Chapter 147: Synchro vs. The Wicked God - Racing Toward a Ruinous Future
"The Ritual Summon completes. The Wicked Eraser descends!"
The god came through churning stormclouds. Three monster souls had been consumed to drag it into the world, and what emerged from the darkness was a colossal body too alien to name, its head a writhing horror that no sane mind could look upon for long.
At that same moment, network infrastructure across the mid-district collapsed in patches.
Even the Kaiba Corporation, operating at the cutting edge of Eden Tower technology, felt it: a flood of data originating from somewhere deep within the Eva Network, its source undetectable, washing over their systems without warning.
"What is that?"
Standing at the top of Kaiba Corporation's tower, Kaiba Chiaki caught something in the flowing data stream, some signal that made her brow tighten.
"Kurosaki. Five minutes. Relay my orders and switch the entire corporation to maximum security."
"M-Maximum, President?" Kurosaki wiped sweat from her brow.
"Maximum," Chiaki said without hesitation. "We'll have our answer soon enough."
THE WICKED ERASER
DIVINE / Level 10
Fiend / Effect
ATK: ? / DEF: ?
The god fully materialized from the stormclouds. Tall. Contorted. That unspeakable head stretching upward as though it intended to split open the space constructed from pure consciousness. Anyone who looked at it too long felt something inside them start to crack.
"Because I Tribute Summoned a god, Card of the Netherworld activates! I draw two cards from my deck!"
"Th-that thing is actually a god?" The miniature Rin Seiya's voice trembled. She was trying to keep it steady and failing. "It looks like something from a nightmare. If that's what a god looks like, this world is terrifying."
"As much as I hate to admit it," Amano said quietly, "that card does carry the Divine attribute."
The Wicked cards in his memory had been something else entirely. In Eden, everything had been restored to its original design specifications. Even the Wicked Gods had been elevated back to true Divine status.
He recalled the basic framework. The three Wicked Gods had been created as counterparts to the three Egyptian Gods. The Wicked Eraser was the mirror image of Slifer the Sky Dragon.
Slifer's power scaled with the number of cards in its controller's hand.
The Wicked Eraser's power scaled with something else entirely.
The Soulswindler raised her hand and announced it before he could finish the thought.
"The Wicked Eraser's ATK is determined by the number of cards on the opponent's side of the field!"
THE WICKED ERASER: ATK equals the number of cards on the opponent's field x 1000.
The Wicked Eraser's head reared back with a sound that fell somewhere between a howl and a scream, as though it were drinking in the life force radiating from every card on Amano's side of the field.
"Amano Rei, you currently have six cards on your field. The Wicked Eraser's ATK is six thousand!"
And with that, the full picture snapped into focus.
This was why the Soulswindler had activated Black Garden. This was why she had flooded his field with Rose Tokens all last turn. Four of his five Monster Zones were occupied by those tokens, tokens he had no control over, and every single one of them was feeding attack points to the god standing across from him.
THE WICKED ERASER: ATK 6000
"Amano, look up!" the miniature Rin Seiya cried, pointing overhead.
The stormclouds that had heralded the god's arrival were dispersing. In the space where they had been, something strange was appearing across the ceiling of the pure white space: a reflection. A real-time image of the outside world, projected overhead like a vast inverted mural.
At first glance it resembled an aerial view of a mid-district city suspended upside down above them. But the longer you looked, the clearer the wrongness became.
"Why is there an image of the mid-district in my soul room?" the miniature Rin Seiya said, genuinely alarmed.
The Soulswindler's expression lit up with delight.
"Ha! Are you still calling this your soul room?"
She gestured up at the inverted city.
"This is the deepest layer of the Eva Network. Your soul room is special, Rin Seiya. Yours is the only one with a connection that reaches this far down."
"My body is... special?"
Rin Seiya blinked, visibly confused.
"Don't let her mess with your head," Amano said immediately. "She literally put the word 'swindler' in her own name."
"True, I'm absolutely a swindler." The Soulswindler smiled. "But the best lie is the one that fools everyone's eyes at once."
