Chapter 136: GX Chronicle - Elemental HERO vs. Destiny HERO
"There's so much text," Sakuya said, staring at the wall of Chronicle entries with an expression that suggested the screen itself had personally wronged her. "So many words. My head is spinning."
Academic subjects involving large amounts of reading had always been Sakuya's natural enemy. That was simply a fact about her.
But was Amano doing any better?
He had been standing completely motionless for a while now, and Sakuya noticed the problem before he did.
"Amano. Hey. Amano. You're drooling."
She reached into her bag with the quiet efficiency of someone who had prepared for contingencies, produced a tissue, and dabbed at the corner of his mouth.
"You look like an idiot right now."
He did not dignify this with a response. He was hungry, and being hungry was entirely reasonable given what he was looking at.
The Chronicle entries on the screen were essentially a categorized index of every significant duel in Yu-Gi-Oh! animated history, sorted and labeled by the system, each entry a completable instance with its own card drop table. Win the Chronicle duel and you had a chance to walk away with the cards that appeared in that original story. It was a gacha dungeon system, except the key to unlock each dungeon was the cards already in your deck.
That explained the network login point facility. This was an online game. Just one that required your personal deck as the admission ticket.
His Extra Deck could not be scanned since those cards only existed during duels, but his main deck was already carrying cards used by the protagonists of the first three Yu-Gi-Oh! series. According to the detection logic, any monster that appeared in a duel sequence could serve as a key to unlock the corresponding Chronicle chapter.
The most productive key in his deck for GX content was almost certainly Elemental HERO Avian. That little vanilla bird had been on the field more times across the GX anime than any card had a right to be. It had basically powered the unlock list for an entire season by itself.
And then there were the drop tables.
Neo-Spacian monsters. The three legendary dragons. Even the Duelist Kingdom arc Chronicle was sitting there in the list.
[Duelist Kingdom arc: Clash! The God (Obelisk) vs. The God (Slifer)]
[Difficulty rating: S+]
[Cards available as drops: Slifer the Sky Dragon, Obelisk the Tormentor]
The Egyptian God Cards. Both of them. Sitting in a drop table he could theoretically unlock.
Any duelist with a functioning pulse would be drooling at that screen. Amano was simply being honest about it.
Then Kaiba Chiaki started talking, and the cold water arrived.
"The Duel Chronicle has a weekly challenge limit of one."
Anti-addiction measures. Of course.
"Furthermore," Chiaki continued, "if you happen to be assigned a Chronicle chapter beyond your current ability to clear, you are locked into that assignment. You cannot switch to a different Chronicle until you have defeated it."
Her expression had not changed, but Amano was developing a sense for when something was costing Kaiba Chiaki more composure than she was willing to show. The revelation that his deck had unlocked this many Chronicle chapters was clearly doing something to her internal calculations.
She was not wrong to react that way. A normal duelist's deck unlocked one or two Chronicles. Most duelists unlocked nothing at all. His own Blue-Eyes White Dragon should have been a strong key, and she had likely expected their unlock counts to be comparable.
Instead his list was several times longer than anything she had seen.
The reason she cared so much, he understood, was that the Chronicle system was Eva mainframe official record. Authenticated history. Every entry in that list was a piece of verified historical documentation that no external investigation could access. Eva's security layers locked these records away from every method except the Chronicle key system. The duels had begun three thousand years ago, and the only way in was through cards.
From where Chiaki was standing, his deck had just transformed him into a walking archive.
She wanted him in Kaiba Corporation. That much was not difficult to read.
But she was holding that thought back for now, because she had her own situation to explain.
"The Chronicle challenge order is assigned by the Eva mainframe," she said. "The duelist cannot choose freely. No pattern has been identified. Treat it as random assignment."
Amano had assumed he could select his own targets. Apparently not.
Eva decided which Chronicle opened. You fought what you were given.
This was also, he gathered, Kaiba Chiaki's deepest frustration with the entire system.
Two years ago, freshly qualified for virtual world access, she had used her Blue-Eyes White Dragon as a key and unlocked a substantial number of Chronicle chapters. She had been prepared to use them as a lens into history, to learn more than any outside investigation could reach.
The Chronicle Eva assigned her for the first attempt had been this.
[Duelist Kingdom arc: The Revengeful Demon, the Mightiest Evil God Beyond the Three Sacred Beasts]
[Difficulty rating: SSS]
[Cards available as drops: The Wicked Avatar]
First attempt. SSS difficulty. The Wicked Avatar.
