"Idiot!"
Watching the surveillance footage of Hoshino secretly cursing him, Kaiba's brows tightened. With a sharp tap of his finger, he activated the automatic door to the president's office.
Psshh—
With the mechanical hiss of the door sliding open, Hoshino outside and Kaiba inside locked eyes.
"Thank you for your hard work, President Kaiba. You even opened the door for me yourself~"
Hoshino smiled, pretending nothing had happened.
"Cut the nonsense. Get in."
Kaiba tapped a few keys on the keyboard atop his desk, and the enormous wall-mounted screen—normally used to broadcast Pro Duel League matches—lit up.
"So you dragged me here at such an important time… don't tell me you called me just to watch duels with you."
If that were really the case, Hoshino would turn around and leave immediately. But knowing Kaiba, there was no way he was that bored.
"How many of the Shadow Riders have been defeated so far?" Kaiba asked bluntly.
"Counting the one you took care of, there are three left."
"I took care of?"
"Oh, right! It was Kaibaman who handled him."
"Kaiba…man?"
Kaiba's expression twisted in confusion once more. Hoshino had, yet again, said something he didn't understand.
But this wasn't new. When Kaiba didn't understand something Hoshino said, he simply ignored it.
"So three remain. That means that old fossil Kagemaru should be making his move soon."
"Kagemaru?"
The name felt both unfamiliar and strangely familiar. Hoshino was sure she'd heard it before… but she had absolutely no recollection of who he actually was.
"Who's that again?"
Kaiba and Mokuba stared at her as if she had just said something utterly unbelievable.
"Hoshino, you're… joking, right?"
"I'm not. So who is Kagemaru?" Hoshino asked again, genuinely confused.
"You—!"
Kaiba snapped, exasperated.
"You're the headmistress of Duel Academy, and you don't even know who the chairman is?!"
"The… academy chairman?!"
Only then did Hoshino remember. Someone had mentioned before that Duel Academy was jointly funded by KaibaCorp and a wealthy old man named Kagemaru.
Which meant Kagemaru's position stood above both Hoshino and Sheppard—equal to Kaiba's authority over the academy. A hidden final boss, in a sense.
"Sorry, sorry. It slipped my mind."
Hoshino laughed awkwardly.
"So—Chairman Kagemaru. What about him?"
Kaiba let out a long sigh. He truly had no idea how to deal with someone like Hoshino.
When it came to academy affairs, she was responsible and beloved by the students. But in social and political matters, she was nowhere near as experienced or smooth as Sheppard.
Kaiba and the other executives regularly received courtesy greetings and gifts from Sheppard.
Meanwhile, Hoshino treated social obligations like optional decorations—things she ignored whenever she felt like it.
Her absence from several KaibaCorp annual meetings had already stirred complaints among the higher-ups.
If Kaiba hadn't personally suppressed those voices, the corporate world—built on利益 and connections—would have already produced someone trying to undermine her from the shadows.
"The mastermind behind the Shadow Riders, the one seeking the power of the Sacred Beasts," Kaiba said slowly,
"is most likely Kagemaru."
He explained everything he knew: Kagemaru's obsession with eternal life, his reason for investing in an academy built atop the sealed Sacred Beasts, and Kaiba's own countermeasure—adding a hidden seal to the cards to interfere with Kagemaru's plans.
"Wow, Kaiba… you're really something."
Hoshino's first reaction wasn't shock, but amusement.
"Openly swindling an old man."
Kaiba replied coldly,
"In this world, everyone acts for their own interests. No one is 'swindling' anyone."
"But if the seals are weakening, and all seven keys are with me, how is he planning to revive the Sacred Beasts?"
Hoshino pulled the seven keys from inside her coat, still warm from her body heat. She had taken custody of them to prevent incidents like Camula's attack on Alexis—making sure students could no longer be targeted.
"That old man didn't survive this long for nothing," Kaiba said.
"Even with KaibaCorp's reinforced seal, he still found another way to weaken it."
Kaiba activated the wall screen.
A dated graph appeared. The line plunged sharply at several points—almost like a sheer cliff.
"This is—?!"
Hoshino gasped.
"KaibaCorp's stock price?! It's crashing this badly—are you going bankrupt?!"
Already sensing the crisis of unemployment, Hoshino had begun mentally preparing for life after bankruptcy.
Streaming seemed like easy money. Plenty of retired pro duelists were doing it now and earning a fortune. As a former Duel King, she could probably survive just fine.
Kaiba shot her a you absolute idiot look and continued.
"This graph represents the strength of the seals. At these specific moments, the seals weakened drastically—clear signs of instability."
He turned toward her.
"So I'm asking you… does anything come to mind?"
"The seals weakened…"
Hoshino stared at the screen, recalling the dates.
The first major drop—
It was the day she came to KaibaCorp to retrieve the keys.
Right after that came the following day, when the seal's power dropped even more sharply than the first time—nearly half of its strength vanished in one go.
Afterward, the graph stabilized for a period, until yesterday, when the long-dormant decline appeared once more. That was why Kaiba had urgently summoned Hoshino here.
If there was anything significant that happened on those dates, it could only be—
"I get it!"
Hoshino clapped her hands together, a figurative lightbulb flashing above her head.
"It's the Shadow Riders! Every time a Shadow Rider is defeated, the seal weakens noticeably!"
The first time the seal loosened was right after she returned from KaibaCorp and defeated Camula.
The second major drop occurred when she defeated two Shadow Riders back-to-back at the hot springs inn.
And yesterday, after the fourth Shadow Rider was defeated, the previously stable graph dipped again.
"So that's how it is…"
Kaiba did not doubt Hoshino's conclusion in the slightest.
