Chapter 313: Weakest vs Strongest, the Synchro Stars That Surpass the Gods
Fiore: "Nicely poached!"
Amano Rei had no idea what state of mind Fiore had been in when she said that.
The Emperor was already married, having taken his wife's family name, no less. By any conventional standard, Fiore herself was the one who should have been called poached, not him.
That familiar sense of powerlessness, the kind any ordinary woman feels standing next to the daughter of some rich and powerful family, rose up in her without warning.
Maybe she just didn't care anymore. Or maybe it was simply the satisfaction of watching the Emperor squirm, plain and simple.
Either way, once Amano Rei's storm of Junk Synchro monsters had swept across the battlefield, two of the three polar gods had already been dealt with in spectacular fashion.
The End Phase, dragged out by an overwhelming pile-up of triggered effects, still wasn't over.
The Emperor pointed at the poached Loki. "Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon's effect gives you control of a monster, sure, but at the End Phase, Loki, Lord of the Aesir returns to my side of the field!"
"And what if I told you I'm not giving him back?"
Before control of Loki, Lord of the Aesir could revert to the Emperor, Amano Rei flipped up a card he'd set the previous turn, back when Slifer the Sky Dragon was still on the field.
"Trap Card, Synchro Barrier, activate!"
[Synchro Barrier] [Trap Card: Release 1 Synchro Monster you control to activate this card. Until the End Phase of your next turn, all damage you take becomes 0.]
A card that showed up often in Amano Rei's Riding Duels.
By releasing a Synchro Monster he controlled, he could earn full damage immunity across two turns' worth of time.
That two-turn duration was exactly what set this card apart from classic defensive cards like Emissary of Peace or Attack Invulnerability.
Most of the time, that two-turn window went to waste, since in most situations all he needed was to guard against damage on the opponent's turn alone.
But in a situation like this one, that two-turn window finally earned its keep.
Having no intention of giving Loki back, Amano Rei released the card outright.
"I release the Synchro Monster Loki, Lord of the Aesir, making myself immune to all damage for the next two turns!"
Releasing Loki on his own turn meant Amano Rei wouldn't take a single point of damage all the way through the end of the Emperor's turn. That was the whole soul of how Synchro Barrier was meant to be used.
[Loki, Lord of the Aesir, released]
Wrapped in a barrier of protective, sacred light, Loki's towering, majestic divine silhouette slowly faded from the sky above the track, transforming into Amano Rei's absolute safety net for the turn to come.
"Not only did he dodge the polar gods' revival that way, he made himself immune to any damage next turn too." Rin Seiya said, "Underclassman is playing this way too steady. Steadier than Yusei Fudo himself!"
"Mm. He's always been like this." Nanki'in Sakuya nodded firmly.
Ever since becoming Class 1-E's representative, Sakuya had always believed one thing without question: that she could always trust her own class committee member.
Everyone in the staging area, watching the tide of battle steadily turn, wore looks of relief and delight. Only the Fiore and Fiona sisters, connected to Amano Rei's line at the support console, looked out of place, their expressions not matching the mood at all.
Fiona was in charge of monitoring the data from Amano Rei's D-Wheel as he rode.
"Why has Moonlight Butterfly's perpetual motion engine built up this much high-speed energy? It's almost like the D-Wheel itself has a will of its own, getting ready to accelerate."
Fiore, meanwhile, kept her eyes fixed on the track ahead, on the image of Amano Rei and the Emperor racing neck and neck through their duel.
"Let it end today, Kai. This chain that's held you down for years, this need to stand at the position of strongest."
"My fight isn't over yet! O emperor of the northern sky, ruler of all knowledge and all power! Return to my field!"
Amid the Emperor's roar as his D-Wheel accelerated to its absolute limit, the last effect of this long, drawn-out End Phase resolved, and Odin, Father of the Aesir, banished this turn by Junk Archer, returned to the field once more.
The duel had circled back to how it started: Odin, king of all beings in Norse mythology, gripping the eternal spear Gungnir, standing alone in his towering, majestic divine form to hold up whatever remained of the Emperor's board.
