Chapter 304: Marry Within a Week or Die
Nanami Misaki said, "Now that's what I call an epic wipeout."
Rin Seiya nodded in agreement. "A real tidal wave of a wipeout."
In the New Riding Duel Invitational's opening match, both sides had unleashed a Riding Duel between gods so intense it tore the sky apart.
The fierceness of that opening duel exceeded everyone's expectations, and the outcome went even further beyond anyone's predictions.
Celestia, the high-profile professional duelist who was supposed to be the New Riding Duel Invitational's biggest draw, had lost in the very first match.
In the end, Amano Rei, locked at exactly 1 Life Point, had delivered an Overkill strike of infinite magnitude.
An Overkill strike of infinite magnitude, no less.
The moment the duel ended and his Eva Terminal, for no clear reason, chimed with a deposit notification, even Amano himself was stunned.
[Overkill Eva Points Received: 2,059,210]
Two million, and with odd change tacked on too?
A number with change like that felt like he'd cleaned out the other person's wallet completely, not even leaving a single coin behind.
[Remaining Overkill Debt to Collect: Infinity]
[Debt Owed By: Celestia]
Infinity plus one striking down an infinite amount of Life Points, and it ends up producing an infinite debt?
Mainframe Eva, are you sure your math is right?
This isn't some backdoor deal you're cutting me because we go way back, is it?
"Theoretically, a situation like this is possible." Backstage in the D-Wheel maintenance area, Nanami Misaki, having been filled in on the situation, rubbed her chin as she thought it through.
"It depends on exactly what type of infinity we're dealing with. But if the mainframe Eva calculated it this way, she must have her reasons."
"So basically, I'm bankrupt?!" Celestia looked ready to cry, but no tears would come.
If she'd known this was coming, she should have just let the Winged Dragon of Ra finish her off obediently when Amano Rei delivered that final blow.
Instead, she just had to flip that Trap Card to sneak a look at the card underneath, and ended up getting hit with an infinite Overkill from the Wicked God. Her composure exploded, and so did her wallet, right along with it.
"The Wicked God really lives up to its name," Nanami Misaki remarked.
Shouldn't the real villain here be Divine Serpent Geh, the one that came with infinite ATK and DEF built right in?
Their own well-behaved, adorable little Wicked God had just copied and carried over the infinite value from the other side, that was all.
"So what's going on with this fiancee business, underclassman?! You actually kept it from me, because you knew I'd be mad, didn't you?"
Back in the staging area, Amano Rei found himself immediately caught in a headlock against Little Thunder senpai's chest, her arm locked tight around his throat in a fit of rage.
Struggling to breathe, Amano Rei realized that apparently you didn't need Big Thunder to pull off a chest-based kill move; solid grappling technique alone would do the trick.
"That was a duel contract Dad set up on his own, without asking me. It's void now, so we can just pretend none of it ever happened, senpai."
With the contract-breaking duel completed, it was just like that time the debt contract with the Wein Group had been voided. Amano Rei now neither had to return the Tearlaments deck nor marry into the tomb-keeper clan.
This was the raw power of dueling, made plain and unstoppable, right here in Eden.
"You can't just call off the engagement, Amano boy!"
Celestia flipped open the Eva Terminal on her wrist and shoved it right in front of Amano Rei's face.
Displayed prominently on the terminal screen was:
[Overkill debt detected. Please repay the debt amount within one week. Failure to repay within one week will result in forced expulsion from Eden.]
[Current Overkill Debt Amount: Infinity]
This wasn't simply a matter of going bankrupt anymore.
Inside Eden, Overkill debts came with a repayment deadline; failing to pay it off meant forced expulsion from Eden Tower.
Only now did Celestia truly understand why her grandfather, while he was alive, had drilled the dangers of Divine Serpent Geh into her so many times, insisting she never use it in any duel that wasn't absolutely necessary.
So this was what happened when you didn't listen to your elders.
"Is that even right?" Amano Rei frowned. "How is anyone supposed to pay back an infinite debt?"
As Amano Rei recalled, the last person to get hit with an infinite Overkill, Miss Shiyue Yi, had never been seen since. Apparently even an immortal from the Top Layer couldn't escape the ultimate consequence of Eden's highest-order rules.
Celestia pressed her lips together, then quietly squeezed two words out from between them: "Get married."
Maybe it was just his imagination, but outside of duel mode, Celestia's wild, over-the-top intensity from the duel had faded considerably, replaced instead with something... cuter?
Though as the old saying goes, cute doesn't hold a candle to sexy.
"No, no, no!" Rin Seiya grabbed Amano Rei's head with both hands and shook it for him in refusal. "If you marry her, what am I supposed to eat?"
