"The funny thing about information…" Julian said calmly. "Is that people assume it has to come from a single source. What you expected, to me to beat and abuse of one of your friends as you did to mine?"
The arena went silent for a moment with the heavy accusation. The actions that happened in the previous days were public knowledge, but when brought forward in such a public fashion they were made undeniable and a heavy thing. One that could even backfire if he was unable to prove his words. Julian just chilled and glanced pointedly at Prohibition's still-glowing sigil.
"You forbade a card I don't even play." he continued. "And I summoned one you didn't expect. Funny how those little things work, right?"
Dorian's eyes narrowed. "You're saying you guessed."
Julian shrugged. "I'm saying you told me everything I needed to know before either of us drew our opening hand. But a magician does not reveal his secrets."
That was when it really set in. Julian wasn't just countering cards. He was countering assumptions.
In the stands, the Obelisk students leaned closer together, whispers multiplying rather than settling.
"Maybe he's got someone inside Blue."
"I heard he's been trading favors for weeks."
"No… This is bigger than that."
"Do you think he hacked the registration system?"
"I don't see how. Dorian's deck was only shown half hour before the match for checking, there would be no time."
"And even if that was the case, how would he convince someone in the administration to side with someone broke like him against an heir like Cauldwell?"
Julian let the rumors grow. He didn't deny them. He also didn't confirm them. Not even acknowledged that he was hearing it right now. Because reputation, he knew, was a finicky thing. It wasn't built by truth alone. It was built by plausibility.
And the more ways people could imagine he might have known. Spies, deals, networks, leverage… the more dangerous he became in their eyes. Like a true Obelisk, someone worthy to sit amongst them.
Dorian watched him in silence now. He was no longer certain. And that shitty face, Julian concluded, was worth more than any single card in the briefcase. Julian didn't give him time to settle.
He raised another card, eyes briefly dropping to his own hand again to confirm and reassure his line of play for precision. Then he slid it forward.
"I discard Night Assailant from my hand." Julian said. A shadowy creature: small and vicious, flashed in hologram as it fell into Julian's Graveyard feed. "As cost for the activation of my Nightmare Apprentice, allowing its Special Summon."
The air beside Julian warped, like a reflection in glass being tugged the wrong way. A figure stepped out of it. A purple-haired young and slender figure stepped onto the field, its clothes like a magician's, but its design like a shadow, a half-formed and twisted version of a known and loved card. Her lips were curved in a smile that promised secrets, and her eyes were too bright, silhouette too clean, like a doll learning how to move or something almost human, but landing front and center into an uncanny valley that deemed that things were not entirely right.
(Nightmare Apprentice/DARK/Illusion/Level 6/2000 ATK)
The crowd reacted instantly.
"Nightmare… What?"
"That's not in his registry."
"Is that… an Illusion card? From that new collection last month?"
"There were a few neat cards there, but not enough to make a viable deck!"
Julian's voice stayed steady, but there was a quiet satisfaction in it now.
"When Nightmare Apprentice is Special Summoned, I can search my deck for an Illusion monster and add it to my hand." he continued.
He made a show of it. Not for drama, but for clarity. For the judge. For the public record. For everyone who'd convinced themselves they could reduce him to a simple label and make known far and wide the bravery of his little friend's lie.
He revealed the card briefly. "I'll Emissary from the House of Wax to my hand."
Murmurs sharpened. Jasmine leaned toward Alexis, whispering. "House of Wax… He used it that time as well…"
Alexis's eyes narrowed. "Yeah. He found a way to make a few recent cards without support into a viable deck."
Syrus didn't speak. He just stared as if he couldn't decide whether to breathe or not.
Julian's fingers adjusted his hand again. One card left that mattered for this turn. Not because it was the only play, but because it was the one that would carve a line through the narrative Dorian had tried to write for him.
He raised it.
"Now, I'll activate Relinquished Fusion."
Dorian's eyes flicked sharply. Not fear, recognition. The kind of recognition that came when you realized the opponent was about to put something on the board you couldn't possibly have prepared for.
Julian didn't bother hiding his amusement now.
The duel system flared, and the Graveyard feed lit as Julian selected material: Night Assailant, already discarded, and Emissary from the House of Wax from his hand.
They burned into pale light. And then the arena's temperature seemed to drop.
Something emerged above Julian's field. Not a normal fusion animation. Not the clean, industrial assembly line of Union Hangar, but a pull. Like reality was being bent into a shape it didn't like.
A figure descended, draped in shadows that behaved like fabric and teeth at the same time. Chains of black glass hung from it like jewelry. Its body was sleek, predatory, and crowned by a single eye that didn't just see, it claimed.
Nightmare-Eyes Restrict hit the field with a soundless impact that still made several students flinch. For half a second, nobody spoke.
Then the arena broke. Even Chazz's smirk faltered, just slightly.
"What the hell is that?" he asked.
"I've never seen that card before."
"Is that… a new Relinquished fusion?"
"Pegasus never released anything like that, did he?"
Several Obelisk students leaned forward sharply, eyes wide, the confidence from moments earlier cracking into something closer to alarm.
"That's not in the database." one of them muttered, already pulling up his DuelPad. "I mean… it is, but it's not anywhere. Did he take an unreleased card from Dorian's case?"
Another shook his head. "I've got contacts. Industrial Illusions, R&D. I get on my phone every new card project they make even before testing. That thing has never been shown. Not in playtests, not in internal demos."
"It passed inspection, though." someone else said, voice tight. "The Duel Disk accepted it. The academy system didn't flag it."
A pause.
"So how does he have it?"
Bastion had gone very still.
Not shocked, but engaged. His eyes flicked between the hologram, the projected stats, and Julian's remaining field. He knew the origin of the card, but the metaphysical elements raised more questions than it answered. Near him, other yellow students were also confused.
"An original design?" one murmured. "No… the integration is too clean. That would require Pegasus-level infrastructure."
Jaden swallowed, grin nowhere to be found.
"Julian…" he whispered, half in awe, half unsettled. "I didn't know Nightmare-Eyes was that unknown."
