Is this the world of card dealers? Yada thieves!

“I told you, didn’t I? Tyrant Blast Dragon inherits the power of Tyrant Wing. Tyrant Wing has the ability to grant the equipped monster the power to attack a monster up to twice during the same Battle Phase, and Tyrant Blast Dragon’s power goes even further,” Kaiba raised his hand, pointing to the two new [Machine] monsters on Amelda’s field, “A monster equipped with Tyrant Blast Dragon by its own effect can attack three times during a Battle Phase!”

"Shattered! Crushed! Cheers!"

A bluish-purple dragon breath swept across, destroying the two monsters that had appeared on Amelda's field due to the effect of [Machine Force: Destroyer Armed Forces]. Although they were in Defense Position, they were practically naked in front of [Blue-Eyes Chaos Extreme Dragon]. In fact, while Attack Position might have slightly reduced the damage, Defense Position was simply easy prey for [Blue-Eyes Chaos Extreme Dragon].

At the same time, because the Earth-attribute Machine-Type [Machine] monster on the field was destroyed, [Machine Colonel] in Amelda's Graveyard can appear on the field after the conditions for its Special Summon are met. However, Amelda no longer has any remaining Life Points to control its appearance on the field.

[Ameruda: 1400LP→0]

"Hmph, it seems I'm still the one standing at the end." Looking at Amelda, who was knocked to the ground by three consecutive powerful attacks and suffered another defeat (wait, why did I say "another"?), Kaiba said confidently, looking completely at ease.

Chapter 612 If our situations were reversed

Knocked to the ground by the seahorse's attack, Ameluda was filled with resentment.

He was so close to victory and revenge, so why, why did Seto Kaiba manage to get a response from his deck and pull off such a comeback at the last moment?

In theory, justice should prevail over evil. Seto Kaiba, the heir to the Kaiba Corporation who amassed wealth through dirty arms dealing, is undoubtedly the "evil" one. And he, who has suffered so much because of the Kaiba Corporation's actions and is now fighting for revenge, should be the "just" one!

Why did it turn out like this?! I can't accept it!

As for Ameruda, who wanted to take his life but was defeated by him, Kaiba had no intention of killing her.

Although Amelda is a member of Doma and has an irreconcilable conflict with Kaiba in terms of their positions, if Kaiba were to take Amelda's life because of this, wouldn't he be following in the footsteps of Gosaburo Kaiba?

However, even if he doesn't commit murder, it doesn't mean that Kaiba intends to let Amelda go. Since he has become the victor in the duel, the defeated Amelda has become his "spoils of war." At least Kaiba is very interested in the information about Doma that Amelda knows.

Ameruda looked at the seahorse that walked up to her and remained silent.

Although Ameruda hates Seto Kaiba because of the hatred and resentment he harbors for the surname "Kaiba," at the same time, he also knows what kind of person Kaiba really is because of his years of obsessive research into Kaiba.

Moreover, aside from intelligence, just from these duels with Kaiba, even though Ameruda's burning desire for revenge prevented him from calmly entering a dueling state, he gradually came to understand Kaiba's character to some extent.

Just as Kaiba himself said, he was true to himself and didn't really care about "Kaiba Gosaburo," who was a remnant of the past, because everything he had received so far was not from the charity of others but from his own hard work and struggle.

The past is ultimately an unchangeable shadow, but Kaiba himself is like a glorious king, seeing only the infinitely possible future and unable to tolerate the existence of this shadow. "Kaiba Gosaburo" and "Kaiba Arms Group" are already things of the past, trampled under his feet.

The attack from the Blue-Eyes Chaos Dragon not only shattered Amelda's Mech Force: Destruction Force, but Amelda also deeply felt Kaiba's disdain for his obsession with revenge.

However, there are some things that, while understandable, are still unacceptable.

“From beginning to end, I don’t think my talent is inferior to yours in any way, Seto Kaiba.”

Ameluda looked up at the seahorse. The seahorse stood in the bright light, its face hidden in the shadow cast by the overhead light in the corridor; while Ameluda sat on the floor in the dim light, only her face illuminated by a few rays.

"I'm not someone who only cares about power. My deck embodies my obsession and has responded to me more than once. My desire for victory has given me enough motivation. And because of Milco, the [Mech] deck is a treasure I cherish even more, no less than your [Blue Eyes]."

"But why am I the one who lost?"