[Odin, Father of the Aesir] [ATK: 4000]
But in contrast, Amano Rei's own board was nothing like the weak, threadbare thing it had been at the start of the duel.
Alongside Amano Rei's speeding D-Wheel rode Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, Junk Archer, Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon, Kurikara Divincarnate, and Thor, Lord of the Aesir, whose towering silhouette rivaled the god-king's own, a whole lineup of monsters ready to rise up against the king of the gods.
The turn changed hands, and the Emperor drew his card.
"My turn, draw!"
Emperor - Speed Counters: 4 to 5
Amano Rei - Speed Counters: 5 to 6
"I remove 2 Speed Counters to activate the Spell Card Graceful Charity!"
Not Speed Spell - Angel's Scepter, the draw-two-discard-one Speed Spell, but the genuine article: Graceful Charity, the draw-three-discard-two Spell Card.
Emperor - Speed Counters: 5 to 3
But as the Emperor drew from his D-Wheel's deck and discarded, Amano Rei caught a glimpse of one of the two cards he discarded.
The color of that card's border was clearly different from an Effect Monster's. It was a Normal Monster.
A Level 1 WATER Reptile. As far as Amano Rei could recall, there was only one vanilla trash monster with exactly 350 ATK, just 50 points above Yuyu's own.
[Gigobyte]
"Why would the Emperor have that card in his deck?"
Though the Emperor hadn't shown any sign of it during the duel itself, Amano Rei had already vaguely sensed something was off.
The Emperor's deck seemed to be carrying an unusually large number of graveyard-filtering, discard-based draw pieces.
Classic graveyard-stacking cards like Speed Spell - Angel's Scepter and Graceful Charity went without saying, and Valkyrie of the Nordic Ascendant, whose activation cost discarding two cards from the hand, was another heavy discarder in its own right.
But given all that, the only card the Emperor had actually activated that could be called a graveyard-based effect was the Trap Card Gjallarhorn.
Right, and there was also Blocker Tomato to count, a Level 2 monster that clashed completely with the visual style of the rest of his polar-god deck.
Given all that, Amano Rei could only think of one reason the Emperor would have a Level 1 trash monster built into his deck purely to discard as a cost.
"Fiore, can I ask you something?"
Amano Rei asked through his helmet earpiece, directing the question to Fiore back in the support area.
"Sure, go ahead."
"What was the Emperor's archetype back in the day?"
"..."
Amano Rei's question left Fiore silent on the other end of the earpiece for a few seconds before she finally spoke, slowly.
"Weaklings."
"Huh?"
"Weaklings. That was Kai's deck archetype, back then."
Did that even count as an archetype?
Anyone who didn't know better would think she was just mocking him.
Even worse than Amano Rei's own vanilla monsters. Could "Weaklings" really count as an archetype inside Eden?
"What kind of archetype is 'Weaklings' supposed to be?" Amano Rei pressed.
Fiore said, "Level 3 or lower, ATK and DEF never higher than 1500. That covers the vast majority of the cards in the Weaklings archetype."
Now that really was a little worse than his own vanilla monsters. His Normal Monsters might be Normal Monsters, but at least he had something like the Level 8 Blue-Eyes White Dragon to carry the board.
The Emperor, stuck with the Weaklings archetype, had been limited to Level 3 or lower monster cards, full stop.
That answer confirmed Amano Rei's suspicion. It explained exactly why the Emperor's deck was carrying around all those useless trash monsters that only existed to pile up in the graveyard.
Unlike Nanki'in Sakuya, who'd been raised from the start as her family's heir, destined to inherit the Shiranui deck, the Emperor had originally had no connection at all to the Nidhogg family. He'd inherited the three polar gods' deck partway through his life.
And those Weaklings cards buried in his deck were the Emperor's original ten soul-bound starter cards, cards that, just like Amano Rei's own Yuyu, could never be removed from the deck.
The man who'd ruled the Riding Duel scene for all these years, and he was a duelist whose starting archetype had been literal weaklings?
