Chapter 233: The Card of Unknown Significance
After Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon's piercing blast obliterated Suzune Ruri on the spot, the live stream chat erupted into a wall of scrolling text that consumed the entire screen in seconds.
[Ruri actually lost a girl card showdown.]
[Does that mean the other side is a genuinely strong duelist?]
[But honestly, by the end it had nothing to do with girl cards anymore.]
[He literally said Blue-Eyes White Dragon counts as a girl card. The definition is completely open-ended!]
[Exactly! Timaeus the United Dragon is a girl card because it was Fusion Summoned using a girl card. Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon is obviously a girl card because it was Ritual Summoned using a girl card!]
[Correct. Everything in this world is a girl card!]
Kuroshio Nagi closed out Lilith Alpha's stream without a word. She had seen enough of the cult gathering that comment section had become.
Over in the VIP lounge of the Riding Duel venue, the Emperor was genuinely surprised.
Suzune Ruri had been playing a casual entertainment deck. Even so, he had not expected someone who had once been his teammate to be taken down that smoothly. What was more, Amano Rei had apparently matched Suzune's energy throughout the stream and turned the whole thing into a genuinely entertaining girl card showcase.
If those two had not arranged the script in advance, then Amano's ability to command a deck had already reached what could only be described as the level of spirit possession.
"A first-year academy student. A spirit-possessed duelist that young. The next generation really does push the current one aside." The Emperor paused. "Have I actually gotten old?"
He closed the stream after that. He had no desire to sit through any more of the girl card cult chat feed.
In the Kaiba Corporation president's office, Kaiba Chiaki's expression was darkening by the second.
Being the company president, free time was a rare luxury. The past two days of scheduled work had been cleared in anticipation of defending the Academy Challenge stages. Then yesterday's loss had created an unexpected vacation, since she no longer had defending duties to fulfill.
Add to that Chiha throwing a sulk about something, and Amano telling her today that he had important business.
The most powerful executive in Kaiba Corporation had found herself with nothing to do. In a moment of boredom without precedent, she had ended up scrolling through Bilibili live streams.
And then she saw it.
"Amano Rei. This is what you call important business? Getting the card to take on the three Egyptian Gods?"
Important business. Cards for the Egyptian Gods. All of it was a lie.
What Kaiba Chiaki actually saw on screen was Amano Rei happily engaging with a female streamer in a girl card battle that went back and forth between them for the entire duel. She watched it with mounting irritation. He had even counted Blue-Eyes White Dragon as a girl card at the end.
He ditched their arrangement to go play cards with another woman. If he could not provide a satisfactory explanation, she was docking his pay.
Just as Kaiba Chiaki was staring at the screen and internally calculating exactly how to make him regret this, the stream cut out.
After the loss, a slightly red-faced Suzune Ruri recalled her four airborne drones and ended the broadcast at maximum speed.
"I admit it, you won, Mizuki Mu." She paused. "Actually, since the stream is off now, I should probably call you Amano Rei."
Clout-chasing was Suzune's professional habit. Accepting a clean loss was something else entirely. Of course, even if she had tried to wriggle out of it, the contract registered with Eva before the duel would have enforced itself regardless.
"Per the contract, I'll post a public apology and pin it on my account. Consider it my way of making up for the disruption you've had to deal with."
The contract had only required a posted apology. The pinned month was Suzune's own addition.
The sudden civility left Mizuki and Kuroshio, both of whom had been mentally loading up a backlog of pointed comments ready for delivery, with no idea how to respond.
Something felt off about the reversal. Amano had the persistent sense that Suzune was setting up for a follow-on move.
Sure enough, a second later, she crossed the distance between them and dropped into a full prostration at Amano's feet.
"I have deeply reflected on my mistakes. So please, I beg you, grant me the one great request of my life, Amano Rei!"
He had more or less figured out what was coming.
"That Dark Magician Girl..."
"Not for sale. She's an important companion."