Alexis didn't answer.
Her gaze was locked on Nightmare-Eyes Restrict, jaw tight. Not in fear, but in something sharper. Recognition without context. Like seeing a chess move that made sense only if you accepted the possibility of plays you didn't know were legal.
Mindy exhaled slowly. "I knew that it was rare, but I don't research cards like that. I had no idea no one had ever seen it before."
Jasmine nodded once. "I know, it's crazy."
And yet there it was. Across the field, Dorian hadn't moved.
His earlier confidence was still held by a sliver, but it had recalibrated. His eyes traced the monster carefully, not with the hunger of a collector, but with the instinct of someone realizing the game board was larger than he'd been told.
"That card…" he said slowly, choosing caution over bravado. "Isn't part of any known release."
Julian met his gaze calmly.
"No." he agreed.
The silence stretched.
Dorian's fingers curled once against his Duel Disk.
"Then how…" he asked, quietly now. "How do you have it?"
Julian didn't answer. He didn't need to. Because, once again, the question itself was doing the work for him.
Around them, theories bloomed unchecked.
Back-channel deals with Pegasus. Prototype testing rights. Private sponsorships. Something taken from a place that wasn't supposed to exist.
Every unanswered possibility added more and more weight to his legend.
He was not the man who fell and fainted, he was the guy with the impossible intel and the unobtainable cards.
Julian had not just countered Dorian's board in a move, he had destabilized the meta-reality of the academy.
"Banishing the materials I can Special Summon my Nightmare-Eyes Restrict in attack mode. And when he's special summoned, I can activate its effect to take one monster on the field and equip it to him." Julian said.
"Nightmare-Eyes Restrict?"
"He used a Nightmare Apprentice before, so he uses a Nightmare deck?"
"Is that a new archetype?"
And when Nightmare-Eyes Restrict's effect activated, its tendrils latching onto A-Assault Core, pulling the Union monster into itself as an equipped shadow… the unease deepened.
The towering titan lifted one hand. Its movements were slow, deliberate… and the air around Dorian's A-Assault Core caught and locked, as if grabbed by invisible fingers. The monster didn't consume, it claimed.
Julian felt it then, faint but unmistakable: the shift in how he was being seen. Not as a challenger, not even as a prodigy. But as something unmapped.
And in Duel Academy, nothing frightened the elite more than a duelist whose ceiling they could no longer calculate.
Chains snapped into place around the union monster. Not physical chains. A conceptual mark of ownership.
The little machine's light dimmed as it was absorbed, then reappeared attached to Nightmare-Eyes like an ornament, a trophy, an extension of its body.
"Obviously, like most of his forefathers, my Eyes-Restrict has the added stats for attack and defense as the monsters equipped to it."
(Nightmare-Eyes Restrict/Dark/Level 1/Fusion/1900 ATK)
Julian's board now held three monsters: the dark machine lock, the nightmare apprentice, and the Restrict, wearing one of Dorian's prized pieces like a stolen watch.
Julian's eyes lifted and he declared. "Battle Phase."
The crowd leaned in as if pulled by gravity.
"Nightmare-Eyes Restrict attacks Gold Gadget."
The attack wasn't a beam or a claw swipe. It was… pressure. A wave of dark force that rolled forward like a hand closing.
Gold Gadget skidded backward under the impact.
Sparks flared. Metal shrieked. The hologram registered the collision cleanly… And then… nothing else happened. Gold Gadget remained standing.
The Duel Disk tallied the difference as a sharp, clean ping sounded (Dorian LP 4000 -> 3800).
A beat passed. Then another. A murmur rolled through the stands, confused, then sharp.
"What?"
"It should've been destroyed."
"Wait… Why didn't it…?"
Julian didn't rush the moment. He let the confusion bloom just long enough to be undeniable before speaking, his voice calm, almost instructional, carrying easily across the platform.
"Illusions don't fully exist in this world." he said.
Heads turned.
"Most of them…" Julian continued, gesturing briefly toward his field, to Nightmare-Eyes Restrict and Nightmare Apprentice. "Can battle and deal Life Point damage. But they can't destroy the monsters they hit."
He paused, just enough to let that settle. "And they can't be destroyed by them either."
The words landed with a strange weight, not loud, but precise. Is was an echo almost word by word of his explanation in the match against Jinzo. For those who had heard something similar before, it clicked immediately. For everyone else, it rewrote assumptions mid-duel.
"Non-destructive combat resolution… So damage without removal. That's…"
"Disgusting." Chazz muttered, though there was no humor in it. "You can't trade into it. You can't stabilize against it."
"So they're like… ghosts?" one red student on the crowd asked.
Julian glanced sideways. "Close enough. That's not a bad way of putting it."
Alexis inhaled slowly, then exhaled through her nose. "Pegasus used monsters like that." she said. "But he almost never dueled, so it is not a widely known mechanic."
Mindy leaned forward, interest burning now. "Most people never even bothered learning how they worked. You couldn't build a whole deck around them before unless you created the game."
Jasmine nodded. "Yeah. They were curiosities for a trivia game." Her eyes returned to Nightmare-Eyes Restrict. "But not anymore."
Around the arena, DuelPads were already lighting up as students scrambled to search card databases, rulings, archived releases.
Which only made the discomfort worse.
It was a mechanic most of the academy had never bothered to respect. And Julian had built around it anyway.
The duel hadn't even reached its second turn yet.
And already, the rules everyone thought they understood were slipping.
Julian didn't pause.
"Nightmare Apprentice attacks Gold Gadget."
Another impact. Lighter, quicker, like a magician's laughter. Gold Gadget shook again, still standing, still not destroyed, still forced to serve as a punching bag for a turn it couldn't escape.
Another ping.
4000? No, Dorian was already at 3800 (Dorian LP 3800 -> 3500).
In the stands, a yellow student let out a noise somewhere between awe and outrage.
"He's not even killing it!" he hissed. "How is he going to finish it if Cauldwell goes into defense?"
"Removal." Bastion finished quietly, eyes fixed on the numbers. "He needs removal to break the opponents board and they also need it to deal with the illusions."
