Chapter 141: Chaos MAX, Let's Go!
The next day, Amano was in the middle of coasting through class when the system notification appeared in front of him. He spent three full minutes not recovering from it.
[Kaiba Chiha] [Affection +30]
What had gotten into the little gremlin?
Had the Puppeteer scrambled her brain so badly it reversed her personality entirely? She was gaining affection points for him now. Thirty of them at once.
[Kaiba Chiha] [Affection: 40]
Still below average. But jumping from 10 to 40 in one go was technically a positive development, probably.
Was it actually a positive development?
He could not think of a single reason Chiha would spontaneously develop thirty points of goodwill toward him. The old saying covered situations exactly like this one. When someone offers unexpected kindness for no visible reason, they are either plotting something or stealing something.
He decided not to spend further mental energy on it. Class was more important. Or at least, class was something that was currently happening.
Synchro Academy's dueling curriculum was content Amano could process without attending to it. That freed up significant mental bandwidth for other activities. As the class's designated Duel Representative, he had a reasonably good view of how everyone else in Class 1-E filled the time.
Sakuya, deep in a shounen manga.
Kozuka Yoka, filling pages of what appeared to be a mysterious observation journal.
Someone in the back row eating their lunch early.
Someone in the middle of the room sleeping in the dead zone where teacher sightlines didn't reach.
A cluster near the wall having a conversation at a volume they believed was quiet.
There were reasons this group had been sorted into Class 1-E, and the reasons were on full display.
Compared to the rest of them, Amano felt his own method of passing time was considerably more defensible. It was at least tangentially related to dueling.
He opened the Academy City card shop interface and browsed the available cards. Part window-shopping, part actual budget planning for which card to redeem next.
Today, for the first time in recent memory, the browsing was not purely aspirational.
The scholarship had arrived.
[Available Points: 132,000]
One hundred and thirty-two thousand points. One hundred thousand of that was the scholarship fund Kondo had promised, the portion Synchro Academy was granting him as discretionary purchase credit. Kondo had guaranteed it would clear the same evening he mentioned it.
It had taken three days.
Even Kondo, the dean of students himself, had apparently underestimated whoever was responsible for processing these approvals at the administrative level.
The remaining thirty thousand came from the Duel Chronicle run. Kondo had been correct that the Chronicle system rewarded academy ranking points in addition to cards. Amano had not expected a single Chronicle clear to generate thirty thousand points of it. He was not sure whether that was a normal yield or something unusual about his specific run, and he was not going to ask Chiaki for a comparison. Her Chronicle situation was not a topic he wanted to prod.
The thirty thousand had pushed his total accumulated ranking to one hundred and seventy thousand, lifting his placement in the academy rankings to five hundred and twentieth.
Higher rankings unlocked more card options in the exchange shop. The HERO section in particular had expanded significantly since the Chronicle run, as if the system had noticed what he had been doing and updated the available inventory accordingly.
The first card that stopped him cold was listed at twenty thousand points.
Elemental HERO Bubbleman.
The GX-era draw engine that had carried Jaden Yuki through more desperate situations than any other card in that series. When summoned while your hand and field were empty, draw two cards. A living Pot of Greed in hero form. The actual Pot of Greed cost two hundred thousand points at current exchange rates. Bubbleman was doing the same job for a tenth of the price.
He did not deliberate.
"Incredible value. Buying."
Elemental HERO Bubbleman acquired.
The next card on the list was fifteen thousand points.
Elemental HERO Blazeman. On summon, search one Polymerization from the deck. For reference, Fusion Sage, a card that did approximately the same thing, was selling for ten thousand Eva Points at market price. Blazeman came with a body attached.
"Practical. Buying."
Elemental HERO Blazeman acquired.
The last high-value HERO at eight hundred points was Elemental HERO Clayman. Four-star vanilla, 1500 ATK / 2000 DEF. The card description called it a sturdy hero crafted from clay, famous for its defensive strength. Its DEF was actually 100 points lower than Eve's.
Eve materialized briefly to register this information.
"So you're saying my chest is harder than a clay block."
The structural integrity argument was gaining supporting evidence from multiple sources.
