At the Fusion Army training bases, an enormous number of residual problems remained.
Beyond some Fusion Army weapons and equipment, there were also traps and such things.
During the period after the Fusion Army was defeated and reorganized, KaibaCorp had been pursuing victory. Crushing the Fusion Army's positions, they'd liberated these dimensions one by one.
These behind-the-scenes matters were things Hikaru didn't have time to do. They were also the main work of KaibaCorp's "Dimension Exploration Squad" during this period.
But even the professional KaibaCorp troops still had some problems they couldn't resolve.
One was the belonging problems of some spirits.
Within the Fusion Army camp, actually some spirits were in a "who am I, where am I" state of confusion. They'd been captured by the Fusion Army and then unauthorized modified and brainwashed. To help these spirits find their homes or companions was undoubtedly very difficult.
Even KaibaCorp could only slowly, spending enormous time, compare one by one, think of methods one by one, make connections one by one.
This was the "war," the "Fusion Army's" unwritable-in-full crimes. It was also the errors the Fusion Army's defeated needed infinite time to make up for.
Beyond this, there was actually a special situation.
"Aooh!"
"Aaaaah!"
Ding.
Bang bang bang!
Hikaru followed KaibaCorp people to a special containment chamber.
The reason it was called a containment chamber was that this was an enormous transparent room. Through the tempered glass, one could see the interior.
Inside the room was a human, clothes torn like animal hide, wildly smashing the surrounding objects.
Not just clothes. Including the table, bed, everything in the room had been shattered into pieces.
"Aooooohh!"
Hikaru furrowed his brow.
"He is..." Hikaru had a vague impression of this person.
"Battle Beast, also called BB," a staff member said to Hikaru. "He was Sanders's student, the Fusion Army 'Gladiator' unit instructor. Sanders's greatest masterpiece, or so that scumbag called him."
"BB..." Hikaru remembered.
In the original work, there was indeed such a person.
"So this is?"
"This guy is a pitiful kid." Another staff member sighed helplessly. "He was a student at Duel Academy's Western branch. Because of his extremely high compatibility with Gladiator Beast cards, he was scouted by Sanders and sent to the Fusion Army headquarters base dimension for cultivation.
That lunatic, to cultivate strong duelists, cultivated Duel Academy students through abuse. He made them obey orders and refined their dueling power and level."
Hikaru's brow furrowed tightly upon hearing this.
"And the result now is like this."
Several KaibaCorp staff explained to Hikaru.
"He's been too severely brainwashed and abused. We tried to isolate him, then let him undergo simple recovery, but he seems completely unable to adapt to normal student life." A female staff member said to Hikaru. "He wants to fight, wants to tear people apart, wants to turn everyone he sees into cards."
She casually pointed at the Duel Disk and Deck outside the room: "No choice, we can only keep him isolated. But there's been no improvement so far."
"Originally we would return the Deck to him, but the moment he gets the Deck he wants to break out of containment. Truly no way."
Terrible.
Hikaru sighed.
Truly damnable.
Leo Akaba.
Oh, he'd already died once.
Hikaru couldn't help taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling.
If he'd known back then, he wouldn't have let Yuri crush Leo Akaba's data. This way he could have refreshed Leo Akaba every couple of days.
Hikaru then asked: "Are there similar situations elsewhere?"
"Ah... yes, there are."
The staff member spoke while feeling emotional.
The first thing he thought of wasn't danger but whether there were other victims. Truly as expected of Hikaru.
In Hikaru's memory, this person was ultimately solved by Yuya Sakaki through Entertainment Duels.
But that brainwashing-like Entertainment Dueling was clearly something Hikaru couldn't do. The Yuya Sakaki of this world he knew clearly couldn't do it either.
"So your thinking is to have me duel him?" Hikaru asked curiously. "In this kind of situation, unless his heart is shaken, there's probably no way to calm him down in a short time. I could indeed try, though."
Hikaru was certainly willing to duel BB. He was not only an unfortunate victim, but also a Gladiator Beast user. Theoretically, he seemed to be the world's strongest Gladiator Beast adapter.
However, when Hikaru had just approached the glass wall, BB suddenly seemed to sense something. He instinctively backed away, using both hands and feet, like a beast, arching his back and emitting low growling sounds from his mouth, seemingly trying to intimidate Hikaru.
"Uh?"
"Um..."
A group of KaibaCorp staff exchanged glances with each other, seeing each other's helplessness: "It seems, Hikaru is a bit too strong."