"Fight, Odin!"
After using Graceful Charity to filter his draw, the Emperor did nothing else this turn. He simply led his last, and also his very first, polar god, Odin, and declared he was entering the Battle Phase.
"At the start of the battle, I'm activating a Trap Card straight from my hand!" The Emperor flung a Trap Card directly from his hand into the back row of his D-Wheel's Duel Disk.
"Activating a Trap Card straight from his hand?" Rin Seiya said, confused. "Has the old Emperor lost his mind?"
But just as with Celestia's Trap that had activated the very turn it was set, Eva's own detection systems would never allow an activation method that broke the rules.
If the effect could go off at all, that alone proved it was within the rules.
"This is one of the monster cards I just discarded from my hand using Graceful Charity!"
Of the two monster cards he'd discarded, Amano Rei had caught a glimpse of one, Gigobyte. But the second card, the one that had stayed hidden, was the one that actually mattered.
[Makyura the Destructor]
[The turn this card is sent to the Graveyard, its owner can activate Trap Cards from their hand.]
This counted as one of the game's ancient Forbidden Cards. Once it hit the graveyard, its owner could activate Trap Cards from their hand without any real limit.
"I activate the Trap Card Divine Relic Mjollnir straight from my hand!"
[Divine Relic Mjollnir] [Trap Card: Target 1 face-up Phantom Divine-Beast monster you control. That monster can attack twice this turn, and if it destroys an opponent's monster by battle, inflict 1000 damage to your opponent.]
Thor's own thunder hammer from Norse mythology, now resting in Odin's grip, granting the god-king a second attack in the same turn, and dealing an extra 1000 points of damage on top whenever it destroyed a monster.
"Bring down the king of the gods' divine judgment, Odin!"
High above the New Speed World track, Odin's towering divine silhouette gripped the spear Gungnir in his right hand and the hammer Mjollnir in his left, marking Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon and Thor, Lord of the Aesir as his targets.
"Heaven's Judgment!"
[Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon, destroyed]
[Thor, Lord of the Aesir, destroyed]
The god-king's double strike destroyed two of Amano Rei's monsters in one blow.
This marked the very first time in the entire Riding Duel that any of the three polar gods had actually entered battle in the true sense of the word.
Had Amano Rei not already activated Synchro Barrier's full damage immunity ahead of time, that double strike from Odin, carrying its bonus effect damage on top, might have taken him out in a single blow.
But it didn't matter. The strongest fighter on Amano Rei's field was actually Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon.
A representative straight from the Synchro Dimension itself, not a monster that could be overcome by raw ATK alone.
And even if the Emperor destroyed Thor, Lord of the Aesir this turn, Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon could still use its negate-and-destroy trick on a monster effect at the End Phase to pin Thor down in the graveyard for good.
"Next, I activate another Trap Card straight from my hand, Monster Rebirth!"
The second Trap Card the Emperor activated straight from his hand, using Makyura the Destructor's effect.
[Monster Rebirth] [Trap Card: On a turn a monster was destroyed by battle, send 1 "Monster Reborn" from your hand or Deck to the Graveyard, then target 1 monster in either Graveyard. Special Summon that monster to your field, treated as a Special Summon by the effect of "Monster Reborn."]
"Since your monster was destroyed by battle, I'll send Monster Reborn from my Deck to the Graveyard and Special Summon Loki, Lord of the Aesir from my own Graveyard!"
[Loki, Lord of the Aesir] [ATK: 3300]
Loki, released by Amano Rei just the turn before, was revived during the Emperor's own Battle Phase.
And with Loki now present during the Battle Phase, it would seal off Amano Rei's own Spell and Trap Card activations. In other words, even if Amano Rei tried activating either of the two set cards left in his back row right now, they'd simply be negated and destroyed on the spot.
"But Loki still can't beat Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon!"
"When Loki, Lord of the Aesir is successfully Special Summoned, I'm activating this Trap Card from my hand!"