"Wait, who even are you?" Celestia's golden eyes swept over her.
Amano Rei had been getting "tormented" by his senpai for this long already, and she was only just now noticing? Was her field of view getting blocked by Big Thunder or something?
"Synchro Academy's number one, Rin Seiya!"
"Oh, a student. Just a little brat, then."
"Huh? You're just some old pro lady!" Rin Seiya huffed indignantly.
"Let's ignore the kid for now." Celestia turned back and dismissed Rin Seiya entirely. "Amano boy, if you don't do something about this, I'm going to get exiled!"
Was it possible that Amano Rei was also a little student brat, and even younger than Rin Seiya at that?
"Is marriage really the only way to solve this?"
Counting it as shared marital debt meant it wouldn't need repaying at all. Whichever genius had discovered that loophole first, seriously.
After all the trouble of winning the contract-breaking duel, having to marry the dark-skinned Big Thunder senior anyway, that actually wasn't all that bad, come to think of it.
But if there was any way around it, Amano Rei would still rather find a different solution.
"What if you Overkill me right back? If you use the Serpent God's infinite ATK to Overkill me once, wouldn't that settle the debt between us?"
With a troubled look, Celestia held the Eva Terminal up in front of Amano Rei's face again.
[Duel Request - Denied]
[You cannot challenge the debt holder to a duel until the debt is repaid.]
Not even being allowed to duel your own creditor until the debt was paid off, that had more than a little flavor of a slave contract to it.
Amano Rei thought of another approach. "What if you use an infinite Overkill on someone else within the week, Tia? Wouldn't that transfer your infinite debt to them? Then they could pass it on to the next person within their own week, and it could just keep getting passed along forever?"
The moment Amano Rei said this, Nanami Misaki and Rin Seiya in the D-Wheel staging area, along with Celestia herself, the intended victim, and a few other duelists waiting for their own Riding Duels, all looked horrified.
Nanami Misaki, shocked: "Coming up with a plan like that, are you the Grim Reaper reincarnate?"
Rin Seiya's star-shaped pupils trembled. "Is this like one of those cursed videotapes where you have to pass it on within a week or die? That's terrifying!"
Celestia said, "Besides, it's not like an ordinary person could pull off an infinite Overkill anyway."
True enough. Even if Celestia did Overkill a third person, if that person couldn't produce an infinite Overkill of their own, it would basically be a death sentence for them.
Actually, by Amano Rei's logic, if they could find a third duelist capable of pulling off an infinite Overkill, they could theoretically set up an infinite triangular relay.
As everyone knows, a triangle is the most stable shape.
Even though he couldn't duel his own creditor, if a third person could also produce infinite ATK, Celestia could transfer the "debt" to that third party.
That third party could then duel Amano Rei within their own week, land an infinite Overkill, and transfer the "debt" to him.
And Amano Rei could then keep the cycle going by Overkilling Celestia again with infinity of his own.
On and on, endlessly resetting the repayment clock and creating a stable loop.
Unfortunately, forget about infinite Overkills, even the card components capable of building infinite loops were strictly regulated inside Eden, precisely to stop anyone from grinding out money with an infinite loop.
"So is your Divine Serpent Geh also something passed down through the tomb-keeper clan, Tia?" Amano Rei asked curiously.
Amano Rei could understand the tomb-keeper clan having the Winged Dragon of Ra; that matched the anime's own setup, after all.
But the Serpent God was supposed to be a card from the Orichalcos storyline. Did that mean cards like that were also under the tomb-keeper clan's control inside Eden?
Then again, if the tomb-keeper clan was already keeping watch over the Tearlaments angel too, one more god to guard on top of that wasn't exactly hard to believe.
"Nope." Celestia shook her head. "I got the Serpent God from a Chronicle, way back."
There were things that good to be had inside a Chronicle?
Made sense, really, considering Amano Rei himself had just picked up Slifer the Sky Dragon from a Chronicle too.
It seemed that even though Amano Rei's own entries into a Chronicle came with their own built-in plot significance, the Duel Chronicle System as a whole was still an important source of rare cards for all of Eden.
It was a bit like the hidden dungeons in some other kind of story, sure, the hero walks in and walks off with all the best loot, but he's never actually the only one who gets a shot at it.
Everybody getting a chance at cards was exactly what kept the dueling world healthy and sustainable in the long run.
"Don't change the subject, Amano boy!"
Celestia threw both arms firmly over Amano Rei's shoulders, her eyes locked on his, full of pleading.
"If you don't marry me, I'm going to be dead within a week!"
And it was true; in the minds of most people inside Eden Tower, being expelled from the Tower was no different from a death sentence.
