Chapter 283: Blue-Eyes White Dragon's Spirit Awakens
"32000 ATK?"
Chimeratech Overdragon had returned from its Cyber Network exile with its ATK doubled, and the number it now displayed under the setting sun had just climbed past Spessartine Dragon's 20600.
Against that spectacle, Kaiser was pressing one hand to his chest.
"Ryo-sama!" Yukishiro's voice carried immediate concern.
This was the cost of the back-side Cyber Dark stream made visible. The duel was not even a Dark Game. The Battle Phase had not begun. He had only Summoned high-ATK monsters, and already the current that ran through the deck was running through the man holding it.
"It's all right, Yukishiro. This will be over soon!" Kaiser forced the pain back behind his teeth and let the edge of something wild take its place at the corner of his mouth.
32000 ATK on Chimeratech Overdragon did not represent raw ATK alone. The anime version of the card came with a number of attacks per turn equal to its Fusion Material count.
Amano had one more card to play before handing the turn over.
"At my End Phase, Kurigalzu's effect activates!"
[During your End Phase: you can target 1 monster in your opponent's GY; Special Summon it to your field.]
"I Special Summon Cyber Dragon from your Graveyard to my field!"
[Cyber Dragon] [ATK: 2100]
One Cyber Dragon on Amano's side. Against a 32000 ATK monster, one 2100 ATK monster was not going to change much by itself. Amano knew it too.
"My turn, Amano! Draw!"
The turn passed. Kaiser drew his opening card, the discomfort that had shown on his face a moment ago already locked away behind focus.
Over to one side, Shio was working through the logic out loud: "Doubling Chimeratech Overdragon's ATK at End Phase with Cyber Network looks impressive, but does it actually accomplish anything? The anime version keeps the ATK from before it was banished and doubles that, but the monster still gets destroyed at your next Standby Phase before you ever reach Battle Phase."
Amano already knew the answer. The finale in the anime, where the Cyber End Dragon blazed in the last light of the sunset, was a different situation entirely. In this duel, Kaiser had not reached his Battle Phase yet, and he was not the type to build something this elaborate as a pure visual statement.
The answer was sitting in Kaiser's hand, in the Quick-Play Spell that had not had space in his Spell and Trap Zone the previous turn. With two face-down Traps and three Equip Cards already occupying those zones, a sixth card could not be set. Now those zones had cleared out.
Kaiser slapped the card onto his Duel Disk without preamble: "Quick-Play Spell: Forbidden Dress, activate!"
[Forbidden Dress: Target 1 face-up monster on the field; until the End Phase, it loses 600 ATK, but cannot be targeted by, or destroyed by, card effects.]
Reducing a monster's ATK by 600 was the price. The immunity to destruction by card effects was what mattered. And applied to Chimeratech Overdragon, it directly cancelled out the self-destruction clause that Cyber Network had left attached to it.
"I reduce Chimeratech Overdragon's ATK by 600!"
Six hundred ATK on a 32000 ATK monster was a rounding error.
[Chimeratech Overdragon] [ATK: 32000 to 31400]
"Now it's time for battle, Amano!"
Whatever had been showing on Kaiser's face a moment ago, there was nothing left of it now. Nothing but wanting this.
"Battle Phase! Chimeratech Overdragon, attack Gem Dragon - Underground Spessartine Dragon!"
No feints, no deflection. The attack target Kaiser chose was the highest-ATK monster on Amano's field.
A 31400 ATK versus a 20600 ATK combat was not the same scale as a 3140 versus a 2060. Even the overflow damage from a trade at those numbers would be enough to wipe out the combined LP of both duelists several times over.
"'Evolutionary Convergence Burst'!"
"Trap Card, activate!"
Amano flipped his face-down. There was no version of this duel where he absorbed that hit without something in place.
Even if Kaiser had not run Cyber Network last turn to double the ATK, Kurigalzu on Amano's field would still have been a target. Amano had set this trap for exactly this kind of moment.
What he had not counted on was that his own Spessartine Dragon, after Fusing the entire Deck of Normal Monsters, would still end up with lower ATK than Kaiser's opening board.
"Trap Card: Attack Invulnerability, activate!"
[Attack Invulnerability: During the Battle Phase only, activate 1 of these effects.
- Target 1 monster on the field; that monster cannot be destroyed by battle or card effects during this Battle Phase.
- Battle damage you take this Battle Phase becomes 0.]
Two options: protect a monster from being destroyed, or reduce all battle damage received to zero. Staring at 31400 ATK, the choice was obvious. Even if Spessartine Dragon survived the hit, the battle damage from that exchange would end the duel.
"I choose to make all battle damage I take this Battle Phase become 0!"
The Evolutionary Convergence Burst tore through Spessartine Dragon's body and scattered it in a column of light.
[Gem Dragon - Underground Spessartine Dragon, destroyed]
"Even with zero battle damage, the battle does not stop, Amano!"