The third Trap Card activated straight from his hand. Now that he'd finally reached the Battle Phase, the Emperor intended to unload the cards Card of Sanctity had stocked up for him, the same way Amano Rei had the turn before.
But there was a flicker of hesitation, of deliberation, in the Emperor's motion as he activated this particular Trap Card. In the end, though, he flung it onto his D-Wheel's Duel Disk anyway.
"Trap Card, United Kickdown!"
[United Kickdown] [Trap Card: Activate only when exactly 1 monster is Normal or Special Summoned. Destroy all monsters on the field with ATK lower than that monster's.]
A Trap Card whose art style had nothing at all in common with the rest of the three polar gods' cards.
The card's artwork showed not only Gigobyte, but Amano Rei even spotted another familiar face on it: Yuyu.
A card whose art was practically a group portrait of the weakest trash monsters around.
Clearly this card had nothing to do with the polar-god system. It was one of the Emperor's own original Weaklings cards.
"This card is..."
Fiore remembered back when she'd first met Kai, a ten-year-old boy holding a trash deck that couldn't even produce a single monster with more than 1500 ATK.
His deck was weak, and he wasn't even much of a player back then. But there'd been something in that ten-year-old's eyes, a light all his own.
Kai: "Even weaklings have their own way of fighting! I'll use this card!"
Fiore: "Idiot, if you use that card, your own monsters get wiped out too."
Kai: "Doesn't matter! United Kickdown's effect, activate!"
The Emperor: "United Kickdown's effect, activate! Destroy every monster on the field with ATK lower than Loki, Lord of the Aesir's!"
For a dizzy moment, Fiore saw the two of them overlap: the foolish boy of ten, grinning like an idiot as he wiped out his own board with a card effect, and the man in front of her now, riding the fastest D-Wheel in Eden, the strongest Emperor who'd ruled the Riding Duel scene for years.
"Is this really the path you wanted?"
Loki, Lord of the Aesir's ATK stood at 3300.
And the highest-ATK monsters on Amano Rei's field were Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon and Kurikara Divincarnate, both sitting at exactly 3000 ATK.
Both of them fell squarely within United Kickdown's destruction range.
Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon might be nearly invincible in battle against other monsters, but it had absolutely no resistance to Spells or Traps. It ate whatever Spell or Trap came its way, and on that front, it simply couldn't compare to the polar gods' full immunity.
[Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, destroyed]
[Kurikara Divincarnate, destroyed]
[Junk Archer, destroyed]
A Trap activated straight from the hand, wiping out Amano Rei's entire board in a single stroke. Only then did the Emperor bring the Battle Phase to a close.
"Is this the strongest way to fight, Emperor?" Amano Rei said.
"No, this is the weakest way to fight there is." The Emperor admitted it without a shred of hesitation. "But it's the resolve I carry with me!"
Though it couldn't deal any damage, it had completely flipped the board state around. The Emperor immediately flung out another Trap Card from his hand.
"I activate the Trap Card Destructive Remedy from my hand, destroying my own Odin, Father of the Aesir to recover 4000 Life Points!"
Emperor LP: 700 to 4700
Just like that, even Amano Rei's Life Point advantage was gone.
"I set my last card in hand. Turn end! And at the End Phase, both Thor, Lord of the Aesir and Odin, Father of the Aesir, destroyed this turn, will revive on my field!"
[Odin, Father of the Aesir] [ATK: 4000]
[Thor, Lord of the Aesir] [ATK: 3500]
Two turns after losing them, the Emperor had gathered all three of Norse mythology's supreme polar gods back onto his field once more.
"Since Odin revived from the Graveyard, I draw 1 card from my Deck! And when Thor revives, it deals you 800 points of effect damage!"
Still within Synchro Barrier's protective window during the End Phase, Amano Rei wouldn't be taking that effect damage, not for now.
But the longer the duel dragged on, the more the polar gods' staying power in a war of attrition would show itself, especially in a slower-paced format like a Riding Duel.
With his board wiped out and the tide turned against him, Amano Rei's hand was empty. All that remained were the two cards set on his field.
