Chapter 229
"THUNDERFORCE ATTACK!!"
"AAAAAGH!!"
Amano LP: 2000.
Under the God's crackling lightning, White Ecclesia the Virtuous was thoroughly incinerated from the outside in. Amano's last flickering Life Points vanished right along with her.
The AI duel's projected light faded. The three God Cards and the Pharaoh commanding them dissolved along with the grand Roman coliseum surrounding them.
The environment around Amano and Chiaki reverted to what it had been: the presidential office on floor 198.
How exactly was anyone supposed to win this?
What version of an AI did Chiaki find outside the tower? Whose idea was it to put a complete set of all three Egyptian God Cards in an AI deck?
Amano vividly remembered that the AI version of Atem in the final film never pulled out the God Cards in that fight. And yet here was an AI that treated Slifer, Obelisk, and Ra as its opening hand staples. Any one of the three would be enough to ruin the day of almost every duelist in this world. Deploying all three simultaneously was essentially treating Amano like he was Yugi Mutou personally.
"Challenging, isn't it, Amano."
The faint upward curve at the corner of Chiaki's mouth communicated that she had predicted this outcome from the start.
Amano had serious suspicions. He had beaten Chiaki this morning. By afternoon she had brought him to her office and arranged for an AI with three God Cards to immediately destroy him. The personal motivation behind this arrangement was difficult to dismiss.
"It is genuinely difficult, yes."
Even Amano had to admit that beating an Atem carrying a full God Card set was an entirely different problem from the duel they had just finished.
System notification: Millennium Puzzle fragment detected. Complete retrieval during duel.
"But," Amano said, shifting gears, "difficult doesn't mean impossible."
A Millennium Puzzle fragment hidden inside the Atem AI's possession was an absurd development. Though after the first AI win against Yugi Mutou had mysteriously deposited Pure Kuriboh into his deck, perhaps the impossible was simply how this AI system operated.
"There's no rush," Chiaki said. "This task has no deadline. And with the upgraded system removing the challenge limit, we have as many attempts as we need."
"In that case, let's go again."
He was already mentally queuing up the next run like someone restarting a difficult game boss after the loading screen cleared. Chiaki stepped in front of him.
"My turn."
She activated the AI before Amano could reach it.
"I activate Equip Spell Card, Megamorph! Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon's ATK doubles!"
Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon: 4500 times two equals 9000.
Inside the restored coliseum, Chiaki positioned herself at the peak of the central dragon head, her ace card burning with attack power that briefly eclipsed all three God Cards combined.
"Take this! This is the power of Blue-Eyes surpassing the gods!"
Obelisk the Tormentor's eye opened.
"Soul Energy MAX!"
Obelisk the Tormentor: 4000 attack becomes infinite.
"GOD HAND IMPACT!!"
"NOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Chiaki LP: 4000 to 0.
Nine thousand attack points. Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon at nine thousand attack. Crushed outright by a single divine fist. The coliseum projected light went dark, and Chiaki's defeat was, if anything, more humiliating than Amano's: the God's punch sent her entire silhouette tumbling backward.
"Damn it!"
"My turn, Senpai Kaiba!"
A task framed as "challenge the most powerful AI in existence" had, somewhere in the hour that followed, transformed into something that felt more like two people sitting on the same couch passing a controller back and forth. One person tries, gets destroyed, hands it over. The other tries, gets destroyed, hands it back.
The coliseum projection rose and fell. It rose and fell again. The God Cards were consistent in one thing: they were absolutely relentless.
After a number of rounds that had long since stopped being countable, Amano was lying flat on the presidential office floor with his arms and legs spread, staring at the ceiling. He was currently recovering from having just been set on fire by Ra's Immortal Phoenix.
"Wait. What time is it?"
His wrist with the Eva terminal was technically reachable, but everything about moving felt like too much work.
"Past 1 AM," Chiaki answered.
He processed this.
"Past 1 AM."
He had been brought in by the Security Bureau around noon, been processed and released in about twenty minutes, come up to floor 198, played cards until the point where 1 AM happened without being noticed, skipped dinner entirely after eating half of lunch, and was currently horizontal on a corporate office floor.
That was an objectively abnormal workday for the first employee of a company who had been on the job for approximately six hours.
"I also lost track of time. Unbecoming of me."
Chiaki settled back into her desk chair, her own fatigue finally registering now that someone had checked a clock.
"Floor 50 has a 24-hour employee cafeteria. Go eat if you're hungry. Your ID card grants you access to floor 198 whenever you want from now on."
First day. Unrestricted access to the presidential floor.
By any reasonable standard, Amano had become the boss's most notable new hire before his first shift ended.
He got himself upright from the floor, which took more effort than it should have, and made his way to the elevator.
"Are you coming, Senpai Kaiba?"
"I don't eat dinner."
"Alright."
He had heard of this habit before. Finesse occasionally decided she was eating too much and skipped her own dinner as penance. Amano had privately connected this fact to certain architectural observations he had made. He was not going to say that out loud about anyone.
It was harder to picture from Chiaki, who was tall and clearly formidable in every physical respect, but personal habits were personal habits.
The floor 50 cafeteria, which turned out to be genuinely excellent in ways that exposed just how much money Kaiba Corporation had, dealt with the hunger efficiently. Amano then checked his VSN.
99 plus unread messages. He had, by the standards of normal human behavior, failed everyone who knew him.
Finesse: "Amano, Kaiba didn't do anything weird to you right? I actually saw you get taken away by her."
Rin Seiya: "What kind of work did Kaiba arrange? Is it a real job? Does it involve using your body? Can you bring me along? I'm graduating next year and I'll need to find something. You know how much I like Blue-Eyes White Dragon."
