Chapter 284: The Final Blaze of Dignity and Victory Under the Sunset
Suspended in the last moments of the dying sun, arriving in the gap between sunset and the descent of stars, Cyber Eltanin had answered Kaiser's call by banishing sixteen monsters from his Graveyard and establishing itself in the sky above him.
Kaiser announced the effect.
"Cyber Eltanin's ATK and DEF become 500 times the number of monsters banished for its Special Summon!"
[Cyber Eltanin] [ATK: 500 x 16 = 8000]
Eight thousand ATK from a single Special Summon. Against a Blue-Eyes White Dragon working alongside The Cleft of Darkness, raw ATK climbing was not going to be enough on its own.
"Then let's clear every obstacle from the path! When Cyber Eltanin is successfully Special Summoned, its effect activates!"
[When this card is Special Summoned: send all other face-up monsters on the field to the GY.]
Not only was its base ATK 8000, the card carried an on-arrival effect that cleared the entire board.
"'Draco Meteor Shower'!!"
Beneath the red evening sky, a rain of stars answered the summon and fell on Amano's side of the field, swallowing Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Elemental HERO Bubbleman in the rolling clouds of dust kicked up from the impact.
[Blue-Eyes White Dragon, sent to GY]
[Elemental HERO Bubbleman, sent to GY]
"Even Blue-Eyes White Dragon is gone now!"
After the board wipe, the only monster remaining on either side was Kaiser's Cyber Eltanin.
"Nothing left to stop our victory! Cyber Eltanin, direct attack!"
Kaiser entered the Battle Phase and sent the hovering Cyber Eltanin toward Amano's open field with all eight thousand ATK behind it.
"'Celestial Dragon Evolution Flash'!!"
The dragon heads in the sky opened fire. The surge of energy tore through the last of the sunset toward Amano.
"Nothing can stop you? I'm not so sure, Kaiser. Trap Card: Precise Defense, activate!"
[Precise Defense: When your opponent's monster declares an attack, target 1 Level 4 or lower monster in your GY; Special Summon it in Defense Position. That monster cannot be destroyed by battle or card effects this turn.]
"Come back, Priestess Who Receives the Star Chalice, Defense Position!"
Because Amano had opened by Fusing every Normal Monster in his Deck, the Graveyard had become something like a full roster on standby. Blue-Eyes, Eve: anything he needed was already there waiting.
[Priestess Who Receives the Star Chalice] [DEF: 2100]
"Eight thousand ATK or not, hold it back, Eve! Precise Defense grants the monster destruction immunity by battle and effects for this turn!"
Steel body paired with an invincibility clause assembled into a wall that the incoming energy surge could not break through.
"And because a Normal Monster was Special Summoned to my field, The Cleft of Darkness activates: I draw 1 more card!"
"This opponent just keeps coming!" The last few days of watching Kaiser end professional duels before his opponents could draw a breath had not prepared Tsukiyu Yukishiro for this. "Where does the Nanki'in family find people like this?"
Precise Defense had held. Amano was still at full LP.
In the Battle Phase, Kaiser flipped his remaining face-down.
"This is the extreme I have been searching for: a duel that lets Kaiser, the Hell Kaiser, stop wandering in hell! My Fusion is not something you can hold back so easily, Amano Rei!"
What was in that face-down was the Quick-Play Spell that had driven the evolution of the full Cyber stream to its outer edge.
"Quick-Play Spell: Cyber Fusion Support, activate!"
[Cyber Fusion Support: Pay half your LP to activate. This turn, when you Fusion Summon a Machine Fusion Monster, you may use monsters from your field, hand, GY, or banished zone as Fusion Materials.]
With access to the banished zone as Fusion Material, and Cyber Eltanin's on-arrival effect having just banished Kaiser's entire Graveyard of Machine monsters, the material pool he had to work with was enormous.
"I will Fuse all 21 monsters in my banished zone!"