"Hmph, can't you even figure that out, you idiot?" Kaiba crossed his arms and looked down at Ameruda. "The reason is quite simple, really very simple: it's because I'm Seto Kaiba."

Kaiba spoke with such an air of self-righteousness. "Because he is Seto Kaiba, he is the winner," a reason that startled Amelda, who then habitually retorted sarcastically, "That's really your style, the runner-up of Duel City."

It's obvious that they're using the incident from the past duel in the city, where Kaiba lost to Hayato, to provoke Kaiba.

But when Ameruda brought up the past, Kaiba smiled disdainfully: "That's it, you fool. Why do you think you lost to me? How could you, whose focus is only on the past, possibly beat me, who is constantly moving towards the future? When a person's vision can only see the past, they cannot walk the right path."

"Having experienced war, you know the grief and pain it brings. Do you want to pass on this pain and repeat the same mistakes? Can attacking others soothe your own wounds? You say your tragedy stems from the weapons of the Seahorse Arms Group, but now you are dragging innocent people into the abyss of your revenge and pushing them to their deaths. Is this what you call the justice of 'revenge'?"

The seahorse's expression was very serious. "Being killed because of killing, and killing because of being killed, this cycle of hatred will forever bind fate to the present and prevent the world from moving towards the future."

"The living have things they must do while they are alive, and all of these things are a tribute to the dead."

Listening to the seahorse's criticism, Ameruda seemed to be pondering something, finally revealing another disdainful expression: "Who understands what you're saying..."

“However, if it were you, you would have truly managed to try to change your future and avoid falling into a hopeless situation.” As she spoke, Ameruda looked at Keihei beside her.

If Kaiba hadn't orchestrated Gozaburo's alteration of his and his brother's fate, would he have one day faced the same powerless predicament as Amelda? And, if Seto Kaiba had become Milco's older brother, would there have been a possibility that Milco could have survived under Kaiba's protection?

"If our situations were reversed, would our fates be different? Would I live your life, and would you follow my old path?"

Hearing Ameruda's sentiments, Kaiba confidently replied, "I don't know. I've never thought about such a question, because I am Seto Kaiba."

"Heh, yes, you're Seto Kaiba." Amelda's lips curled into a smile as she lowered her head, avoiding looking at Kaiba.

What cannot be escaped is the self, and what cannot be undone is the past. Any assumptions about the past are, in fact, just a joke to the hippocampus.

Strangely enough, Kaiba did find a rope in a briefcase he was carrying, and used it to tie Amelda up by the back of his hand. Kaiba then went into the data center with Keihei. Amelda, left at the door, glanced at her deck and Duel Disk, which had been removed and placed not far away. In a relatively hidden spot on the Duel Disk, a red button that had been pressed flashed with a faint light.

Chapter 613 The Card Printer's Parting Gift

As the dazzling array of data flashed before his eyes, Guiping frowned, a strange expression on his face.

"What's wrong, Keihei?" Kaiba asked from the side. "Can't we find the data for the virtual projection system here?"

Guiping shook his head: "No, the data in the virtual projection system is not encrypted at all because we accessed the database through a physical connection. It has all been copied down."

"However, I just found something strange when I was searching data based on the keyword 'Duel Monsters'."

As he spoke, Guiping tapped a few keys on the keyboard, retrieved a document, and displayed it on the large screen in the data center.

What appeared on the screen was a series of photos and strange data. Ancient Egyptian stone tablets, underwater ruins in the Atlantic Ocean, ancient murals and other strange photos and data began to naturally arrange and combine, and finally formed Pegasus's face.

Even more unexpectedly, Pegasus actually moved and spoke:

"Hello, seahorse boy, Guiping boy~"

"Huh! I didn't know this thing could move when I was checking the data!" Guiping was startled by Pegasus suddenly moving, while Kaiba, who was next to him, looked at "Pegasus" on the screen with considerable surprise and said, "Pegasus, weren't you dead?"

“‘You’re dead, aren’t you?’ Seahorse Boy, you’d definitely say something like that, wouldn’t you? How heartless, it makes me sad.” Pegasus on the screen muttered to himself, “Unfortunately, this data will only be released when ownership of this castle under our Crawford family’s name leaves my hands.”

"Theoretically speaking, I should indeed be dead, otherwise this video wouldn't have been played. At the same time, I also believe that the ones who were able to find this video from the data center of Crawford Castle are definitely you two, Seahorse Boy and Keipai Boy."

