Chapter 329: Kikawayu's Must-Eat "Trap"
[Lost Duelist "Alexis Rhodes" Defeated]
[Spacetime Points Gained: 10]
[Remaining Spacetime Points: 25]
[Spacetime Card Pack Unlocked: Radiance of Ritual]
Probably because Alexis Rhodes had lost her will to fight partway through, the system ruled the duel a win for Amano Rei outright, and just as it had after his victory over Kaiser Ryo, rewarded him with Spacetime Points and a brand new Spacetime Card Pack.
"Whew!" Eve pressed a hand to her chest and let out a long breath. "That was close. I really thought I was about to get sliced in half."
Dakini's twin blades had come to a stop just centimeters from Eve's forehead before vanishing, once Alexis gave up the fight.
But none of that was what Amano Rei actually cared about right now.
"That's my line. Alexis, why are you here at all?"
Ever since the last Chronicle, when the system had flagged Alexis Rhodes as a new Lost Duelist, Amano Rei really had been keeping an eye out for news.
He'd even gone out of his way to contact Officer Kirigakure Shomei of the Security Bureau's Special Investigation Division, asking whether Eden had turned up any unidentified, large-chested beauties wandering the streets lately.
All that got him was a cold stare from Kirigakure and nearly a set of silver handcuffs ready to haul him away on the spot.
With no leads from the Middle or Upper Districts, Amano Rei had assumed Alexis Rhodes had ended up lost in the bottom-level districts, the largest, most crowded, and most chaotic part of Eden.
But the truth turned out to be even more unexpected than he'd imagined.
The Lost Duelist system had apparently sent Alexis outside the Tower entirely.
You could've at least sent her somewhere decent, system!
But looking at Alexis's outfit, and the whole "stopping the terrorists to save the city" act from a minute ago, none of it looked like someone who'd only just arrived here a week ago.
Sitting on the ground, Alexis lowered her head quietly, trying to hide the faint flush on her cheeks. "Amano, do you remember the Campus Queen duel from half a year ago?"
"Half a year ago?" Whether it was the Duel Chronicle or the Campus Queen duel back in Eden, both had only happened last week as far as Amano Rei was concerned.
Alexis explained, "Back then, I was actually planning to tell you how I felt. But before I could even get the words out, I got pulled into some kind of spacetime vortex."
Amano Rei: "A spacetime vortex?"
Kaiba Chiaki: "Tell you how she felt?"
Alexis went on. "And then I ended up in this world. It's been half a year. I figured you'd gotten pulled in along with me, so I kept trying to track you down, but there was never any word of you at all. I actually started thinking you weren't even in this world..."
Probably some kind of timeline distortion causing a transit offset. As far as Amano Rei was concerned it had happened just last week, but Alexis Rhodes had actually arrived in this world half a year ago.
Pushing herself back up on her long legs, Alexis reached out and touched Amano Rei, making sure he was really there in front of her.
"I'm so glad you're all right, Amano!"
"I think you're the one people should be worried about." Amano Rei studied Alexis for a moment and found that, aside from her outfit being different from her Academy uniform, nothing else about her had changed noticeably. "You've actually been living outside the Tower for half a year?"
This wasn't just wilderness survival anymore. This was post-apocalyptic survival.
"Outside the Tower?" Alexis looked confused.
"Right there, I came from inside it." Amano Rei raised a hand and pointed at Eden Tower behind him.
Honestly, up this close, calling it a tower didn't feel quite right. It looked more like an endless wall soaring up out of sight, as if it split the entire world in two.
Alexis covered her mouth in shock. "There are actually people living inside that thing?"
Her reaction was almost identical to the one Amano Rei and the others had when Alexis first appeared outside the Tower.
"We're just as shocked that there are people outside the Tower too."
Both sides had assumed the other was already empty of people. Was this what they called an information bubble? Or, to put it more precisely, a wall of information that had been deliberately built.
At the very least, the people inside the Tower had only come to believe there was no one outside because the mainframe Eva had told them so directly.
"But our captain told us there was nothing left inside the Tower except artificial life forms."
"Captain?"
"The person in charge of assigning us duelists to gather supplies. It just happened to be my turn to come to Domino City today, and then I ran into you all. Maybe this really was destiny at work!"
The mere fact that humans had survived outside the Tower at all was already shocking enough for everyone from inside it.
And from the way Alexis explained it, the people outside the Tower even seemed to be living under some kind of organized, orderly system.
But the part about gathering supplies left Amano Rei a little confused. What was there even left to gather in a city that had been abandoned for three thousand years?
Even food frozen away in a refrigerator would have sat there for three thousand years by now. Even Finesse wouldn't eat that.
Alexis explained, "It's because this city has Kaiba Corporation in it, and Kaiba Corporation has a perpetual motion machine inside. Every so often it produces resources, so we send people out on a regular schedule to collect them."
Kaiba Chiaki said, "Your destination is Kaiba Corporation too?"
