Every one of the lackeys became convinced Itagaki had been possessed by something, and none of them dared question him out loud again.
Fujishiro Yukine stood off to the side, jaw dropped, her small mouth hanging wide open.
Before this duel, she never in her wildest dreams would have imagined things turning out like this.
Yushin asked another question.
“By the way, how does the protection money just go up like that?
Collecting that much in a single month, doesn’t that leave people with basically nothing to live on?” It honestly felt like someone was trying to squeeze out one last big haul before skipping town.
Itagaki let out a heavy breath, and said quietly, “Because the Fang Gang probably can’t hold this territory much longer.” Yukine looked startled.
“What do you mean?” “It’s the Sickle Gang from the east side.
For whatever reason, they seem to be moving in on this territory,” Itagaki said.
“Word is the Sickle Gang’s leader used to be a duelist in the main city, got convicted for running illegal underground duels, and got shipped out here to the Satellite as punishment.” “A main-city duelist?” That only startled Yukine more.
A duelist born in the main city had access to far stronger cards, far better dueling education, and a far richer environment for sparring and competitive growth, none of which the Satellite’s poor could ever hope to match.
So for people in the Satellite, Yukine included, anyone from the main city automatically earned a measure of instinctive respect, assumed to be a strong duelist by default.
Itagaki’s lackeys were even more shaken to hear this.
This was Fang Gang’s top secret information.
How could the boss just spill it to an outsider this easily?
The more they watched, the stranger their boss’s behavior seemed today.
His talk of retiring didn’t look like a joke at all; after today, he might really be about to quit the gang and run.
Itagaki said nothing more, just waved a hand and turned to leave, taking his lackeys with him.
Yushin went back inside, thoroughly satisfied, and started sorting through his fresh haul.
Yukine, meanwhile, still hadn’t recovered from her shock, her legs still weak beneath her.
She watched her brother for a long moment before finally blurting out, “Brother, how did you…
suddenly get this good at dueling?” Yushin looked up and said, with total sincerity, “Last night I had a dream about this starfish-headed guy.
He said he was a Pharaoh from three thousand years ago, and he basically dropped some enlightenment on me and I just got it, dueling-wise, all at once.” Yukine lit up.
“Really?!
Could it have been the legendary spirit riding shotgun in the original Duel King, Yugi Muto?
I always thought that was just a made-up story…” Yushin: “…You actually believe that?” Yukine said, completely seriously, “You went from a nobody street duelist to someone even the Fang Gang’s own boss couldn’t beat, all of a sudden.
I can’t really think of a more reasonable explanation than that.” Yushin thought it over.
Put that way, it actually wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
Yukine asked, “By the way, brother, where’d those cards I’ve never seen before come from?
Did you find them at the general store?” Yushin: “General store?” “Rude’s general store, on the corner of Old Factory Street.
His is the only place around here you can actually buy cards.
Where else would you go?” Yukine said.
“Oh, that place…” Yushin finally dug the matching memory out of the jumbled mess in his head.
“No, I don’t have spare cash lying around for buying cards at a shop.
These were all picked up along the way.” This much, at least, was the honest truth.
The cards’ original owners had died when the ritual failed, so the decks had naturally become unclaimed property.
He, Yushin, had merely given all those poor, ownerless decks a new home.
What was wrong with that?
“To think you picked up cards that good…
your luck’s really turned around, brother.” Yukine didn’t seem the slightest bit suspicious, her cheeks flushed pink with excitement.
Yushin thought to himself, this was nothing.
He happened to know about some guy in the Satellite who hand-built a perpetual motion engine out of scrap junk, and who’d similarly scavenged his way into a “Junk Doppelganger” deck good enough to compete at a real-world top tier…
If that guy’s scavenging skills ranked a perfect ten, his own barely scraped by at a one or two.
Not even close.
Then again, the Satellite was such a sprawling place, with poor communication and worse transportation, that he had no idea which part of it the anime’s protagonist Yusei Fudo might actually be in, or how far that was from here.
If he could just tag along with Yusei and mooch off his protagonist luck, following him around and picking through whatever scrap piles he picked through, maybe he could scavenge his way into a top-tier deck of his own on the spot too…
In a great mood, Yukine hummed a little tune and went back to the kitchen to finish washing dishes.