Sakuya: "Let me know if anything dangerous happens. I've already told Ryuuma and the others to stay on standby."
Kikawayu: "Rei, I saved dinner for you. Tell me when you're back and I'll heat it up."
At least they all knew he was with Chiaki. The guilt reduced fractionally.
He typed a blanket response into the group chat named Loving Family rather than reply to each message separately.
Amano: "Sorry. Got absorbed in a card game and lost track of time."
Shio: "Brother. Do you think we'd believe that?"
Amano: "Middle schoolers are supposed to be asleep by 1 AM. I'll deal with you when I'm home."
Shio: "I ALREADY WENT TO SLEEP okay zzZZ the last message was Yui using my terminal~"
Throwing Yui under the cart while pretending to be asleep. Yui was technically the one from the lower district who kept early hours. The accusation did not land.
Kikawayu: "Don't push yourself too hard, Rei. We're not short on money anymore."
Finesse: "Why didn't you tell me if you were looking for work? I could have had my second brother sort something out."
The work itself was not really the point. What mattered was the Tower exterior access and the Millennium Puzzle fragment now identified inside the Atem AI. Kaiba Corporation had become significantly more relevant to his actual goals.
He finished eating, noted that it was now 1:30 AM, and decided that simply leaving without saying anything was impolite. He took the elevator back to floor 198.
When he opened the door to the presidential office, he found Chiaki reclined in her chair with her eyes closed, breathing slowly and evenly.
Asleep.
Amano moved quietly. Approached the desk. Verified that she was genuinely unconscious and not just resting her eyes.
Confirmed.
The president of Kaiba Corporation, who maintained strict composure during almost every interaction Amano had observed, was asleep in her chair thirty minutes after he had left for the cafeteria. The accumulated exhaustion from recent days had apparently required very little additional encouragement to collect on the debt.
He looked at the screen still glowing on her desk. The search history showed queries about today's duel. Also open was a chat with Chiha, where Chiaki had sent a single message: "Chiha, you're living alone now. Don't catch a cold."
Read. Not replied to.
The dynamic of a strict older sibling who did not quite know how to show that she cared.
November in Eden had started to carry a chill. The central air handled it on the whole, but an office this large and open let some of it through regardless.
Amano took off his Synchro Academy uniform jacket and laid it over her shoulders.
Maybe look after yourself a little, too, and not just your younger sister.
Around 3 AM, Chiaki woke up.
She sat still for a moment while her mind finished loading, then registered: she had apparently fallen asleep while waiting for Amano to come back from the cafeteria. Since he had not woken her, he had probably just left directly after eating.
That conclusion was accompanied by a quiet exhale of relief.
Then she noticed the white uniform jacket covering her.
He had come back. He had found her asleep, and instead of waking her, he had left the jacket.
"What insufferable meddling."
She pulled the jacket off her shoulders, and then sat there holding it for a moment while her face decided what temperature it wanted to be.
An employee had seen her in an unguarded, completely unprofessional state. She had clearly let her standards slip somewhere.
She opened VSN, held the cursor over Amano's message box, and then spent the next half hour failing to come up with what she actually wanted to say. Eventually the professional side of her won the standoff, and she typed:
"Tomorrow come to the company. We'll continue working out how to defeat the Atem AI."
Which was the kind of message a boss sends at 3 AM.
She sent it. Then immediately began second-guessing whether to recall it.
Amano replied instantly.
"Tomorrow I have something, Senpai Kaiba. I'll probably come later."
"Something? What?"
"I'm going to get the cards that can beat the Three God Cards!"
She stared at that line.
In Eden, a card like that actually existed?
Back at the villa, Amano lay on his bed in the guest room looking at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
The day's AI duels were replaying in loops behind his eyes. He kept rotating the problem: how do you approach three Egyptian God Cards?
And then the system notification arrived.
Kaiba Chiaki. Affection plus one.
Which confirmed she had woken up.
Then, half an hour later, the work message arrived. And Amano, who had been lying awake intending to bring this up in the morning anyway, went ahead and told her.
The cards that could beat the Three God Cards.
This was the conclusion he had arrived at after thinking through every option across the entire day.
The God Cards were not a puzzle to be solved by raw power or clever combos. Even nine thousand attack from Megamorph Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon had not been enough. What was needed was not a stronger strategy, but the one strategy whose theoretical ceiling, across the entire history of Yu-Gi-Oh's thousands of years of card development, nothing had ever surpassed.
The Dark Wizard. Exodia.
The next morning, Amano skipped the final day of the Academy Challenge Tournament entirely, got on his D-Wheel, and rode to Room 209 on the second floor of the Club Building.
Mizuki's livestreaming club room.
Through the door, he found the pink-haired streamer sitting in front of her monitors eating instant noodles. She had clearly also skipped the tournament, having chosen instead to sit in her club room and edit video. Specifically, footage of yesterday's duel between Amano and Chiaki.
"Amano bro! What are you doing here?" She swallowed the mouthful quickly.
"Mizuki, I'm warning you now. If you upload that video, there's a real chance Kaiba Corporation puts out a search warrant."
Her eyes shifted sideways. She scratched the back of her head with an expression of completely transparent guilt. "I'm... just editing for fun. Not necessarily... not necessarily going to upload. Ha ha ha ha."
She was absolutely going to upload it.
But that was not why he had come.
Amano pulled up a chair beside her and sat quietly watching her edit for a few minutes. Then he asked:
"Mizuki, let me ask you something."
"Hm?"
"How would you describe our relationship?"
She rolled her eyes thoughtfully, pinched her chin, and gave it a moment's genuine consideration.
"We have an incredible relationship!"
If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone or drop a review — it helps more than you'd think.
Advance chapters → patreon.com/Eatinpieces