The environment outside the Tower was, by all accounts, still unfit for living things to survive in.
"You wouldn't just stand there and watch me die, would you, darling?"
"Darling, ha, you've got the nerve to call him darling?" Rin Seiya angrily slapped her hand away. "A debtor like you should just call him master, obediently!"
Leave it to his senpai to find an angle no normal person would ever think of, and instantly at that.
"You wouldn't just stand there and watch me die, would you, master!"
So why are you playing along with her too?
Amano Rei sighed helplessly. "Well, there's still a week left, so let me think it over first. Maybe there's some other way to solve this."
Faced with this overly complicated problem of infinity, Amano Rei resorted to stalling for time, at least for now.
Even if he really couldn't find any other way, the worst-case outcome was just ending up married to Celestia, wasn't it.
After all, no matter how you looked at it, there was no way Amano Rei could just watch Celestia get expelled from Eden and leave Big Thunder to rot out in the wasteland.
Besides, getting married and entering a spousal relationship inside Eden was unusually simple. There was no need to file any complicated paperwork or throw a wedding banquet; the two of you just confirmed the relationship on your Eva Terminals, and it was done on the spot.
Divorce was just as convenient, of course; you could dissolve the marriage on the spot too, and there wasn't even a 30-day cooling-off period.
The only catch was that after a divorce, your personal record would show as "Divorced," and marrying again after that would put you in "Remarried" status.
So if Amano Rei ended up with little Shio, his sister, in tow afterward, that would basically count as a divorced single parent. Finding a second marriage after that might not be so easy.
Celestia couldn't help but sound worried. "Is there really another way to solve this? Don't you dare lie to me and then quietly disappear on me, Amano boy. For this whole week, I'm not letting you out of my sight!"
With her life on the line, no matter how carefree Celestia usually acted, there was no way she'd hand her fate entirely over to someone else.
"Relax, I'm just going to go ask someone about it."
"In that case, can I still call myself your fiancee during this whole time?"
"Do whatever you want about that."
The only person Amano Rei could think of to ask was the almighty President Kaiba.
As the Tower's foremost capitalist and head of industry, someone who also had cutting-edge technology at her fingertips and even some knowledge of the environment outside the Tower.
He hoped Kaiba Chiaki would know some way to break the deadlock on being expelled from Eden over an unpayable debt.
Of course, Amano Rei would have to ask Kaiba Chiaki in person; something like this wasn't the kind of thing you could explain properly over VSN.
He also couldn't just send Chiaki senpai a message saying, hey, I'm getting married next week, please figure something out for me.
But even to go find Chiaki, he'd have to wait until the Riding Duel Invitational was over. They'd only just finished the first match.
While Amano Rei and the others had been talking backstage, the second Riding Duel had already wrapped up. Rin Seiya, set to duel third, pulled on her helmet to cover her white hair and charged out onto the track, still smoldering from the last match.
Even without any more flashy god-card showdowns to follow, the crowd, still riding the emotional high from before, stayed just as fired up as ever.
After all, the appeal of dueling went far beyond just powerful gods trading blows.
Even a battle between ordinary monsters, or even weak ones, the Summoning and the back-and-forth mind games of the cards, could still shine with a light all its own for every duelist.
Rin Seiya: "Gathered stars shall awaken a newborn power. Become a road shining with light! Synchro Summon! Come forth, Junk Warrior!"
His senpai's Riding Duel had clearly been an effortless win in the opening round.
Speaking of duel victories, Amano Rei suddenly remembered something.
He'd gotten a new skill from Celestia earlier.
[Mark of the Heir] [After winning a duel, randomly obtain a copy of one card from your opponent's deck, including their Extra Deck. This skill only takes effect once per individual target.]
He could randomly obtain a copy of one card from his opponent's deck.
Did winning his duel against Celestia just now mean he'd already gotten his hands on that copied card?
Not only had winning the duel netted him two million (well, technically infinite), it had also handed him a free card. Big really did mean generous, huh.
Amano Rei immediately opened up the system's skill interface to check what card he'd gotten from the win.
What kind of card could he have copied from Celestia's deck, he wondered?
Could it possibly be the Winged Dragon of Ra? Even Divine Serpent Geh would already be an absolute jackpot!
Though if it really was a copy of a god card, he'd need to think long and hard before actually using it, or he'd end up defeating the whole point if he couldn't handle getting struck by lightning over it.
Of course, since the copy was random, the odds of it precisely landing on a god card were probably slim.
But Amano Rei figured that with his own incredible luck, whatever he'd copied probably wouldn't be bad. Her deck had three copies of Monster Reborn crammed into it, after all, so copying one of those wasn't out of the question either.
