Yugioh [393-395] (Patreon)

Chapter 393: Undead?

Watching the last Doma Swordsman’s near-hysterical state, Mokuba couldn’t help but be a little absent-minded.

He thought back to the past, to Alister, one of the three swordsmen last time. He had also been this angry, and accused them in much the same way.

“What exactly happened to this person...” Mokuba murmured to himself.

Of course, he knew that no matter what, his brother would never ask, nor would he care. Or rather, maybe it’s not that he doesn’t care—he just never shows it, nor would he ever stop because of it.

Because that’s Seto Kaiba: someone who always moves forward, never stopping for any reason.

He had made this decision when he first set foot on this path—when he beat Gozaburo in chess at the orphanage and clawed his way to the top of KaibaCorp and even the world all on his own.

There had been sacrifices along the way, and certainly some underhanded methods. But he accepted that long ago, so no matter who blocked his path or for what reason, even if something stirred in his heart, he’d never show it, and certainly wouldn’t halt his steps.

“I set two cards face-down. Turn end.” Kaiba said coolly.

“My turn. Draw!” Loren declared. “I activate the Spell Card ‘Spell Books from the Pot’! Both players draw three cards from their decks.” (Manga card)

Loren drew, and as he looked at one of the cards, his hand noticeably paused and his expression turned blank.

But it was only for a moment.

He added the card to his hand.

“With your Ultimate Dragon bounced back to the deck, your field is empty, Kaiba! It’s over!” Loren raised a card high. “First, I activate the Spell ‘Foolish Burial’ to send a monster from my deck to the graveyard.

I send the Machine-type ‘Barrel Dragon’ to the grave.”

Loren revealed the Machine-type card from his deck and sent it to the grave.

“Next, I activate the Spell ‘Double Evolution Pill’!

By banishing a Machine-type and a Dinosaur-type monster from my hand or graveyard, I can Special Summon a LIGHT-attribute Dinosaur-type monster from my hand or deck!” (Anime effect)

With a flash of golden light, two cards left his graveyard.

“I banish the Machine-type ‘Barrel Dragon’ I just sent, and the Dinosaur-type ‘Megalosmasher X’ for the ultimate evolution!

After millions of years of evolution, the strongest creature on earth and the power of industry combine to create—

—Cyber Dinosaur!!”

(The real-life version of this card was later made Machine-type with changed effects, but in the original, it was a Dinosaur-type.)

[Cyber Dinosaur, ATK 2500]

“It gains the effect of the Seal of Orichalcos, boosting its ATK!”

[Cyber Dinosaur, ATK 2500 → ATK 3000]

“This is the turn to settle our fate—all our grudges end now!” Loren stepped forward. “Cyber Dinosaur, direct attack!”

“Activate face-down.” Kaiba remained unmoved by his roar. “Trap Card, ‘Necro Fusion’!

Banish Fusion Materials from the graveyard face-down, and Fusion Summon a monster!”

“What!?” Loren was shocked. “Fusion from the graveyard, with a trap?”

“From my graveyard, I fuse three ‘Blue-Eyes White Dragons’!”

Kaiba raised his arm high, and the three Blue-Eyes appeared once again, drawn into the fusion vortex and becoming one.

“The ultimate dragon of light, my most powerful servant, now descends—

—Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon!!!”

“Roaaaar—”

The roar shook the sky, and the fused dragon landed fiercely, an insurmountable barrier before Kaiba!

[Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, ATK 4500]

Another Ultimate Dragon.

Loren’s eyes were turning red.

The Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon—a symbol of power in the Duel Monsters world. Facing it was like facing Seto Kaiba himself.

Yes, it was the symbol of his hatred, the obstacle he had to overcome.

His gaze fell to his own hand.

The final monster card he had left.

That night from his memory, the card the man gave him before collapsing.

The card that had protected him countless times during his darkest moments.

“I activate the Quick-Play Spell ‘Quick Summon’,” Loren said. “Normal Summon a monster from my hand.” (Anime card)

He revealed the card in his hand.

“By this effect, I Normal Summon—

Cameraclops.”

[Cameraclops, ATK 1400]

The art style of this monster was completely different from his previous ones. The spectators were all stunned.

Especially Jaden, who had a special gift, was particularly surprised.

