon of Demolition from Amano's.
Activated from the Graveyard, Final Geas forcibly ejected every monster card sitting in all three players' Graveyard zones on their new Duel Disks. A tornado made of countless cards swept toward another ending on the far side of the dimension.
In the anime's version of the duel, this was the very card that had ended in Kaiba Seto's defeat.
And now, in this three-way free-for-all, Amano and Yugi had "teamed up" to activate the same card, driving Kaiba Seto back into a corner as if the timeline itself were converging toward the same point again.
Kaiba Seto swept an arm out. "I chain to Final Geas's effect! I activate Death Guardian's effect from my Graveyard, banishing this card to negate the next attack!"
"Won't work, Kaiba. You already know this trick doesn't get you anywhere." Amid the storm of banished cards swirling through the air, Amano's fingers closed with precision on the exact card he meant to Summon.
"By Final Geas's effect, I Special Summon the highest-Level Spellcaster-Type monster among the banished monsters to my field! It's decided. Dark Magician!"
[Dark Magician] [ATK: 2500]
Special Summoned out of the banishing storm, the Dark Magician that had once belonged to Yugi swung its staff in a blur, materializing in front of Amano through the projection's most lifelike rendering yet.
"Dark Magician, attack Obelisk the Tormentor first!"
It looked like a self-destructive attack on paper, but Amano had every reason for confidence. He knew this exact attack was guaranteed to be the one Death Guardian's effect blocked.
Final Geas had been the play that forced Kaiba Seto into banishing Death Guardian in the first place, and Dark Magician's throwaway attack was what burned through that critical negation.
A black barrier spread out in front of the towering god's body, and in a stroke of irony, it wound up stopping nothing more than Dark Magician's own suicide attack.
"It's over, Kaiba! Now, my infinite-ATK god, attack your Obelisk the Tormentor!"
A clash between gods: both Obelisk the Tormentors reared back and swung their massive fists. Everyone in the venue instinctively clapped their hands over their ears, as if the shockwave from the coming collision might burst their eardrums on its own.
"Heh heh. Hahahaha. Hahahahaha! The ones who lose this duel are going to be the two of you!"
In the very instant the timeline seemed to be converging on the same defeat all over again, Kaiba Seto raised the arm bearing his new Duel Disk, blazing with a blinding blue light, as though he'd seen straight through fate itself.
An effect from the Graveyard had just activated.
Even after Final Geas had cleared every monster card from every Graveyard, Spell and Trap Cards were still sitting there.
"Transaction Rollback's effect, activated from the Graveyard!"
Transaction Rollback was walking away with the MVP award for this duel.
Kaiba Seto's own Transaction Rollback had gone to the Graveyard the turn before, spent copying Energy-Absorbing Monolith.
Activated from the Graveyard, its second effect copied a Trap Card sitting in Kaiba Seto's own Graveyard.
The reason Kaiba Seto hadn't copied a Trap sooner was simple: the specific Trap he wanted to copy had only just become eligible to activate.
Kaiba Seto LP: 8100 to 4050
"I copy the Trap Card in my Graveyard, Return from the Different Dimension! Special Summon as many of my banished monsters as possible!"
The reason it could only activate now was that before Final Geas resolved, Kaiba Seto hadn't had any banished monsters at all.
But now, after Final Geas, every one of Kaiba Seto's monsters had just been banished.
"Cross through time, span across space, transcend dimensions itself! Roar out your proudest cry for my victory!"
"Special Summon! All at once! Blue-Eyes White Dragon! The white phantom beast, Blue-Eyes White Dragon! Blue-Eyes Alternative White Dragon! Neo Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon!"
Four dragons roared in fury, the Blue-Eyes White Dragons reappearing on Kaiba's field and circling around Obelisk the Tormentor.
Standing at the center of the god and his dragons, lit by the new Duel Disk's most brilliant projection yet, Kaiba Seto looked as if he were about to break free of the defeat that had already been written into another timeline.
"Obelisk's effect, activate! I tribute all four monsters on my field, raising Obelisk the Tormentor's ATK to infinity, and dealing infinite battle damage to both of you!"
"Soul Energy MAX" and "God's Fist Crush: Shockwave" activating together, an all-or-nothing gamble that held nothing back: this was Kaiba Seto's style through and through.
"This time I will absolutely beat both of you! Yugi! Amano!"
Facing Kaiba Seto's final, ferocious counterattack, Yugi and Amano swept out cards at almost the exact same moment, reacting in perfect sync.