Julian's gaze flicked once to Dorian's backrow: Union Hangar protected, Field Barrier sealing it, Prohibition still glowing with its declared name like a smug signature. Then back to Dorian's face.
"Intel against intel, rare cards against rare cards." Julian said, as if explaining for a young kid the basis of the situation. "Let's see what you can do in a match of equal footing."
He moved his hand, setting a final card.
The crowd couldn't see what it was, only the motion, the click of it sliding into place. A promise facedown. Julian's posture settled again into stillness, but this time it wasn't passive. It was coiled.
"I'll set a single card and end my turn."
The judge's voice carried, crisp as ever, forcing the room back into structure.
"Turn passes to Dorian Cauldwell."
Dorian didn't immediately move.
He stared at Julian's field, Quarantine in particular, and for the first time his expression didn't carry that inherent sense of superiority. He wasn't amused. It was the face of someone that knew that the duel he'd expected had never existed and now he had to deal with something else when his list was filled with empty defenses and promises against an enemy that did not exist.
The duel lights hummed. Union Hangar's holographic gantries still towered behind him like scaffolding for a victory that was supposed to be inevitable. ABC's remaining pieces stood on his field now accompanied by the gleaming golden hue of the Gadget. Assembled, but restrained, the projection of a modern engine locked behind one simple, ugly truth: Ally of Justice Quarantine was on the field.
And as long as it stayed there, LIGHT Special Summons were a fantasy.
Dorian glanced at the Quarantine the way people glanced at a stain they believed shouldn't exist on their clothes. His eyes flicked to his own field, then back. A quick inventory. A quiet recalibration.
He drew for turn, the motion crisp. Confident hands, even if his eyes weren't.
The judge's voice carried. "Dorian Cauldwell. Turn two."
For a second, Dorian didn't speak. He inhaled through his nose and let it out slowly, as if he could vent the shock out of his bloodstream and return to the version of himself the crowd had paid to see.
'Reset.' Julian could almost hear him thinking. Not mystically. Not spiritually. Just the cold mechanics of pride: if you don't acknowledge the crack, the glass is still whole.
"Fine." Dorian said at last, voice light… too light. "First, we go for tools."
He raised a card.
"I activate Pot of Greed."
On the stands, students leaned in.
"Did he get an out?"
"Of course he did. It's a new deck."
"He still has Hangar. Is Quarantine leaves he can still…"
Bastion didn't look away from the field. "Knowing Julian, he has a couple protections from Quarantine up. He can't play his deck while the monster is not destroyed." he murmured, jaw set. "Not the way he wants to."
Alexis's gaze stayed locked on Dorian's side of the platform. "Then he has to remove it, even through his defenses."
Jaden, still riding the aftershock of the Nightmare-Eyes whole deal, looked like he was trying to force the duel to make sense by willpower alone. "He can crash into it and just play on Main Phase 2, right?"
Julian didn't move. He simply watched Dorian's eyes.
They went, inevitably, to the only route left that didn't require special summoning. Battle. Collision. Simple arithmetic. A crude solution, but sometimes the only one available.
Dorian's fingers tightened on the edge of his Duel Disk.
"Alright." he said, and his tone tried to reassert control, going into the same answer as Jaden. "If I can't unlock the engine, I'll break the lock."
He lifted his hand toward his monsters, then paused. Even if Dorian could attack Quarantine, even if he could trade into it, he'd still have to deal with what Julian had put in front of him.
Nightmare-Eyes Restrict.
It stood there like a living contradiction, a sleek, predatory silhouette wrapped in the stolen contour of machinery, its presence wrong in a way the arena couldn't name. It didn't look like a "new archetype." It looked like a nightmare given rules and permitted to manifest.
And more importantly… It was an Illusion. Meaning Dorian couldn't simply ram a monster into it and expect the usual consequences.
The blue student's gaze flicked, briefly, to Julian's set card. Julian's face remained composed, but to Dorian's eyes it was almost mocking .
The crowd interpreted the stillness as confidence. Dorian interpreted it as knowledge.
Because that was the real poison here. Not that Julian had strong cards. But that Julian had the right strong cards for this exact moment.
"Battle Phase." Dorian said, snapping the words out like a command to himself, his head obviously in the sense of dealing with one obstacle at a time.
The arena's lights sharpened slightly, the holographic boundary shifting into its battle-ready glow.
Dorian pointed.
"Gold Gadget, attack Ally of Justice Quarantine."
Gold Gadget surged forward, a compact beam of momentum and metal. In any normal duel, it would have been clean: Gadget against Quarantine, 1700 against 1700, a trade that removed the lock at the cost of a single unit. A sacrifice you made without thinking when you had an engine assembled behind you.
The crowd saw the line, they felt the relief of it. Even some of the Obelisk boys who'd been whispering earlier leaned forward with the hungry satisfaction of watching someone finally 'deal' with the upstart.
And then Julian smiled. A small curve that carried the weight of someone watching a door close exactly as planned.
"Hold." Julian said, and his voice cut through the arena with calm authority.
Dorian's eyes snapped up. "What?"
Julian's hand lifted. His faint smile promised: I'm not responding with a trap. I'm responding with something you can't pretend you didn't hear.
"My monster's effect." Julian said. "Nightmare-Eyes Restrict."
A shiver went through the stands. Because that was the frightening part of unknown cards. Not the attack points. Not even the visuals.
The frightening part was the sentence that began with: my monster's effect.
Dorian's jaw tightened. "What does it do?"
Julian's smile didn't change.
"It enforces attention." he said mildly. "If you declare an attack, you attack him."
The duel system chimed, recognizing the declaration. The attack line, Gold Gadget's trajectory toward Quarantine, stuttered mid-animation, the holographic path bending as if reality had been edited.
"What?" someone in the crowd blurted.
"You can redirect attacks like that?"
"So it is like Relinquished?"
"It's a retrain without ritual. Easier to summon as well."
Gold Gadget veered, its charge redirected toward Nightmare-Eyes Restrict as if pulled by an invisible hook lodged in its core. The arena lights flashed to confirm the new target.