Not just the 16 banished by Cyber Eltanin this turn: the 5 Cyber Dark monsters banished by Overload Fusion in Turn 1 counted too. Twenty-one monsters total, all pulled back from the banished zone and returned to Kaiser's Deck as Fusion Materials for Cyber Fusion Support's effect.
Saotome Rei's small frame had gone rigid. "What kind of duel is this? More than the opening Fusion! Ryo-senpai! Amano-senpai!"
Sixteen banished, then twenty-one Fused: the numbers had long since left the scale of any duel she had seen before. There was no predicting what came out next.
"Kaiser: what are you"
Amano's brow tightened. Even if Kaiser Fusion Summoned a second Chimeratech Overdragon at this point, Precise Defense's invincibility had already been applied to the Priestess this turn. There was no damage to be taken.
"Watch, Amano Rei! The extreme I am pursuing is not the highest ATK. It is the light of the Cyber stream blazing at its absolute limit in this one instant!"
"This is my struggle for victory!"
"I Fuse twenty-one Machine monsters including Cyber Dragon!"
"Every force of the face and back Cyber streams, forged into the absolute iron fortress dragon!"
"Fusion Summon! Chimeratech Fortress Dragon!"
Amano had nearly forgotten that Kaiser Ryo was holding this one. The anime version of Chimeratech Fortress Dragon was a card that lived in an entirely different tier from its TCG counterpart.
[Chimeratech Fortress Dragon] [Level 8 / DARK]
[Machine / Fusion / Effect]
[ATK: 0] [DEF: 0]
["Cyber Dragon" + 1 or more Machine monsters]
The Chimeratech Fortress Dragon born of twenty-one banished Machine Fusion monsters had even more materials than the Overdragon that opened the duel, yet arrived with 0 ATK instead of the Overdragon's towering display. What it brought instead was its name: a true fortress, a machine dragon that took up the entire field like a wall of steel.
"When Chimeratech Fortress Dragon is Fusion Summoned, all other cards I control are sent to the GY!"
The same field-clearing condition as the Overdragon. And Kaiser was already ahead of it.
"But first I chain that effect: Quick-Play Spell Mystik Wok, Tributing Cyber Eltanin to gain Life Points equal to its ATK!"
If the Eltanin was going to be sent to the Graveyard anyway, it might as well produce something useful first.
Kaiser LP: 200 to 8200
Eight thousand two hundred LP. And the Fortress Dragon now standing on his field, with the canon of twenty-one Machine Fusion monsters arrayed across its body, had already opened every barrel.
"This is the effect of the Chimeratech Fortress Dragon Fused from every Cyber stream at my command!"
[This card cannot be destroyed by battle. Battle damage from this card's battles becomes 0 for both players. This card can attack a number of times per Battle Phase equal to its Fusion Material count. Each time this card declares an attack, inflict 400 damage to the opponent.]
Even a Defense Position monster with battle destruction immunity still had to absorb 400 damage every time the Fortress Dragon declared an attack at it.
It could attack a number of times equal to its Fusion Material count. Twenty-one materials.
Twenty-one attacks.
Eve: "(O_o) WHAT?!"
Eve. Do you remember what you said last turn when Amano took twenty attacks from Chimeratech Overdragon at zero battle damage?
(Eve: "Zero damage. I wouldn't even have flinched.")
The Fortress Dragon also has zero attack. Now it's your turn.
"'Evolution Termination Cannon: First Barrage'!!"
Twenty-one attacks began from the Fortress Dragon's front cannons. Each attack declaration had to be announced separately to calculate the 400 damage individually rather than all at once.
Eve: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
You are objectively louder than Amano was.
"No matter, second Trap Card activate!" Amano flipped his second face-down. "Trap Card: Damage Diet! All damage I take this turn is halved!"
Stacking Damage Diet on top of the incoming barrage brought each 400-damage shot down to 200.
