Chapter 280: Kaiser Ryo, Fully Restored
Kaiser Ryo had known. His heart could no longer bear high-intensity dueling.
The doctors had issued a final directive: no more duels. Even a single duel could be the last cut that ended his life. And if he stopped dueling entirely, he had less than three years left, most of it in a wheelchair.
He was Kaiser Ryo. The one and only Kaiser. He could not accept an ending like that.
Better to burn out in a duel than fade away in a bed.
He had set out for the alternate world with something close to resignation, determined to find, before the end, one opponent worthy of wagering his dignity on.
And then he had seen: the Elemental HERO light that broke through the Supreme King's darkness. The Gem Dragon holding down seven Sacred Beasts with the combined souls of Normal Monsters. The Exodia that surpassed the gods themselves, a five-monster Tribute Summon reversing an unwinnable situation.
His last opponent had to be that man. There was no other choice.
A duelist acknowledged by his closest friend Fubuki. A duelist who had once defeated his own signature Electronic Cascade at the Academy Festival.
This time, Kaiser would come with an evolved version of his face-side and back-side Cyber strategy and bring this fated duel to its conclusion.
The alternate world journey had been far harder than he expected.
He had not encountered any opponent of genuine strength. But the Supreme King's army had come at him in waves, and those alternate-world duels carried stakes close to a Dark Game. Each one consumed more of what little remained of his life's flame.
When Super Polymerization's overwhelming force swept him up, his body had already reached what it could absorb.
When he touched down again, his vision was chaos. Even the entirely unfamiliar city around him appeared only as blurred outlines and residual shapes.
He ignored the girl's voice calling from behind him. On his last legs, holding himself together through willpower alone, Kaiser walked into the city's dark alleyways alone: a lone wolf searching for its own gravestone.
Ironic. He had chased victory his entire life. And this was how it ended, with barely a sound.
In the last moment before he lost consciousness, what swam into his blurring vision was a girl with a flower-print umbrella, crouched down and examining him with calm, measured eyes.
A voice from somewhere behind her: "Young mistress, this person has no visible injuries but looks to be in considerable pain."
"Is he ill?" the girl asked, cautiously.
"If he's ill, why is he collapsing in an alleyway instead of going to a medical center? This is suspicious."
"Perhaps he has his reasons. But since we've encountered him, it must be fate. Take him with us."
Back to the present:
Saotome Rei had settled into the villa faster than Amano had anticipated. One day in and she had already made herself at home.
"Rub my legs, Rei."
"Sure thing, Shio-oneechan!"
Shio, experiencing the role of older sister for the first time in her life, had moved well past her initial resistance to Saotome Rei. She was visibly enjoying it.
Amano could see exactly what Saotome Rei was doing. Completely devoted and attentive toward Shio, with the transparent strategy of someone cultivating a good relationship with their future sister-in-law.
Toward Finesse, by contrast, Rei maintained a steady wariness, despite it being Finesse who had personally ensured she had a place to stay. The romantic instincts of a girl deep in the throes of love were apparently quite perceptive.
Finesse, who was usually immediately beloved by children, was encountering her first setback with this one. She remained, nonetheless, the most actively concerned with Rei's practical wellbeing.
"Amano, since you're Rei's guardian now, what's the plan going forward? She'll need to enroll at a duel academy eventually, won't she? If you need to arrange a transfer I can handle that, the same way we did for Yui."
"Duel academy..." Amano turned the question over.
Rei's arrival had been caused by the historical alteration he had made, deflecting Super Polymerization's dimensional bridge toward Eden. How long she would remain in Eden: he genuinely didn't know.
But one thing was certain: Rei's situation was different from Yui's. Yui was Eden-born. Even if she came to the mid-level Academy City, she had a home in District 32 to return to on holidays.
Rei's parents, family, and friends were all in a world three thousand years in the past.