"Can you still win like this, Amano Rei! Can the monsters you trust still stand against gods when their backs are against the wall!"
"I'll win. I'll show you. I'll show everyone!"
Show everyone, and put an end to the curse of the Emperor's strongest title in the Riding Duel scene once and for all.
Amano Rei flipped up one of the Trap Cards set in his back row.
"At the End Phase of your turn, I activate the Trap Card Graverobber! I'll be borrowing your Spell Card, Emperor!"
Even at full speed, the little grave robber dove smoothly into the Emperor's graveyard, copying the effect of a Spell Card sitting there.
The grinning little grave robber pulled out one card: Soul Charge.
[Soul Charge] [The turn this card is activated, you cannot enter the Battle Phase. Target any number of monsters in your Graveyard. Special Summon those monsters, then you lose Life Points equal to 1000 times the number of monsters Special Summoned this way.]
The turn Soul Charge was activated, its controller couldn't enter the Battle Phase. But that didn't matter, because this was still the Emperor's turn.
"I Special Summon Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, Stardust Dragon, and Junk Speeder from my Graveyard!"
Amano Rei LP: 3200 to 200
Since Soul Charge's cost was Life Point loss rather than damage, Synchro Barrier's immunity did nothing to stop it.
Betting every Life Point he could spare, three Synchro Monsters reappeared in a blaze of revival light, flying in formation alongside Amano Rei's D-Wheel.
Watching the D-Wheel's data climb faster and faster, Fiona said, "He hasn't given up yet, sis! It looks like he can still go even faster!"
Fiore nodded. "Yeah, I can tell. Honestly, I could tell from the very start."
A month ago, her little sister had suddenly told her about some duelist who'd shown up at Synchro Academy using nothing but trash Normal Monsters, a first year who'd already beaten Kaiba Chiha and won the joint duel tournament besides.
A duelist who fought with trash Normal Monsters. Fiore couldn't help but think of that boy who'd once used a Weaklings deck of his own.
So when Amano Rei had suddenly turned up at her D-Wheel garage asking if she had any spare Tuner cards, Fiore felt like she was watching the exact same scene play out from ten years ago.
She'd lent him her treasured Nova Junk Synchron.
And then she'd watched with her own eyes as this first-year student, brand new to the academy, took that same trash Normal Monster deck and beat Rin Seiya, the current strongest duelist at Synchro Academy, in a Riding Duel.
"You don't need to give it back. Just keep the card."
Fiore had no idea if that had been the right call or not. She'd just wanted to bet on hope one more time.
The same way she'd once placed her hope in that weak, scrawny boy ten years ago.
She wanted the Emperor to see it: that even a trash deck, even without ever betraying your own heart, could still become the strongest there was.
And now, the Emperor was about to see it.
"My turn, draw!"
The moment his turn began, Amano Rei drew the single card waiting for him and staked everything on speed.
Amano Rei - Speed Counters: 6 to 7
"I remove 2 Speed Counters to activate the Spell Card Pot of Greed, drawing 2 cards! Then, chaining off it, I activate the effect of Revival of the Sky God in my Graveyard!"
Revival of the Sky God had landed in Amano Rei's graveyard a long time ago now, even earlier than he'd drawn Slifer the Sky Dragon itself.
On Amano Rei's very first turn of this duel, it had been sent to the graveyard as a cost when he activated Albus's effect.
[Revival of the Sky God] [Banish this card from your Graveyard to activate. Select 1 "Monster Reborn" from your Deck or Graveyard and place it on top of your Deck. If you have a Phantom Divine-Beast monster in your Graveyard, draw 1 additional card from your Deck.]
By chaining Revival of the Sky God off Pot of Greed's effect, he could stack Monster Reborn safely on top of his Deck first, then draw three cards in a row.
Amano Rei - Speed Counters: 7 to 5
"Now, hope is in my hand!"
"Draw!"
The last three cards landed in his hand, and one of them, exactly as planned, was Monster Reborn.
"I remove 2 Speed Counters to activate the Spell Card Monster Reborn!"