Mana: "Amano, I knew I could count on you!"
"No no no, I would never be so presumptuous as to ask for a card that rare. I just want to see it. Just to hold it in my hands for a moment. If I can do that, I will have no regrets in this life!"
She had prostrated herself sincerely, and the genuine depth of her love for girl cards had been on clear display throughout the entire duel. Letting her hold the card for a look was not something Amano had any particular reason to refuse.
Besides, there were three people here plus one D-Wheel. Even if her obsession had reached a critical level, she wasn't going to grab the card and escape on her little electric scooter.
As expected, Suzune received Dark Magician Girl and simply held the rarest card in the world with pure, reverent awe.
Mana: "She's just looking, but that stare is making me deeply uncomfortable. I feel completely exposed."
"Amano Rei, I have one more great request of my life!"
Your great requests for this lifetime are used up. Save them for the next one.
"Can I lick the card?"
Mana: "Absolutely not!"
The same bad habit as a certain other person. If she damaged the card and the Duel Disk couldn't read it, what then?
Amano declined without hesitation and took Dark Magician Girl back while Suzune watched with eyes that contained equal parts longing and resignation.
"Then I suppose we'll be heading back."
"Wait, Amano Rei!"
"Another great request of your life?"
He was beginning to get the picture. This woman was genuinely a handful.
"No. As fellow lovers of girl cards, take this card as proof of our friendship. And if we get the opportunity someday, I'd love to collaborate on a video together!"
Collaborations between streamers to drive mutual engagement weren't a foreign concept to Amano. But between the collaboration and the card, it was the card that had his attention.
[Shadow Severance]
It appeared to be part of the same trap card series as World Severance, the card Suzune had used during the duel. And of course, a card coming out of Suzune's hands was, without question, a girl card.
The trap's effect was also genuinely useful.
Amano accepted the gift without hesitation. Suzune was visibly pleased that he had taken the card as a symbol of their girl card fellowship. She hopped back onto her little electric scooter and puttered off cheerfully into the distance.
Afterward, rather than heading straight back to the club room, Amano held Kuroshio Nagi back for the afternoon. He wanted to test out the newly unlocked skill in a practical setting.
Specifically, Mizuki's new skill: the Card of Unknown Significance.
Before putting any unknown skill into actual combat, Amano wanted to understand what he was working with first. What exactly was a Card of Unknown Significance going to look like in practice?
What if the skill didn't insert a Duel Monsters card at all?
If he was deep into a critical match and drew a spade from a playing card deck, his long-standing reputation as a ten-game champion of Slum District New Year's Poker might finally find its proper application.
Not that he could tell Kuroshio the real reason for the sparring session, of course.
Friendly practice between club partners. That excuse would do fine.
"If it's my oshi asking, I... I obviously can't say no..."
That was what her mouth said. Her expression told a different story. And during several of the duels, she kept reaching back to guard her lower half for reasons that defied easy explanation.
Despite the muscle-memory dread embedded somewhere deep in her nervous system, Kuroshio Nagi endured the entire afternoon as Amano's sparring partner out of sheer loyalty to her number-one oshi status.
"My oshi, does friendly sparring really have to involve this many rounds? I'm starting to lose track of whether our relationship is good or bad."
She had been looking forward to a proper rest after stepping down from the Bronze Stage. Instead the dueling intensity had gone up.
It wasn't Amano's fault. Testing the skill was genuinely inconvenient.
The Card of Unknown Significance added to the Main Deck did not come up in every duel. The draw rate was quite low.
But based on his afternoon of observation, the card the skill inserted really was, in the most literal reading of the name, of unknown significance. The selection appeared to be completely random.
Over the course of the afternoon, Amano drew the Card of Unknown Significance three times. Each time it was a card that had no business being in his Main Deck.
The three were: Xenothermia Weapon - Wind God Cloud Dragon Sword, Broken Bamboo Sword, and Harmonizing Celestial Dragon.
