Chapter 228
"How did it go, Finesse?"
Everyone waiting at the villa surrounded her the moment she came back. Amano being collected by the Security Bureau in front of a crowd in the middle of lunch had genuinely alarmed people.
Nanki'in (the Nanki'in family) and Jinguuji (the Jinguuji family) both had the kind of standing that put them permanently at odds with the Security Bureau, which meant the burden had fallen on the Wein family and their comparatively functional relationship with law enforcement.
"Finesse, where's Brother? Why didn't he come back with you?"
"It's fine, Shio." Finesse smiled and reached over to pat Shio's head, though her own expression carried a faint weight she was not entirely managing to hide. "By the time I arrived, they'd already released him. It didn't seem like anything serious."
The group finally exhaled after a long, tense midday.
"But where did he go?" Wangchuan You pressed.
"Amano, he..."
The image from across the street surfaced again, and something in Finesse's chest clenched without permission.
"He left with Kaiba Chiaki."
"With Kaiba?" Rin Seiya was on her feet immediately. "That's not 'nothing serious.' That's extremely serious!"
Having just learned that Chiaki had been defeated by Amano, Rin had first understood why her own ranking had inexplicably risen, and then allowed herself to be genuinely impressed that Amano had actually pulled it off. He had created the first instance in recorded history of someone breaking through an academy stage. He had beaten Chiaki, who was rich, attractive, powerful, and insufferably above-it-all but was unquestionably all of those things.
And then he had won the duel in the morning and been taken away by the woman he defeated before noon.
"This is obviously a problem," Sakuya said, which was further confirmation that it was.
Finesse slowly processed the consensus view forming around her. She had been so preoccupied with performing the role of helpless husband at the time that she had not finished the thought: Amano had barely finished winning and he was already being removed from the premises.
Entirely Karl's fault for misdirecting her.
"I think it's fine." Yui cut in. "I just messaged Amano via VSN. He said it's just a work discussion with Kaiba."
Everyone stared at her.
What exactly were the rest of them panicking about? She was from the lower districts and she was the calmest person in the room.
"Work?" Rin crossed her arms, tilting her head. "Why is Kaiba looking for Amano for work? Is it a real job?"
Kaiba Corporation.
This was Amano's first visit to Kaiba Corporation as it existed inside Eden. Three thousand years of architectural evolution had stripped away everything that had matched the New Domino City version from the anime. The building was now aggressively futuristic, dense with technological styling. What had not changed was the height. Standing at the base and looking up still induced enough neck strain to feel like an act of structural ambition against the human body.
Amano followed Chiaki through the main entrance into the reception hall. The greetings came continuously from every direction.
"Good day, President!"
"Good afternoon, President!"
"You've worked hard, President!"
So this was what it felt like to be the unquestioned head of an organization. Clearly different from being a family's eldest daughter in a household context, though Amano could only speculate, never having been either.
Eve: "But you were a young wife once."
Following Chiaki through the building and upward into the elevator, the car stopped at floor 198.
The building topped out at 200 floors. That number communicated something about Kaiba Corporation's resources. Floor 198 was the presidential office, the entire level reserved exclusively for Chiaki's use.
Being brought to the boss's office on a first visit was objectively not standard practice. Amano felt no particular nerves about it. He had been to Kaiba Seto's office in New Domino City. This was the same lineage.
"Senpai, so now I should..."
"In the corporation, address me as President."
Difficult woman. She had been the one to tell him to use "senpai" back at the academy.
"President Kaiba."
"Actually, don't call me President. I'm not used to it."
Difficult woman!
"Kaiba. What am I here to do?"
Bringing someone in personally from the Security Bureau and up to the executive floor suggested something specific was on the agenda.
"Have a look at what I've arranged for you here first, Amano."
Chiaki pulled up a file on the office's main computer and printed a virtual copy. She handed it across: something resembling a staff identification card, with Amano's photo and two titles printed in bold gilt lettering.
Kaiba Corporation Chief Duel Advisor.
Tower-Exterior Exploration A-Rank Investigator.
Both titles were completely opaque to Amano's functional understanding.
"To access Tower Exterior Exploration, employment at Kaiba Corporation is mandatory. This is a hard regulation from the mainframe Eva. At present, Kaiba Corporation is the only entity in Eden with exterior exploration authorization."
Setting up the necessity of the position first, possibly because she was concerned Amano might simply decline to work for her. The original plan had been for Amano to lose to Chiaki at the Academy Challenge Tournament, find it in himself to respect her dueling, and sign on as a Kaiba Corporation employee with his head held in the appropriate angle. Since Amano had won that duel, the subsequent arrangements were now being made from a position of slightly less leverage.
"The fifty million annual salary I promised you will be paid one month after your formal onboarding date into the company's financial records."
"One month. That's fine."
High-grade organizations paid upfront. In contrast to certain labor arrangements in the lower district where you worked a full month before seeing any settlement.
"When are you available to complete the formal onboarding."
"Now," Amano said without any hesitation.
Chiaki's eyebrow shifted fractionally upward. The answer settled something she had been privately uncertain about. If money was the anchor, money was the one resource she had no shortage of.
"But what does the work actually involve?"
Everyone employed at Kaiba Corporation at any tier was, by the standards of anywhere else, an elite. Being handed two completely unfamiliar job titles and asked to carry them deserved a concern about whether the job could be done.