The reason to redeem Clayman despite its underwhelming stats was simple. Eight hundred points. It carried the HERO type, it could serve as a wall, it could be used as Fusion material, and it could replace a fixed vanilla slot in the deck. The cost-to-utility ratio was genuinely excellent.
"Cheap. Buying."
Elemental HERO Clayman acquired.
After this run of HERO purchases, a faint ethical discomfort had settled somewhere in Amano's chest.
He was sitting in Synchro Academy's classroom, using Synchro Academy's scholarship points, to reinforce his Fusion infrastructure. This was a repeated pattern and he was aware of it.
The discomfort reminded him of his original plan for the scholarship. The card he had mapped out from the beginning.
Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon. Exchange cost: 80,000 points.
Someone might ask at this point why Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon, a Ritual Monster belonging to the main deck, qualified as a legitimate Synchro Academy expenditure.
The reasoning was airtight.
Synchro Summons worked by adding stars together until reaching the target Synchro Monster's Level. Ritual Summons worked the exact same way, adding stars together until reaching the target Ritual Monster's Level. The underlying mathematical operation was identical.
Eve reappeared.
"Those are completely different mechanics."
Irrelevant. The point was Chaos MAX Dragon, and Chaos MAX Dragon was extremely cool. He had been planning this purchase since the scholarship was first mentioned. Spending a hundred thousand points on miscellaneous smaller cards instead of biting down and getting the one he had actually wanted from the start was the kind of decision he would regret later when the opportunity didn't come around again.
"Expensive, but worth it. Buying."
[Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon] [Exchange Successful]
[Available Points: 16,000]
He would need to redeem Chaos Form, the companion Ritual Spell, from the remaining balance. Whatever was left after that could go toward smaller utility pickups.
He held the card and looked at it.
Two lifetimes of playing this game, and the satisfaction of holding a card like this still landed the same way every time.
Then a voice reached him that was familiar and not familiar at the same time. A girl's voice. Ethereal in a way that made it immediately distinctive.
"Wonderful, Amano Rei. I like it very much."
That voice.
He had heard it exactly once before. The first time he had summoned Blue-Eyes White Dragon, something had spoken near his ear in that same register.
He reached into his card case and pulled out Blue-Eyes White Dragon, setting it on the desk next to Chaos MAX Dragon.
No spirit manifested. Same result as the first time. One appearance, then gone.
"Are you actually a spirit or not?"
He tried calling to the card in a low voice for a few repetitions, until Sakuya glanced over from the next seat with the specific expression that meant she had questions about his current behavior.
"Amano," she said quietly. "Are you that repressed?"
"How did you arrive at that interpretation?"
"Dragon-sexual?"
"Who taught you that word?"
"Yukki."
Nanki'in Yukki. The girl who had been possessed by Onikiri and lost all her memories of her previous life in the process. She was currently living with the Nanki'in main family, effectively as Sakuya's cousin in practical terms.
The depth of vocabulary they had apparently developed between them in the time since was notable.
That was between the two of them. Not Amano's concern.
What he did keep thinking about was the Millennium Key sealed inside Yukki's Eva Terminal. Onikiri had set some kind of password protection on it before everything ended. The hope was that Yukki might remember the password if her memory ever recovered, because losing one of the legendary seven Millennium Items to a permanently locked terminal was a genuinely unfortunate outcome.
Near the end of class, Sakuya passed him a note.
"Amano, do you want to grab something to eat before evening study?"
"Class rep, I actually have something on tonight."
"What is it?"
"Personal matter. I'll get your homework to you over the weekend."
"Okay." The disappointment in her voice was audible even kept as flat as she kept everything else.
Sakuya's attachment had been developing a kind of gravitational persistence lately, but when he gave her an honest answer she was reasonable about it. She was already aware he had the evening study exemption, and she had still been coming by on her own time to copy work. Pressing him further than that was something she apparently recognized was not appropriate, even by her current standards.
The thing he had told her was not an excuse.
Rin Seiya had been absent for two days.
Yesterday she had told him via VSN it was a minor cold. Last night she had apparently passed out before she could update her usual evening post. This morning he had checked in again.