Kaiser raised two fingers. "I used 20 Fusion Materials. Chimeratech Overdragon can attack twenty times in the same turn!"
The anime-version Chimeratech Overdragon carried no restriction to attacking only monsters. Direct attacks, one after another, were entirely within its parameters.
Under the setting sun, the massive Chimeratech Overdragon had nineteen dragon heads left, each one charging its own Convergence Burst.
"You're not pulling any punches, Kaiser!"
Amano's field was already cleared. Wiping the remaining monsters would have been enough. But of course Kaiser was going to run all twenty attacks. This was Kaiser Ryo.
"'Evolutionary Convergence Burst'! Twenty times!!"
"Here we gooooooo!"
The courtyard's dueling ground, already large enough to serve as a small plaza, took twenty overlapping hits from the Chimeratech's combined fire in the dying light of the afternoon. When the last of the energy columns faded, there was a visible crater in the ground where the duel field projection had concentrated the impact.
"Are you all right, Rei-sama?"
Nanki'in Yukihime swept her folding fan through the air beside Amano to clear the white heat haze that had risen from the ground around him.
"Hard to kill." He was fine. Battle damage at zero meant that even in Eden, where the duel's virtual projections carried a real physical feedback to match the attacks, the force behind each hit had been stripped out before it could register on his body. Twenty consecutive blasts of Chimeratech energy had been roughly equivalent to twenty consecutive camera flashes: impressive in a visual sense, essentially harmless.
If pressed for a genuine complaint: the light pollution from twenty dragon-head beam attacks at sunset had done more damage to his eyes than anything else.
Eve: "Zero damage. I wouldn't even have flinched."
After clearing the board with twenty attacks, Kaiser set a card face-down.
"I set one card. Turn end!"
The turn passed. Amano drew.
"My turn. Draw!"
Twenty attacks had stripped Amano's field completely. Not one card remained.
An empty field had its advantages.
"I Normal Summon Elemental HERO Bubbleman in Attack Position!"
[Elemental HERO Bubbleman] [Level 4 / WATER]
[Warrior / Effect]
[ATK: 800] [DEF: 1200]
A man whose expression read pure card-drawing joy, hands planted on his hips, materialized on the field looking as though he had arrived specifically to announce how many cards were about to be drawn.
"Since I control no other cards, Bubbleman's effect triggers when he is Summoned, and I draw 2 cards!"
"HEROes." Kaiser's expression settled into something focused.
In the GX timeline, HEROes had been as much a part of Amano's signature as anything else. But everyone who had dueled alongside him at Duel Academy knew that when it came to the card that people thought of first when they thought of Amano Rei, there was one default answer that was not a HERO card.
Eve: "Is that me?"
No.
"Call for me, Amano Rei!"
It was the same cool, unfamiliar voice as before. The one that spoke rarely, usually only once per duel, and that Amano had been hearing for longer than he could clearly account for.
He checked his hand. The answer was sitting right there.
"Then let's meet it head on! Sebadoragon!"
That last word was not a real card name. It was Amano's personal shorthand for the concept: Kaiba Seto's dragon, the fourth one, the one that ended up with him.
Amano slapped a Continuous Spell Card into his field first.
"Continuous Spell: The Cleft of Darkness, activate! Then: Spell Card: Monster Reborn!"
The holy light of resurrection blazed under the setting sun, a brilliance that stood face to face with the colossal Chimeratech Overdragon across the field.
"The monster I'm Special Summoning from my Graveyard!"
"The roar of the soul, in this moment becoming a gale that shatters all who stand in the way!"
"If all that lies ahead is endless darkness, then bend to the Dragon of Light and let it swallow the dark!"
"Blue-Eyes White Dragonnnnn!!"
[Blue-Eyes White Dragon] [Level 8 / LIGHT]
[Dragon / Normal]
[ATK: 3000] [DEF: 2500]
[A legendary dragon of magnificent power. Capable of reducing any enemy to cinders, its destructive force is beyond reckoning.]
The proud white dragon arrived under the last red light of the afternoon with a cry that filled the courtyard, wings spread to their full span, pale blue eyes catching the dying glow of the sun. The image it made was one of those moments in a duel that stopped everyone watching and turned the whole scene into something they would remember.
"Is that... the legendary Blue-Eyes White Dragon?"
Tsukiyu Yukishiro and Nanki'in Yukihime both went still, speaking at almost exactly the same moment. The first time seeing a real Blue-Eyes White Dragon could do that to a person.
Shio: "It's Blue-Eyes White Dragon... ah, yes. It's here. Great!"
Saotome Rei: "Shio-chan, why do you sound so guilty?"
Guilty. That was because of how many times the people who lived with Amano had said unflattering things about Blue-Eyes behind its back and occasionally to its face. The sudden fear that the Blue-Eyes now standing in the courtyard might decide to direct its "Burst Stream of Destruction" at whoever had done the most insulting was not entirely irrational.
