Chapter 249: Sky Striker Awakens, and a Secret Overheard
Kaiba Chiaki had also noticed the system notification: [A Chronicle has already been cleared this week.] Her expression shifted, a quiet flicker of disappointment crossing her face.
"So that's it for this week..." she murmured quietly.
Watching her state, Amano felt something almost like surprise. Chiaki-senpai looked more let down about it than he was.
That look in her eyes, the low murmuring, the air of unsatisfied craving: it was exactly what you saw in someone trapped by parental screen-time limits who had only just started enjoying themselves before the weekly quota ran out.
"Since we can't do anything until next week, I'll head back, Chiaki-senpai."
"Wait."
"Something else, Senpai?"
Kaiba Chiaki had called out by instinct to keep him from leaving, before she had actually thought of a reason to make him stay.
"No. Never mind."
"If there's really nothing, I'm heading back to the Academy." Something about her state felt off enough that Amano checked again. "You're really okay?"
"Yes. I'm fine. Go."
Standing in the private booth without moving from the spot, Kaiba Chiaki watched Amano turn and walk away through the automated door. The mechanical door slid open and sealed shut behind him. Only then did she slowly raise her wrist and look at the Eva Terminal that had been flashing notifications for some time.
The unread messages had long since overflowed past ninety-nine. Most were internal corporate communications waiting for her instructions or approvals.
A single afternoon of letting go had produced this much backlog.
Kaiba Chiaki had grown accustomed to this intensity of workload long ago. But this particular stretch of time had felt completely different from anything else.
The Chronicle today especially: inside the background spirit state, every chain dropped away. She could set aside even her sense of self. Her soul had wanted only one thing: to fight and win. It had been addictive. So addictive that she had been ready to dive into Amano's next Chronicle the instant the first one ended.
But for now, she would have to wait until next week.
The private booth was empty. No one to perform the president's image for. Kaiba Chiaki raised her long arms above her head and stretched fully, releasing a long, soft sound of relief that no one outside this room had ever heard, something between release and gathering energy.
Even if she had temporarily escaped the identity that was hers, when the dream ended she was still the president of Kaiba Corporation. The chain of responsibility could not be fully removed.
But Kaiba Chiaki was satisfied. It was as though a cool, undisturbed oasis had appeared somewhere in the endless burning wasteland: a place to rest, untouched by the flames. She knew she could not stay there permanently. But knowing that the oasis would appear again ahead of her was its own source of momentum.
Out on the streets, Amano was already on his D-Wheel heading back to the Academy at speed.
By a reasonable interpretation of the rules, arriving back before the last afternoon period ended technically meant he had not skipped an entire afternoon of class.
During the ride, though, he kept catching himself feeling vaguely unsettled about how Kaiba Chiaki had looked when he left. Something about her had felt different from the Chiaki-senpai he was used to.
Then the system chimed.
[Kaiba Chiaki] [Affection +1]
[Kaiba Chiaki] [Affection +2]
[Kaiba Chiaki] [Affection: 88]
Three points at once this late in the progression. That was a reasonable sign that things were fine. Or that she was in a good mood. Either way, nothing to worry about.
Amano gunned the D-Wheel and made it back to the classroom with exactly five minutes to spare before the end of the last afternoon period.
When the bell actually rang, he found himself on the receiving end of a round of genuinely impressed looks from Class E.
"Class rep, that was actually impressive. You skipped the whole afternoon."
"And Kondo's theory lecture was this afternoon. You skipped Sensei's own class."
"The part that really got me was Kondo noticing you were gone and not saying a single word about it. We were all stunned."
"If any of us skipped, he'd have gone ballistic."
"This is what being a top student gets you. No wait, class rep is beyond that. He's the legendary student who beat Fusion Academy."
When you were at the center of everyone's attention, even skipping an afternoon could become the subject of admiration. Though the cheering for a class representative leading by example in truancy was making Amano slightly uncomfortable.
"Rei, where did you go this afternoon? Class president was looking for you." Kikawayu asked with a note of genuine concern.
"I went to run a Chronicle." Amano answered honestly.
"A Chronicle! Why didn't you take me along? You don't consider me a friend anymore?!"
"Would you have actually skipped class to come?"
"That I absolutely would not..."
"Also, I'm not attending evening study hall tonight either. You enjoy sitting in the classroom."