Amano Rei - Speed Counters: 5 to 3
A sacred light of revival shone down across the track beneath Amano Rei's speeding D-Wheel.
"It won't matter what you revive at this point, Amano Rei!"
Even if he revived Slifer the Sky Dragon, it would only have 2000 ATK.
So as far as the Emperor was concerned, the only monster of Amano Rei's that posed any real threat at all was Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon.
But the Emperor had a Spell Card exclusive to the three polar gods set in his back row right now, Raging Sacred Curse, which could negate an opponent's monster effect and cut its ATK by 2000. Not even Crystal Wing could stand up against a Trap's effect like that.
"The monster I'm reviving is..."
Amano Rei flung a monster card onto his speeding D-Wheel's Duel Disk.
"Go, Star Chalice Divine Child Eve!"
[Star Chalice Divine Child Eve] [Level 5 WATER Tuner] [ATK: 1800]
Amano Rei had saved Monster Reborn's revival for the one soul card the Emperor had mocked as useless, all the way back at the start of the duel.
"Reviving that monster, now, of all times? Why?"
The Emperor couldn't make sense of what Amano Rei was doing, but the way his D-Wheel kept accelerating, and the sheer confidence radiating off him as he rode alongside his ace monster, actually made the Emperor, sitting on a field with all three gods, feel a flicker of real threat.
(The Emperor: "Pinning the outcome of a duel on one perfectly ordinary card. That really is the kind of naive thing only a young person would do.")
"An ordinary card? My last hope is riding on a card that doesn't even qualify as ordinary! I'm going to use this naive little card to shatter your strongest title!"
Amano Rei's last two cards in hand were Yuyu and the Spell Card Level Lifter.
"I remove 2 Speed Counters to activate the Spell Card Level Lifter's effect!"
Amano Rei - Speed Counters: 3 to 1
Betting everything, every last bit of speed and every last card, in that instant Rin Seiya could have sworn she saw a faint golden light flickering into being all around Amano Rei's D-Wheel.
"Is that...?" Rin Seiya rubbed her eyes, unable to believe it. "Accel Synchro beyond the limit?"
[Level Lifter] [Spell Card: Send 1 monster from your hand to the Graveyard, then target up to 2 face-up monsters you control. Until the End Phase, their Levels become the original Level of the monster sent to the Graveyard to activate this card.]
"I send the Level 1 Yuyu from my hand to the Graveyard, then target Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon and Stardust Dragon on my field to activate the effect, changing both of their Levels to match Yuyu's own Level 1!"
[Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon] [Level 8 to Level 1]
[Stardust Dragon] [Level 8 to Level 1]
"I wasn't seeing things!" Rin Seiya confirmed with total conviction. "This really is Accel Synchro beyond the limit!"
Facing down the three polar gods' ultimate trump card, Amano Rei used Star Chalice Divine Child Eve as the crucial Synchro Tuner at the heart of it all, used Yuyu to reshape the Levels on his field, and gathered every last shred of hope he had left to reach the very limit of Accel Synchro.
Bathed in golden light beyond the limit, Amano Rei reached his fingers forward, touching the Synchro card hidden deep at the very heart of the domain of speed.
"I bring together the Level 5 Synchro Tuner Star Chalice Divine Child Eve, the Level 5 Synchro Monster Junk Speeder, the Level 1 Synchro Monster Stardust Dragon, and the Level 1 Synchro Monster Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, for the final Tuning!"
"Go, Eve! Lead us past the limit!"
"Osu!!"
Amid Amano Rei's roaring declaration and the burst of golden light around him, Eve, the divine child, spread her wings of starlight and transformed, at full speed, into five overlapping rings of Synchro light.
5 plus 5 plus 1 plus 1 equals 12!
"When the gathered stars become one, a new bond will light the way to the future! Become a road shining with light!"
"Accel Synchro beyond the limit! Light of evolution, Shooting Quasar Dragon!"