“Rude’s general store, huh…” Yushin murmured.
Dedicated card shops were everywhere in the main city, but there weren’t any in the Satellite.
This general store was the only place nearby to buy or sell cards at all.
It was still early in the day, so Yushin decided to head over and take a look, treating it as a walk to settle his stomach after eating.
Partly, he wanted to see if there was anything else useful to dig up at the store.
Partly, he’d picked up a decent number of cards today, but as anyone who knew anime character decks could tell you, everyone’s deck always had a few completely useless cards mixed in somewhere.
So Yushin figured, if the price was right, he could offload some of the dead weight at the general store for a little spending money.
Money was genuinely tight for the Fujishiro siblings right now.
And after everything Yushin had gone through cooped up in that temple, upgrading their food situation once he had some spare cash felt like an absolute necessity.
So after letting his sister in the kitchen know where he was headed, Yushin left the apartment and made his way straight toward Rude’s general store.
A few streets away.
The cult’s ritual cavern had already been sealed off with cordon tape, printed with the cold, official markings of Sector Security.
Uniformed security officers moved back and forth through the ruins, dust hanging thick in the air along with a lingering sense of decay.
The squad leader in charge of the scene had his brow knotted tight.
An officer hurried over, dropping his voice.
“The Director’s here.” The squad leader’s stomach tightened.
Sector Security’s headquarters was located in the main city.
Unless something serious was going on, someone that high up the chain didn’t just casually make the trip out to this dirty, run-down corner of the Satellite.
The man stepped slowly into the cordoned-off area.
He was pale-skinned, his features sharp but restrained.
He wore a crisply tailored uniform, his hair a striking shock of white, and his eyes had a sharpness that looked like it could cut straight through every secret hiding in the shadows.
The squad leader quickly bowed.
“Director Goodwin.” “Only Deputy Director,” Goodwin said flatly.
If Yushin had been there to hear that, he would have found it strange.
Rex Goodwin had already been Director of Sector Security by the time the Yu-Gi-Oh!
5D’s story Yushin knew even began.
But here, the man was only calling himself Deputy Director.
The squad leader quickly acknowledged him and gave his report.
“It’s another underground cult sacrifice, the third one to happen in the Satellite.
Except this time the scene…
I don’t even know how to describe it.” Goodwin: “What happened?” “Everyone who was in the cavern is dead.
Not a single survivor,” the squad leader said, throat bobbing, the memory of it clearly sending a chill through him even now.
“The scene’s a mess, hard to even piece together what happened.
It genuinely looks like they summoned something evil, and that thing killed every last one of them.” By the time he finished speaking, Goodwin had already stepped into the cavern, eyes half-lowered, gaze sweeping across the wreckage.
“Are all the bodies cultists?” he asked.
“Yes, all of them are wearing the same ceremonial robes,” the squad leader said.
Goodwin said, “A ritual site like this should have a sacrifice.
Where is it?” The squad leader blinked.
“The sacrifice…” He glanced around, and all he could see anywhere were cultist bodies.
“Are you saying…
the sacrifice killed all of them instead?” the squad leader said, startled.
“Is that even possible?” Director Goodwin stood quietly in the middle of the ruined cavern for a long moment, saying nothing, the only sound around them the shallow breathing of the security officers.
After a while, Goodwin finally spoke again.
“Whatever killed them all might not have been a person.” A chill ran through the squad leader’s whole body, and he asked carefully, “Are you saying, sir…
some kind of anomaly, something beyond normal explanation, showed up here?” Sector Security’s archives had no shortage of sealed files on supernatural phenomena.
Domino City had been a place with more than its share of the paranormal for years now, and most of the strange cases over that time had ended up tied to Duel Monsters in one way or another.
Goodwin didn’t answer his question, only gave an order.
“Keep this quiet.
Someone else will be handling it from here.
You don’t need to worry about it anymore.” He paused, then added, “Once the timing’s right, the Chief might handle this personally.” The squad leader sucked in a sharp breath.
The main city’s own “Duel Chief,” possibly coming to the Satellite in person?