Looking at Pegasus's ever-present smiling face on the screen, the seahorse snorted, "I'll just take what you said as a compliment."

Since what's in front of him is just a pre-recorded video, the seahorse naturally wouldn't be a fool to interact with Pegasus, whose content wouldn't change. He simply waited quietly for the video to play.

"Oh~ You're not even talking to me? How sad." Pegasus in the video once again anticipated Kaiba's thoughts, showing a rather exaggerated "sad" expression. However, he stopped his performance precisely before Kaiba got angry out of impatience, and said with a serious face, "Well now, let me tell you a secret, Kaiba boy."

"A long time ago, even before I created Duel Monsters cards inspired by the ancient Egyptian stone tablet monster, I learned about the existence of a creature called 'Legendary Dragon' while traveling the world. However, I repeatedly failed when I tried to create it as a card, and at the time I thought that this legend might be false."

"However, the recent global Duel Monster materialization event made me realize that the legend is not fiction, and the reason why I cannot create cards is simply because I was not chosen by the Dragons."

As he spoke, an exaggerated look of dejection appeared on Bekas's face.

If someone were unfamiliar with Pegasus, they might genuinely think he was upset about not being chosen by the "Legendary Dragons" because of his performance. However, both Kaiba and Keihei knew Pegasus's truly wicked nature and didn't respond to him at all.

Pegasus, feeling awkward after being rebuffed, said helplessly, "Even if it's a pre-recorded video, it would be nice to comfort me a little, you know, Kaiba boy, Keipai boy."

“Alright, let’s continue.” On the screen, Pegasus shrugged and continued, “After learning that the myth of the ‘Legendary Dragon’ is not fiction but reality, I thought of something. In some of the legends I’ve collected, the ‘Legendary Dragon’ left its mark as a ‘warrior’ rather than a ‘dragon,’ which seems a bit different from the reality.”

"I came up with a pretty good idea for this, and made this video after finishing that card."

Pegasus snapped his fingers, and a chibi-style [Najima] doll appeared in his hand, which he held in his arms. "It's right there in the toy room next to my bedroom, on top of the castle. Embark on an epic treasure hunt and grab the prize, Seahorse Boy."

With a "Ciao~" in Italian, Bekas's image disappeared from the screen with a smile.

Guiping couldn't help but complain, "This fake American can't even speak English properly, why does he have to learn Italian?"

Kaiba didn't seem to care much about Pegasus's strange accent. After confirming that they had collected the necessary information from the data center, he led Keihei out of the room and saw Ameruda doing the same thing as when the two of them entered the data center.

"Hmph, surprisingly honest. I thought a third-rate duelist like you would be a sore loser and try to run away when I wasn't looking." Kaiba said contemptuously, took one end of the rope binding Ameruda and handed it to Keipai, who then led Ameruda by the rope, while Kaiba himself took the lead.

If it were a seahorse leading Ameruda, he might have fiercely resisted this humiliating treatment. However, since it was Keipei leading him, Ameruda only glanced at Keipei with a strange, slightly apologetic look and didn't say anything.

Amelda's Duel Disk and deck were left behind by Kaiba. He's not like Hayato, who likes to steal other people's cards (Hayato: That wasn't stealing, it was just normal loot collection!).

Although the castle was large, the space was designed to be quite reasonable and comfortable, and it did not feel like a maze. The three of them easily found Pegasus's toy room, and as soon as they opened the unlocked door, they saw a room full of toys.

From cartoon monsters like "Cartoon Egg Dragon," "Blue-Eyes Cartoon Dragon," and "Cartoon Dark Magician Girl," to ritual monsters like "Narcissus" and "Chaos Warrior," and fusion monsters like "Dragon Knight Gaia" and "Red-Eyes Black Blade Dragon," Pegasus's toy room is filled with various chibi-style plush toys of Duel Monsters!

"Oh my! So many of these toys have never been released before, I really want to take them—" Seeing a room full of toys, Keihei, who was still a child at a young age, couldn't help but blurt out his thoughts. "No, no, this is not the time to talk about this."

"So many toys! No wonder Pegasus called it a 'treasure hunt.' How long will it take to find them all?!"

Unlike Keipi, Kaiba and Amelda weren't interested in the toys all over the room, not because they were too old to like toys, but because—

Ameruda: 'Tch, what terrible taste. All the toys in the world need are [mecha] monsters.'

