Chapter 74: Noise, and the Darkness Within
What greeted him upon opening his eyes was a patch of sky pieced together between tree crowns. Clarity and sharp pain mingled in his brain.
Bakura was a little disoriented: Where was he?
"Yo, you're awake. The surgery was a success, you're a girl now." A voice entered Bakura's ears. He looked towards the sound and saw a rather familiar face under a large tree.
"Chumley?" Sitting up from the ground, Bakura looked at the dense forest surrounding the grassy area where he sat, feeling a bit confused. "How did I end up here?"
"Speaking of that, why don't you try to recall the most recent thing you can clearly remember?" Flipping through a few Cards he had just acquired, Chumley looked up at Bakura, thinking to himself, 'Unlike Yami Yugi and Yugi, does he have no memory of the period when he was controlled?'
Bakura, covering his temples with a weak expression, sat on the grass recalling, while Chumley continued to examine his Rewards after his previous Duel with Dark Bakura.
Due to the change in DP Rule, although there were multiple Reward bonuses like "Flawless Victory" and "used 3 Trap Cards", Chumley only received 600 DP in the end. After deducting the cost of activating a Shadow Game, he only earned 100 DP, which was quite, quite unprofitable.
However, although his Dueling prowess wasn't much, Dark Bakura's true identity was, after all, the Great Evil God, the final boss. He unlocked a full five Achievements for Chumley in one go, five!
They were—
[Attack Power of Obelisk the Tormentor!]: Monster's Attack reaches 4000 points
[Attack Power of Five-Headed Dragon!]: Monster's Attack reaches 5000 points
[Gaze into the Abyss.]: Activate one Shadow Game
[Fatal Five-Hit Combo!]: Achieve five consecutive Duel victories
[Legendary Darkness]: Eliminate one Shadow Duelist
Besides the fixed 1000 DP Reward, these five Achievements also gave Chumley a bunch of Selection Tickets and Limited Card Packs. Chumley used to think the DP from Achievements was just a bonus because he would get at least over 1000 DP from a single Duel. But unexpectedly, with the update to the DP Rule, the fixed Achievement Rewards became the main source of his DP income.
What appeared in Chumley's hand were the Cards he obtained from several Limited Card Packs and Selection Card Vouchers. Although he got new Cards, honestly, Chumley wished he hadn't opened those Card Packs, because now several more noisy voices were echoing in his ears—
"Waa-ha-ha-ha, we really are Big Bro's best Partners, neh~"
"When our Ojama Family unites, we can overcome anything!"
"Make the Ojama Family great again!"
"Yay!" x2
Looking at the newly joined (Ojama Red) and (Ojama Blue), Chumley felt a headache. He hadn't expected that the Ojama Trio, who had already awakened as Card Spirits, could accelerate the awakening speed of other Ojama Monsters. To awaken the Card Spirit of Gaia The Fierce Knight, he had gone through over a dozen intense (probably) Duels, spending more than a month.
Yet, (Ojama Red) and (Ojama Blue) awakened less than ten minutes after he obtained them?
"Kuriii~" Rainbow Kuriboh lay on top of Chumley's head, watching the lively Ojama Family, and couldn't help but chirp at Chumley, its eyes fixed on the several Dragon-Type and Machine-Type Monsters in Chumley's hand.
"Don't look at me like that, it's not up to me what Cards appear. But now that I think about it, I've almost collected all Ojama-related Cards, except for the main Ojama family's (Ojama Pink)?"
Chumley looked at the Cards in his hand, feeling as if someone had arranged things for him in the shadows. Besides his usual EARTH Attribute Warrior-Type Deck, he could almost put together a new Deck now?
However, before he could combine a new Deck, Chumley had another urgent matter to deal with.
"Aibo, do you think what that Rabbit-Eared Devil King said before is true?" Looking at the Millennium Ring hanging on his chest, Chumley hesitated whether to continue with his next actions. "Do I really have the aura of the Millennium Eye on me?"
"Kuriii. Kurii! Kurikuri!" Floating down in front of Chumley, Rainbow Kuriboh expressed its opinion to Chumley in its perfectly articulated Kuriboh language.
Chumley nodded: "I think so too. My personality indeed had some issues recently, I was a bit too agitated, as if I wasn't myself?"
Chumley recalled that not long ago, he had gathered the full power of his five Card Spirits at the time, attempting to stop Pegasus from sealing Grandpa Muto's soul. In that difficult and brief confrontation—or rather, "desperate resistance"—Chumley lost without suspense, and even fell into a coma for a period because of it.
After waking up, Chumley's behavior became somewhat irritable and reckless. Whether it was arrogantly using a Field Spell during his Duel with Gorō the Pig-Head, or physically attacking Weevil for failing to stop him from tearing up (Exodia). At the time, Chumley didn't feel anything wrong with his actions, but now, recalling them, he found them utterly bizarre.
Although his temper wasn't inherently great, he was definitely not such a reckless or straightforward person.
During the previous Shadow Game, Dark Bakura said that Chumley had the aura of the Millennium Key and the Millennium Eye on him. Although Chumley himself didn't know when he had come into contact with the Millennium Key, which should be held by Shadi, there was no doubt that the Millennium Eye had genuinely interacted with him.
Chumley subconsciously lifted the Millennium Ring from his chest and muttered to it: "It feels a bit silly, but. Oh, Millennium Ring, guide me to the location of the Millennium Eye."
A golden light shone on the Millennium Ring. The five pendants surrounding the circular disk floated up antigravitationally. After a slight pause, four of the pendants all pointed towards Pegasus' Castle in the center of the island, while one pendant swayed slightly before finally settling on pointing towards Chumley's direction.
Almost immediately after activating the Millennium Ring, Chumley felt a powerful force surging from the golden circular disk directly towards his brain, but it dissipated into nothingness just before impact.
'Did the System's Mind Barrier activate?' Chumley sighed in relief. Honestly, he was gambling: gambling that he could use the Millennium Ring's power to detect whether Pegasus had left some of the Millennium Eye's power within him, and also gambling that the System could intercept the Backlash of the Millennium Ring, one of the Millennium Items, on its user.
And he had indeed gambled correctly.
Just as Chumley was contemplating how to deal with the power of the Millennium Eye on him, he overlooked a crucial detail—the Millennium Ring's Backlash on its user should have begun the moment it was worn, and even the father of its previous owner, Ryo Bakura, had lost his life due to failing its trial.
But why had Chumley, who wore the Millennium Ring, not experienced even a hint of its trial?
"It's a Monster with 3000 Attack, just like (Blue-Eyes White Dragon)!"
"I'm going to become a God!"
"Human potential is limitless!"
"..."
(end of chapter)