Dorian's eyes widened for half a heartbeat, enough for Julian to see. Enough for the crowd to sense something had gone off-script.
"Wait." Dorian said sharply. "That's not… I want to…"
"You declared the attack already." Julian replied, still calm. "Your little tin can may proceed now."
Gold Gadget crashed into Nightmare-Eyes Restrict. Impact, sparks and metallic shriek, but once again, it did not result in destruction, with the machine returning to his starting position once more, the pinging noise of Life Points signaling already another deduction in value. Numbers flashed (Dorian LP 3500 -> 3300).
Dorian's mouth opened as if he had something ready. Some retort, some smug correction, some assertion that he hadn't lost anything meaningful.
But then the end-of-Battle-Phase indicator flashed… and Nightmare-Eyes Restrict moved. It didn't lunge like a beast. It didn't strike like a dragon. It simply decided, and extended its reach once more. A thin shimmer of darkness, like a hand-shaped shadow in the air, reached out from Nightmare-Eyes Restrict toward B-Buster Drake. The machine's hologram stuttered, as if its model didn't know whether it was being destroyed, absorbed, or rewritten.
The shadow closed.
Buster Drake's form collapsed into a strip of light, then reappeared, attached, its outline reforming as a piece of equipment, locked onto Nightmare-Eyes Restrict like another prey pinned to the titan's trophy wall.
A collective sound rose from the crowd, half gasp and half protest.
"No way."
"It equipped it."
"In the opponent's turn as well."
"That's bullshit."
Julian's tone remained almost conversational.
"When special summoned or at the end of a battle phase, if he battled, Nightmare-Eyes can grab one of your monsters and equip it. And with that, your second union monster is also gone."
The duel system updated Nightmare-Eyes Restrict's stats in real time. Its attack surged upward into a clean and brutal 3400.
Dorian's eyes went wide, and this time he didn't manage to hide it. Because that number wasn't just power. It was finality.
Mindy's hand went to her mouth, then dropped. "I already saw it before, but every time it's bizarre how his stats keep growing by devouring the opponents monsters. It's obscene."
Jasmine's face hardened. "And he can't even special summon to respond. Quarantine's still up."
Bastion's voice was quiet, almost reverent with the ugliness of it. "He tried to trade Quarantine away… and instead he fed a monster into an Illusion that turns attacks into more power."
Alexis didn't look away from Dorian, not even for a second. "That's what happens." she said softly. "When you build a plan around a rumor instead of the opponent. Someone that only deals in intel against the unknown."
On the far side of the platform, Dorian stood very still.
His eyes flicked down to his hand, too fast for anyone to read. Then up to his field. Then to Julian's board.
Quarantine still stood there, impassive. Nightmare Apprentice still watched like a lesser omen. And Nightmare-Eyes Restrict now wore two of the three pieces of ABC like a badge.
The duel wasn't just slipping away. It had already left.
Dorian's lips parted as if he wanted to speak. Maybe to accuse, maybe to demand a ruling, maybe to pull the judge into this and force the unknown card into a public explanation that could be exploited.
But the judge was watching impassively.
And Julian was watching with the steady patience of someone who'd already accepted that the duel was over the moment Dorian played Prohibition.
Dorian's eyes burned.
He had come prepared to break a Gravekeeper narrative.
He had built his "answers" around a field spell Julian didn't even need.
And now, confronted with a lock that required generic removal: simple, boring, universal tools… he had none.
Because he hadn't respected the possibility that Julian would fight him with fundamentals instead of a gimmick.
His horizon had narrowed into a single idea: counter the rumor, crush the upstart, humiliate the story. And now the story was humiliating him instead.
A low laugh drifted from the Obelisk seats: not as loud as earlier. Not as confident.
It sounded nervous. Because Obelisk boys liked laughing when someone else was weak. They didn't like laughing when weakness looked contagious. The falling on disgrace.
Dorian's hand moved. He set a card, then another.
Two face-down spells or traps slid into place. Silent, featureless rectangles that could have been salvation or bluff. The crowd leaned in automatically, desperate for the idea that there was still a play left.
Julian didn't react. He didn't even blink toward the backrow.
He didn't need the help of his Ka to grasp from the defeatist spirit of the man at the other side of the duel that a backrow was only dangerous if you needed to fear it. And right now, he didn't.
Dorian lifted his chin, trying to reassemble dignity from scraps.
"Turn end." he said.
The words felt wrong in his mouth. Too early, too small. Like conceding without conceding.
The duel system chimed, passing priority.
Julian's draw phase approached like a guillotine with polite ceremony.
Across the stands, whispers surged again, but the tone had changed.
Not "he's finished." Not "Cauldwell will crush him."
Now it returned to: How did Ashford know? Who told him?
And somewhere beneath the questions, one quieter, uglier thought began to spread through the elite seats like frost: Maybe there were other players in the game able to fight them card by card, and plan by plan.
Julian's hand moved to his deck.
He didn't look at Dorian when he spoke. Because the line wasn't for Dorian. It was for everyone who had watched Syrus break and treated it like entertainment.
"Alright." Julian said softly. Then he drew. "Final turn."
The word final shouldn't have rang out so loudly in people's ears and spirits. But it did.
It crossed the space between the field and the stands like something solid, heavy enough to make conversations die mid-sentence. The duel system hadn't even finished registering the phase change, and yet the arena already seemed… tilted. As if the ground had accepted an answer before the question was even finished being asked.
"Final turn…?" someone murmured, incredulous.
"But he has two cards face down." another replied, confused. "That's not…"
"Is it not too early to say that?"
"That's arrogant of him…"
The sentence didn't carry mockery. It carried doubt. And fear.
In the Slifer seats, the reaction came first as discomfort. A boy in a red jacket leaned forward, squinting as if he could see across the field by sheer willpower.
"Wait." he whispered. "Maybe… he knows what those cards are?"
"There's no way!" another replied immediately. "That doesn't exist."
"…it doesn't officially exist." a blue girl added hesitantly. "But you've heard the rumors about Pegasus, right?"