As she spoke, the perspective of the inverted city overhead began to shift and widen. The image resolved into something more detailed, showing figures in the mid-district streets below, or above from this angle, all of them with their heads tilted back, expressions confused and searching, staring up at a sky that had just done something impossible.
As Kaiba Chiaki had predicted, the answer had arrived right on schedule.
The sky of Eden Tower had gone dark.
Not dark in the way of natural nightfall. It was already nighttime. This was something else. The artificial starfield that draped itself over the tower's interior like a painted ceiling, the twinkling lights that had fooled generations of residents into forgetting they lived in a sealed structure, all of it had simply switched off.
What remained was nothing. An endless black void hanging over every district, stripping away the comforting illusion and leaving only the truth it had always been hiding.
"What is that thing?"
"Why is something that horrifying appearing in the sky?"
"Is this the end of the world?"
"Mommy, I'm scared..."
The overhead image showed the god reflected in the sky above the mid-district, and in that same moment the mid-district sky was reflecting the god back down. The two projections mirrored each other across the layers of the tower.
To the people looking up, there was no context. What they saw was simply a monstrous entity emerging from infinite darkness, something no rational mind would categorize as a god. It looked like a harbinger. It looked like the end of something.
"The Wicked Eraser, attack the Rose Token!"
It was only when the Soulswindler drove the god toward Amano's field that the crowd outside began to piece it together. The shadow in the sky was moving with intent. Someone, somewhere, was dueling against it.
"Who is dueling a god?"
High above the mid-district, on the rooftop of Kaiba Corporation's tower, the closest point to the sky in the entire building, Kaiba Chiaki stood and searched the distant reflection for any answer it might give her.
The Wicked Eraser carried six thousand attack points. The Rose Token it was targeting had eight hundred.
If the attack connected cleanly, the five thousand two hundred points of excess damage would end the duel in one strike.
"CATASTROPHIC OBLITERATION!!"
From that unspeakable head, a beam of deep crimson light condensed and erupted. The god's jaws stretched apart to an angle that shouldn't have been physically possible, and the beam carved straight toward Amano's field.
"Amano! Red Wyvern's effect!" the miniature Rin Seiya called out urgently.
He already knew.
Red Wyvern carried a quick effect: once per turn, it could destroy the monster on the field with the highest ATK if that ATK exceeded Red Wyvern's own. The Wicked Eraser at six thousand absolutely qualified.
"It won't work."
Shrine of the Binding Gods was still active on the field. Its text was unambiguous.
SHRINE OF THE BINDING GODS: Monsters of Level 10 or higher cannot be targeted by effects and cannot be destroyed by effects.
And even setting the Shrine aside, if the god card operated under the same divine immunity rules as the original Egyptian Gods, a Level 6 monster's effect couldn't touch it regardless.
"Activating my face-down trap card!"
"Pointless, Amano Rei!" The Soulswindler was already answering before he could finish. "Gods cannot be affected by the opponent's trap cards!"
She was correct. Any trap that tried to affect a god directly would be negated by divine immunity.
But Amano's trap wasn't aimed at the god.
"I'm not targeting the god. Trap Card: Damage Diet!"
DAMAGE DIET
Trap Card: All damage you take this turn is halved.
A straightforward survival tool. Cheap. Unglamorous. Exactly the kind of card that belonged in a slum duelist's back row.
"And because I activated a trap card, a card has left my field and entered the graveyard. The number of cards on my side of the field decreases by one, which reduces The Wicked Eraser's ATK by one thousand."
THE WICKED ERASER: ATK 6000 > 5000
The crimson beam at five thousand attack points detonated against the eight-hundred-point Rose Token and produced four thousand two hundred points of damage. Enough to obliterate the token completely. More than enough to finish Amano in one blow.
Except Damage Diet cut it in half.
AMANO REI: LP 4000 > 1900
The shockwave from a Divine card's attack still felt like being hit by a wall even at half strength. Amano's feet left the ground. He rolled several times across the floor before stopping, and the number above him settled into the danger zone, below half in one turn.