No apologies for a close friend. Just endless gloating.
"You said Class President was looking for me. Seriously?"
He had not received any messages from Nanki'in Sakuya on the VSN terminal, so whatever she had wanted, it probably was not urgent.
"Where did Class President go?" Amano scanned the room. The familiar cold-faced moe expression was nowhere to be found.
Kozuka Yoka chimed in: "Class President skipped the last period too. I assumed she went to find you."
So she had not gone to find him after all. Kozuka had spent an entire class period mentally writing a scenario that had not happened.
Nanki'in Yukki drifted over. "My cousin seems to have been called away by a phone call from grandfather. It should not be anything important, otherwise she would not have kept it from you, Amano-san."
Yukki, you really are just sitting back enjoying the view on this one. He was not actually a Nanki'in family member, so even if there was something involving the family, there was no particular reason to loop him in.
While they were still talking, Nanki'in Sakuya pushed open the back door and walked back into the classroom. The usual expressionless calm, readable as neither good news nor bad. But the moment she registered Amano's presence in the room, something flashed in her eyes, just for an instant. Something that looked like relief.
"Amano. Can you come with me for a moment? There is something I need to discuss with you."
Yukki: "Is it about Nanki'in family matters? Can I know, cousin?"
Sakuya shook her head. "It is mostly a personal matter. Not much to do with the family. Do not eavesdrop, Yukki."
The cousins knew each other well: Sakuya had caught the impulse before Yukki even acted on it.
"Leave it to me, Class President!" Kozuka Yoka snapped a sharp salute and volunteered immediately. "I will watch them. They will not bother you and the class representative at all!"
Nanki'in Sakuya gave a small nod. "Well done. Kozuka, you can be the homework collection team leader for next week's assignment."
"Mission understood, Class President!"
Amano caught what was happening between the two of them. Sakuya, when did you start using positions to win people over? Then again, she had been groomed as the Nanki'in family heir since she was young, and had apparently been serving as class representative since middle school. Calling her a dunce ignored the fact that she was genuinely sharp when it came to managing people and building loyalty. That aspect of her was better than most.
Nanki'in Sakuya pulled Amano all the way to the back of the nurse's office. Same spot as always. Somewhere between visits, this corner had quietly become their shared private space.
"Class President, what is this about?" Amano asked. "You even made sure Yukki could not listen in."
"Yes. It is a personal matter. For now, I do not want others to know. Especially Yukki."
In Amano's experience, when Sakuya came to find him about something, it was usually family business or class administration. Something she framed as purely personal was rare. The tutoring sessions were the only real exception he could think of.
"I have thought about this for a long time. I wanted to confirm it with you in the end."
"Confirm with me?"
Nanki'in Sakuya's expression remained still, but her voice carried an unusual seriousness, different from her usual baseline. "I want to awaken my own Duel gene field. Do you think that is the right choice?"
So that was it.
Sakuya had said she had been thinking about this for a long time. The moments he had noticed recently where she seemed distracted and lost in thought: this was probably why.
The question Nanki'in Sakuya was wrestling with: whether to awaken her own Duel gene field.
Amano opened the system and confirmed the skill he had originally received at 70 affection with Nanki'in Sakuya.
[Inheritor of Shiranui Style]
[In duels with an Extra Deck zone, unlock the Sky Striker Ace Link 1 Field Spell cards in the Extra Deck. At the start of a duel, optionally add Sky Striker Ace - Raye and Sky Striker Ace - Roze to the Main Deck.]
If the system's assessment was based on the holder's actual gene field rather than Sakuya's visible habit of carrying a tachi, then her own unawakened field was almost certainly Sky Striker.
The rule in Eden for Duel gene identification was that ten field-bound cards had to exist. In order to keep those ten slots clean for the inherited Shiranui deck and maintain perfect compatibility with the family tradition, Nanki'in Sakuya had never awakened her own field.
If Amano were ranking the two archetype for raw strength: Sky Striker had the higher overall ceiling. Not by a small margin, either. But that was his judgment based on memories of competitive play in his previous life. Inside Eden, the Extra Deck Zone did not exist in most duels. No Extra Deck Zone meant no Link Summons. Sky Striker was a Link archetype. A Sky Striker deck without Links was, in Amano's honest assessment, low tier.
Crawling-on-the-ground tier.
He opened carefully. "Class President, can I ask what brought this on? Why now?"