A few heads turned.
"Are you saying he can see face-down cards?"
"Or the opponent's hand?"
"I don't know… Maybe… those Illusions do that?"
The idea wasn't stated with conviction. It was thrown out like someone testing ice with the tip of their toe. Nobody there really believed in duel spirits, in invisible entities, in monsters that watched. Duel Academy was an institution. A system. A place where everything had a technical explanation, a rule, an explanation or a backup hidden on some server. But…
Julian Ashford didn't quite fit into any of those categories either.
Bastion didn't comment. His eyes were fixed on the field, the exact configuration of the board, and the detail that mattered most: Nightmare-Eyes Restrict.
Not just in the center of Julian's field, but dressed with B-Buster Drake.
A piece. The central cog of the ABC names.
In the Obelisk seats, the atmosphere was different.
The laughter had vanished. Not replaced by dramatic tension, but by something far more uncomfortable: delayed calculation. Some were still trying to convince themselves it was all theater. Others, more attentive, perceived the real problem.
Two face-down cards meant nothing if you couldn't activate them. And worse: they meant nothing if they were a bluff that the opponent simply didn't care about.
"He's bluffing." someone whispered, without conviction. "He just wants to pressure."
"With this field?" another retorted, more quietly. "Doesn't seem like it. If he misses lethal, he would become a joke."
Eyes inevitably returned to Dorian.
Cauldwell was still standing. But there was a new rigidity there. A micro-delay between thought and movement. A mismatch that hadn't existed two turns ago.
He knew. He knew that Julian didn't need to know those cards to call that moment the end.
He only needed to know that 'they didn't matter'. Julian didn't look at Dorian when he declared it.
That was also noticed, because it wasn't disregard. It was deliberate.
The phrase wasn't said to the opponent. It was said to the space above the field. To the seats. To the students who had watched someone break down and turned it into casual entertainment. To those who had laughed at the fountain. To those who had bet on rumors. To those who had believed that false information was still control.
In the red row, Syrus stood motionless.
He didn't seem relieved. Nor hopeful or proud, just… attentive. Like someone watching something that needed to happen, regardless of the cost.
Julian finally made the pulling motion into the deck.
The movement was simple. Economical. No rush. The duel system recognized the action and slid a card into his hand.
A corner of his mouth lifted. Not a grin. Not triumph.
Amusement. There was a particular flavor to irony in this world: one Julian had learned to recognize over time. Sometimes it felt deliberate. Sometimes accidental. Sometimes so precise it made him wonder whether chance itself had a sense of humor.
'Really?' he thought distantly. 'That card. Now?'
For a fleeting second, the old question brushed against his mind again, uninvited but familiar. 'Was this the Heart of the Cards? Or just a world that liked to play back?'
He looked up. Dorian was watching him closely now, trying to read the line before it was spoken. Julian didn't give him the courtesy.
"Well… Let's finish this." Julian said calmly.
The words were not loud, but they carried. They always did.
He raised his Duel Disk.
"I activate the effect of Relinquished Fusion from my Graveyard."
A ripple passed through the arena. Several students leaned forward instinctively, eyes tracking the familiar sigil as it manifested again. Not as a summoning circle this time, but as something closer to a command.
"By banishing it from the grave…" Julian continued evenly. "I can equip an opponent's monster to a Relinquished or an 'Eyes-Restrict' Fusion Monster."
His gaze shifted, finally, deliberately, to the last remaining piece on Dorian's ace on his side of the field.
"I'll choose C-Crush Wyvern." The monster didn't resist. It couldn't.
The hologram fractured into segmented light, drawn inexorably across the field and into Nightmare-Eyes Restrict, where it locked into place alongside the other two components.
As C-Crush Wyvern was drawn in, the transformation did not complete in the way anyone expected. The three Union components did not dissolve into formless power. Instead, they aligned themselves instinctively within Nightmare-Eyes Restrict's body: A-Assault Core, B-Buster Drake, and now C-Crush Wyvern taking positions that mirrored their perfect configuration, the unmistakable silhouette of ABC-Dragon Buster almost there.
Almost. Each piece hovered a hand's breadth apart, suspended in precise symmetry, close enough that the union should have been inevitable. But it never happened.
A viscous black aura coiled between them, Nightmare-Eyes' influence acting like an unseen vice, holding the components forever on the brink of completion and denying them the final step.
The message was unmistakable: the boss monster had been conquered not by destruction, but by decree. Reduced to its parts. Allowed to remember what it was meant to become, and forbidden from ever standing as one again in the presence of its better.
Nightmare-Eyes Restrict stood taller now, its form heavier, more complete. The glow around it deepened, pulsing once as the system recalculated its parameters. His attack raised to a staggering 4600.
A murmur ran through the crowd.
"Did you see that?"
"It just keeps getting stronger."
"Wait… he didn't take the Gadget? It has more attack!"
Alexis's voice cut through the noise, calm and precise.
"That wasn't about numbers." she said, eyes never leaving the field. "That was a message."
Jasmine glanced at her. "A message?"
Alexis nodded once. "He didn't just beat him in the match. He dismantled the core of his deck piece by piece."
Several Obelisk students shifted uncomfortably at that. Gold Gadget was still standing. Technically stronger. Technically the better target.
Julian hadn't touched it. Because this had never been about efficiency. It had been about meaning.
He lifted his hand again. "Now, I activate Metamorphosis."
The reaction was immediate.
"What?"
"Now?"
"Why would he?"
Nightmare Apprentice dissolved into light as the tribute was offered, its form unraveling cleanly, willingly. The fusion gate opened. Familiar, almost mundane by academy standards… And something entirely unexpected emerged from it.
Steam Gyroid descended onto the field.
(Steam Gyroid/EARTH/Machine/Fusion/6 stars/ATK 2200)
For half a second, no one spoke.
Then recognition hit.
"That's…!"
"Doesn't that apprentice of his play Vehicroids?"
"Its Syrus's monster!"
A ripple of shock spread outward, fast and uneven. Even Dorian's composure cracked, just for an instant, eyes widening in genuine confusion.