“Kuri kuri!” Winged Kuriboh appeared.

“Partner,” Jaden exchanged a look with it and nodded. “Yeah, I noticed too. Does this card have a special spirit?”

Kaiba frowned slightly: “That monster...”

“This is the card most suited for my revenge on you, Seto Kaiba.”

Loren said, glancing at the just-summoned monster with a complicated expression.

“He was killed by all of you. He is the embodiment of my father.”

“What!?” Mokuba was dumbfounded.

As far as he knew, only the legendary duelist Mako Tsunami from the first Duelist Kingdom had something similar.

Mako’s father was a fisherman who died in a shipwreck and never returned. After that, Mako gained the spirit of the ‘Legendary Fisherman’ and regarded the card as his father’s incarnation.

“My father was a journalist—a very good one,” Loren said. “But he was killed, along with everyone in my hometown, because he investigated things he shouldn’t have, uncovered secrets of powerful people, and was silenced.”

Kaiba frowned: “You’re saying I did it?”

“I never expected you to admit it at this point. But it doesn’t matter. I only need revenge—not justice, not evidence.”

Loren shouted.

“I said it. This turn, fate ends here, and this is the most fitting card for the end.

Cameraclops, attack ‘Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon’!”

“Attack with a monster with only 1400 ATK!?”

Mokuba was shocked.

“Cameraclops’s effect!” Loren called. “When this card attacks, if the target’s DEF is higher than its ATK, no damage is calculated—the opponent’s monster is destroyed directly!”

“Ah, Ultimate Dragon’s DEF is higher than the photographer’s ATK!” Mokuba exclaimed.

If the Ultimate Dragon’s defense is broken here...

Kaiba gently closed his eyes.

“Fate, huh. I don’t know what happened or what grudge you have with me.” Kaiba said coldly, “But if I have a fate, it’s to keep moving forward, until I reach the other side where he stands.”

He raised his hand.

“Activate Trap: ‘The Ultimate Creature of Destruction!’

Select one ‘Blue-Eyes’ monster you control; until the end of the turn, it is unaffected by any effects except its own!”

Loren: “!!!”

Unaffected by any effect...

“You can’t stop the attack command now,” Kaiba said coldly. “Since you dared to challenge absolute power, I’m sure you were prepared for this.

So as you wish! Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, strike back! Crush this vengeful ghost and his undead with him!”

The Ultimate Dragon’s three mouths opened, brewing a destructive white light.

Loren looked up blankly at the oncoming endless white light.

Still can’t do it...

Kaiba was right.

With only anger and obsession, without the power to see it through, it’s all empty talk.

So even my fury was only this much, after all.

In that moment, he seemed to see the Cameraclops turn and nod at him.

As if to say: That’s enough.

The monster spread its arms, blocking Loren with its body.

Until the endless white light swallowed them both.

[Loren, LP 1900 → LP 0]

Chapter 394: The Usual Routine, but Effective

Loren tilted his head up, his expression lost. When the white light blasted through him, at first it hurt so much he could barely stand.

But soon, he couldn’t even feel pain anymore.

It was like as his life force faded, even his senses left him. His body felt like a puppet with all its strings cut by that last attack—he fell backward, as if plunging into endless void, like Lucifer’s nine days and nights of descent...

Then he landed in an embrace.

Loren strained to look up. It was his most special card—the Cameraclops.

The spirit that was like his father’s incarnation, that had always protected him.

“Dad...” Loren said softly.

The photographer nodded at him.

The duel had only just ended, and as everyone’s attention was still on the field, Kira suddenly spoke to the always-silent Arbiter across from him: “Now you can rest easy, right?”

The Arbiter, who had watched the field with an unreadable expression, glanced at him.

“Oh?” he said calmly. “My last swordsman lost—why should I be at ease?”

“That was your plan, wasn’t it?” Kira smiled. “Whether it was your swordsman or the enemy, whoever lost, the soul is still yours.

After all, Doma’s three swordsmen are just high-quality duelist souls you were going to consume sooner or later.”

Kira paused, eyes narrowing.

“And besides, as the real killer of his father and his people, isn’t it normal to feel relieved?”

Everyone was shocked at these words. Even Kaiba’s always-calm expression shifted as he frowned and looked over.

But no one was as stunned as Loren himself.