"I want to become stronger." Sakuya's answer carried no decoration at all.
"But the Shiranui deck is already strong inside Eden..."
"Not enough. I want to be stronger than that. During the Tournament, I watched your duel against Jinguuji Ryoushuu, and your duel against Kaiba Chiaki. What I have now is nowhere near enough."
She was right. Against either Jinguuji Ryoushuu or Kaiba Chiaki, a Shiranui deck would most likely lose.
Shiranui as a legacy deck was genuinely strong by Eden's general standards. Most people would envy that floor. But its ceiling was simply not in the same conversation as the truly powerful archetypes. And because Sakuya's own gene field was not Shiranui, she could not use the Eva Terminal to acquire additional Shiranui cards for deck reinforcement. Her power ceiling was completely locked in place.
"You need to think carefully about this, Class President. It is a real gamble. If the field that awakens is not a good fit, your strength could actually go down."
If Nanki'in Sakuya went and awakened Sky Striker, ten Sky Striker support cards would have to occupy permanent slots in her deck from that point forward. Sky Striker's support Spells were usable even without the Link monsters themselves, but slotting them into a Shiranui deck would dilute the archetype's concentration and produce an awkward hybrid that committed to neither side.
"I have thought it through. I want to break free of inherited limits. Like Onikiri and Muramasa did."
That was probably exactly why neither of the previous generation's two strong Nanki'in figures, Nanki'in Muramasa and Nanki'in Onikiri, had carried the Shiranui legacy forward. They had each found their own path instead.
"As for the Shiranui deck... I want to leave it to Yukki."
"Yukki?" Amano did not actually know what gene field Yukki had awakened. Field identity was genuinely private in Eden. Asking a girl about her deck field without good reason was considered rude.
That Sakuya was bringing this up with him meant she trusted him considerably.
"Yukki's field is actually Zombie Hand-Trap. I think she is the most natural fit for the Shiranui legacy."
Sakuya, you just freely disclosed your cousin's private field information to someone outside the family. That is quite a level of trust you are placing in him.
No wonder she had not let Yukki come along.
A Zombie Hand-Trap field. That explained why Yukki had essentially become a wholesale supplier of Ghost Ogre.
A Zombie Hand-Trap sister alongside a Shiranui legacy deck: the combination actually made sense strategically.
But could a Zombie Hand-Trap field actually qualify as a gene field designation?
From the moment Amano's own Vanilla gene field had been identified, he had sensed that Eva's definition of a field was not perfectly identical to how fields had been understood in his previous life. Vanilla as an entire archetype counted as a single field in Eden. Zombie Hand-Trap counted as a field. Even Mizuki's Spellcaster field was a relatively broad and loosely defined category. Eva's definitions were simply wider. That meant the ten fixed cards left more actual room to maneuver than the framework suggested.
Perhaps Sakuya's field was not purely Sky Striker in the narrow sense. If the definition was broader, it might still work without the Link infrastructure.
Still, Sakuya's whole manner told him she had already worked through all of this in her head. She had done the thinking. She had come to ask him for something specific.
"Amano. This decision could affect the Nanki'in family's future direction. Which means it also involves you. If you do not agree, I will not go through with it."
"What does Muramasa-dono think? Have you told him?"
"Grandfather said to do whatever you say."
Muramasa. That is genuinely underhanded. Passing this kind of unresolvable question to someone else and then walking away. If something goes wrong, are you prepared for me to be fully responsible for Sakuya?
Amano looked at Nanki'in Sakuya's eyes: fixed on him, no emotional fluctuation visible, but with an intensity that was unmistakable.
Yes or No.
If his answer was no, Nanki'in Sakuya would let it go. She would spend the rest of her dueling career with the Shiranui deck, become the standard Nanki'in family heir, and follow the path that had been laid out.
Would that be a good ending?
More to the point: would that be a result worth wanting, from a duelist's perspective?
"Sakuya." After sitting with the question, Amano gave his answer. "Go and claim the fate that is yours. I believe you will become stronger. Stronger than anyone."
At the moment he gave his answer, Nanki'in Sakuya's expression shifted: something clearly visible, unusual from someone who wore the cold face as a default. Excitement mixed with anticipation, neither hidden nor suppressed.
"I understand. Thank you, Amano. Then I will go for the awakening identification tomorrow."