"Since you haven't graduated yet, the corporation won't assign daily routine duties. Showing up to check in once per week is sufficient. But your assignments will be arranged personally by me, and the difficulty level will be commensurate with what you're being paid."
"Assignments commensurate with fifty million a year."
"The A-Rank Investigator title is to give you a legitimate basis for leaving the tower. You don't need to concern yourself with that. Your primary title right now is Chief Duel Advisor. And your first assignment is..."
Chiaki's fingers moved across the keyboard. The display on the main computer projected onto the enormous wall screen of the presidential office.
"What is that?" The dark figure on the screen made Amano pause.
"Recognize it?"
Was that a serious question?
The hair was the giveaway. That star-shaped silhouette was unmistakably Yugi Mutou's. The AI that Amano had dueled inside Mizuki's club room.
"The AI system you dueled previously."
"Right, the one from before."
The online AI dueling service featuring Yugi Mutou had gone offline the morning after Amano defeated it, citing maintenance. It had remained suspended ever since. The site currently displayed the same Blue-Eyes Maintenance Dragon holding page it had been showing for weeks.
"There was an operational error. The AI you dueled was not difficulty level 30. It was T2 difficulty."
"I know."
Of course it was not standard difficulty. Placing Yugi Mutou at the minimum setting was roughly equivalent to spawning a final boss at the tutorial stage. Either the system design had a serious flaw or the difficulty assignment had one. One of those two things had a problem.
"After you defeated the T2 AI, the system initiated a closed self-upgrade. Three days ago, the upgrade completed."
Three days ago, just before the Academy Challenge Tournament began.
This system had upgraded itself without any intervention from Kaiba Corporation being able to stop it. It was exterior data, sourced from outside the tower.
"My guess is this is data from Kaiba Corporation three thousand years ago."
The same lineage as Deep-Eyes White Dragon's code data, preserved intact in Kaiba Corporation's mainframe across three millennia and still functional inside Eden.
For Amano, that made the situation considerably clearer. Kaiba Seto from three thousand years ago had been legendary for his relationship with AI systems and artificial dueling opponents. A self-designed system from that era being capable of independent upgrading and compatibility with the present Kaiba Corporation was entirely consistent with what he knew.
"Why are you showing me this AI system?"
"Because after you defeated the T2 AI and it completed its self-upgrade, the highest difficulty T1 AI is now unlocked."
If Yugi Mutou was the T2 difficulty AI, the natural question was who occupied the T1 slot.
Given that this was almost certainly Kaiba Seto's design, Amano could already guess.
The same star-shaped silhouette on the screen, but carrying a different presence from the previous encounter.
"T1 difficulty AI. Name: Atem. The appearance matches Yugi Mutou, which appears to be a post-upgrade bug, but the deck is completely different."
Not a bug. Chiaki simply did not know about the Millennium Puzzle, the dual souls, or the Pharaoh whose memories had been sealed inside it for a thousand years. From her perspective, of course the two looked identical when they shared the same body. But she had no context for what that meant.
"Since you know the decks are different, you've already tried it."
"Correct. The challenge limit has been lifted after the upgrade, so I tested it several times."
"Results?"
"Very challenging."
Which, translated from Chiaki, meant that the AI had given her a comprehensive series of defeats.
"The system can self-upgrade. There's almost certainly more hidden inside it. External methods can't penetrate it. It has to be solved from within."
"From within."
"Defeat Atem. That's your first assignment as Chief Duel Advisor."
So that was why the work was worth fifty million.
In the dueling world, any duelist capable of defeating Atem, even an AI version of Atem, was not someone whose time was overpriced at fifty million.
Since the assignment was dueling-related, Amano felt he could at least make the attempt.
"How about it? If you have time, you could try now."
Both of them were, at this particular moment in the day, thoroughly free. The Academy Challenge Tournament had a day and a half remaining. Amano had no lectures to attend. Chiaki had just had her Gold Stage broken through and no longer needed to hold it.
Chiaki seemed, if anything, relaxed about the arrangement. "With the challenge limit lifted, we can try as many times as needed. The remaining day and a half gives us both time to work through how to break this AI."
"Sounds good. Let's try."
The presidential office on floor 198 of Kaiba Corporation was, in terms of floor space, several multiples of Mizuki's club activity room. Combined with the AI system's built-in spatial expansion effect, what appeared when the program launched was not a standard duel stage. It was something closer to an ancient Roman coliseum, an arena of staggering scale that felt designed to match the grandeur of the strongest duelist.
At the far end of the arena, the AI figure resolved into clarity.
Pharaoh Atem stood wearing his Domino High school uniform as if it were ceremonial robes, carrying himself with the quiet confidence of someone who had faced every challenger that three thousand years of dueling history had to offer.
"Come then, Amano. Let us duel."
"Let's go, Yugi!"
Amano had learned from the first fight. No matter how well the AI replicated the Pharaoh's behavioral patterns, it was still an AI. A simulated memory was what it was, as Kaiba Seto had said: a clown from my memories, nothing more. Not unbeatable.
Both Duel Disks extended.
"DUEL!"
Amano LP: 2008
Field: White Ecclesia the Virtuous. Defense: 1500.
Atem LP: 3000
Field: Slifer the Sky Dragon. Attack: 6000.
Field: Obelisk the Tormentor. Attack: 4000.
Field: The Winged Dragon of Ra. Attack: 5000.
He had completely lost his shirt.
Who in their right mind puts all three Egyptian God Cards in an AI deck?
There was no winning this.
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