Setting aside the completely combat-worthless Broken Bamboo Sword, Harmonizing Celestial Dragon was without question the most valuable of the three. If that card could be reliably added to the deck, it would represent a meaningful step up in overall deck power.
Unfortunately, that was not something Amano could decide on his own.
The other disappointment was that the Card of Unknown Significance had not turned out to be Exodia the Forbidden One.
He had allowed himself to hope that Mizuki's skill, coming from a lineage that had carried the Dark Wizard's head across generations, might have some connection to it and let him get the head early.
Looking at the results now, there was a connection, but a loose one at best. Getting lucky enough to randomly draw the Exodia head in an actual duel was theoretically possible, but practically speaking, essentially out of the question.
Amano checked the time. The final day of the Academy Challenge Tournament had to be winding down.
And Yuuma Tsukumo had apparently been absent from the Xyz Stage the entire day.
How did Amano know that without being there himself? That traced back to the task he had given Kikawayu that morning.
He had sent his closest friend to stake out the Xyz Stage with standing orders: if Yuuma showed up, contact him immediately.
Kikawayu's total silence throughout the day confirmed that Yuuma had never appeared.
"Is Yuuma Tsukumo always this elusive?" Amano asked Kuroshio.
As a top-ranked duelist at Xyz Academy herself, she had to have encountered him at some point.
"It's genuinely hard to spot Yuuma-senpai on campus. I've been enrolled for a year and I've only seen him twice. One of those was at a joint event." She thought about it for a moment. "Though given his level of skill, he might turn professional right after graduation. If that happens, he'd actually have to show his face more."
What Amano was more curious about than Yuuma's skill level was whether this person was actually the protagonist of the Zexal anime in the flesh.
His VSN chimed.
A message from Kikawayu.
This had to be it.
[Kikawayu: Rei, get to the Synchro Stage fast!]
Why the Synchro Stage? He was supposed to be watching the Xyz Stage.
Almost simultaneously, messages came in from both Sakuya and Finesse.
[Sakuya: Amano, come back now. Emergency.]
[Finesse: Synchro Academy's Silver Stage has just been cleared!]
Synchro Academy's Silver Stage had fallen?
On the last day of the Academy Challenge Tournament, in the final stretch, something like this was breaking?
Two historically unprecedented dueling results in a single tournament. One right after the other.
Amano got on his D-Wheel without a second thought and rode straight back to the activity plaza toward the Synchro Academy section.
When he arrived, Synchro Academy Director Leiden's expression on the spectator platform was visibly strained.
Yesterday's decisive victory over Fusion Academy had felt like a lifetime ago. Today it was Synchro Academy's turn to be in crisis.
All they could do was trust that the academy's top-ranked duelist Rin Seiya would be able to hold the line.
But after watching the Silver Stage duel just now, a quiet unease had taken root among the Synchro Academy crowd that was hard to put into words. The challenger's deck had felt specifically built to dismantle Synchro Summoning.
"What's the situation?"
Back at the venue, Amano saw Rin Seiya mid-duel on the stage at a glance and found the rest of his group watching from below.
The opponent currently facing Rin on stage did not appear to be the so-called Synchro Killer everyone had been discussing. This looked like an ordinary Xyz Academy student.
"It's strange, Rei." Kikawayu explained: "The Fusion Academy student who cleared the Silver Stage is someone nobody here recognizes. Not a single person. The teachers don't even know who it is."
"Name?"
"Prayano."
Amano's brow furrowed.
A Synchro Killer. A name like Prayano. Was this a coincidence?
That name was a combination of the Machine Emperor trio from the 5D's anime.
That said, if this person had registered for the Academy Challenge Tournament, Eva had verified them as an enrolled Fusion Academy student. Whatever was happening, Prayano was in the system.
"The teachers managed to pull an identity record!" Finesse had opened the Fusion Academy discussion channel on her device. Her expression froze mid-read. She turned to Amano as if she'd seen something she could not explain.