"When a Normal Monster is Special Summoned to my field, The Cleft of Darkness activates, and I draw 1 more card! Then: Battle Phase!"
Amano raised his hand and pointed forward.
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon, summoned into the red evening light, had already shifted its gaze to the enemy in front of it.
"Rei-sama?" Nanki'in Yukihime's voice carried genuine alarm. "Is that going to work? The ATK difference is ten to one in the other direction."
"It's going to work. Because Blue-Eyes White Dragon's ATK is about to be eleven times Blue-Eyes White Dragon's ATK. When Blue-Eyes White Dragon declares an attack, The Cleft of Darkness activates!"
[Activate when one of the following monsters you control declares an attack: target monster gains ATK equal to the ATK of the monster it is battling, until end of turn.
- A Level 5 or higher Normal Monster]
Blue-Eyes White Dragon was, unambiguously, a Level 5 or higher Normal Monster. When it attacked into Chimeratech Overdragon, The Cleft of Darkness stacked Chimeratech Overdragon's full ATK value directly onto the white dragon.
"At the moment of the attack declaration, Blue-Eyes White Dragon gains ATK equal to Chimeratech Overdragon's 31400!"
"ROAR!"
[Blue-Eyes White Dragon] [ATK: 3000 to 34400]
Shio's jaw fell open. "34400 ATK on Blue-Eyes White Dragon? That's more than seven Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragons combined!"
An ATK value that had no right to be attached to what was functionally the game's most famous vanilla monster was now blazing in the courtyard under the setting sun, and the white dragon was already in motion.
"Go! Destroy everything in front of you, Blue-Eyes!"
"'BURST STREAM OF DESTRUCTION'!!"
Thirty-four thousand four hundred points of white light detonated against Chimeratech Overdragon's twenty mechanical heads, erasing the steel fortress in its entirety.
[Chimeratech Overdragon, destroyed]
Kaiser LP: 4000 to 1000
Tsukiyu Yukishiro could barely process it: "Ryo-sama lost an ATK matchup."
Kaiser looked like he had been expecting exactly this. "That's Amano Rei for you. If it ended here, it wouldn't be the duel I came for."
Everyone who had dueled alongside Amano at Duel Academy knew it: the card that stood for Amano Rei was not the HEROes, even though HEROes were part of what he brought. What came to mind first was the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, the fourth one, the one that history had somehow routed through a garbage heap in District 32 and into the hands of a transmigrator who built a deck out of castoffs and ran it all the way to Tower Rank 1.
The second person in the world to carry a Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Not three of them like the duelist who had made the card legendary. Just one. But that one, in his hands, had produced moments like this.
"Well done, Amano Rei."
It was the same cool voice. But it had never said anything twice in the same duel before.
Amano stopped. "Blue-Eyes?"
"Mm... yes."
That was something that had never happened. Not once. The voice always spoke one sentence and vanished. Having it respond at all, much less with something that carried a slight hesitation in it: this was new.
Eva had told him, sometime after the Academy Challenge, that he would be able to see more truths clearly now. This might be one of them.
Though what came through in that brief, slightly uncertain voice was not the aloof, unreachable presence he had always imagined a legendary dragon spirit would carry.
It sounded, if anything, a little shy.
"Well, there will be time for that later. For now: Bubbleman, direct attack!"
With Chimeratech Overdragon gone, Kaiser's field was completely open. Bubbleman crossed it.
Kaiser LP: 1000 to 200
"That's what I'm talking about, Amano Rei! This is exactly the feeling I came for!"
Watching his LP drop to 200 in a single exchange, Kaiser was more energized than he had been before it happened.
"Try not to run your body empty along with your LP, Kaiser."
Amano set his remaining hand before ending the turn.
"I set three cards face-down. Turn end."
Against 200 LP still fighting back with all of this behind it, Amano was not taking a single card for granted.
"My turn. Draw!"
Kaiser drew without slowing down. Two hundred LP was not something he dueled from differently than four thousand.
"Continuous Trap: Cycle of the World's effect, once per turn. I declare a monster Type: Machine!"
With the declaration shifting from Divine Beast to Machine, every monster in both Graveyards became a Machine-Type. Kaiser's Graveyard cards flew from the zone in sequence, arcing across the courtyard under the last light of the sun, joining into a configuration like a star chart traced against the fading sky.
"I banish every remaining LIGHT Machine-Type monster in my Graveyard! Sixteen of them! Summon forth the dragon born from the constellation of the Celestial Dragon!"
"Come down! The mightiest Cyber Dragon blazing on the track of countless stars, the light of the celestial dragon lit by a thousand suns!"
"Special Summon! Cyber Eltanin!"
[Cyber Eltanin] [Level 10 / LIGHT]
[Machine / Special Summon / Effect]
[ATK: ?] [DEF: ?]
[This card cannot be Normal Summoned. It can only be Special Summoned by banishing all LIGHT Machine-Type monsters from your field and GY.]