"It's still not enough!" Sakuya's voice was tight.
Even at 200 per attack, twenty-one shots totaled 4200 damage. Enough to wipe out full LP from a starting point of 4000.
Amano LP: 4000 to 3800
"Take this! 'Evolution Termination Cannon: Second Barrage'!!"
Eve: "AAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The last light of the setting sun made the courtyard feel like a battlefield, and the Fortress Dragon filling Kaiser's entire side of it hammered its way through the evening with one cannon after another, opening the road to victory one shot at a time.
"Incredible! Truly incredible, Ryo-sama!" Tsukiyu Yukishiro's voice had lost all composure. Behind Kaiser, the girl in her white off-shoulder kimono watched the man in the black trench coat sweep his arm forward for each attack declaration, the ground of the Nanki'in estate shaking with every shot.
"'Evolution Termination Cannon: Fifth Barrage'!"
...
"'Evolution Termination Cannon: Twelfth Barrage'!"
...
"'Evolution Termination Cannon: Nineteenth Barrage'!"
Amano LP: 400 to 200
Nineteen hits and the Priestess was still standing, though Eve had long since stopped having the energy to scream about it. The "wouldn't even have flinched" had turned out to be accurate in the most technical sense possible, because by shot twelve there was nothing left to flinch with.
"It ends here, Amano Rei!"
Kaiser raised his arm for the last time. Two cannons remained, and the Fortress Dragon was working its way toward them from the tail end of the body.
"'Evolution Termination Cannon: Twentieth Barrage'!"
"Ha. Already the twentieth?"
Amano's current state was not significantly better than Eve's at this point. The smoke and debris of the battlefield had not been kind to him aesthetically. He had accumulated the kind of battered, disheveled look that made the word "battle-worn" feel like an understatement.
"Then everything rides on this."
Amano flipped his last face-down card.
"Trap Card: Side Effects?, activate!"
[Side Effects?: Your opponent draws any number of cards from 1 to 3. Then, you gain 2000 LP for each card they drew.]
"Make your choice, Kaiser! How many cards do you draw?"
Whatever number Kaiser chose, the minimum LP recovery was 2000. Amano was not dying this turn.
"He survived it!" The twenty-one-cannon barrage had ended and Amano was still in the duel. Even Nanki'in Yukihime found herself acknowledging something.
With no way to finish Amano off this turn and his hand completely empty, Kaiser's choice here was uncomplicated.
"I choose to draw 3 cards!"
"Then I gain 6000 LP!"
Amano LP: 200 to 6200 to 6000
"'Evolution Termination Cannon: Twenty-First Barrage'!!"
Amano LP: 6000 to 5800
The Fortress Dragon's last cannon fired. Amano's final LP total settled at 5800.
"How are two people even having this duel?" Yui had the least dueling experience of anyone in the courtyard, which meant the scale of what she had just witnessed landed on her harder than it did on anyone else. "You both Fuse twenty monsters. Then you're both locked at 200 LP and bouncing back to full health and above after a twenty-one-shot barrage."
Kikawayu: "You're not alone. None of us have ever seen a duel like this."
"I set one card face-down. Turn end!"
"My turn. Draw!"
Amano looked at the card he drew.
Chimeratech Fortress Dragon could not be destroyed by battle. Leaving it on Kaiser's field meant Eve was absorbing another twenty-one shots next turn.
"If battle can't destroy it, then Chaos can! My draw this turn"
Amano showed the card to the field and two monsters ejected from the GY zone of his Duel Disk.
"I banish Dark Magician from my Graveyard as the DARK material, and Elemental HERO Neos as the LIGHT material!"
"Where light and dark converge, answer the call: the blade that carved the world from nothing, now called forth from the swirling chaos!"
"Special Summon! Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning!"
[Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning] [Level 8 / LIGHT]
[Warrior / Special Summon / Effect]
[ATK: 3000] [DEF: 2500]
[This card cannot be Normal Summoned. Banish 1 LIGHT and 1 DARK monster from your GY to Special Summon this card.]
The warrior of chaos descended from the intersection of light and darkness, stepping forward into Amano's field with his great sword at the ready.
"A card of that rarity!" Nanki'in Yukihime's surprise was genuine. "On the same level as Blue-Eyes White Dragon in terms of legend, but even rarer in practice. That kind of card cannot simply be purchased, no matter what the budget. Zero-sama, you are genuinely something."
Amano drove the card home and declared the effect: "Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning's effect!"
[Once per turn: you can banish 1 monster on the field. This card cannot attack during the turn this effect is activated.]
"Banish Chimeratech Fortress Dragon from the field, Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning! 'Heaven-and-Earth Creation Slash'!"
The warrior poured the force of light and darkness into the blade and brought it down along the earth in a sweeping arc that moved at ground level, cutting the steel fortress body of Chimeratech Fortress Dragon cleanly in two as the sword passed through it.
[Chimeratech Fortress Dragon, banished]
Kaiser watched the iron fortress dissolve from the field and closed his eyes.
"You turned it around again, Amano. But this turn, your monsters cannot attack me! And you have no cards left to play!"
He was right. Black Luster Soldier's banish effect cost it the attack for the turn, and the Priestess at 0 ATK had no business swinging at anything.
"I still have one card I haven't played yet, Kaiser!"
The one remaining card in Amano's hand was not the Black Luster Soldier draw. It was the card he had drawn the previous turn thanks to The Cleft of Darkness triggering on the Priestess's summon.
"Spell Card: Dark Factory of Mass Production! I return 2 Normal Monsters from my GY to my hand. I take back Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Yuyu!"
Taking Yuyu back was incidental. Blue-Eyes was the point.
The instant Amano reclaimed Blue-Eyes White Dragon from his Graveyard, the Priestess and the Black Luster Soldier on the field were enveloped in a pure white radiance.
"Accept the souls of the Priestess and the warrior of chaos! I Tribute both monsters on my field for a Tribute Summon!"
"My pride! My soul! The dragon that embodies them both!"
"Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"
[Blue-Eyes White Dragon] [ATK: 3000]
Blue-Eyes arrived again under the setting sun, its proud bearing carrying something that felt like a final act, the closing of a curtain over the last light of this particular afternoon.
"When a Normal Monster is Summoned, The Cleft of Darkness lets me draw 1 more card! Then Battle Phase: Blue-Eyes White Dragon, direct attack!"
"'BURST STREAM OF DESTRUCTION'!"
The white dragon's roar swept forward across the open field at Kaiser, gathering light as it moved, carrying the reflection of the last sunset against everything it touched.
Kaiser flipped his last face-down.
"Trap Card: Power Wall, activate!"
[Power Wall: Activate only during damage calculation where you would take battle damage from a monster attack. Send any number of cards from the top of your Deck to the GY; reduce the battle damage you take by 100 for each card sent.]
In the anime version, Power Wall blocked damage by milling the Deck, one hundred damage per card. Blue-Eyes White Dragon's ATK was 3000: Kaiser immediately threw thirty cards into the air from the top of his Deck.
If it had not been for Cyber Fusion Support retrieving all twenty-one Fusion Materials back into his Deck the previous turn, Power Wall would not have had thirty cards to send. He would not have survived Blue-Eyes' direct attack.
Both of them had been stripped down to nothing. This was genuinely the last exchange.
Amano set the card he had just drawn from The Cleft of Darkness's effect.
"I set one card face-down. Turn end!"
Everyone watching already sensed it: one more turn would decide this. Everything now depended on Kaiser's draw.
"My turn. Draw!"
Kaiser looked at the card.
His eyes shifted, just slightly.
Power Bond.
The card he trusted unconditionally as the strongest Fusion Spell in existence. In the last instant of this duel, in the last instant of this sunset, it had arrived.