[Mark of the Heir] [Copy Target: Celestia] [Card "" Copy Successful]
Huh?
Just going by what the system interface showed, the card's name hadn't displayed at all, there was only an empty box where the name should have been.
System, did you actually copy it successfully? Why isn't the card name showing up?
Amano Rei immediately chose to claim the card, wanting to check whether his cut-rate system had glitched out again.
But once the brand-new card materialized out of streaming data into Amano Rei's hand, he actually understood exactly why.
The card genuinely had no name printed on it. In fact, nothing was printed on it at all, not even its type or effect.
Because this card was, one of the Legendary Dragons!
The anime version of the Legendary Dragon cards were the ones where the card face showed nothing but the dragon itself, with no effect text printed at all.
And the Legendary Dragon card Amano Rei had copied from Celestia turned out to be the one Jonouchi used in the anime: The Claw of Hermos.
The Claw of Hermos's ability let it fuse with monsters of different Types to become Fusion Monsters that could be used as different forms of Equip Cards.
The most iconic form was probably Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword.
So that's how it was. No wonder Celestia had the Serpent God in her deck.
To get your hands on the Serpent God, you had to enter a Duel Chronicle tied to the Orichalcos storyline.
And the prerequisite for unlocking a Duel Chronicle was having a card in your deck related to that particular arc.
This Claw of Hermos must have been the key card Celestia used to unlock the Orichalcos arc.
Looking at it that way, the tomb-keeper clan in Eden really did have quite a collection of good stuff.
If the goal was getting hold of those extremely rare, powerful cards that had only ever appeared in the anime, marrying into the tomb-keeper clan really might be the best option.
What was he even thinking?
Amano Rei immediately slapped himself to snap back to his senses.
He'd told himself already, a man could be as poor as he wanted, but he wasn't for sale!
Nanami Misaki eyed Amano Rei's behavior with confusion. "Has Big Thunder finally driven you off the deep end?"
Out on the track, Rin Seiya had already entered her finishing sequence, Junk Warrior's iron fist came crashing down from the sky, slamming into the Dark Armed Dragon on the opposing field.
Nanami Misaki edged a little closer to Amano Rei, lowering her voice. "Amano Rei, barring any surprises, the finals of this Riding Duel tournament should come down to you and Seiya. Keep an eye out when it happens."
Nanami Misaki's sudden shift in tone reminded Amano Rei all over again that this girl wasn't just some ordinary high schooler on the surface, she was a member of Team Future.
"Keep an eye out for what, exactly?"
Surely she wasn't asking him to go easy on his senpai. If that was the request, all he could say was, Bruno, you really do spoil her too much.
"Seiya ran into Z-one in this week's Duel Chronicle. At first, she was actually a little worried she couldn't beat you or the Emperor. But after meeting Z-one, her whole attitude changed completely. Do you know what that means?"
"Z-one? W-what does it mean?" Amano Rei asked nervously.
"I don't know either," Nanami Misaki said.
If she didn't know either, then why was she acting so mysterious about it?
"That's exactly why I'm telling you to keep an eye out during the duel."
So she wanted him to watch for some change in his senpai.
Just from this one Riding Duel alone, Amano Rei couldn't actually pick out any specific change in his senpai; she still seemed just as fond of mimicking Yusei Fudo's dueling style as ever.
Just as Nanami Misaki had predicted, in the subsequent semifinals, though the opponents were also professionals, they were unremarkable names the organizers had brought in purely to pad the roster, and both Amano Rei and Rin Seiya took their matches with ease.
The finals of the New Riding Duel Invitational, Amano Rei versus Rin Seiya, was about to begin, witnessed by tens of thousands of spectators.
"Today's my revenge match on the track, underclassman!"
Rin Seiya, who'd only just come off the track, drifted her Yusei No. 2 straight into the starting position, seamlessly gearing up for the final match, showing no sign whatsoever that the two prior duels had worn her down at all.
"You'd better not go easy on me, underclassman. Even if you pull out a god card, I'm not backing down! If anything, I'm already ready to go toe-to-toe with a god!"
Wanting to challenge the anime version of Slifer the Sky Dragon with nothing but Synchro Summons? Seiya senpai, you really would be the first person in history to try that.
"And one more thing!" Rin Seiya's star-shaped pupils sparkled.
"Which is?"
"This whole win-a-duel-get-married event that's going on, can I still sign up?"
"Give it up. There was never any event like that to begin with."
Amano Rei hadn't originally planned on using a god card in an ordinary duel, but since his senpai had said that, he went ahead and slotted both the Sky Dragon and the Legendary Dragon card into his deck anyway.
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