Too strong doesn't help.
"BB has an ability to seek benefit and avoid harm. Perhaps because Sanders threw him into the jungle to live, he's become very sensitive to everything." A male staff member explained. "He'd use terrain and stealth tactics in the jungle to ambush intruding duelists, attacking indiscriminately whether they were friend or foe."
/
"In the Fusion Army's original training camp, he would also attack students who wandered in, then turn them into cards."
"This seems to have been Sanders's cultivation of him. That old bastard thought a strong Gladiator Beast unit only needed to kill people, no other emotions needed." Someone said with indignation. "That damned thing was still spouting nonsense when the President defeated him..."
The President personally acted?
Hikaru was slightly surprised.
Noticing Hikaru's surprise, the KaibaCorp staff sheepishly scratched their heads and explained: "Actually, Sanders was easy enough to handle, but BB, using duels and terrain, was very tricky. Nearly all the professional duelists our company works with lost. And some cooperating duelists were spread too thin. The President happened to come inspect the situation, so he just got involved."
"The situation then and the current one are similar." The female staff member looked at Hikaru with admiration. "When Master President appeared, BB retreated in fear. Even with terrain advantage, he didn't challenge Master President."
"His crisis awareness as a duelist has indeed been stimulated to the extreme." Hikaru nodded in acknowledgment.
He didn't know how big a gap remained between himself and Seto Kaiba, but he knew the "energy" on him was probably no less than Seto Kaiba's.
"Truly troublesome..." A staff member rubbed his brow. "Could it be, we can only have BB slowly calm down in this sealed environment?"
How long would that take, and how much energy would it cost?
KaibaCorp naturally didn't fear lacking money, but BB's life, how much would be wasted?
His originally vigorous youth, his originally normal student life, all destroyed!
At this thought, the KaibaCorp staff couldn't help saying in unison: "How infuriating, Leo Akaba..."
Hm.
Hikaru raised his brow. Clearly, they too wanted to kill Leo Akaba once.
Not to mention, Hikaru suddenly felt considerably lighter.
Not because of the matter before him, but because Hikaru had genuinely killed Leo Akaba.
Fortunately, Hikaru had other methods.
"Andal, do you hear me?" Hikaru took out his Deck and asked into it.
After a moment, Andal's figure slowly manifested beside him. Several KaibaCorp staff, seeing this, immediately backed away.
They'd seen this kind of scene many times.
In no time, they saw a large-framed, black giant bear with an enormous scar over its eye, looking incredibly fierce.
Gladiator Beast Andal!
So one of Hikaru's companions was a Gladiator Beast spirit!
Looks so ferocious.
Just as they were thinking this, after Andal finished roaring, he immediately lowered his head, scratched his bear face with his right paw, and adorably called out to the staff nearby: "Hello, everyone~"
The group looked at each other.
Andal was actually easygoing, the more peaceful kind of spirit, different from other kin and same-type spirits in his tribe. The reason he showed such ferocity was completely because the earlier Fusion Army researchers had needed spirits to appear more ferocious and mighty, so they'd modified his very disposition.
"Ma, master, shall I go?" Andal was slightly nervous.
Among the spirits in Hikaru's faction, the only one who personally went to duel was Her Excellency Tierra. He was a bit hesitant.
"You decide." Hikaru said to him.
Me decide?
The Gladiator Beast looked up at BB in the room. BB also stared at Andal in shock. The two looked at each other for a long time. BB actually stopped being afraid and stopped displaying wild aggression.
And Andal, in BB's eyes, saw something familiar.
Familiar madness, familiar... fear.
The so-called "madness" was actually fear.
Fear of oneself, fear of the future, fear of everything around.
Andal was like this. BB was like this too.
Only...
Andal had luckily met his master and Flame Swordsman and the others in the first duel he was dispatched to, so he was luckily liberated.
While BB had been madly trained in a dark, sunless mad arena.
His clear gaze gradually grew firm.
"I, I'll go up!" Andal shouted.
"Alright, go for it. Go up there and give him two slaps!" Tierra suddenly appeared, looking quite excited.
Maybe she wanted to give pointers from the sidelines later.
Hikaru looked at the staff and asked them to help return the Duel Disk to BB. Several staff had no objection and quickly complied.
The duelist himself not dueling, and instead the duelist's companion spirit dueling, was rare but not impossible. Besides, this Gladiator Beast Andal was after all a Gladiator Beast spirit, and had karmic connection with BB, so he should work.
At the very end...