Seahorse: 'Tch, as always, terrible taste. There are enough toys in the world if there are only Blue-Eyes.'

Chapter 614 The Seahorse's Superstition about Science

Although Amelda was taken along by the Kaiba brothers, to Kaiba, Amelda's value was only that she could obtain information from him when she needed information about Doma. Therefore, although Amelda could tell that the Kaiba brothers seemed to be looking for something in Pegasus's toy room, she did not know what they were looking for.

However, that didn't stop Ameluda from mocking Kaiba: "Given the number of these toys, it'll probably take quite a while to find something. Are you going to waste your time here, Seto Kaiba?"

Kaiba ignored Ameruda and instead began to observe the room's layout. Although there were so many toys, and many of them, including the Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon, were considered unnecessary junk by Kaiba, he was still willing to patiently search for the card that Pegasus had suggested.

Anyway, his Blue-Eyes White Dragon jet was parked not far from the castle. After finishing things here, he could set off for the headquarters of the Paradis Group at any time. Even if he spent a little more time here, he wouldn't fall behind the game that had already started. He might even be able to get there faster.

Moreover, he still had a prisoner from the Doma organization by his side, so he might be able to obtain enough intelligence before even reaching the Paradis Group.

The toys in the room were hardly categorized and were arranged haphazardly. For example, the "Dark Magician Girl" and "Narcissus" were placed together, and the "Kuriboh" was next to the "Blue-Eyes Dragon." In addition, Kei, who was quite interested in these toys, would often take a few to play with under the guise of "inspection." If you were to search for them one by one using a foolish method, you might not find them even by dark.

However, who is Seahorse? It only took him a few minutes to find the pattern before his gaze settled on a very inconspicuous [Pot of Greed] in the corner of the room.

In this room, all the toys, big and small, and even the decorations on the walls and ceiling, are related to Duel Monsters, or more precisely, to the "monsters" in Duel Monsters. However, in that corner, there is only one "magic card".

No matter how you look at it, it's suspicious beyond belief. And compared to a doll that's sewn shut and doesn't have much space, where you can only hide things by stuffing them into the cotton inside, a pot is clearly a better place to hide things.

Sure enough, when the seahorse arrived at the Pot of Greed, it saw a dark figure jump out of the Pot of Greed.

"Bingo!"

The shadowy figure stopped precisely in front of the composed seahorse, revealing its true form: a card from Pegasus's [Cartoon] deck called [Copycat].

"Hmph, what an infuriating thing, such lowbrow humor." However, Kaiba scoffed and ignored it, reaching through the body of [Copycat] and probing into the [Pot of Greed]. This was clearly a pre-set illusion projected by a virtual projection system, and judging from the fact that Keihei had walked around the vicinity two or three times without triggering it, it seemed that it could only be activated when Kaiba got close.

Of course, Kaiba wasn't sure if he was the only one who could activate the image, but according to his plan, given Pegasus's personality, he would most likely have pre-set recordings in various parts of the castle, and then activate different recordings depending on the triggerer, thus achieving his kind of "predicting the future" trick.

For example, if the person who comes here is Kaiba, he will naturally be interested in the International Illusion Society's data center, so the video prepared for Kaiba is in the data center. If it is Hayato, who knows that Pegasus is dead and comes here, he will definitely go straight to the warehouse where Pegasus stored the cards.

Reaching into the bottom of the Pot of Greed, Kaiba's lips curled into a smile as he retrieved what he had grabbed from the bottom of the pot—two Duel Monster cards.

It must be said that although Pegasus has a lot of quirky sense of humor at times, as a card designer, he is quite meticulous when it comes to details.

The Pot of Greed is a Duel Monster Card with the effect of "drawing two cards". Therefore, Pegasus naturally has two cards stored in the Pot of Greed. One of the cards is called "Destined Rivalry", which depicts the two monsters, Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician, in battle.

With just one glance, Kaiba guessed the prototype of this card design. It must be the stone tablet that he had seen with Hayato and Yugi under Isis's guidance. It was said to record the fate of an unknown pharaoh. The stone tablet depicted the "Three Egyptian Gods", the confrontation between the Dark Magician and the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and two ancient Egyptian figures whose appearances were extremely similar to his own and Yugi's.

Although he had no interest in the "fate" or "destiny" mentioned on the stone tablet, because Isis had entrusted the [Obelisk the Titan] to him, Kaiba, quite unusually, left a little space in his precious memory for that stone tablet.