Three cards in hand. One decisive attack.
"I activate Continuous Spell: Mana Conservation! While this card is on the field, I do not pay LP costs for my own Spell Cards." He followed it immediately with: "Then Quick-Play Spell: Cyber Fusion Support!"
[Cyber Fusion Support: Pay half your LP to activate. This turn, when you Fusion Summon a Machine Fusion Monster, you may use monsters from your field, hand, GY, or banished zone as Fusion Materials. (LP cost negated by Mana Conservation.)]
"By Cyber Fusion Support's effect, I can use monsters in my Graveyard as Fusion Materials!"
Two cards set. Kaiser lifted the last one from his hand, the card he had carried into this moment believing in without reservation.
"Spell Card: Power Bond, activate!"
[Power Bond: Send, from your hand or field, the Fusion Materials listed on a Machine Fusion Monster to the GY; Fusion Summon that Monster from the Extra Deck. Its ATK is doubled. During the End Phase of this turn, you take damage equal to the original ATK increase.]
"I banish 3 Cyber Dragon monsters from my Graveyard as Fusion Materials, and I use Power Bond to Fuse them!"
"One more time! Take me past the limit again, Chimeratech Terminator Dragon!"
Behind Kaiser, the scale of the Fusion energy that erupted dwarfed any frame of reference the courtyard had offered so far. A Cyber End Dragon twice its original size in every dimension erupted from the closing light of the afternoon.
"Come forth, the mightiest Cyber stream I have left to wager!"
"Fusion Summon! Chimeratech Terminator Dragon!"
[Chimeratech Terminator Dragon] [Level 10 / LIGHT]
[Machine / Fusion / Effect]
[ATK: 4000] [DEF: 2800]
"Chimeratech Terminator Dragon!" Amano could not hold back the reaction: "You've been here less than a week and you've already reached this point, Kaiser!"
"By Power Bond's effect, the Fusion Summoned Machine monster's ATK is doubled! But at the End Phase, I take damage equal to the ATK it gained!"
[Chimeratech Terminator Dragon] [ATK: 4000 to 8000]
Power Bond's downside was damage, not LP payment. Mana Conservation could not prevent it. This was the price that came with the power.
And this was the only card on Kaiser's field with any path to getting past Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Three thousand ATK on the surface was not the whole picture: The Cleft of Darkness meant that whatever ATK Kaiser sent at Blue-Eyes, the white dragon would absorb it and add it to its own total at the moment of the attack declaration. No matter how high Kaiser pushed his monster's ATK, the blue eyes would always see the number coming and match it.
Except for one thing.
"I activate Chimeratech Terminator Dragon's effect!"
[If this card was Fusion Summoned using only LIGHT monsters as materials: you can pay 4000 LP to add 1 'Limiter Removal' from your Deck to your hand.]
"I pay 4000 LP to search Limiter Removal from my Deck!"
Kaiser LP: 8200 to 4200
Limiter Removal, activating during the Damage Step, could double Chimeratech Terminator Dragon's ATK after The Cleft of Darkness had already stacked Blue-Eyes' total. No matter how high Blue-Eyes climbed, Terminator Dragon could climb past it in the same instant.
"Battle! Chimeratech Terminator Dragon, attack Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"
"At the moment of your attack declaration, The Cleft of Darkness activates! Blue-Eyes White Dragon's ATK increases by Chimeratech Terminator Dragon's 8000!"
[Blue-Eyes White Dragon] [ATK: 3000 to 11000]
"I was waiting for exactly this moment, Amano Rei! Now The Cleft of Darkness has resolved: we're in the Damage Step. This is the instant where the Cyber stream shines at its absolute limit!"
Kaiser's last Quick-Play Spell hit the field. In the light of the setting sun, Chimeratech Terminator Dragon ignited with a brilliance it had never held before in any duel.