This might not be the objectively optimal choice. But it was absolutely the choice that made Nanki'in Sakuya the happiest. What the result would be was something to leave to the duelist's soul to answer.
Walking back to the classroom, Amano realized it was the first time he had seen Nanki'in Sakuya's usual composed gait develop a faint bounce in it.
Change was always exciting. Like an unknown card draw: you held hope right up until the moment it sank.
After a quick word to Class E, Amano left the classroom.
They had evening study hall. He did not.
He got on the D-Wheel and headed toward the club building. As one of the privileged students also exempt from evening study hall, Rin Seiya was available at this hour. The timing was ideal.
On the way there, though, what Amano found himself turning over in his mind was not what Rin Seiya had called him here for. He was thinking about what a Sky Striker deck would look like with no Extra Deck Zone and no Link monsters.
"Without Links it really would be difficult."
More than thinking through the Sky Striker question, he was realizing he should probably research how to actually unlock an Extra Deck Zone in Eden. That would be worth knowing.
Thinking this, his hand drifted to his pocket and found something there that should not have been: a hard, irregular object that had no business being in his pocket before today.
"What is this? Who put this there?"
He assumed it was a prank from Class E's regular troublemakers. Then he pulled it out and froze.
An irregular piece, golden colored, shaped like a puzzle fragment.
"Is this..."
The moment he held the golden fragment up, it disappeared. Immediately following its disappearance, a system notification swept across his vision.
[Host has obtained a fragment of the Millennium Puzzle. The Romance Development System will begin automatic upgrade in 12 hours.]
An actual Millennium Puzzle fragment. When had he obtained this?
Reviewing his entire day, the only possible moment was inside the Chronicle. That had been the first time Amano met the Pharaoh, Atem, in any historical setting. Their exchange had been brief, but the only connection to the Millennium Puzzle across the whole day was that one moment.
A reward for unlocking the achievement of meeting Atem in the Chronicles for the first time.
The second fragment. Faster than he had expected.
He passed Mizuki's streaming club room on his way through the building without going in, but the memory surfaced: that was where Kuroshio Nagi had passed him the first fragment. And Kuroshio had also said she obtained her fragment through a Chronicle run.
That meant Kuroshio's Chronicle also came with its own full storyline. She really was unusual in her own right.
Inside the streaming club room, Kuroshio Nagi had just taken off her headset and ended her stream. She happened to look out the window at exactly that moment.
"Mizuki. Was that my favorite person just now walking past?"
"Amano?" Mizuki did not look up from her keyboard. "Probably not. Synchro Academy has evening study hall at this hour."
"My oshi-radar is never wrong. I'm going out for a minute."
"Good luck."
Kuroshio Nagi slipped quietly out of the streaming club room and reasoned her way through the options: if Amano was in the club building and not there to see Mizuki, the only destination that made sense was the historical film screening club on the fourth floor.
Lean to the point of looking slightly unhealthy, but surprisingly light on her feet: she took the other staircase and climbed quietly.
Sure enough. By the time she reached the far end of the fourth-floor corridor, she spotted Amano pushing open the club room door and stepping inside.
"I knew it. I was right."
But through the brief gap as the door opened, Kuroshio seemed to catch a glimpse of something inside: a white-haired girl with bare feet standing on the sofa cushions.
"Wait, at this hour, just the two of them?" Kuroshio had the distinct feeling of having stumbled onto a bombshell secret.
"So my oshi and Rin Seiya-senpai are that kind of... no, no, calm down. Not necessarily."
She crept closer. Pressed herself against the wall beside the club room door and leaned her ear toward it.
Eavesdropping was not exactly admirable behavior. But she was a delinquent. She had never claimed to be a good person. And when something like this landed in front of you, the curiosity was hard to argue with.
As long as she did not disturb them, it was fine. She was Amano's number-one fan. Naturally she took an interest in her favorite person's daily life.
She was not a creepy stalker.
Just a little listen was fine.
The club room had good soundproofing. Some clubs ran noisy activities, and thin walls would have been a problem. But soundproofing was not the same as silence: pressed against the door, Kuroshio could just faintly make out the spirited opening music of what sounded like an anime playing inside.
And then Rin Seiya's voice, barely suppressing a smile.
"Take a seat, junior."
If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone or drop a review — it helps more than you'd think.
Advance chapters → patreon.com/Eatinpieces