Even if the duel was lost, wasn't Hikaru still here? No need to fear.
Actually, Andal was operating under this same thinking.
At worst, his master would clean up.
"Alright, Andal, this place is left to you. Hikaru, since we still have time, let's go to Branded." Just as Andal was thinking it wasn't a big deal, Tierra suddenly spoke.
Wha, what!?
Andal was startled.
"Eh!?" He cried out.
"Eh, Hikaru, you're not staying!"
Hikaru directly laughed: "Of course. What Tierra said is what I'll do."
"This..." Andal was instantly nervous. Sweat seemed to run down from his head.
Tierra flicked her hand and said: "Andal, if you can't even manage this level, if you can't bring out your courage even at this time, forget about helping Hikaru. Peacefully lying flat isn't so bad either."
Uh...
"Andal, I trust you." On the other side, Hikaru directly stuck up his thumb, sunny and cheerful. "You absolutely won't lose! Bring out your courage!"
Uh...
Andal really felt cold sweat this time.
He believed Tierra was capable of tossing him onto a wasteland planet to just live off scraps. He also believed what Hikaru said was absolutely sincere.
But watching the two of them slowly walk away, Andal fiercely slapped his own face.
He remembered scenes of Hikaru fighting desperately in the Branded Dimension, thought of the Three Knights taking shifts, thought of Black Flame's exhausted appearance in the Branded Dimension. He immediately gathered his spirits.
Then he thought of those later spirits' curious appearances, worried appearances, and their personal abilities helping the Great Cosmos Workshop in various ways.
He had nothing. What he had was only combat power!
He knew his master could absolutely accept spirits in his camp who just lived off scraps. For instance, master fully supported Witchcrafter Tailor doing nothing but playing. Although that one would still help the technical spirits with support work, master would truly accept that.
But he couldn't accept himself, a super "founding elder," being unable to help master at all.
He'd started to train hard again, started to challenge the Gladiator Beast trials, precisely to help master, precisely to become "Emperor."
Now, an opportunity most suited to him was placed before him. A person with the same tragic fate as him was also waiting for a new life.
He... couldn't back down!
"Coming, coming up! Roar!" He roared again. The badge on his left paw, issued by the Gladiator Beast dimension's legion commander, began to disassemble and transform into a Duel Disk, inheriting his power.
At this time, Hikaru and Tierra actually hadn't walked far. The two poked their heads back, under the sweating expressions of other staff, and kept nodding.
"Not bad, this kid." Tierra commented. "Just speaking of drive, he's actually much stronger than Flame Swordsman or Black Flame."
"Being able to encounter this kind of opponent is also lucky. Although the matter itself is completely constituted of misfortune." Hikaru also said.
Andal being able to encounter this kind of opponent was truly lucky. If he could transform past terrible experiences into motivation for his growth, into an opportunity for BB to sober up, that would be quite good.
Hikaru certainly believed Andal could do it, but how could he really abandon a friend? So he only had Tierra isolate the two of them so Andal couldn't detect them, then watched from the side.
He was anticipating, anticipating Andal taking a brand-new step.
And somewhere in the Synchro Dimension, someone else was also "anticipating."
Clap clap clap.
At Team Despair's base, the room was rather dark. A boy sat before an enormous TV screen, looking expectantly at what was on the screen. A lion's furious roar rang out, and a cat and mouse appeared on screen.
"Ohh, so interesting! Hahaha, more interesting than our dimension's cartoons!"
A masked boy clapped hahaha, anticipating each frame.
At this moment, a pale-faced youth walked down from upstairs and saw the boy watching TV.
His complexion was terrible, his hair a mess. On his face was also a savage scar like Andal's.
"Father..."
"Oh, IV, come look, it's really very interesting." The boy didn't care about the youth's expression and state, laughing hahaha.
"Father, Kite has obtained the qualification." Quattro continued. "Shouldn't you take a break first, put it down..."
"Oho, he really did it! Haha, as expected of Faker's son." He lightly clapped, then continued.
"In other words, he'll come knocking soon, huh. Heheheh, the long-awaited duel."
"Hart Tenjo versus Kite Tenjo."
"Truly... a joy like despair itself!"
The eyes beneath his mask emitted crimson light, exuding ill omen everywhere. Beside him, Quattro painfully coughed, watching his father's appearance and no longer blocking or trying to advise him.
He fiercely clenched his fist, the whole fist creaking.
He knew.
His father had been completely and utterly controlled by that damned bastard!
E-Ra!