"Ryo-sama!" Tsukiyu Yukishiro could not look away from it.
"Quick-Play Spell: Limiter Removal, activate!"
[Limiter Removal: Double the ATK of all Machine-Type monsters you control until the End Phase. Destroy them at the End Phase.]
[Chimeratech Terminator Dragon] [ATK: 8000 to 16000]
"My ATK is higher now, Amano!"
Sixteen thousand against eleven thousand. A five-thousand point gap in Kaiser's favor. Not enough to take Amano's LP in one hit, but Chimeratech Terminator Dragon's anime effect had one more clause:
[While this card's ATK exceeds its original ATK, it can attack 3 times during each Battle Phase.]
Sixteen thousand ATK, three attacks per turn: anything in the path was gone.
"It ends here! 'BEYOND ULTIMATE ETERNAL EVOLUTION FLAME'!!"
"Kaiser: I feel it. Your resolve, your pride, your struggle for victory. So now I answer it with this!"
Amano flipped his last face-down card.
Both players had played out their entire hands. Every card was on the table.
"Trap Card: Roar of Pride!"
[Roar of Pride: Activate during damage calculation when your monster has lower ATK than the opponent's. Pay LP equal to the ATK difference. Until the end of the Damage Step, your monster gains ATK equal to that difference + 300.]
"I pay the 5000 LP difference between 16000 and 11000, and Blue-Eyes White Dragon's ATK increases by 5300!"
"Staking my life and soul: go past the limit, dragon that carries my pride and my soul!"
Amano LP: 6200 to 1200
[Blue-Eyes White Dragon] [ATK: 11000 to 16300]
Five thousand points of LP became the final stake, the last piece of fuel that pushed the white dragon above and beyond.
The calculation for the outcome had been set one turn earlier. If Kaiser had drawn only one extra card from Side Effects? instead of three, he would not have had the LP to survive to draw Power Bond. The choice to draw three had given him everything he needed for this moment and also given Amano the 2000 LP that paid for the 300-point difference that mattered.
"This is the final reckoning of dignity and soul, Kaiser!"
"Strike back, Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"
"'LIMIT BREAK BURST STREAM OF DESTRUCTION'!!"
In the last instant where sunset and nightfall exchanged places, the center of the dueling ground erupted with a collision of light that should not have been possible at this hour: brighter than the sun that had spent the last half-hour descending, two beams of everything each duelist had left blazed against each other and lit the entire courtyard white.
When it resolved, Blue-Eyes White Dragon had taken Chimeratech Terminator Dragon down by exactly 300 ATK.
[Chimeratech Terminator Dragon, destroyed]
Kaiser LP: 4200 to 3900
"ROARRRR!"
The white dragon still standing at the end of it raised its head and cried out at the sky with everything it had left, the sound rolling across the Nanki'in estate and into the approaching dark.
"One step short in the end, was it." Kaiser lowered his Duel Disk.
He could see the conclusion from here.
"Power Bond is the Fusion Card I have always believed in as the strongest there is. Its power comes with a cost that matches it. And you, Amano Rei, read that weakness precisely and found the line through it. The victory is yours."
The margin had been 300 ATK. The 300 that came from Roar of Pride's clause. The most modest winning blow imaginable. But it was enough, because it had done exactly one thing that mattered: it had brought Kaiser's remaining LP below 4000.
"I am satisfied. This light, blazing at its absolute peak: there is no better moment to step off the stage. Amano Rei, I am glad we had this duel!"
"My turn... End Phase!"
Kaiser LP: 3900 to 0
The 4000 damage from Power Bond's End Phase clause finished what the 300 ATK damage had set up.
[Duel End]
[Winner: Amano Rei]
[Lost Duelist "Kaiser Ryo" defeated]
[Spacetime Points awarded: 15]
[Spacetime Points total: 19]
[Spacetime Character Card Pack unlocked: Kaiser Ryo]
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