A card that surpassed the three Egyptian Gods. That black sphere out of some bottomless void, as if Eva had deliberately selected the one Chronicle in existence specifically designed to be impassable. For two full years it had sat in front of Kaiba Chiaki like a lock she could not break, blocking everything behind it.
She had Blue-Eyes White Dragon. She could see the history she wanted. She simply could not reach it.
Her final year before graduation was now. And that was why the Kaiba Corporation exterior investigation team had been operating at such high intensity recently, pushing the ruins excavation, searching for anything from three thousand years ago that might give her a way through the wall before her academy access expired.
"Start your first Chronicle, Amano." Chiaki raised a hand and gestured, and the full authority of someone who had built a corporation from the top down compressed into the motion. Amano found himself pulling up the interface at a slightly faster pace than he had intended.
He was personally not interested in historical documentation. Every Chronicle chapter on that list was just an animated story he remembered, organized into a dungeon format. What he cared about were the drop tables and figuring out which difficulty brackets he could clear comfortably with his current deck.
The prayer was simple. Not a completely useless Chronicle with no relevant drops. Also not a difficulty wall he could not actually beat.
When it came to luck, he had never had reason to be afraid of it. Ten consecutive championships at the District 32 New Year poker tournament had established that much.
He hit the Start button.
The screen filled with Chronicle images that swirled together and condensed around a single point of light, a rotating sphere. The data resolved.
[Light of Destruction arc: Elemental HERO vs. Destiny HERO]
[Difficulty rating: A+]
[Cards available as drops: Elemental HERO Neos Alius, Neo-Spacian Air Hummingbird, Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin, Neo-Spacian Flare Scarab]
This was the first Chronicle he had opened on his own earlier to check the description. It was also, by his current assessment, an entry he could win. A+, early-arc Aster Phoenix, Hero versus Hero. His deck had the tools. The drop table was also genuinely useful. Neo-Spacian cards would strengthen the fusion lines for every HERO variant in his Extra Deck.
Either his luck was working exactly as advertised, or Eva had made an unusually generous arrangement. He was not about to argue with either explanation.
Sorry, Synchro Academy. He was using academy resources to reinforce his Fusion setup again.
The next moment his consciousness was pulled through the Eva Terminal on his wrist and into the virtual world, as if something had reached in and simply relocated his mind.
Three thousand years of technological advancement, and it required no helmet, no neural jack socket in the back of the skull, none of the classic full-dive hardware from the stories he remembered. The Eva Terminal was already a neural interface. It had always been one. The Hacker Invasion skill had told him that much directly. It just happened to be installed on the wrist rather than the brain.
As his awareness settled into the virtual space, a briefing began.
[Amano Rei, student of Duel Academy's Slifer Red dormitory and close friend and roommate of Jaden Yuki.]
[Fought alongside Jaden Yuki and your Academy companions to stop the resurrection of the Sacred Beasts and defeat the Shadow Riders and Chancellor Sheppard's shadow influence.]
[But the threat was not over.]
[In a recent duel, Jaden Yuki's Elemental HEROes were defeated by Aster Phoenix and his Destiny HEROes.]
[Affected by the influence of the Light of Destruction residing within Aster's deck, Jaden Yuki can no longer read any information on his cards and cannot duel normally.]
[Jaden Yuki has chosen to leave Duel Academy.]
[With Jaden's defeat, Slifer Red dormitory faces the risk of demolition.]
[Your reliable performance during the Sacred Beasts duels has earned the trust of your Academy companions.]
[Chronicle clear condition: Stop Aster Phoenix.]
[Chronicle hidden reward condition: ???]
When Amano opened his eyes, it was night.
He was standing outside the Slifer Red dormitory building, worn red paint visible in the dark, the crumbling exterior exactly as familiar as it should have been.
That briefing had not felt like a game introduction. It had felt like memory being unlocked. Like something already inside his head surfacing. Not visiting the GX world. Not stepping into someone else's story. More like remembering something that had happened to him. The three Sacred Beasts arc, the Shadow Riders, Jaden's loss to Aster. All of it carried the texture of personal experience rather than recalled animation.
"Wait. What is happening, Amano?"
Chiaki's voice. He turned.
Kaiba Chiaki and Nanki'in Sakuya were both standing behind him. Chiaki had spoken. Sakuya had already shut down from context overload.
"Why did we enter your Chronicle?" Chiaki's confusion was visible, which meant it was significant. "This has never happened before."
