For several seconds, the world seemed to stop.
Seto Kaiba stood completely motionless.
He said nothing.
Jamie waited comfortably for his response.
Inside, Kaiba’s thoughts were far less calm than his expression suggested.
He trusted science far too much to be seduced by a few grandiose riddles Jamie had obviously rehearsed—or so Kaiba assumed—but what he had just witnessed with his own eyes could not simply be ignored.
The transformation of Jamie’s Duel Disk had been real.
Kaiba did not believe in mystical nonsense.
Time travel, however, was another matter.
From a scientific perspective, it could not be dismissed as absolutely impossible.
“Nothing but projection technology,” Kaiba finally said.
“An illusion of that level isn’t much more advanced than the holographic systems already built into Duel Disks.” The holograms used by commercially released KaibaCorp Duel Disks were already extraordinarily realistic, but they did not represent the true limits of KaibaCorp’s laboratories.
Any company releasing a technological product kept more advanced prototypes behind closed doors.
KaibaCorp was no different.
The remote Duel robots Kaiba used internally already employed more sophisticated projection systems and advanced artificial intelligence.
With sufficiently refined equipment and some clever misdirection, reproducing the transformation Jamie had just displayed was entirely plausible.
Kaiba therefore adjusted his estimate of the organization behind Jamie upward.
But only slightly.
As far as he was concerned, they remained nothing more than a potentially troublesome competitor.
“If you can’t provide something more convincing than—” Kaiba stopped.
“What is that?” Jamie had spread both arms.
From the emerald crystal at his chest emerged ten card projections arranged in a perfect line.
All ten tilted at exactly the same angle and rotated at exactly the same speed.
Several did not even maintain a single image; their card faces shifted every time they completed a rotation, cycling between different cards.
Of the ten projections, Kaiba recognized only the third.
That one was impossible for him to forget.
Everything else was completely unfamiliar.
There were orange-bordered Effect Monsters, purple Fusion Monsters, and green Spell Cards, but several projections used frames unlike anything Kaiba had ever seen.
Above those ten floated three more cards.
All three possessed blue frames.
None displayed DEF values.
Most bizarrely, their monster illustrations were accompanied by arrow-shaped markers built into the cards themselves.
“This is proof that we came from the future,” Jamie said.
“And it’s also the reason we’re here.” He was becoming increasingly pleased with the nonsense he was inventing.
Most veteran Duelists would recognize what he had chosen almost instinctively.
Even someone who had never personally experienced every era of the game would still know several of them by reputation alone.
“In our age, Duel Monsters has already developed almost as far as it possibly can.” Jamie allowed a hint of weariness to enter his voice, as though he were describing the end of a civilization.
“And the closer something comes to perfection, the closer it comes to the end of its road.” He looked up at the rotating cards.
“At the height of prosperity comes decline.
After decline comes destruction.” “Countless cards possessing unimaginable power accumulated across generations until the forces gathered through Duel Monsters became powerful enough to destroy the entire world.” “Not merely the present.” Jamie continued calmly.
“The destruction spread backward and forward through history, erasing the very existence of Duel Monsters from past to future.” Kaiba’s eyes remained fixed on the cards.
“Our era became the endpoint of everything.
To preserve our history and prevent every trace of humanity and Duel Monsters from disappearing into the river of time, mankind gathered every resource it had left.” “For one final moment, we believed we had found a method that would allow the future to survive.” Jamie’s expression grew solemn.
“But we failed.” “The future contained no answer.” “The only path capable of preserving the future existed somewhere in the past.” “So we spent everything that remained to calculate the critical points in history capable of keeping that future alive.
We recorded those points, gathered the last embers of hope, and sent ourselves backward through time.” Jamie spread his arms wider.
“Back here.” “To the era when Duel Monsters had only just been born.” “To the beginning of everything.” The thirteen projections shone more brightly.
“The cards I’m showing you represent thirteen critical points capable of anchoring the world.” “Only by collecting all thirteen and engraving their existence into the chronicles of Duel Monsters can the history of both mankind and Duel Monsters continue.” Jamie lowered his voice.
“We call them the Thirteen Cipher Keys.” As his explanation ended, all thirteen projections simultaneously erupted with mysterious light.
To Kaiba, the glow was almost painfully bright.
For once, Seto Kaiba had no immediate response.
He had no reliable way to determine whether Jamie’s story was true.
His instincts told him that the cards themselves undeniably represented immense power, because the one card among them he recognized was Exodia.
The right arm.
The left arm.
The right leg.
The left leg.
And the head and torso that completed the Forbidden One.
Exodia had once annihilated Kaiba so completely that the memory remained carved into him.
If these other unknown cards stood beside Exodia as equals…
What kind of power did they possess?
Kaiba had become so absorbed in the implications that he had almost forgotten why he had come here in the first place.
Jamie could practically see that his improvised story had pushed Kaiba most of the way over the edge.
After a moment’s thought, he smiled mysteriously.
Time for the final push.
“Se↗to↘ Kai↗ba↘!” Kaiba’s eyes snapped toward him.
“Have you ever seen the future?!” While Kaiba was still processing the question, Jamie unfolded his Duel Disk again.
The System’s emerald crystal flowed back into it, and the thirteen projected cards drifted across the air until they hovered over Jamie’s device.
“I respect the people who first gave form to Duel Monster spirits, because everything that exists in the future was built one step at a time from what they created.” Jamie looked directly at Kaiba.
“Seto Kaiba, if I show you Dueling from the future…
will you still be satisfied remaining here in the past?” The thirteen cards shone overhead.
A hunger for power appeared in Kaiba’s eyes.
He loved Blue-Eyes White Dragon precisely because of its overwhelming strength.
He wielded Obelisk the Tormentor because he wanted to crush every enemy beneath the power of an Egyptian God.
So even though he had no idea whether Jamie’s story was true, Kaiba could not completely suppress his anticipation at the possibility of seeing power from a future beyond anything he knew.
Jamie smiled.
“Humanity will always move toward the future, Seto Kaiba.” He raised his Duel Disk.
“And you should understand one thing.” “The moment we arrived in this era…
Dueling began to accelerate.” One projection blazed to life.
“Ten Thousand Dragon.” A second followed.
“Victory Dragon.” Then the third.
“Exodia the Forbidden One.” The fourth image appeared.
“Yata-Garasu.” Another projection shifted through a series of mighty dragons.
“The Dragon Rulers.” Beside them appeared a succession of ancient magical tomes and Spellcasters.
“Spellbooks.” The next projection erupted into the chaotic spectacle of Pendulum-era monsters.
“Performapal Performage.” Another rotated forward.
“Zoodiac.” The first of the strange blue-framed cards flared brilliantly.
“Firewall Dragon.” Then came a monster whose very appearance seemed to combine two legendary bloodlines.
“Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon.” Three more blue-framed monsters appeared one after another.
“Heavymetalfoes Electrumite.” “Predaplant Verte Anaconda.” “Crystron Halqifibrax.” All thirteen projections burned simultaneously above Jamie’s Duel Disk.
He swept one hand forward.
“The words have been spoken!” “The Chronicle is engraved!” Jamie grinned.
“Duel in Heaven!”