For now, the novelty and the particular momentum that came from being a romance-brain in active pursuit might keep her from thinking too hard about any of that. But given enough time, Saotome Rei would eventually have to reckon with the fact that she did not belong here.
Amano was not in a position to take permanent responsibility for the shape of her future life, even as a temporary guardian. He was eighteen years old.
Whatever the system's intention was in sending him Lost Duelists to shelter.
A temporary Academy enrollment while searching for a way to send her home was not unreasonable. All the Lost Duelists who had arrived were, if the GX cast was any indication, exceptionally capable duelists in their own right.
But today was Friday. He would observe through the weekend first.
And then there was the new system feature the prompt had mentioned yesterday.
[First shelter: 5 Spacetime Points awarded]
[Spacetime Points Shop will unlock in 24 hours]
[Time remaining: 2 minutes, 23 seconds]
He watched Shio and Rei's comfortable dynamic on the sofa. Two minutes and twenty-three seconds later, the new shop interface opened.
The visuals that greeted him were a level above anything else the system had shown him: elaborate, polished, with the kind of high-end aesthetic that felt like its own category.
[SPACETIME POINTS SHOP] [Available Points: 5]
[GX ERA SECTION]
[Character Card Pack - Cost: 1 Point]
[Available characters: Jaden Yuki, Aster Phoenix, Chazz Princeton, Johan Anderson, Alexis Rhodes]
[Spacetime Return Ticket - Cost: 10 Points]
[Returns a Lost Duelist to their original timeline. Corresponding rewards issued based on the type of Lost Duelist returned.]
[Spacetime Invitation Ticket - Cost: 20 Points]
[Brings a duelist from the corresponding era to this timeline for 24 hours. They return to their original timeline after 24 hours.]
"System: you are literally a time machine. You're not even pretending anymore."
The Character Card Packs were a classic gacha option. But the real substance here was the two Spacetime Tickets.
Return Ticket and Invitation Ticket: one sending, one summoning. A clearly bidirectional gateway.
If he could get a Return Ticket, he could send Saotome Rei home. As he had told her himself: she was not from this world. Her family was waiting for her three thousand years in the past. The butterfly effect had landed her here, which made it his responsibility to correct. He would send her back.
The problem: 10 points, and he currently had 5 after the first-shelter bonus.
There had to be other ways to earn Spacetime Points beyond sheltering Lost Duelists. If the only method was sheltering people, the math did not work out: shelter two, earn 10, but sending one home cost 10. You would accumulate stranded GX characters indefinitely with no path to clearing them out.
His system had no intelligent interface to query, unlike the sophisticated AI companions some other transmigrators apparently got. He could only read what was displayed.
In the meantime: the card packs were there.
Looking at the five character pack options with their illustrated cover art, Amano selected Jaden Yuki without hesitation. Of the five, Jaden's cards had the highest synergy with his own deck by a significant margin.
[Pack opened: Jaden Yuki]
The opening animation was exquisite: individual cards sliding out, a seal being broken, the kind of visual feedback that made the action feel meaningful.
One card came out.
A single card. From an entire pack.
This was either the highest-rarity individual pull format he had ever encountered, or the system had very different ideas about pack contents.
The card, however, was something he had never seen in any physical card environment from his previous life.
[Fusion Genesis]
[Spell Card: Send the top 5 cards of your Deck to the GY. If all the Fusion Materials listed on a Fusion Monster's card are among those sent, you may Fusion Summon that Fusion Monster.]
Not a card from the anime. A card Jaden had used in the manga.
Even the Academy's point exchange shop did not carry this one. Whatever else could be said about the pack format, the contents were genuinely rare.
The secondary hope, that the pack might contain information about other ways to earn Spacetime Points, had not materialized. Pure single-card pull.
My apologies, Rei. If it ends up being one point short of sending you home, I'll just have to look after you for a little longer.