Julian could have chosen something stronger. Something rarer. Something crueler.
Instead, he chose that.
Steam Gyroid's engines hissed softly as it settled into position, blades rotating with a steady, grounded rhythm. It looked almost humble next to Nightmare-Eyes: utilitarian, practical, honest.
Julian's voice was steady when he spoke again.
"Battle Phase."
Steam Gyroid surged forward first.
"Steam Gyroid, tear down his last protection. Attack Gold Gadget!"
Gold Gadget barely had time to react before the heavy tackle from the speeding train tore through it, the hologram shattering into fragments of light that scattered across the field.
Dorian's Life Points dropped (Dorian's LP 3300 -> 2800).
It wasn't a spectacular attack. It didn't need to be.
It was an opening. Julian didn't look at Dorian when he spoke next.
Because the line wasn't for him. It was for the stands. For the whispers. For the laughter that had followed someone else's breaking point.
"You know." Julian said calmly. "People might say I outplayed you in this duel."
His eyes shifted. Not to Dorian, but to the red jackets in the stands. To Syrus.
"But that's not really true."
The arena stilled. Julian's tone didn't sharpen. It softened, and somehow that made it cut even deeper.
"This duel was decided before either of us drew a card." he continued. "The moment someone decided that breaking a person was a valid strategy."
A murmur moved through the crowd, uneasy now.
"I didn't win this match alone." Julian said. "And I didn't win it because of my deck or your lack of confidence in your own power."
He paused, just long enough.
"You lost because of your hubris. And because Syrus Truesdale chose, even in the darkest hour, to not betray someone who trusted him."
A collective intake of breath swept the stands.
Syrus's head snapped up. Julian finally turned his gaze fully toward him, and nodded.
Once. Simple. Final.
Gasps. Whispers. Voices colliding.
"What?"
"Did he just say?"
"Wait, does that mean?"
Some of the students did not know some of the hidden elements behind the match, but they were now fully shown and public for all to see.
Dorian looked like the ground had dropped out from under him.
Julian didn't give him time to recover.
"Nightmare-Eyes Restrict," he said quietly. "Attack directly. Finish this."
The monster moved. There was no flourish. No roar.
Just inevitability.
The massive silhouette surged forward, shadows stretching across the platform as the accumulated weight of stolen power came crashing down. Dorian's Life Points vanished into nothing (Dorian's LP 2800 -> 0) as the Duel Disk chimed once.
Then again, the arena fell silent as if everyone was holding their breath. Not stunned silence. Acknowledging silence.
The last echo of Nightmare-Eyes' aura hung in the air like smoke. The shadows around the fused Illusion thinned slowly, reluctant to let go, as if they didn't want to admit the meal was finished. The crowd's noise collapsed into a wide, stunned quiet. An intake of breath shared by hundreds of throats that had been too eager to laugh a minute ago.
Julian kept his Duel Disk raised until the judge's device chimed the formal confirmation.
He didn't throw his arm up. He didn't smirk. He didn't even look at Dorian.
Not because Dorian didn't deserve to be looked at.
Because if Julian turned his attention that way now, the room would assume this was about humiliation. About victory as entertainment. About a boy from Ra finally getting to step on a boy from Obelisk.
And Julian had already decided. Quietly, long before he stepped onto this platform, that he wasn't going to give the academy the satisfaction of turning Syrus into collateral again.
The judge's voice cut through the silence, crisp and procedural.
"Life Point count confirmed." he announced. "Winner: Julian Ashford."
That finally cracked the quiet. It didn't shatter; it fractured. Murmurs spread in waves, disbelief tumbling over itself, voices trying to claim the outcome as if ownership made it safer.
"No way…"
"He really did it…"
"With that thing? What even was that fusion?"
"Did you see the way it."
"I never knew Illusions don't destroy monsters? That's crazy…"
"Even with all of it, he still won."
Julian exhaled slowly, then lowered his Duel Disk. The metal folded with a clean mechanical click. Nightmare-Eyes Restrict remained projected, looming behind him for another second, until the duel system began retracting the field's holograms. The Illusion's presence faded last in a visible manner, as if it resented being dismissed by anyone other than Julian. When he was gone, its spiritual presence remained in the same place, watching carefully.
Across the platform, Dorian stood stiffly, Duel Disk still deployed, as if he'd forgotten how to end a duel.
His face had the wrong kind of stillness: too composed to be calm, too tight to be disbelief alone. A boy who had built his entire sense of power around systems and leverage using his influence and social status had just watched a single turn of overcommitment become a noose.
When Dorian's eyes finally found Julian, there was no rage. Rage required the belief that you could still fight. This was something thinner. Something like a question he didn't have permission to ask out loud.
Julian met it without expression, then looked away again.
The judge stepped forward and held up his DuelPad, the administrative model that kept the bracket, the recorded match data, and, today, the stake.
"As per the academy-sanctioned terms recorded prior to the match." the judge said, tone neutral but pitched to carry. "The agreed-upon stake is now enforceable."
A fresh wave of murmurs rose.
They'd all heard the stake when the duel began. Hearing it again, after the outcome was set, made it feel less like drama and more like a sentence.
Julian's eyes tracked the movement at the edge of the platform.
Chancellor Sheppard had shifted. Not dramatically. Just enough that people noticed he had decided to move. The older man stepped down the aisle with the steady pace of someone who didn't rush because the world would wait for him anyway.
And as Sheppard moved, the arena changed again. Not quieter, different.
The same students who had been enjoying the spectacle a second ago seemed to remember they were in the presence of an adult who didn't laugh at cruelty. The same Obelisk boys who loved making noise now made smaller, safer noises. A few of them turned their heads away, as if looking elsewhere could make them less visible.
Julian watched Sheppard approach and felt, distantly, the faint pressure of the man's authority settle over the platform like a lid.
The judge glanced toward Sheppard, received a small nod, then continued.
"The sealed collection registered under Candidate Cauldwell." he said. "Will be transferred into Candidate Ashford's custody, to be administered through academy channels."