"Set Quick-Play Spell, activate!"
"Quick-Play Spell from my hand, activate!"
Even the cards the two of them activated in this exact moment were nearly identical.
Yugi: "Quick-Play Spell: Forbidden Chalice, activate!"
Amano: "Quick-Play Spell: Forbidden Crown, activate!"
Spell Cards did have a one-turn effect against a god.
Two Quick-Play Spells from the Forbidden series. Different names, but activated at this exact moment, aimed at exactly the same target.
Negating Obelisk the Tormentor's effect.
"Yugi?" Amano glanced over at him.
He hadn't expected the card Yugi had set at the end to be this one. It was a good thing Amano hadn't chosen to copy the board-damage effect earlier, or Yugi's Forbidden Chalice right now would probably have ended up landing on Amano's own god instead.
What Amano couldn't quite figure out was why Yugi had flipped up Forbidden Chalice alongside him when Amano's own card had already negated the god's effect. Wasn't that a waste?
Yugi said, "Amano, if I survived off your card alone, it would feel like I'd lost anyway."
Ah, so that was the meaning behind it. In plain terms, what Yugi's play was really saying to Kaiba Seto was this: even without Amano's card, I still wouldn't have lost.
Not content to just beat him, he had to crush his spirit too? No wonder you never had any friends before, Kaiba.
[Obelisk the Tormentor, effect negated]
[Obelisk the Tormentor, effect negated]
The double negation the two of them triggered at the same instant slammed down on the god, sealing off completely the counterattack Kaiba Seto had staked his last shred of pride on.
Even having broken free of a predetermined defeat, even having crossed into another timeline entirely, Kaiba Seto found that the same two people were still waiting for him at the finish line.
"So I still can't beat these two."
Looking at the Blue-Eyes White Dragons and Obelisk the Tormentor standing on his field, Kaiba Seto knew this was as far as he could reach for now.
"Time to end this, Kaiba!"
The infinite-ATK strike finally, inevitably, came down on Kaiba Seto.
God versus god, fist against fist: Amano's infinite ATK crushed the exchange completely, shattering Kaiba Seto's Obelisk the Tormentor with a single punch.
"'God's Fist Crush: Soul Energy MAX'!"
Kaiba Seto: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
Kaiba Seto LP: 4050 to 0
The infinite force of the impact, rendered in the new Duel Disk's most extreme physical projection yet, shook the very ground beneath all of Domino City.
Even though it hadn't been a direct attack, Kaiba Seto was blasted backward and sent tumbling a distance that outdid Amano's and Yugi's combined flight distances from earlier in the duel.
In this three-way Chronicle duel, Kaiba Seto was the first to be eliminated.
Even watching her own ancestor go down in defeat, Kaiba Chiaki found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she could accept the outcome.
At least Amano hadn't lost.
Eliminating Kaiba Seto first had come at a real price. Neither of the two remaining duelists was in especially good shape.
Yugi, hanging on with 200 Life Points like a candle in the wind, needed no further explanation.
And Amano, despite the infinite-ATK god currently standing on his field, would see it revert back to a 1000-ATK Neo-Spacian Dark Panther once the turn ended. His actual position wasn't much better than it looked.
This duel had to be nearing its end.
Most of the people watching the duel thought exactly that, once Kaiba Seto had been eliminated.
Surely, in the endgame of a match like this, there was nothing left to pull out that could top the shock of Obelisk the Tormentor.
Only Kaiba Seto, climbing back up onto one knee after being blasted off his feet, knew what was about to happen next.
A faint smile touched the corner of Kaiba Seto's mouth as he listened to Mokuba's voice come through his earpiece, his gaze settling on the Millennium Puzzle still suspended above the stage.
"Brother, it's ready! This turn's battle went way past what we expected! The Dimensional Domain System is charged to 200 percent!"
"Then activate it, Mokuba!"
"Yes, sir!"
With Kaiba Seto eliminated, Amano ended the Battle Phase of his turn and looked over what remained of his hand.
"I set two cards. Turn end."
The instant Amano declared the end of his turn, he felt the reality around him flicker, just for a moment.
The sensation was exactly like the one that came every time a Chronicle ended and released him. Reality would blur, the surrounding space would start collapsing bit by bit, and then he'd be pulled back across time to Eden.
But this time, no Chronicle-clear notification had popped up at all, and he hadn't lost either, so it couldn't possibly be a failed clear.
Was it just his imagination?
The next second, the blurring scenery around him began collapsing and dissolving like a data world falling apart, proving it hadn't been his imagination after all.