In every account she had gathered about the Chronicle system, the process was simple: Eva briefed you, arranged a duel against a historical figure, and you either won or came back next week. A participant entering the Chronicle with an assigned identity, integrated into the story, connected to the lore of the setting, was something she had never encountered. And pulling two additional people in alongside through secondary Eva Terminal synchronization was beyond anything in her research.
"I'm just as lost as you are," Amano said.
He did not finish the sentence before a voice cut through from somewhere in the dark.
"Amano! Did you find Jaden over there?"
Running footsteps from across the campus. Alexis Rhodes appeared from the night in her Obelisk Blue uniform, one hand on her knee catching her breath. The moment she straightened up, Sakuya went very still next to Amano.
The effect was understandable.
"Alexis?"
The recognition in his voice was immediate and genuine, which was the Chronicle memory doing its work.
Alexis studied him while she caught her breath, then registered the two figures standing at his back.
"Who are they?"
All three of them processed the same question at once. Chiaki and Sakuya had been pulled into the Chronicle. The assumption had been that they would be present as passive observers, present in the space but invisible to the story. Alexis was making direct eye contact with both of them.
They were participants.
"They're friends of mine," Amano said, producing an explanation before the silence became a problem. "I called them in from off-campus for backup. You know how short-staffed Slifer Red has been lately. We need people for both the dormitory defense and searching for Jaden."
"That's fair," Alexis said slowly. She was still watching the two of them with the sharp attention of someone who had been Obelisk Blue's top student for reasons that included being extremely difficult to fool. "Though I have to say, Amano, I didn't realize you knew such cute girls outside the Academy."
Something in her tone carried an edge he had not expected. A faint sourness that had no obvious cause.
"I'm Nanki'in Sakuya," Sakuya said. Her gaze had not moved from Alexis since she had arrived, and it had settled on a specific region of the uniform with focused interest.
"Amano, I clearly underestimated how well-connected you are to meet someone this..." Sakuya paused. "Large."
Alexis blinked.
"And I'm Kaiba," Chiaki said.
Alexis's hand went to her mouth.
"Kaiba! As in Kaiba Corporation Kaiba? As in Seto Kaiba, our Academy's chairman and founder?"
"Coincidence," Amano said immediately, stepping forward. "Completely unrelated. Very common name."
Across the campus, the others who had scattered to search for Jaden were converging back at the Slifer Red entrance. Syrus, Chumley, Chazz. Faces the Chronicle memory recognized as naturally as breathing.
Dawn was beginning to gray the sky. As Amano had expected, an entire night of searching had produced nothing. Jaden was not on Academy grounds. He never had been.
"Big bro Amano, what do we do now?"
Syrus and Chumley, addressing him the same way they addressed Jaden. The Chronicle memory confirmed it: after the Sacred Beasts duels, he had stood beside Jaden through enough of the fighting that the dormitory had started treating him as the same kind of presence. The line about earning everyone's trust had not been exaggeration.
He was the anchor right now. Slifer Red was waiting for a decision.
"I trust Jaden," Amano said. "He'll come back."
"Professor Napoleon's arranged duel starts in half an hour," Alexis said, checking the time. "We're running out of it."
The situation was straightforward from his memory of the original story. Napoleon had arranged a duel against the dormitory. If Slifer Red lost, the building came down. The opponent was Aster Phoenix, who carried Destiny HEROes and had already beaten Jaden once. In the original timeline Jaden made it back at the last possible moment with Elemental HERO Neos and a full new understanding of Neo-Space, completing the rematch.
But the original timeline had not included Amano as a Chronicle participant with a genuine assigned role in the story. Whether Jaden's return still happened on the same schedule was an open question.
The fallback was already clear.
"If Jaden doesn't make it back in time," Amano said, "I'll be the one to stop Aster."
He had Elemental HEROes in his deck. Only three vanilla ones, but if this was early-arc Aster Phoenix rather than the fully developed version, his odds were solid.
What kept pulling at him, though, was something harder to name. The longer he moved through this Chronicle world, the stronger a particular feeling became. Not the alienation of being somewhere fictional and unfamiliar. The opposite of that.
Everything here felt like it had happened to him. Not "I remember watching this." More like "I remember being here when this happened."
He was going to have to stop laughing at Rin Seiya for taking her Yusei Fudo feelings too seriously. At this rate, he was not sure he had any standing left to tease her about it.
***
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