"Don't tell me you're headed there too?" Alexis suggested. "Then let's get moving quickly. We can trade information once we're there, no rush on that. It's still early, but staying anywhere near the Tower once it gets dark is extremely dangerous."
"Why would that be dangerous?" Kaiba Chiaki couldn't help but ask.
"It's those artificial life forms from inside the Tower, the ones I just mentioned. The moment night falls, they come pouring out of the Tower, and it looks like they're only carrying out one single order: hunt down and kill humans."
...
The artificial intelligences from inside Eden Tower were actually carrying out a mission to hunt humans outside it.
For everyone who lived inside Eden, this piece of information landed with just as much force as learning humans existed outside the Tower at all.
"At least it's safe enough during the day, and the inside of Kaiba Corporation counts as a safe zone too. So let's head there first."
Alexis Summoned Blue-Ice White Night Dragon from her Deck and swung herself sideways onto the ice dragon's back.
"President, we..." Yukimura still hadn't fully recovered from the shock.
Kaiba Chiaki glanced back at the towering wall of Eden Tower behind them, then looked toward the distant Kaiba Corporation building standing tall in the distance. "Let's listen to her. We move first."
"Y, yes ma'am!"
Bombarded with information this explosive, even a team made up entirely of Kaiba Corporation's elite found it hard to process all at once.
At a moment like this, the orders coming from Kaiba Chiaki, the backbone of the whole team, mattered more than ever.
With the twenty-odd people around him all mounting up on dragons to fly, Amano Rei naturally couldn't very well ask Eve to carry him again.
So he just went ahead and Summoned a dragon of his own from his Deck instead.
"Come on out, Slifer the Sky Dragon!"
Kaiba Chiaki: "?!?"
Thunder rolled and crashed as the Summon effect erupted, and a colossal, blood-red, serpentine dragon body coiled into physical existence, hovering directly over the city.
Alexis Rhodes, still on her own dragon's back, along with everyone from Kaiba Corporation, stared at the sight with their eyes practically bulging out of their heads.
This was actually one of the legendary three Egyptian Gods!
Wasn't this a little much?
Alexis asked, trembling. "Amano, don't, don't you have any other monster you could ride? You're really going to ride a god out there?"
"What, can't I ride a god?"
"It's not that you can't, it's just, isn't that a little too flashy?"
"If nobody sees it, it doesn't count as flashy."
Truthfully, this was also an experiment for Amano Rei. Summoning Eve earlier had been about confirming whether Duel Monsters could be perfectly reproduced as physical bodies outside the Tower, and as it turned out, even the iron plating had come through faithfully.
And Summoning Slifer the Sky Dragon was about testing the upper limit of physical Summons outside the Tower, whether it could handle the weight of an actual god card.
Looking at it now, both experiments had come back with a pass.
Sitting cross-legged atop the Sky Dragon's head, Amano Rei never could have dreamed, before now, that he'd ever get to soar under a real sky while riding one of the three Egyptian Gods.
Flying alongside him, Kaiba Chiaki glanced over at Amano Rei's utterly contented expression, her tone carrying a faint edge of sourness.
"Amano Rei, I really didn't expect you to be so popular with women. Even outside the Tower you run into one you already know, and one who was about to confess her feelings to you, no less."
"President, that was all three thousand years ago." Amano Rei, missing the implication behind Kaiba Chiaki's words entirely, just sat cross-legged atop the Sky Dragon with his eyes closed, savoring the real wind blowing past under a real sky. "It's got nothing to do with the me right now."
"Heh. A debt of the heart is still a debt." Kaiba Chiaki left it at that and said nothing more.
Because the group was already closing in on their destination.
A distance of over ten kilometers from the city's edge to its center looked far on paper, but riding a Duel Monster with 3000 or more ATK, like Blue-Eyes White Dragon, it barely took any time at all.
Even after three thousand years of weathering, Kaiba Corporation's tower still looked spotless, practically brand new, a world apart from the crumbling, moss-covered ruins surrounding it.
Only once they'd actually entered Kaiba Corporation did Alexis finally let out a breath of relief.
"Once you're here, there's nothing to worry about for now. So, do we keep trading information, or go collect supplies first?"
"I need to go get my friend first." However explosive the information he'd taken in today, Amano Rei still hadn't lost sight of the most important thing.
"Your friend, Amano, is inside Kaiba Corporation?"
"Yeah."
Earlier, Amano Rei hadn't understood why Kikawayu had completely ignored her instructions and rushed at high speed to this exact spot.
Thinking about it now, if what Alexis said was true, that artificial life forms hostile to humans roamed outside Eden Tower, then he might have completely misjudged his best friend.
Kikawayu might have just fled here, all the way to Kaiba Corporation's safe zone, running for her life.
"Ms. Yukimura, what's Kikawayu's signal reading?"
"Mm, let me check." Yukimura quickly synced up and built a 3D map of Kaiba Corporation, and the red dot marking Kikawayu's position sat almost right at the very top of the building.