Was the Chronicle really about to end?
But the commotion rising from the crowd changed Amano's read on the situation all over again.
It seemed like he wasn't the only one seeing the scenery collapse. This wasn't the Chronicle ending at all. Something was genuinely happening, a shift across the timeline itself, the same kind of thing a Chronicle usually simulated.
The entire venue's appearance had already been transformed once, back when Kaiba Seto demonstrated the new Duel Disk's features, turning the sky into a pale-blue data network.
If the projected scenery was collapsing now, KaibaCorp had to be behind it too.
Inside KaibaCorp's space station, a massive orbital elevator called the Dimensional Domain Device fired toward the venue's coordinates, its dimensional energy fully charged.
Kaiba Seto suddenly rose to his feet and roared, "Dimensional Domain System, activate!"
At the sound of Kaiba's voice, the collapsing data scenery around them reassembled itself. As if someone had just activated a Field Spell, the sky blanketed in data network gave way to an ancient city buried under drifting yellow sand.
"This is?!"
Chronicle-related memories flooded into Amano's mind all at once.
This scene matched, exactly, one from the Memory of the King.
Ancient Egypt, three thousand years in the past?
Amano felt some kind of strange energy drifting off his own body, exactly like the state Kaiba Seto had been in at the end of the movie, right when he crossed those same three thousand years.
It wasn't just Amano. Yugi, Kaiba Seto, and every stunned spectator in the venue were all caught in the same state.
Was that man actually dragging the entire venue back three thousand years along with him this time, not just himself?
Had he lost his mind?
"Finally arrived in this dimension." Kaiba Seto plucked the suspended Millennium Puzzle out of the air and tossed it into Yugi's hands.
"Call him, Yugi! Use this Millennium Puzzle to call the king who belongs to this dimension!"
Just as stunned by the change in surroundings as Amano was, Yugi's eyes flickered the instant he caught the Millennium Puzzle in his hands, as if he'd sensed something.
"My other self..."
Yugi couldn't be mistaken about this. It was a bond he and Atem had built up over years spent together.
Up until now, Yugi had been certain the Pharaoh was gone, that no soul remained inside the Millennium Puzzle.
But now that they'd arrived in this dimension and the Millennium Puzzle was back in his hands, Yugi felt it again, for the first time in far too long.
"Partner!"
Deep within Yugi's soul, the voice of his other self rang out once more.
"That was a magnificent fight, the three of you. That absolute passion for dueling reached across time and space, all the way to my heart!"
"My other self!"
"So let's stand shoulder to shoulder again, for the first time in far too long, partner! Let me take it from here and continue the duel, the way we always used to. That's fine with you, isn't it?"
"Of course it is, my other self!"
As the Millennium Puzzle hanging at his chest glowed and swung, a rousing theme song seemed to carry all the way to Amano's ears.
Golden light spanning a thousand years wrapped around Yugi. By the time it faded, his school uniform had become a flowing cloak, and the Pharaoh's burning fighting spirit, reawakened, was enough on presence alone to send that cloak billowing.
"Amano Rei, let's continue this duel full of passion! And settle what the KC Cup left unfinished between us!"
"A, Atem?"
"Yes. My turn, draw."
Taking over the duel, Atem drew his card and, without so much as glancing at it, slapped it straight down onto the Duel Disk.
"Go, Mahad!"
Mahad materialized down on one knee, bowed low to the Pharaoh, then rose, gripped the staff in his hand, and turned to face Amano.
[Palladium Oracle Mahad] [Level 7 / LIGHT]
[Spellcaster / Effect]
[ATK: 2500] [DEF: 2100]
[When this card is drawn: You can reveal this card to your opponent. Special Summon this card from your hand.]
"Mahad, attack Neo-Spacian Dark Panther!"
Mahad leapt through empty air on pure magic, staff raised high, and layer upon layer of golden magic circles spread and shimmered across the sky.
As a fellow spellcaster-style attack effect, this single blow's power alone left even the five-ringed circles of Dark Magic Attack completely behind.
[During the Damage Step, if this card battles a DARK monster: This card's ATK becomes doubled.]
[Neo-Spacian Dark Panther] [DARK] [ATK: 1000]
[Palladium Oracle Mahad] [ATK: 2500 to 5000]
Amano Rei LP: 3750
Was he seriously about to get one-shot the same way Diva had?
If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone or drop a review — it helps more than you'd think.
Advance chapters → patreon.com/Eatinpieces