"... to be administered through…" someone in the crowd repeated with a scoff, but it died halfway through as Sheppard reached the base of the steps.
Julian's gaze flicked once toward the stands where his friends sat.
Jaden looked like he was trying not to grin and failing. Bastion's expression was intense, half analysis and half satisfaction. Alexis was still and watchful, posture controlled, eyes sharp like she was already reading the next move before it happened. Mindy's face held that particular kind of delighted shock that didn't want to be delighted. Jasmine's jaw was set, but her eyes were bright.
And Syrus…
Julian's eyes found Syrus and paused.
The boy sat rigidly, hands clenched in his lap, face pale under the arena lights. He wasn't looking at Julian's victory. He was looking at the aftermath like someone waiting to be hit again.
Julian didn't let his expression soften. Not here. Not with a hundred eyes that would love to interpret softness as weakness.
But he gave Syrus the smallest, almost invisible nod.
Syrus blinked, and something in his shoulders loosened—one notch. Not peace. Not relief. Permission to breathe.
Julian turned back to the platform just as Sheppard stepped up onto it.
The Chancellor didn't take the judge's place. He didn't seize the spotlight. He didn't need to.
He stood slightly to the side, hands behind his back, posture composed. His gaze drifted over the duelists, the judge, the audience, and then settled again on Julian in a way that didn't feel personal so much as… measured.
His mouth did not smile, but there was something almost like approval in the barely perceptible softening around his eyes, gone so quickly that if Julian hadn't been looking for it, he might've thought he imagined it.
The judge cleared his throat again, reasserting the formal structure.
"Candidate Ashford." he said, "Your duel performance for today has been recorded as a pass. Your promotional exam: written assessment, timed puzzles, and practical match is now complete."
A ripple ran through the stands. The Ra jackets in the lower rail stirred with a kind of proud disbelief. The Obelisk boys who had hoped for a humiliating failure shifted, faces tightening.
Julian inclined his head once. "Understood, sir."
The judge glanced down at his DuelPad again.
"Your promotion to Obelisk Blue will be processed as per standard academy procedure." he continued. "You will receive your jacket authorization and dormitory assignment confirmation by the end of the day."
That was the official wording.
The meaning was simpler: You made it.
Julian felt the words land somewhere in his chest and not quite reach his face.
He'd wanted this. He'd fought for this. He'd bled for this in ways the academy didn't track.
And yet, standing under these lights, looking at Syrus in the stands, hearing the murmur of people who had been ready to cheer for a boy breaking… it tasted bitter.
Because he could feel, with unpleasant clarity, what the system had demanded as payment for the privilege of stepping up a level.
Not just skill or victory. Not just the ability to solve puzzles under pressure. A human price.
The judge shifted, as if preparing to dismiss the platform entirely.
Then Sheppard lifted one hand. Not a dramatic gesture, a quiet signal. The judge stopped immediately. The arena sensed it too, the collective attention tightening again like a rope being pulled taut.
Sheppard's voice carried without effort.
"Before we end the exams, there is another matter to be seen." he said, calmly. The phrase hit like a cold drop of water. A few students laughed, uncertain, as if trying to test whether this was still a show.
Sheppard didn't look at them. He looked at the judge's DuelPad, then at the audience, and finally, briefly, at Dorian.
"Candidate Cauldwell." Sheppard said, voice level. "Stay on the floor."
Dorian's jaw tightened. "Chancellor…"
"Silence." Sheppard repeated, and the second time it wasn't a request. Dorian's mouth closed.
Julian didn't move. He didn't turn. He didn't visibly react. But something in his posture became stiller. More centered. He could feel the crowd shifting, trying to guess what was coming.
Some of them would be thinking it was about the cards. About the stake, and how the academy could allow pre-release material.
Some of them might already suspect something else, because rumor moved faster than truth in a place like this.
Sheppard's gaze swept the stands again: slow, impersonal, like a security camera that had decided to be human today.
"In the last twenty-four hours…" he said. "There have been reports and corroborations of misconduct related to the promotional bracket."
A stir. A tightening. A sudden, nervous energy. Julian watched faces change. Some students leaned forward, hungry. Others leaned back, wary. A few Obelisk boys went very still.
Sheppard continued, tone unchanged.
"I will not turn this into theatre." he said. "This academy is not a courtroom for public spectacle. Disciplinary matters will be handled administratively where appropriate."
That line was deliberate. A boundary drawn in front of the crowd like glass. The audience would not get the satisfaction of seeing someone dragged by the collar. They would get something else. A public consequence.
Sheppard's eyes returned to Dorian.
"However…" he added. "Given the scale of the incident and the number of students affected, it is appropriate to clarify the academy's stance and make it in front of most of our student body."
Julian watched Dorian's throat move. The boy swallowed. Sheppard didn't raise his voice.
"Candidate Cauldwell." he said, "You are hereby suspended from the Duel Academy effective immediately, pending final review of the administrative council for expulsion. You will be escorted to your dormitory to gather your belongings and leave campus by the end of the hour."
It took a second for the words to process. Then the arena reacted as if someone had slammed a door.
Noise erupted: sharp, incredulous, shocked.
"What?!"
"He's… expelled?"
"Suspended? For what?"
"No way they'd do that!"
Dorian's face went pale with a speed that betrayed how unprepared he was for consequences.
"You can't…" he started, voice tightening. "My family…"
Sheppard's gaze didn't change.
"You are not your family here." he said. "You are a student. And your conduct has been found incompatible with this institution's values."
The words were clean. Clinical, not angry, not personal. And precisely because of that, they were devastating.
Dorian's hands curled into fists at his sides. His eyes flicked to the stands, searching instinctively for allies, friends… the satellites that had always cushioned him.
But the crowd wasn't a single loyal organism. It was a living hierarchy. And hierarchies moved away from weakness the moment it appeared.
Two staff members in a gray academy color stepped up at the base of the platform. Not guards with weapons. Just adults with badges and the weight of procedure.
Dorian stared at them like he'd never had anyone tell him "no" without a price tag attached.