"Looks like she's on floor 198." Yukimura concluded.
"The president's office?" Kaiba Chiaki frowned.
Naturally, no one knew the exact floor of the president's office better than Kaiba Chiaki herself.
Kikawayu really did know how to make herself at home, marching straight into the president's office and settling in.
"Floor 198?" Hearing the floor number, Alexis's expression shifted subtly.
"You can't get up to floor 198 without proper authorization. So far, we've only ever managed to survey up to floor 50 and below. The perpetual motion machine that produces resources is down in the basement."
"Maybe she flew up there?" Amano Rei guessed.
"Flying up wouldn't get you inside either. Duel Monster projections, virtual as they are, can't actually deal real damage to Kaiba Corporation's building."
Since virtual monster projections were a Kaiba Corporation technology to begin with, it made perfect sense that they'd be unable to damage Kaiba Corporation's own buildings, probably some built-in safeguard Kaiba had set up.
"Let's just try it and see." Kaiba Chiaki stepped into the elevator.
[President-level authorization detected. Accessible floors unlocked up to floor 198.]
"Huh? That actually works?" Alexis felt like she'd been stuck in a permanent state of shock all day, one clickbait headline away from turning into a walking reaction meme.
"Kaiba Corporation's pretty considerate, huh. A president three thousand years later is still a president." Amano Rei followed behind Kaiba Chiaki, stepping into the elevator with her.
[Two President-level authorizations detected. Accessible floors unlocked up to floor 200.]
"Am I counted as a president too?" Amano Rei pointed at himself. "Isn't that being a little too considerate?"
Kaiba Chiaki's authorization, at least, could be explained by her title as a future president.
But which era's president was he supposed to be, exactly?
But when Alexis, Yukimura, and the others tried to step into the elevator to go up together, the floor options locked back down to floor 50.
"Guess we can't go up together after all." Alexis said, disappointed. "Well, Amano, go ahead and get your friend first. I'll go collect supplies down below. Let's meet up in the first-floor lobby afterward."
"President, we'll go gather and investigate as much useful intel as we can too, then." Kurosaki volunteered.
The exterior exploration team was made up entirely of Kaiba Corporation's elite, and an elite team never carried dead weight. Taking initiative was basic professionalism, not sitting around waiting for Kaiba to hand out every assignment.
And besides, human curiosity toward the unknown was the greatest driving force behind exploration in the first place. Even without Kaiba Chiaki giving the order, everyone wanted to know the truth about the world outside the Tower.
In the end, it was just Amano Rei and Kaiba Chiaki, the two of them alone, who made their way up to floor 198, where the president's office was located.
And then came another problem.
Standing outside the office door, Amano Rei spotted the problem immediately.
"It's a Dark Game barrier."
The barrier looked exactly the same as the one from Kikawayu's Dark Game against a mind-controlled Kaiba Chiha, back at the very start.
A Dark Game barrier that Mana herself had once called something surpassing even the Millennium Items, nearly impossible to break through.
"What in the world is that girl up to?"
Sneaking into the president's office, setting up a Dark Game barrier, all this trouble, for what?
Kaiba Chiaki reached out to try touching it, and found there really was no way to get near the inside. "Could Kikawayu be in some kind of danger? Amano Rei, do you have any idea..."
Just as she turned to ask him, Kaiba Chiaki saw that Amano Rei, who'd been reaching out to touch the dark barrier right alongside her, suddenly looked like he'd been yanked forward by force, losing his balance and tumbling straight through it.
So this barrier had apparently been built just to keep her out specifically?
Having tumbled into the dark barrier, Amano Rei staggered a few steps before he managed to regain his balance.
Inside the Dark Game barrier, the president's office looked even dimmer, like a sealed space lit only by the last glow of a setting sun.
Amano Rei glanced around. "Yu, are you in here?"
The instant he'd touched the barrier, Amano Rei had clearly felt a burning hot hand yank him forcibly inside, and yet he couldn't spot Kikawayu anywhere in the room.
Suddenly, Amano Rei felt heat spread across his back.
Something smooth and soft had suddenly wrapped tightly around him from behind.
Unable to move, Amano Rei realized he wasn't just being held. His hands and feet had also been pinned down by some indescribable something reaching out of the darkness.
Uh oh. He'd fallen into a trap.
Amano Rei's very first instinct was that he was in danger.
But the very next instant, Kikawayu's soft, delicate voice drifted in against the back of Amano Rei's neck, laced with breathless, barely restrained excitement.
"I finally got my chance, Rei!"
"Yu?"
"Do you have any idea how many years I've been waiting for this day? Haha, hahaha, hahahahaha, there's nobody left who can stop me now. Not Yubel, and Eva sure isn't around either!"
"What are you planning to do, Yu."
"Isn't it obvious~" Kikawayu licked her rosy lips. "You know what an all-you-can-eat buffet is, right?"
"A buffet?"
"I'm going all in~"
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