Chapter 179: The Hero's Spirit, More Practiced Than Ever [2-in-1]
"It is moving. Look, it is moving!"
Every eye in the mid-level district that was fixed on the black sun tracked it the moment it shifted. The reaction was immediate and collective: equal parts desperate curiosity about where it was going and terror of the possibility that it might be coming toward them.
At Kaiba Corp, Kaiba Chiaki watched the trajectory and let out a quiet breath when the Wicked Avatar moved away from the building.
That relief lasted approximately three seconds.
She followed the movement in her head, extrapolated the path, and her expression went flat.
"Is it heading for the medical district?"
The southernmost section of the mid-level area housed Eva's public hospital alongside the private medical facilities of almost every major family. The medical district had the highest concentration of bedridden patients, the worst capacity for organized evacuation, and the fewest able-bodied people capable of moving quickly.
In a disaster film, this would be where the monster went first.
But this was not a disaster film. This was a card game deity. The question that genuinely did not make sense was why it was moving toward a hospital rather than toward the densest population of duelists in Academy City.
What was the actual objective here?
On the roof of the Eva Network Tower, Shiyue watched the black sphere move toward its destination and smiled.
"The Wein trio should all have been pulled in by the Sakuraba Nao bait by now. Have to satisfy the old men's arrangements first and clear the inconvenient people out of the way. Then I will go find you afterward, Amano-nii."
The Wicked Avatar settled into position directly above the hospital. From the underside of the black sphere, a dark liquid began to pour, slow and deliberate, flowing down the outer walls of the building, enveloping it floor by floor.
"The Millennium Puzzle ability is too unpredictable. I needed the dark barrier in place before anything else. A barrier constructed from the sacrificed souls of the strongest Wicked God cannot be breached from outside. Not even Amano Rei can interfere through that."
From the street, the hospital appeared to be slowly drowning beneath black fluid. From inside, all that was visible were thick streams of something moving down the exterior glass, and the black sun itself had vanished from the sightline above. The interior lights shifted, the ambient color bleeding toward dark red.
The children's rhyme drifted through the corridors. Melodic, unhurried, completely wrong for the environment. The hospital staff who had been managing a network crisis now had something considerably worse to manage.
Amano Rei was not particularly afraid of the atmosphere. But he became aware, with some confusion, that his legs were not entirely steady.
Oh. That was Finesse.
"No, no, absolutely not. I cannot handle anything that looks like this. This is exactly what horror films look like and I am not equipped for it."
There it was.
"You are supposed to be a hero. You were tracking people through District 11 at midnight and you were fine."
"That is completely different. Living enemies versus dead ones are two entirely separate categories and I absolutely can tell the difference."
Dead enemies. Amano looked around the corridor. The dark red light was doing a reasonable job of making things unsettling, and aside from that, there was a child singing somewhere in the building. The voice was oddly familiar. But nothing else was immediately visible.
The singing stopped.
What replaced it was a child's voice with a slight echo, conversational in a way that made it worse.
"Latir Wein. Karl Wein. Finesse Wein. I know all three of you are in the hospital. I am going to give you a chance to save everyone."
The three Wein siblings went still simultaneously.
This had been designed for them specifically.
"You have ten minutes. You need to reach the hospital rooftop within that time. The building has three safe passage stairwells: north, south, and west. Each of you takes a different one. Every five seconds you are late, one patient gets to be a lucky winner."
The delivery was cheerful. The content of what was being said was not. The corridors, which had already been in chaos, shifted toward something closer to genuine panic as the words registered. Nobody wanted to be selected at random for whatever "lucky winner" meant.
"One more rule. The three of you come up separately from your respective sides. If that condition is violated, people die for that too. And of course, heroes like you would never abandon the weak when you have the option to help them, would you."
The singing resumed, light and unconcerned.
"We need to think about this," Amano started.
Latir was already running. She had not waited for any discussion of strategy or route assignment. She was moving south at full speed before anyone had finished processing the situation.
"South is mine."