One small mercy: tokens were removed from play when destroyed, not sent to the graveyard. Shrine of the Binding Gods carried a secondary effect that dealt one thousand damage whenever a Level ten or higher monster sent a destroyed monster to the graveyard. Since the token bypassed the graveyard entirely, the secondary trigger never fired.
SHRINE OF THE BINDING GODS: When a Level 10 or higher monster destroys a monster in battle and sends it to the graveyard, the destroyed monster's controller takes 1000 damage.
That thousand damage would have ended the duel outright.
"Hmph. Surviving on a card like that."
The Soulswindler's theatrical sneer faded as she settled back into the face wearing Rin Seiya's features, beautiful and unreadable.
"I set two cards face-down. Turn end."
Eve spoke from somewhere close, her voice carrying a quiet resolve that was entirely disproportionate to her usual attitude.
"Even a god's attack. I'll hold it back for you."
"Looking cool, Eve. I'm counting on you."
The miniature Rin Seiya was already sprinting toward him on small legs, braids swinging.
"Amano! Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." He pushed himself back to his feet. "I'm fine."
Being in the Eva Network in something closer to soul-form had its advantages. Even a direct hit from divine power left no serious physical damage on the body. And with Eve's resistance buff absorbing the spiritual impact, the damage had been manageable.
He stood. Steadied himself. Looked at his hand.
"My turn. Draw!"
And then he found one thing to be grateful for.
The Wicked Eraser's attack had destroyed a Rose Token and cleared out one of his Monster Zones. A space had opened up on his field that hadn't been there before. If the Soulswindler had left all five zones packed with tokens, he would have had nowhere to summon anything.
He looked up with a slight grin.
"Thanks for the gift, by the way. You just handed me the room I needed to beat you."
"You're going to beat a god?" The Soulswindler didn't bother hiding the contempt in her voice.
"With a Synchro." Amano pulled a monster card from his hand. "I'll gather the hope needed to surpass a god through Synchro Summoning!"
"I Normal Summon: Satellite Synchron!"
SATELLITE SYNCHRON
DARK / Level 2
Machine / Tuner / Effect
ATK: 700 / DEF: 100
The Tuner materialized on Amano's last remaining open zone, a machine monster built like a satellite signal tower, compact and functional, bristling with antennae.
The miniature Rin Seiya's eyes widened. As a Synchro duelist herself, she read the play the instant Satellite Synchron hit the field.
"Amano, are you going to..."
"Exactly." He was already raising his hand. "I'm tuning with the Rose Tokens!"
If the Soulswindler was generous enough to fill his field with monsters, he was going to use every single one of them.
Around his feet, the four Black Garden tokens swayed like flowers in a wind that didn't exist. As Satellite Synchron began to spin its tuning rings outward, points of light broke through the petals of each Rose Token and aligned themselves into the familiar arc of Synchro preparation.
"I tune the Level 2 Tuner Satellite Synchron with two Level 2 Rose Tokens!"
Level 2 plus Level 2 plus Level 2. The rings converged.
A new tuning effect surged through the field, not the fire of Red Wyvern's earlier summon but something fluid and deep, like a pulse moving through still water.
"Dragon sleeping in the depths, rise up and send Synchro waves crashing across the calm surface!"
"Synchro Summon! Level 6! Coral Dragon!"
CORAL DRAGON
WATER / Level 6
Dragon / Synchro / Tuner / Effect
ATK: 2400 / DEF: 500
It erupted from the wave effect with a snap of razor-edged wings, a water-attribute Synchro dragon landing on Amano's field with controlled force. Its scales caught the pale light of the white space and scattered it.
"Now I activate Coral Dragon's effect! I discard one card from my hand and destroy one card on the field!"
"Useless!" the Soulswindler snapped. "A god cannot be destroyed by an effect like that!"
"I know." Amano's gaze had already moved past The Wicked Eraser. "I'm targeting your face-down card."