Sheppard's attention shifted again.
"And to those students identified as participating in coercion, harassment, and sustained intimidation." he said, voice still level. "You will be removed from Obelisk Blue dormitory status pending disciplinary review and reassigned to Slifer Red dormitory effective immediately. Further sanctions, including detention and restricted privileges will be issued through formal channels."
That produced a different kind of reaction. Not a roar. A sharp, almost gleeful gasp from some of the lower dorms. A demotion of five students in one swing was no small deal.
Slifer students, kids who had been treated like background noise by Obelisk for years, lit up with a stunned kind of satisfaction.
Ra students looked shocked, half relieved and half afraid, like they'd just witnessed lightning strike somewhere close enough to feel the heat.
Obelisk students… some sneered, some looked furious, and some looked suddenly uncertain about the stability of their world.
Julian saw a cluster of familiar faces in the stands stiffen. The ones who had laughed by the fountain yesterday. The ones whose cruelty had been so casual it almost sounded like boredom.
Now their mouths were tight, eyes darting. A few of them tried to look like they didn't know what Sheppard was talking about.
As if innocence could be performed into existence.
Sheppard didn't name them in public.
Julian understood why. Names would make it a performance. Names would invite counterattacks from parents and lawyers and donors.
But the message still landed, because everyone in that arena could do the math, and would be able to see who was demoted or not.
They knew who moved together, who laughed together. The ones who had been orbiting Cauldwell like vultures. And now they knew what it meant to be sent down.
The crowd's noise surged again, messy and overlapping.
"Slifer? Seriously?"
"They're getting demoted!"
"They deserve it!"
"The Chancellor's finally doing something…"
"Are you kidding? Cauldwell's… he's…"
Julian did not look at Dorian. He didn't need to.
The boy's breathing had become audible. Tight, fast.
Dorian's voice finally broke through, sharp with panic.
"This is a mistake," he snapped. "You're overreacting. You have no proof of…"
Sheppard's eyes flicked to him. Not harsh. Final.
"Proof is not your concern." Sheppard said. "Process is. You will comply."
Dorian's face twisted with something like humiliation and hatred mixed together into an ugly compound.
His eyes flashed to Julian. His glare was quick, venomous. As if Julian had pulled the lever. Julian met the look briefly, then returned his gaze to the judge's DuelPad.
If he looked away too fast, it would read like fear. If he stared too long, it would read like pride. He chose neither. He chose control.
The judge stepped forward again, reclaiming the procedural flow.
"As I said before. Per the agreed-upon stake…" he said, voice raised to carry over the chaos, "The registered collection will now be transferred into Candidate Ashford's custody. The academy will supervise the transfer."
A staff member approached the platform holding a sealed hard-case.
The case looked expensive. Matte black with reinforced corners, a bright academy seal across the latch. It wasn't just "cards." It was status in physical form. A portable declaration of advantage.
"Candidate Cauldwell." one of the employees near Dorian said, polite enough to sound harmless. "By order of the Chancellor's office, your deck is to be collected and secured."
Dorian's nostrils flared. "On what grounds?"
"On the grounds that a portion of your card pool is registered under sealed custody, as they were part of the briefcase wagered." the staff member replied, still calm. He held up a DuelPad with the case file already open: barcode, signatures, the same bureaucratic language the arena had been forced to acknowledge out loud. "And because you are no longer authorized to retain it."
For a heartbeat, Dorian looked like he might argue with the paper itself.
Dorian swallowed whatever he'd been about to say and snapped his Duel Disk shut with more force than necessary. The metal clicked loud in the hush.
The second staff member stepped in, unhurried. "Please remove the deck cartridge."
Dorian hesitated just long enough for the whole arena to feel it, the moment where pride wrestled with reality. Then he yanked the cartridge free and placed it in the staff member's open palm like it burned.
A few students whispered, voices sharp with fascination.
"They're taking his whole deck?"
"That's insane…"
"It's not insane." a Ra student murmured, eyes wide. "That's what it looks like when the academy actually enforces something. His deck was on the bet, is that simple."
The taller staff member didn't react to the noise. He simply turned, walked to the sealed case at the edge of the platform with th judge and opened it with a key and a code, two steps, not one. Procedure as armor.
Inside was the familiar stack of rare cards, the briefcase's latches still tagged, its interior foam cutouts precise as a coffin's lining.
He slid the deck cartridge in first secure, locked in place, then began extracting the individual cards and sleeving them with practiced speed. Not because they didn't trust their own hands.
Because they wanted everyone watching to understand that this wasn't Julian taking a prize.
This was the academy reclaiming property under custody and transferring it under sanction.
When the last card was slotted, the staff member snapped the latches shut. The sound was final.
He turned to Julian, and the whole gesture was so formal it almost felt unreal.
"Candidate Ashford." he said. "Per the registered terms and the Chancellor's authorization, custody is transferred to you."
It was the third time those words were said to him, the words 'proper procedure' stuck to his head. The briefcase was offered with both hands.
Julian didn't reach for it immediately. He didn't want to look eager.
Not because he didn't want it, he did, but because he refused to let anyone believe this had been the motivation for what happened to Syrus.
Sheppard's gaze drifted toward the case, then back to Julian, and for a moment Julian could remember one of their previous conversations and the unspoken question in the air: Are you really going to go that far for a powerful deck?
Julian's answer came out quiet, but it carried.
"After yesterday, my main goal for this match was not for the case." he said.
The crowd stilled slightly. Not silent, but attentive.
Julian's eyes flicked, briefly, to Syrus.
"I came here because certain people thought they could use my friend as a tool." he continued, voice low, clipped. "Fortunately, that ended now. I thank the administration for the quick and decisive action and punishments issued."
A ripple of approval and discomfort moved through the arena at the same time. People loved righteous lines when they didn't have to pay for them.
Julian's gaze returned to the case.
"At the same time, people also thought they could hide behind rare cardboard and money." he added. "So no… I'm not going to pretend I don't want the opportunity. After all, we made this wager for a reason."
There it was. Honest, unromantic. Almost pragmatic.