Karl watched the flash of red hair disappear down the corridor and exhaled.
"That is how she is. What she has in her chest for justice is purer than anyone I know. The moment a condition like that was stated, there was never a question about whether she would move."
He turned west.
"West is mine. Amano Rei, take Finesse north. Her safety is in your hands."
'My brother acts dismissive but he never actually falls behind my sister in a crisis.'
"Let us go, then."
The hospital was three floors up from street level. The rooftop was the sixth floor. Under normal conditions, five minutes was comfortable. With ten minutes given for three separate routes, something was filling the remaining five.
When Amano pushed open the door to the north stairwell, he understood what that something was.
The stairwell should have been full of patients and staff trying to evacuate. Instead it was completely empty, the walls washed crimson in the dark barrier's light.
Except for two figures.
A familiar face. And beside it, a physique that could have disassembled Amano into several pieces without much effort.
"You are... Bounty Hunter Lutz."
In Finesse's mental space, a scream. "A ghost. That is a ghost."
He felt the legs go unsteady again.
It was, technically, a ghost. Lutz had been declared dead in the physical sense following the District 11 incident. Whatever was standing in this stairwell was not the living version.
A Duel Disk forced itself open on Finesse's arm.
A Dark Game. Of course.
The ten-minute window made complete sense now. Five minutes of walking, five minutes of a mandatory Dark Game. Tight but achievable, as long as the duel was short.
Forced Dark Game: open.
Lutz moved first. He always did. In Amano's memory, across every duel with Lutz, the coin had never once landed differently.
"I fuse High-Tech Wolf and Cannon Soldier from my hand. Fusion Summon: Labyrinth Tank!"
The Fusion effect blazed out in the dark red corridor, and the hospital floor split open as a steel chassis drilled up from beneath.
Labyrinth Tank. ATK: 2400.
"Not this again."
"Quick-Play Spell, De-Fusion. Dissolve Labyrinth Tank back into its components: High-Tech Wolf and Cannon Soldier. I then Tribute both for a Tribute Summon."
The steel tank dissolved. Two monsters stood briefly in its place before rising as a column of water and condensing into a new form.
"Aqua Majin - Skia!"
Aqua Majin - Skia. Level 7, WATER, Aqua/Effect.
ATK: 2500. DEF: 2400.
From steel war machine to water deity. The five-for-one exchange Lutz had been practicing for years, and now practicing in whatever form of afterlife this was. If anything, the transitions had become smoother. Faster.
The result was a 2500 ATK monster. Same attack points as Elemental HERO Neos.
Even in death, Lutz was refining himself.
"My turn ends."
He was not performing theatrical delay. He was dueling normally, which meant every second counted against the clock precisely as much as it would in any other duel.
Two minutes for one turn, including all the Fusion animation sequences. In Eden's fully projected duel system, every effect had to play through before the next action was available. There was no shortcutting it.
The clock in Amano's head read: three minutes remaining.
He looked at the Aqua Majin across the field. Underground duel, first encounter. A 2500 ATK monster that had pushed him to the edge back then. Looking at it now, it mostly inspired a kind of fond recognition.
What the Wein family did not know was that across Eden's dead network, every device that could no longer connect to normal broadcast was receiving a forced signal. Hospital TVs. Office computers. The enormous advertising displays along the shopping districts. Every screen was showing the same thing: three simultaneously running duels, split into three live windows, playing in real time.
The broadcast title floated above the split screen: Judgment Descending Upon Heroes.
A countdown in the corner showed remaining time.
The audience watching had heard Shiyue's announcement. They knew exactly what would happen to the patients inside if those three windows did not resolve correctly before the counter reached zero.
"This cannot be real. They cannot be serious about killing patients."
"Even if it is for the broadcast, winning a duel in a few minutes is impossible. Look at the monsters they are up against."
"Finesse-nee."
In front of an orphanage television, children who had been supported by Finesse's donations sat together and watched the screen in silence.
On the roof of the Eva Network Tower, Shiyue watched her broadcast numbers and smiled wider.