The two set cards in the Soulswindler's back row sat there with all the patience of landmines. An unknown face-down was always a maximum threat. He needed to clear at least one before he committed to his next move. He already had a path to victory mapped out, and the last thing he could afford was an unknown variable disrupting it at the worst moment.
Two cards. A fifty-fifty call.
Amano felt the pull of something, instinct or whatever passed for it in a space constructed from data, and pointed to the right.
"I'm destroying your rightmost face-down card."
The discarded card served as ammunition. Coral Dragon opened its jaws and fired a pressurized column of water straight into the Soulswindler's back row. The targeted card shattered.
The Soulswindler let out a low, pleased laugh.
"Oh, you fell for it."
The destroyed card flipped face-up before vanishing.
MIRROR FORCE
She had been bluffing. Hiding Mirror Force in the back row to bait exactly this kind of preemptive destruction play. A classic trap used by duelists who understood that the threat of a card was sometimes worth more than the card itself.
"Clever," Amano acknowledged without losing a beat. "Hiding Mirror Force as a bluff to bait out removal. Using the logic of the game to set traps within traps."
He wasn't deterred. He moved directly into his next action.
"Now for the next Synchro."
"You can Synchro again?" The Soulswindler's composure flickered.
"Because Coral Dragon is itself a Tuner!"
Beyond its ability to discard and destroy, Coral Dragon functioned as a Synchro Tuner, a monster that could anchor the next layer of Synchro Summoning the way Star Chalice Divine Child Eve had done before. The chain could continue.
"I tune the Level 6 Tuner Coral Dragon with the last Level 2 Rose Token!"
Six plus two. The final Black Garden token dissolved into Synchro rings as Coral Dragon wove its own star-level into the pattern. The remaining Rose Token's energy threaded through each ring in sequence.
A cascade of stardust particles burst outward in every direction, spinning at high velocity, rushing toward the light at the end of the Synchro path.
An eight-star phenomenon. Familiar in shape but different in speed.
The miniature Rin Seiya caught her breath. The stardust was recognizable. Her heart responded before her mind could process why.
But Amano stopped her before she finished the thought.
"A regular Stardust Dragon won't be enough to surpass a god in this space. I need to reach a higher state. I need a Clear Mind."
For one precise, crystalline instant, Amano vanished from the field entirely.
The Clear Mind was the mental state required for Accel Synchro. Total stillness. No fear, no urgency, no attachment to the outcome. A consciousness smooth and reflective as standing water under a windless sky. He dropped into it and came back out in the same breath, drawing the Synchro card from the resonance it created.
"Gathered wishes, become the radiant stardust of the Accel Synchro realm and race down the shining path!"
"Synchro Summon! Take flight!"
"ACCEL SYNCHRO STARDUST DRAGON!"
ACCEL SYNCHRO STARDUST DRAGON
WIND / Level 8
Dragon / Synchro / Effect
ATK: 2500 / DEF: 2000
It broke through the Synchro light faster than a standard summon should have allowed. The same Stardust silhouette, but accelerated, the entire body sheathed in velocity-born luminescence as it took position beneath the inverted city image hanging overhead.
"And because Coral Dragon was sent to the graveyard, I draw one card from my deck!"
Up on the Kaiba Corporation rooftop, Chiaki's eyes narrowed.
She recognized Stardust Dragon. She had dueled Rin Seiya enough times to know it as Rin Seiya's signature card. But she had never seen Rin Seiya summon it in this form.
And there were other things on that field she had never seen Rin Seiya use. An entire collection of dragon-type monsters that didn't fit Rin Seiya's style at all.
Stardust Dragon, yes. But the rest of that field...
She kept arriving at the same name.
"You converted all four Rose Tokens into Synchro material," the Soulswindler said, and for the first time something in her voice sounded close to honest surprise. "The summoning method that carves the path to the future. It really is a nuisance to deal with."
She was correct about why Synchro was the only option here.