"According to the teachers, the name Prayano belongs to a student who enrolled at Fusion Academy one hundred and ten years ago. They took a leave of absence in their fourth year and never formally graduated."
Never formally graduated meant still technically enrolled. Still technically enrolled meant still eligible to enter the Academy Challenge Tournament.
"Hold on, this is starting to sound like a ghost story," said Shio, her petite frame visibly trembling. She pulled herself in tight against Amano's back and held on.
A duelist from a century ago. The word that came to mind was undead.
Was this a recreation of the Ghost arc from the 5D's anime?
While the group was still processing the revelation, the Eva announcement system in the activity plaza crackled to life.
[Challenger: Prayano]
The queue speed was as if someone had paid for a fast pass. Just for context, even Amano, after clearing Fusion Academy's Silver Stage, had waited in queue the entire afternoon and not reached his duel with Kaiba Chiaki until the following morning.
Yet Prayano, appearing out of nowhere in the final window of the tournament's last day, had fought through two consecutive Synchro Academy stages with only one person's wait between them.
It was now that Amano got a clear look at the challenger's appearance. Or rather, their outfit: a grey-white cloak that covered the figure completely, concealing both body and face. The whole thing looked immediately suspicious.
Sakuya said quietly: "Rin Seiya-senpai will be okay, right?"
Amano had heard secondhand that Mikado-senpai, Synchro Academy's Silver Stage guardian and a duelist ranked in the school's top ten, had been defeated with almost no chance to respond. Information gaps likely played a part in that, but if someone could take out a top-ten player that quickly, the raw power behind it was real.
And yet when Amano looked over at Rin Seiya on the Gold Stage, she was casually stretching her back with no visible trace of tension.
"Three days standing still and my whole body has seized up. Getting to actually duel again is a relief, honestly."
Across from her, Prayano said nothing. Just stood in silence, watching her.
"Now there's an interesting opponent." Rin's confident smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. "But don't expect to catch me off guard with an information gap!"
"A Synchro Killer running Machine Emperor tactics. It's my favorite era of callbacks! Undead or machine, it doesn't matter. I'll dismantle you myself!"
As one of the few people in the academy with thorough knowledge of the 5D's storyline, Rin Seiya had recognized exactly what she was facing the moment she saw the Silver Stage duel. She knew what was coming.
[Eva: Duel Recognized]
[Duelist: Rin Seiya]
[Duelist: Prayano]
[Connecting to data network. Duel field generating.]
[Duel type: Academy Challenge Tournament]
[Proud duelists, let the outcome of this battle serve as the scale that weighs your souls!]
[Duel!]
"First turn is mine! My turn, draw!"
Rin Seiya drew from her arm-mounted Duel Disk.
"I Normal Summon Trident Warrior in Attack Position!"
[Trident Warrior]
[Level 4 / LIGHT]
[Warrior / Effect]
[ATK: 1800 / DEF: 1200]
[When this card is Summoned, you can Special Summon 1 Level 3 monster from your hand.]
"Using Trident Warrior's effect, I Special Summon the Level 3 Tuner in my hand: Junk Changer!"
[Junk Changer]
[Level 3 / EARTH]
[Warrior / Tuner / Effect]
[ATK: 1500 / DEF: 900]
"When Junk Changer is Normal or Special Summoned, I can change the Level of a Junk monster on the field by 1! I raise Junk Changer's own Level by 1!"
[Junk Changer] [Level 3 to Level 4]
"That gives me two Level 4 monsters on the field!"
Rin's slender fingers swept across her Duel Disk. Stardust-bright particles erupted at her feet.
"I tune Level 4 Tuner Junk Changer with Level 4 Trident Warrior!"
Level 4 plus Level 4 equals Level 8.
"May these gathered wishes become a newborn radiant star and blaze into a shining road!"
"Synchro Summon! Soar, Stardust Dragon!"
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