"There it is. The spread of anxiety across Eden. The collapse of hero worship is the first step in breaking the Wein family's power. Watching heroes fight with everything they have and still fail to save anyone. That is my favorite story. The anti-hero ending."
"My turn. Draw."
Amano pulled his card. Across every screen in Eden, every anxious viewer, every child in that orphanage, watched his hand.
He threw the next card down with more force than strictly necessary.
"Spirits of a dead age: stand down. Stop trying to block the path of the living. Spell Card, Fusion Destiny!"
Fusion Destiny. Spell Card: Using monsters from your hand or Deck as Fusion Materials, Fusion Summon 1 Fusion Monster that lists a "Destiny HERO" monster as material. The Summoned monster is destroyed during the End Phase of the next turn. After this card resolves, you can only Special Summon HERO monsters for the rest of the turn.
This was Finesse's card, in Finesse's deck. A Deck Fusion spell. The ability to reach directly into the Deck for Fusion Materials. A year ago, Lutz had blocked both of them with his five-for-one. The gap between that duel and this one was visible in the single card she now held.
"I fuse Destiny HERO - Dasher and Destiny HERO - Dreadmaster from my Deck."
"Let the destiny flame consume what should not linger here. Phoenix wings, divide the boundary between life and death."
"Fusion Summon. Destiny HERO - Destroy Phoenix Enforcer!"
Destiny HERO - Destroy Phoenix Enforcer. Level 8, DARK, Warrior/Fusion/Effect.
ATK: 2500. DEF: 2100.
Materials: 1 Level 6 or higher HERO monster plus 1 Destiny HERO monster.
The Phoenix Enforcer descended through Fusion light directly from the Deck, burning destiny flame scorching the dark red air of the corridor, boiling away the liquid at Aqua Majin's feet.
Destroy Phoenix Enforcer's passive effect activated: opponent's monsters lose ATK equal to the number of HERO cards in the Graveyard multiplied by 200.
Aqua Majin - Skia. ATK: 2500 to 2100.
The ATK gap was gone. But Aqua Majin still carried its immunity: once while face-up, when attacked, it could reduce the attacking monster's ATK to zero during damage calculation. Attacking into it directly would zero out the Phoenix Enforcer's ATK. That line was closed.
"Spell Card, Cavalry Surge. Target Destroy Phoenix Enforcer: its ATK increases by 1500 until end of turn."
The moment the Spell activated, Amano chained before it could resolve.
"Destroy Phoenix Enforcer's effect activates in response."
Once per turn, either player's turn: select 1 card you control and 1 card your opponent controls, destroy both.
"I select Cavalry Surge on my side and Aqua Majin - Skia on yours. Both are destroyed."
The Phoenix Enforcer's destiny flame split perfectly down the center and erupted in two directions simultaneously, one burst hitting the Spell, one hitting the water deity.
Cavalry Surge: destroyed.
Aqua Majin - Skia: destroyed.
"However. A Spell Card's activation effect resolves even when the card itself is destroyed before resolution. Cavalry Surge's ATK boost still applies."
Destroy Phoenix Enforcer. ATK: 2500 to 4000.
"Back to your hell, Lutz. Burn it all away."
The field was empty. There was nothing standing between 4000 ATK and Lutz's Life Points.
"Direct attack. Destroy Phoenix Enforcer."
"Phoenix Blazing Kick!"
The kick hit with everything. The burning arc of a Phoenix's cry tore through the stairwell air and erased what remained of Lutz, a ghost that had had no business existing in this world of the living to begin with.
Lutz LP: 4000 to 0.
Two cards. Two and a half minutes.
Amano did not stop to watch the dissolution. The moment the Dark Game closed, he was already moving through Finesse's body, pushing past what remained of Lutz's fading presence, taking the stairs at full speed toward the roof.
As he passed through the fading echo of the bounty hunter's last cry, he offered the only acknowledgment he intended to give.
"Back to your hell, Lutz."
He kept running.