Tokens had no Rank, which meant they couldn't be used as Xyz Overlay material. Most Fusion Summons required specific named monsters or type restrictions, ruling out generic use of tokens. But Synchro Summoning had no such barriers. Any combination of Tuners and non-Tuners could be gathered, any accumulation of levels stacked and converted, weak monsters unified into something that reached beyond what each individual piece could become.
It was a summoning method built on the premise that strength could be constructed from almost nothing.
"But infinite evolution ends in destruction," the Soulswindler said. "Do you have the resolve for that, Amano Rei?"
"I'd rather evolve toward a ruinous future," he said, "than be erased right now."
He activated the effect of Accel Synchro Stardust Dragon.
ACCEL SYNCHRO STARDUST DRAGON, Effect 2: When this card is Synchro Summoned, Special Summon 1 Level 2 or lower Tuner from your graveyard.
"I Special Summon the Level 2 Tuner Satellite Synchron from my graveyard!"
SATELLITE SYNCHRON: Special Summoned from GY
"Then because a monster was Special Summoned from the graveyard," the Soulswindler cut in smoothly, "Card of Safe Return activates! I draw three cards from my deck."
She drew them without expression.
Amano was already moving to the next effect.
"Final effect of Accel Synchro Stardust Dragon!"
ACCEL SYNCHRO STARDUST DRAGON, Effect 3: During either player's Main Phase, Tribute this card to Special Summon 1 "Stardust Dragon" from the Extra Deck as a Synchro Summon. Then, Synchro Summon using monsters on your field. Monsters Synchro Summoned by this effect are unaffected by the opponent's activated effects this turn.
"I Tribute Accel Synchro Stardust Dragon!"
The acceleration light surrounding the faster Stardust form didn't fade. It expanded. The velocity energy dispersed into a Synchro field that spread outward from where the monster had stood, and from within the Extra Deck, responding to the resonance, a different version of the same legend stepped through the light.
"Gathered wishes, become the light of a new shining star and blaze a radiant path!"
"Synchro Summon! Fly! STARDUST DRAGON!"
STARDUST DRAGON
WIND / Level 8
Dragon / Synchro / Effect
ATK: 2500 / DEF: 2000
The original form arrived with a quieter grandeur than its accelerated counterpart. No blinding velocity. Just the steady radiance of a card that had carried dueling forward across generations.
"And then, using the monsters remaining on my field, I Synchro Summon!"
The miniature Rin Seiya followed the math instantly. Eight-star Synchro Summon. Her gaze moved to Satellite Synchron.
"Wait, are you going for Shooting Star Dragon? Satellite Synchron isn't a Synchro Tuner. Shooting Star Dragon requires a Synchro Tuner as material."
"I know, Senpai. But look at my field more carefully."
The miniature Rin Seiya looked.
Besides Stardust Dragon, there was another Synchro Monster still standing.
Red Wyvern. Sitting exactly where it had been since Turn 1, Level 6, never used, waiting.
Her eyes widened.
Amano raised his hand toward both of them at once, toward starlight and flame.
"I tune the Level 2 Tuner Satellite Synchron with the Level 6 Synchro Monster Red Wyvern!"
Two plus six. The satellite's rings expanded and caught Red Wyvern's star-level inside them. Fire and signal light wove together through the alignment sequence.
"Sacred light gathers upon those wings! With that blazing radiance, strike down the god!"
"Synchro Summon! Level 8!"
"CRYSTAL WING SYNCHRO DRAGON!!"
CRYSTAL WING SYNCHRO DRAGON
WIND / Level 8
Dragon / Synchro / Effect
ATK: 3000 / DEF: 2500
Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner Synchro Monsters
Effect 1: Once per turn, when another monster's effect activates, negate that activation and destroy that monster. If a monster is destroyed by this effect, this card gains ATK equal to the destroyed monster's original ATK until the end of the turn.
Effect 2: During damage calculation, when this card battles a Level 5 or higher opponent's monster, this card gains ATK equal to that opponent monster's ATK during that damage calculation only.
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