He had already closed his eyes in the photographer’s embrace, his consciousness nearly gone. But hearing this, his eyes snapped open and, by sheer will, he struggled to stand.

Bathed in shrinking green light, he stared wide-eyed at the Arbiter.

“You... what did you say?”

But the Arbiter didn’t look at him, only at Kira with interest.

“How did you know?”

That was as good as admitting it.

But with his status, and at this point, there was no reason to deny it.

“Who knows?” Kira replied, saying nothing more.

He actually didn’t know—he just guessed.

The three swordsmen, and Shell he’d encountered before, all had the same background: a tragic past, a desire for revenge, a reason to serve Doma. But in the end, everyone found the one who created their tragedy wasn’t some outsider, but the very one they served.

It’s a classic trope—nothing new.

Maybe the Orichalcos just lacks creativity, or believes that tropes work because they’re effective. Why bother making it new? As long as it works.

So Kira’s random guess turned out to be right.

“It... was all you!?”

Loren stared in disbelief at the Arbiter.

“Yeah.”

The Arbiter nodded, admitting it openly.

“To be a Doma Swordsman, you need a vast darkness within and the drive to control it,” he said calmly. “Waiting for such darkness to form naturally is too slow and inefficient.

Instead, I hand-pick the most promising seeds, and train them myself.”

“That—was you too?”

“Yeah,” the Arbiter said casually. “It was I who spread the virus in your hometown, destroyed that place.

I infected your father, and made sure he died in front of you.”

“You... you...”

Whether from rage or fading life force, Loren could barely speak.

Frankly, the fact he could still stand and question was a miracle. Normally, after losing the duel, the Seal of Orichalcos would have already drained his soul. If he hadn’t been jolted by Kira’s words, his soul would have been taken by now.

He was resisting the barrier’s power through sheer obsession, anger, and will.

“Oh, by the way. The rumors of ‘KaibaCorp conducting secret inhumane experiments’ and ‘KaibaCorp developing bioweapons’—those were spread by me, too.”

The Arbiter chuckled.

“I arranged for informants to leak clues to your father, kept baiting him along.

He thought he was digging for justice, but he was just following the breadcrumbs I left, like a puppet.

Even when he finally uncovered a big secret and was killed for it, he was only acting out a script already written for him.”

The Arbiter spoke with indifference, as if narrating something trivial.

Even Mokuba was angry: “Saying we researched bioweapons…”

Ever since Gozaburo died, KaibaCorp had stopped all weapons development to focus on new card printing technologies, much less bioweapons.

But Kira thought, maybe it’s not entirely wrong.

If a powerful enough dark duelist could manifest the power of a virus deck, maybe it could be used as a bioweapon.

After all, card powers are limitless—anything could be sealed in a card. So technically, you could say KaibaCorp made whatever you want...

“AAAAAAHHH!”

Loren was furious. Veins bulged on his forehead as he tried to charge at the Arbiter. The Cameraclops tried to stop him, but Loren’s rage spread, turning into green light that even corrupted the monster—its eyes reflected the Orichalcos’s green glow, like fury bursting out from within.

“Kill you! Kill you—!”

He tried to punch, but was blocked by the green barrier he himself had triggered, pounding on it helplessly. The barrier had shrunk to his face, the suction from above growing stronger.

“Good, very good. The angrier you are, the more your darkness grows.”

The Arbiter nodded with satisfaction.

“Become my sacrifice—disappear forever into darkness.”

Loren finally exhausted the last of his strength.

An angry soul was drawn from his body, up the green light, vanishing without a trace.

Chapter 395: As a Champion

Cough, cough, cough—

On the Duel Ship, in the competitors’ lounge, Hibiki Koyo clutched the wall, coughing hard.

He took out a tissue, wiped his mouth, and got up to leave. Passing a full-length mirror in the room, he paused and looked at his reflection.

He saw a man there.

A thin, frail man who looked like a gust of wind could blow him away. His pale face was like snow that had never seen sunlight, with no color at all, and faint shadows under his eyes.

He looked less like a duelist, more like a patient.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“Honestly, this is pathetic.” He laughed at himself. “In front of my most important kouhai, I need to show what a duelist looks like…”

He adjusted himself, took a deep breath, and put his glasses back on.