"I don't know what method that old fossil, Kagemaru, used—but under the pretense of having the Shadow Riders steal the Spirit Keys, he forced you to duel them. And with every Shadow Rider you defeat, the seal on the Sacred Beasts weakens."
Hoshino puffed out her cheeks in frustration.
"So I was being used?"
"Yes. We were both used." Kaiba clenched his teeth. "Kagemaru's cunning far exceeds what I anticipated. I underestimated him."
Mokuba spoke up, uneasy.
"So if the remaining three Shadow Riders are defeated too… the Sacred Beasts will break free?"
"But if we don't defeat them and lose a Shadow Duel," Hoshino added grimly, "the consequences could be even worse."
"That Kagemaru…" Kaiba growled, eyes locked on the plunging graph. "He's played a brilliant move."
"Oh, right!" Mokuba suddenly brightened. "Since we can't stop the Sacred Beasts from awakening anyway, why don't we just use the keys to unlock the seal ourselves and seize the Sacred Beast cards first?"
Kaiba shook his head.
"The Gates are only the second seal I added on top of the original Sacred Beast seal. Even if we open the doors, we still don't have a way to bypass the original seal like Kagemaru does."
Mokuba slumped.
"Then what do we do… just sit here and wait for the Sacred Beasts to revive?"
"What's there to worry about?" Hoshino said confidently. "They're just Sacred Beasts. Demon or god—if they're Duel Monsters, then we just beat them in a duel!"
"You're right!" Mokuba exclaimed. "Hoshino is the one who defeated the Egyptian Gods and the Evil Gods back then! Even if the Sacred Beasts revive, as long as she's here—!"
Hoshino's most devoted fanboy immediately regained his confidence.
Yet despite her bravado, Hoshino knew the truth. Even Uria alone had been troublesome. Facing all three Sacred Beasts together would be terrifying.
"If I had a God Card," she muttered, "fighting the Sacred Beasts would be much easier…"
Sure, with her Heroic Spirit deck, she could manage somehow. As the strongest Master of Heroic Spirits, she had been capable of soloing a God Card even seven years ago.
But if her opponent fielded multiple god-tier monsters—like Marik during Battle City or Yugi in the KC Grand Prix—whether her own God Card could unleash its full power would be the deciding factor.
Not to mention that, when combined with certain Heroic Spirits, God Cards could even shatter dimensional barriers with divine force.
"So where do I get a God Card?"
Her first thought was that red-haired little loli, Uria.
She immediately vetoed the idea. Even if Uria were summoned, who knew whether that "Uria-chan" would disappear again? And using a counterfeit Sacred Beast—one even Gilgamesh dismissed as a fake—to fight the real Sacred Beasts was downright idiotic.
Then Minazuki's goofy grin flashed through her mind.
That card could count as a god, right?
"…Forget it. That sketchy card feels even less reliable than Uria."
In the end, the only god she could truly rely on was that gothic little girl shrouded completely in darkness.
Which meant it was time to activate the final emergency plan—
Gripping the pyramid of light hanging at her chest, Hoshino called out:
"Other me, I'm counting on you."
["Aibo—! You finally remembered me?! I thought you'd forgotten I even existed! (ﾉД｀ﾟ)"]
"Don't joke around. Didn't we play that galgame together last night?"
["Play? Aibo, you ignored all my suggestions and speed-ran straight into the bad end."]
"This isn't the time for galgames. Other me, I need you to go to Chaldea and bring back the Evil God cards."
Da Vinci had said she wanted to investigate the connection between the Saint Quartz gacha malfunction and the Evil God cards. A month had passed, and Hoshino had no idea whether she'd discovered anything yet.
"The other two Evil God cards can stay with Da Vinci—but that girl, you absolutely must bring her back."
Honestly, just having that black sphere in her deck—even if she never got the chance to use it—would give her peace of mind. Such was the presence of the strongest Evil God.
["Got it. Retrieve Evil God-san first, right? Leave it to me—mission guaranteed!"]
The pyramid grew lighter as her partner's consciousness transferred back to Chaldea through the pyramid's inner space.
"If summoning me was the cause of the seal weakening, I'll be more careful from now on," Hoshino said once everything was arranged.
"If you believe you can defeat the Sacred Beasts," Kaiba replied calmly, "then I have nothing more to say."
If anyone else had said something like that, Kaiba would have scoffed. But when Hoshino said it, it meant she could do it.
"Oh, one more thing." Kaiba switched the display on the screen. "Do you remember the AR Duel System we used five years ago?"
"You mean Duel Links? The Duel Disk that connected duelists' consciousnesses through a network?"
The moment Kaiba demonstrated that Duel Disk—summoning a meteor to annihilate Domino City's virtual projection—remained unforgettable even after all these years.
With such overwhelming promotional power, the AR Duel Disk should have easily replaced traditional Duel Disks. Yet Kaiba abruptly shut the project down right after that duel.
Hoshino never learned what Dr. Romani told Kaiba in that higher-dimensional space—but officially, Kaiba claimed humanity wasn't ready for such deep consciousness-link technology.
Incidentally, Hoshino had tried three separate times to get Kaiba to explain the three world cycles in detail, just as Dr. Romani instructed—but Kaiba's lips remained sealed tight.
"So," she asked, "what about the AR Duel Disk now?"
Looking out over Domino City through the glass wall, Kaiba answered solemnly:
"The time has come. Five years ago was too early—but now, with how Duel Monsters and duelists have evolved, they can finally handle it."
"Handle it? So the AR Duel Disk is finally going on sale?"
"The AR Duel Disk is only a vessel—more like a prototype. KaibaCorp never stopped developing it. And a few days ago, we finally completed something new…"
"A product that transcends the limits of this era."
"A product that transcends the era?"
Kaiba gazed into the blue sky like a hawk trapped in a cage, yearning to shatter it.
"—Overlay Network!"