[Shooting Quasar Dragon] [Level 12 LIGHT]
[Dragon/Synchro/Effect]
[ATK: 4000] [DEF: 4000]
[1 Tuner Synchro Monster + 2 or more non-Tuner Synchro Monsters]
Normally a Synchro Summon needing just three Synchro Monsters, but this time Amano Rei had used four to complete Accel Synchro beyond the limit, adding one more attack to Shooting Quasar Dragon's count in the process.
A Synchro light breaking through the sky itself, like a dazzling quasar falling straight out of the cosmos. Immense in size, Shooting Quasar Dragon stood every bit the equal of the three polar gods' towering, majestic forms beneath the dusk sky.
Eden's artificial sky had no true day-night cycle at all. It simply shifted on a fixed schedule.
But right now, the sky above the track had split into a gradient, half dusk, half starlit night.
It wasn't a shift between day and night at all. It was the sheer, ultimate confrontation of Synchro power, tearing even the sky itself apart.
"Why does it feel like underclassman's Accel Synchro beyond the limit is even cooler than mine? But I love it!"
"Fight, Shooting Quasar Dragon!" Wrapped head to toe in golden light, Amano Rei raised a hand forward, riding as if across the stars themselves, and declared he was entering this turn's Battle Phase.
"Shooting Quasar Dragon! Attack Thor, Lord of the Aesir!"
"Set Trap Card, activate! Raging Sacred Curse!" The Emperor flipped up his one and only set card.
[Raging Sacred Curse] [Trap Card: If you control a face-up Phantom Divine-Beast monster, target 1 monster your opponent controls. Until the End Phase, that monster's ATK and DEF decrease by 2000. In addition, that monster becomes unaffected by your Spell/Trap effects, and its effect is negated.]
"Shooting Quasar Dragon's effect, activate!"
[Once per turn, activate when a Spell, Trap, or monster effect is activated. Negate that activation and destroy it.]
A guardian light of gathered stars swept in, negating and destroying the Raging Sacred Curse, clearing the way for Shooting Quasar Dragon's attack.
"Heaven and Earth Creation Strike: Blast of Genesis!"
Starlight from across the cosmos gathered in the massive dragon's jaws and blasted into Thor's own majestic divine form.
[Thor, Lord of the Aesir, destroyed]
Emperor LP: 4700 to 4200
The sheer shockwave of falling stars sent even the Emperor's D-Wheel rocking violently.
"Shooting Quasar Dragon's effect lets me attack again!"
[This card can attack a number of times per Battle Phase equal to the number of non-Tuner monsters used as its Synchro Material.]
"Since I used four materials for the Synchro Summon, Shooting Quasar Dragon can attack three times!"
A second falling light of cosmic stars crashed down onto Loki, Lord of the Aesir.
"Heaven and Earth Creation Strike: Blast of Genesis, Second Round!"
The second of the Emperor's towering divine silhouettes was swallowed whole and shattered by the light of the stars.
[Loki, Lord of the Aesir, destroyed]
Emperor LP: 4200 to 3500
"Now fight Odin, Father of the Aesir, one last time! Shooting Quasar Dragon!"
Launching its final assault against the king of the Norse gods, the gathered radiance of cosmic stars collided head on with the god-king's own spear, Gungnir.
Amano Rei: "Heaven and Earth Creation Strike: Blast of Genesis, Third Round!"
The Emperor: "Strike back, Odin! Heaven's Judgment!"
Both sides stood at exactly 4000 ATK. The final collision of two equal attacks exploded beneath the sky, half dusk and half starlight, into a battle scar more brilliant and dazzling than anything that had come before.
[Shooting Quasar Dragon, destroyed]
[Odin, Father of the Aesir, destroyed]
An equal collision of ATK could only ever end one way: mutual destruction.
Having single-handedly wiped out all three polar gods, Shooting Quasar Dragon's own towering form vanished from the battlefield as well.
In its place, another shooting star burst onto the field.
[Activate when this face-up card leaves the field. Special Summon 1 "Shooting Star Dragon" from your Extra Deck.]
"The gathered crystals of a dream will open a brand new gate of evolution! Become a road shining with light!"
