After eating Shunoros's ultimate straight to the face, Sarina was blown off her feet with arms flung wide. For a moment, she looked disheveled; even her virtual avatar seemed to glitch slightly.
Everyone seemed dumbfounded by how fast the duel's plot whiplashed.
First those Sphere Birds that kept bouncing back like cockroaches, then the legendary Planet series's The Supremacy Sun, then the Phoenix of Nephthys—a virtual hard counter to her deck…
And finally—what!?
Orichalcos!?
When she saw Kyutora, it didn't click. Kyutora is an unassuming little monster, not eye-catching. She felt like she'd seen it somewhere, but couldn't place it.
But when that terrifying green divine idol descended with crushing pressure, bearing 12,000 ATK like the embodiment of heavenly judgment, Sarina suddenly realized—
—She had seen it.
Orichalcos… wasn't that the deck of that world-ending demon king from ten thousand years ago?
The very one who was allegedly trounced by the Duel King at Duel City GX…
Yeah, right. While the "Arbiter" is reputedly very high-tier and truly powerful—especially among underground dark duelists, where rumors say that in Duel City the world stood only a few steps from destruction—
That's what they say, but once people heard the details, what stuck most was how he got toyed with by the Duel King's Lava Golem…
Only now did Sarina understand: not only did that Orichalcos unluckster lose the duel and his life, even his Orichalcos-avatar deck got stripped from him.
Sarina still didn't know that the legendary Planet-series The Supremacy Sun she'd just witnessed was also stripped from a certain world-ending dark boss.
Come to think of it, even the Sphere Bird Kira first revealed—Kagemaru was at least an arc-end boss, just on a lower tier than the previous two.
So in a sense, Sarina got ganged up on by three major bosses this match; not exactly a disgrace.
"Never thought even the power of Orichalcos would be in your grasp."
Sarina slowly stood, chuckling softly.
"As expected of the Duel King—wielding so many extraordinary powers at once… When they say you're not ordinary, they aren't exaggerating."
In fact, she was being polite; there were things she didn't say.
Rumors about the Duel King go far beyond "not ordinary." Those lucky enough to receive guidance from this generation's King often said: he's not even human…
"Well then, we've played the duel we needed to play. So—"
Kira smiled, stepped up to her, and offered a hand to the still-prone Sarina.
"Through this duel, what sort of fate did you observe?"
Sarina blinked, then smiled, placing her slender hand in his and letting him pull her to her feet.
"To be honest? You'll laugh—I couldn't see anything."
Sarina spoke calmly.
"It seems my ability is too shallow. Your fate is as unfathomable as your strength. With my meager capacity, I cannot glimpse it."
"You can't see my fate?"
Kira had long been curious. Sartorius possesses the power to see the future—so in Sartorius's view, what does his future look like? Can they predict the outcome of a clash between them?
"It's not that I can't see anything at all, but… more or less."
Sarina said,
"In truth, I don't know if it's because of you, or something else… because this sort of thing has been happening more often lately."
"What?"
"Fate is changing," Sarina said. "Not only for me, but for my brother as well.
We siblings have had this power since childhood—innate. For so many years, it never went wrong… but recently, anomalies keep happening."
"How so?"
"For example, Aster Phoenix," Sarina said. "He is my brother's strongest duelist. My brother's predictions of his victories have never missed.
But recently he's suffered loss after loss—each time breaking my brother's predictions."
"Or on my side, my Four Monarch. Each bore a prophecy of victory, a fixed fate. But they encountered a man called Revolver, and their fated victories were broken all the same."
"Jaden Yuki, Zane Truesdale, Revolver… and today's duel with you," Sarina wore a puzzled expression. "In fact, even before today's duel, my mirror divination showed I should win.
But your duel was completely beyond my expectations. Even up to the end, I didn't feel I had any chance at any point… Why?"
The more Sarina thought about it, the more perplexed she became, her brows knitting tight.
"Has our ability failed? Or is there some interfering force?"
Kira said nothing.
He couldn't answer her. He didn't even understand how the Sartorius siblings' power worked. From her words, the only takeaway was that their power lately seemed to be failing.
And judging from the people she mentioned, that failure might be related to him.
His duel just now with Sarina and the one with Revolver go without saying—both were him. Zane Truesdale reached Hell Kaiser stage early thanks to Kira's meddling at the Academy; you could say fate was altered by Kira's interference.
Jaden was also influenced, gaining Neo Space's power earlier than in the original timeline; his fate's trajectory likely changed as well. But that proves little, since in the original, Sartorius's power failed against Jaden's fate anyway.
Is it because he's a transmigrator, not native to this world, so Sartorius can't observe him?
Or perhaps, when Sartorius/Sarina make predictions about him, they're predicting the fate of the original body—before he arrived—not his?
After all, if they predicted the original's fate, the result would be "an unremarkable duelist," "easily defeated," which wouldn't be wrong.
Of course, Kira could only speculate. He wasn't a mystic, and didn't get these occult things. Maybe he'd simply reached a level of strength where Sartorius's power naturally couldn't see through him.
That wouldn't be strange. In the original, Jaden surpassed Sartorius's prophecies. And in DM, Seto Kaiba brute-forced his way past Ishizu's Millennium Necklace prophecy. In Kira's opinion, the Necklace's specialization in future sight shouldn't be inferior to Sartorius's.
"Mr. Kira, I didn't come here today just to challenge you."
Sarina's words pulled him back to reality.
She spoke earnestly.
"I came to ask a favor. I want to ask you to save my brother… no, more than that. I want to ask you to save this world."