Engines roared as the convoy rolled grandly out of the school grounds, heading for the quarantine zone on the city’s edge.
About an hour later, the convoy halted before a deep-mountain military base sealed off layer upon layer by high walls and high-voltage electric fencing.
Everyone filed off the buses one by one and, guided by the military, passed through a long isolation corridor.
But what greeted them was not the sky-tearing spatial rift they’d imagined.
What met the eye was simply a massive alloy gate set into the heavy mountain rock.
The gate stood wide open, and beyond it lay a pitch-black tunnel of bottomless depth, faint emergency lights flickering within.
“So this is the entrance to the new Verdant Ruins?” Kai craned his neck, looking a little dazed.
“Different from the last Ruins.
This one looks like an ordinary air-raid shelter.” “The exterior is just camouflage and a blockade the military set up.” At the front of the group, homeroom teacher Hiroshi explained in a low voice.
“The Ruins’ true spatial node is deep in the tunnel.
Once you pass through the node, the environment inside changes drastically.
It’s a primal alien forest completely untouched by modern technology.
After you go in, don’t push your luck.
Find Spirit cards suited to your level and Duel them.
If you run into danger, press the lifesaving ring on your wrist.
Once you press it, you’ll be forcibly ejected from the Ruins!” “Right, right…” Kai swallowed.
The sliver of nerve he’d managed to scrape together on the bus dissolved by more than half the moment he saw the guards armed to the teeth.
The classes began assembling by number on the open ground before the alloy gate, preparing to enter the tunnel in batches.
“Hey, you over there, Class 10!” Just then, an arrogant voice abruptly shattered Class 10’s somewhat gloomy formation.
A boy in designer casual wear, the latest streamlined Duel Disk strapped to his left arm, came swaggering over with several Class 5 elite students.
He pointed rudely at Nate, Kai, and the others, nose tilted toward the sky, and sneered.
“When we go into the Ruins in a bit, the teleport scatters everyone at random.
I’m warning you, if you’re lucky enough to run into someone from our Class 5, you’d better roll far away on your own like good little dogs!
Don’t come anywhere near us with that garbage junk Deck of yours, and don’t even dream about leeching off our spoils and wasting our resources!” “Oga Ryo’s got it right!” a flunky beside him chimed in loudly at once.
“A bunch of worthless trash running vanilla-bones Decks.
Even inside, they’ll just be running a marathon around the Ruins.
Honestly, why the school still hands slots to a bottom-feeder class like this is beyond me.
It’s a flat-out waste of the school’s resources!” The instant these words came out, Class 10’s ranks stirred.
More than a few students flushed red with anger, fists clenched tight.
But when they saw the “397” badge pinned to the chest of the opposing uniform, every one of them deflated like a punctured ball, daring to seethe but not to speak.
Kai squeezed his fists so hard the very fat on his face trembled with the strain.
The commotion here quickly drew the attention of the other surrounding classes.
Plenty of students poked their heads over to look, and once they saw what was happening, their eyes held not sympathy but mostly mockery and the expression of spectators settling in for a show.
In this duel-supreme school, where survival of the fittest and weed-out-the-weak were held as sacred dogma, the weak being ridiculed had long since become an everyday sight no one batted an eye at.
Yet amid this crowd reveling in others’ misfortune, a stunning figure standing at the very front of the Class 1 ranks knit her willow brows in a way almost too faint to notice.
She was a girl with long, deep-blue hair, her bearing cold and aloof as a flower on a high peak: Rio Kastle.
The number 001 badge on her chest, marking the top of the first year, was especially striking in the sunlight.
As an absolute genius who had advanced straight up from the middle school division as its top student, she had a pride all her own.
In her eyes, a true duelist should fight it out on a battlefield of evenly matched strength, not bark at the weak like these Class 5 people, relying on family resources.
It was crude beyond words.
A flicker of disgust crossed the depths of Rio Kastle’s eyes.
She turned slightly to the side, intending to speak up and cut off this distasteful farce.
But the next second, her motion stopped.
Those gem-like beautiful eyes quietly fixed on the Class 10 ranks, as if waiting for something.
In this world where the strong devoured the weak, if these people didn’t even have the courage to resist being ridden over, then she could step in and help this once, but not the countless times after.
If the weak wanted to win respect, the only way was to stand up for themselves.
Yet faced with such grating provocation from Class 5, the students of Class 10, though their faces were full of swallowed grievance, none dared take that step.
Seeing this, homeroom teacher Hiroshi at the front of the ranks went instantly grim, his face dark enough to drip water.
He whipped his head around toward the Class 5 ranks not far off.
The Class 5 homeroom teacher was holding a thermos, chatting and laughing with someone, his gaze deliberately steering clear of this side, plainly taking an attitude of tacit consent toward his students’ provocation, if not outright encouragement.
Duel Academy had an unwritten rule.
Friction between students was for the students themselves to settle through Dueling, and teachers absolutely did not interfere.
Hiroshi knew full well that if he stepped in now, bullying the younger as the elder, the Class 5 homeroom teacher would absolutely intervene at once.
The man had always edged him out in the yearly teacher evaluations, and his Deck configuration was far more lavish too.
Go up against him, and Hiroshi would most likely only humiliate himself.
But so what?
Hiroshi clenched his teeth, a flash of fury in his eyes.
So my class’s students are weak, even spineless!
And I can curse them out from the lectern however I please!
But since when does some other class get to come right up in my face and call my students trash?!
“A pack of ill-bred little brats…” Hiroshi gave a cold snort and went all in.
He jerked his left arm up, his right hand clamping straight onto the Duel Disk’s deployment button, ready to force his way out and blast these arrogant little punks away.
But before he could press the deploy key, a voice suddenly exploded out of the crowd.
“Hey, you over there, the brat doing all the barking, you dare have a Duel with me?” As the words landed, a tall, slender figure strode straight out from the back of the ranks and planted himself right at the very front of Class 10.
Hiroshi froze.
“Nate?” At the same time, Rio Kastle, observing from not far off, narrowed her eyes a fraction.
Those eyes of hers, which had already settled back into calm, suddenly stirred with a strange light.
With a trace of surprise and curiosity, her gaze crossed the crowd and landed straight on that tall, straight-backed figure who had stepped out so abruptly.
Someone actually dared to stand up?
Nate paid no mind to the astonished looks around him, and noticed even less the gaze of that ice-queen campus beauty not far away.
He stopped in front of the one who had just spoken, halting less than half a meter away.
A cold arc curved at the corner of Nate’s mouth as his left arm snapped out.
Shing!
The old standard-issue Duel Disk unfolded in an instant with a crisp mechanical click.
He stared at the one across from him, his voice not loud, yet carrying clearly to the ears of everyone around.
“Running your mouth is no kind of skill.
If you’re not convinced, then let’s settle it by a duelist’s rules.”