"Special Summon! Be born, Shooting Star Dragon!"
[Shooting Star Dragon] [ATK: 3300]
"Since it was Special Summoned during the Battle Phase, it can still make another attack. Go! Direct attack on the Emperor!"
"Stardust Mirage!!"
Having just watched all three polar gods obliterated head on, Shooting Star Dragon, accelerating to its absolute limit, turned its own draconic body into a blade and rammed straight into the Emperor's D-Wheel.
The massive, very real physical impact knocked the helmet clean off the Emperor's racing suit, sending his long golden hair whipping wildly, more than a little disheveled, in the high-speed wind.
Emperor LP: 3500 to 200
The Emperor gritted his teeth and held on, his expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace. "You almost killed me there, Amano Rei! But in the end, I'm still the one who wins!"
Not only did the Emperor still have 200 Life Points left, but in his hand, drawn the turn before through Odin's revival draw effect, he was still holding one of his own original low-Level monster cards: Performapal Kuribohble.
"At the End Phase, the revived Thor, Lord of the Aesir will deal you one last 800 points of damage!"
Amano Rei LP: 200
If he couldn't finish off the Emperor now, then even after destroying the undying, indestructible polar gods, he'd still lose in the end.
The Emperor, his golden hair streaming in the wind, gripped the card in his hand tightly. "I'm the strongest. No, I have to be the strongest. I have to stand in this position!"
"Then your title as the strongest ends today! I still have one last set card in my back row that hasn't activated! I'm using it to revive a monster from my Graveyard!"
Bathed in brilliant golden light, Amano Rei flipped up the last set card that would decide the duel.
"Pointless. Even if you revive a monster from your Graveyard, I can shut it down with a Trap straight from my hand!"
"Trap Card, Synchro Soul, activate!"
[Synchro Soul] [Trap Card: Banish 1 Synchro Monster in your Graveyard to activate this card. Special Summon the complete set of monsters used as that monster's Synchro Material from your Graveyard.]
"Let's see you shut this down, Emperor!"
"I banish Shooting Quasar Dragon from my Graveyard, and Special Summon all four of the monsters used as its Synchro Material: Stardust Dragon, Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, Junk Speeder, and Star Chalice Divine Child Eve!"
Gathered together into a single point, that quasar-bright light of hope spread out in this one instant into a rain of falling stars scattered across the earth.
[Stardust Dragon] [ATK: 2500]
[Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon] [ATK: 3000]
[Junk Speeder] [ATK: 1800]
[Star Chalice Divine Child Eve] [ATK: 1800]
The Emperor had assumed Amano Rei would use something like Call of the Living Dead to revive just a single monster from the graveyard.
He hadn't expected Amano Rei to bring back all four Synchro Monsters at once.
He couldn't. He couldn't stop this at all.
Right now, alongside Amano Rei's golden D-Wheel on the track, five monsters in total, Shooting Star Dragon among them, all shimmering with starlight, flew in perfect formation beside him.
Rin Seiya trembled with excitement. "Underclassman's Synchro. It's Synchro that's surpassed the gods!"
Amano Rei thrust his arm forward. "A Synchro prayer gathered beneath the starlit sky will become a miracle that surpasses even the gods of Synchro themselves! Direct attack, Eve!"
Even the weakest of cards could, in this one moment, having surpassed the gods themselves, aim its decisive attack straight at the strongest Emperor there was.
"It really was this card, after all!"
As he rode, the Emperor watched the monster closing in on him for the final blow, and in the reflection of all that gathered starlight, he seemed to see another meaning entirely.
These were weaklings and Normal Monsters, and they had surpassed the gods.
The flat-chested girl with shimmering wings of crystal light became a single flash of brilliance on the high-speed track and shot straight through the Emperor's D-Wheel.
Eve: "Star Prayer! Light Blade Impact!!"
Emperor LP: 200 to 0
The Emperor: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
[Mark of the Heir] [Copy Target: Kai] [Card "Odin, Father of the Aesir" Copy Successful]
Even a god card could be copied like this?
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