"Senpai, how are you feeling?"
"Not great, kouhai."
That was not a reassuring answer.
"If you have time, could you pick up a few things from the supermarket for me? I'll transfer you the money."
That was probably a request to visit. He said yes on VSN and started planning his route.
When her address came through, he understood what had happened that night. After they had parted ways following the Riding Duel, Rin Seiya had not gone back to the dormitory. She had ridden the new D-Wheel straight home, which meant she had noticed something was wrong with her body early and made a practical decision about where she would rather be sick.
She had managed one day of family care before her parents had been called in to work. Both of them, apparently required to put in overtime through Friday and into Saturday. Archaeological fieldwork schedules did not accommodate convenient timing.
So she was alone at home and Amano had a free evening.
He wondered briefly whether she had other female friends who might have been more appropriate for this. There were privacy considerations involved in visiting a sick girl in her home. Going into her bedroom as a male acquaintance carried a certain awkwardness. Then he thought about it practically and recognized that everyone else at Synchro Academy had mandatory evening study, and he and Rin Seiya were the only first and third years with the exemption. The scheduling had made the choice for him.
After school he stopped at the largest chain supermarket in the mid-district, a place called Value-G whose name suggested comprehensive inventory and a pricing model that rewarded volume shoppers. He pulled up the shopping list from their conversation.
Fever patches. Electrolyte water. Instant synthetic congee.
Her parents had apparently left the house without stocking anything. Busy was one thing, but forgetting to arrange food for a sick family member was a particular level of occupied.
Three flavors of Maris lollipops, five of each.
He recognized the brand. She was always eating those. Sick and still craving them. Understandable, actually. Illness made people want sweetness. He picked up fifteen lollipops without complaint.
Steam eye masks, two packs.
She slept with eye masks. Good for sleep quality. Reasonable.
He read the next item.
He put his phone in his pocket.
He did not buy that one.
Rin Seiya lived in a high-end apartment block in the mid-district, the kind of building that put it in the upper residential tier without quite reaching the level of private villas with courtyards and pools that the genuinely wealthy maintained. It was significantly better than standard student housing and an entirely different category from the lower district.
She had sent a door code. He entered it, took the elevator to the sixth floor, and rang the bell. The lock disengaged automatically.
He changed into the guest slippers left by the entrance and moved carefully into the living room.
The apartment was a two-story loft unit. More space than the exterior had suggested.
At the foot of the stairs, holding the wall for support in a white sleeping set, was Rin Seiya.
"Senpai, what are you doing up?"
"I was worried you might not find my room, so I came down to meet you."
She managed a weak smile. It cost her something visible.
He had never seen her like this. The version of Rin Seiya he had grown accustomed to was energetic and precise and present in every room she walked into. This version had flushed cheeks and disheveled white hair and an unfocused quality to her gaze that made her movements seem slightly disconnected from her intentions.
There was something different about it. A fragility that the usual Rin Seiya never allowed to show. The kind of thing that made a person want to do something about it.
The brief trip downstairs had already used up most of what she had left. Her breathing had gone uneven.
He guided her firmly to the living room sofa and sat her down. Then he went to the bag and started unpacking the congee.
"You haven't eaten, right? I'll get the congee started."
She leaned over and pulled the shopping bag toward herself, rifling through it with the focus of someone checking for a specific item.
"You got them, right? I cannot function without those."
"The Maris ones. Got plenty. But if your throat is sore you probably shouldn't have too much sugar."
She was not listening. She had already located the strawberry milk lollipop, unwrapped it, and put it in her mouth with the relieved expression of a person reuniting with something they had been separated from too long. Three days of abstinence finally resolved.
She continued searching the bag. After checking it twice, she looked up.
"Kouhai. You forgot something."
"I didn't buy the weird item."
"It's not weird." She moved the lollipop to the corner of her mouth. "I was just being prepared."
She could not explain to herself why she had included it on the list. The most she could say was that something about the past two days had felt unusual, and the feeling had started the night of the Riding Duel, and she had been operating on instinct since then without fully understanding where the instinct was coming from.
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love sickness? op reference
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