But when he turned, he found his sister, Hibiki Midori, was already standing at the door, blocking the only exit.

“Sis,” Koyo said softly.

A few seconds of silence.

“So you never really recovered, did you?” Midori said. “Ever since that duel...”

Koyo thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Yeah.”

That was last year.

It was the night he won the world championship in America—a mysterious duelist appeared before him.

“Congratulations, World Champion Koyo.”

The man said, then gave a strange smile.

Then he raised his duel disk and inserted a deck.

“Will you accept my challenge?”

The duel was sudden. But Koyo was a true card fanatic like Jaden, and still basking in the joy of victory. He didn’t think much of it.

He felt that as champion, it was his duty to accept challenges.

So he did.

And that was the start of a nightmare.

The man’s dueling was beyond imagination—not just strong, but bizarre.

That was Koyo’s first encounter with the shadow duel. Every time he took damage, every time he lost life points, he felt his real life force drain away, as if a black hole was sucking out his soul.

Then he lost.

Or rather, he should have lost.

In the final turn, all his resources were gone, his life points a dying ember, his consciousness fading.

He couldn’t see his opponent, only heard the man’s sinister laugh: “As expected of a world champion—much stronger than most duelists today.

So, I’ll gladly take your soul and your Terra.”

But at that moment, two beams of golden light shot in, the roar of a motorcycle approaching.

The man’s face changed.

“Damn, you even chased me here… Persistent bastard. Whatever—my power hasn’t recovered enough, it’s not the time.”

He packed up his duel disk, gave Koyo a cold look.

He sneered.

“You got to keep your life, champion,” the man said coldly. “But don’t celebrate too soon. You’ve already lost to me—this life is just on loan, but it’s mine.

From now on, every time you duel, your life will drain away with your deck—your very soul. It’s a bit abstract, but you’ll understand soon enough.”

His face was shrouded in shadow.

“You’ll understand soon.”

Koyo lost consciousness, collapsing.

As his awareness faded, he heard the motorcycle stop nearby, and someone running over.

“Hey! You over there, are you okay?”

“…”

“So in the end, you lied to me, didn’t you?”

Midori looked at him.

“Saying you’d recovered, that you could return to the dueling stage…”

“Sorry, sis,” Koyo said.

“But why? You’re still like this…”

Midori approached.

“And now there’s only one quarter-final match left—just you and that weird man.

You must realize, this opponent…”

“Maybe he’s like the one who beat me in America,” Koyo nodded. “Another who holds the legendary dark power.”

“You know, then… But two people collapsed in the last duel.

With your current body, even a regular duel is a struggle. Against someone like that, you might not make it to the end…”

“I know.”

Koyo nodded.

“Then why—!?”

Midori grabbed his shoulders, desperate.

“Just listen for once, Koyo. Forfeit. There’s still time, don’t duel him.”

But Koyo looked up and smiled gently.

“I entered this tournament ready for anything, sis. So, whether it’s a dark duel or not… it doesn’t matter.”

“Koyo!”

“I’m a duelist, sis.” Koyo shook his head. “Especially in front of Jaden, I want to show the spirit of a duelist… not a coward.”

Midori: “…”

She lowered her head, silent.

“Do you… really have to go?”

“Yes.”

Koyo smiled, patting her shoulder.

“And don’t worry, sis. I’m really strong.” He said with confidence.

Midori took a deep breath.

“I understand. But just this once—never again. And…”

She stepped aside, clearing the way.

“…Win.”

Koyo walked out, down the corridor to the arena, leaving her with a thumbs-up.

“Of course.”

“…”

“All right, we’ve finally reached the last match of the quarterfinals!”

Referee Roland stood in the center, and the two duelists—Koyo and the man claiming to be the Orichalcos’s avatar, the Arbiter—stood on opposite sides.

Koyo eyed his opponent warily; the man merely stood with his hands behind his back, eyes closed, as if he didn’t take him seriously at all.

Koyo thought of the previous round, of what happened before Loren fell.

He didn’t know the man’s background, but there was no doubt: this opponent was terrifying, in and out of a duel.

But no matter what kind of opponent, he never backed down.

“World Champion, the strongest HERO duelist—Koyo Hibiki.”

The Arbiter looked at him meaningfully.

“Let me see what you can do.”