Saotome Rei's room had been arranged next to Shio's for now. The villa had plenty of spare rooms; this arrangement was purely because the two of them were close in age and had clicked immediately.
Back in his own room on the third floor, Amano had developed a new habit: check every corner of the room before locking the door for the night.
Practical advice for any young man living away from home. The villa now contained Finesse, Kikawayu, and Saotome Rei as three independent sources of potential 3 AM door-knocking. Diligence was warranted.
Clear. Lock.
The Lost Duelists Kaiser Ryo had arrived in Eden and immediately gone off on his own. That was its own ongoing problem.
His Eva Terminal chimed. Sakuya, calling on a Friday evening.
On weekends without classes to attend, she occasionally called around bedtime for exactly this kind of conversation: light, inconsequential, the verbal equivalent of two friends talking past midnight about nothing in particular. He never found it a bother.
"Good evening, Amano."
"Good evening, class rep."
The standard opening.
"How is your new sister settling in?"
"Better than I expected. I thought Shio would resist, but they're getting along well. Nothing to worry about."
"That's good. Shio is a lovely child." A brief pause. "My mother has been asking about Shio. Would you bring her to visit this weekend? You're welcome to come too, of course."
Yukihime-san. Amano ran the weekend schedule briefly. Nothing pressing.
"That works. Pick a time and we'll come. Shio will be happy."
He was also considering whether to bring Rei, given that she was nominally his sister too. Treating one new sister differently from the other in front of a thirteen-year-old would produce exactly the kind of emotional sensitivity that age tended to generate.
"By the way, Amano: if you're coming over the weekend, would you be interested in handling a small dueling matter? The compensation is negotiable."
"Even without compensation, if it's something you're asking me, I'm not going to refuse."
That was the polite version. In practice: please do not take me at my word and actually skip the compensation.
"A number of Nanki'in family dojos have been challenged recently. Whoever is doing it seems to be deliberately targeting the Nanki'in. They're very strong. The current dojo masters, all active professional duelists, have apparently not lasted a single turn."
The Nanki'in family's reach extended into every industry of note in the Tower. Professional dueling dojos were part of that network. The dojo system functioned as an extension of the professional duelist's league: dojo masters were active professionals, attendance could build league ranking points, and each dojo represented a particular deck style that drew practitioners of the same archetype together.
"If even professional dojo masters are being one-shotted, is this something I can realistically handle?"
Amano's frame of reference for professional-level strength was limited. His one professional duelist matchup had been Suzune Ruri, who had been playing an entertainment deck built around the little-sister aesthetic.
"Amano," Sakuya said, with a mild note of surprise, "you have an oddly poor sense of your own strength. You beat Kaiba Chiaki. That alone puts you above the majority of active professionals."
Kaiba Chiaki as a calibration benchmark for duelist power levels. Parallel to Blue-Eyes White Dragon as a calibration benchmark for ATK values: surpass 3000 and you are competitive, surpass Kaiba Chiaki and you are in the first tier.
"Also: even if you lose, the worst outcome is one more closed dojo. But if you win, your standing with my mother improves considerably. No downside worth worrying about."
"Did my class representative just do the math on this?"
The answer was clearly yes.
Since it was Sakuya asking, and since it amounted to playing one round of cards, Amano agreed.
"I'll give it a try then, young mistress."
"Thank you for the support, my husband. I'll send you the dojo's stored duel footage."
Eden's network data transfer was effectively instantaneous. Amano opened the clip Sakuya had sent.
What he saw: a dojo master who had evidently lost very badly, and a monster that had reached thirty thousand ATK within the span of a single turn.
[Iron Cage Dragon - Cyber Dark Nether Dragon] [ATK: 30000]
The footage was only a few frames of the challenger. But that black trench coat: unmistakable. The signature image of a man who had returned from the edge of the underworld and come back stronger than before.
"Kaiser Ryo!"
The Lost Duelist had already started cutting through Eden's dueling scene.