Chapter 12: Soul-Bound Blue-Eyes White Dragon
"HOLY CRAP—BLUE-EYES WHITE DRAGON!"
Amano's entire art style transformed from shock.
The moment he saw that final card flip to reveal Blue-Eyes White Dragon, a single number consumed his thoughts completely.
87 million.
Kaiba Corporation President Kaiba Chiaki—87 million Eva Points bounty for the fourth Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
If he sold this card to Kaiba Corporation, wouldn't he become rich overnight?
Changing his fate against heaven's will—turned out to be this simple.
Amano looked at the [Vanilla] archetype identification result with newfound appreciation. It was absolutely beautiful.
If he'd identified any other archetype—even a powerful meta deck—Amano would still need to work hard and struggle for years.
But now? One step solved everything. He'd just skipped sixty years of grinding.
He definitely wouldn't be like Solomon Muto from the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime—clutching his Blue-Eyes White Dragon card and refusing to let go no matter what.
After all, he had no bond with this card.
The Eva system's notification chimed again.
When good fortune arrives, even electronic synthesized voices sound pleasant to the ear.
[Duel Gene Identification Complete. Duelist Amano Rei may now spend Eva Points at Duelist Service Centers to draw "Vanilla" archetype cards. Cost: 1,000 Eva Points per card.]
One thousand Eva Points per card was double the 500-point initial rate, but honestly not that expensive.
After all, even garbage cards sold at card shops were priced at minimum 1,000 points.
Essentially, spending the bare minimum gave you a chance to pull rare cards matching your personal archetype.
Rather, the initial ten-card draw was just too good a deal.
The system notification continued.
[Subsequent "Vanilla" cards drawn using Eva Points may be freely traded and exchanged.]
[Duelist Amano Rei, proceed toward the pinnacle of dueling!]
A perfectly normal closing announcement. Yet Amano immediately noticed something wrong.
Wait. What did that mean—"subsequent cards drawn using Eva Points may be freely traded"?
That phrasing made it sound like the initial cards couldn't be traded...
Amano hurriedly examined the ten starter cards displayed before him.
The bottom right corner of each card—where Eva's anti-counterfeit serial numbers should be printed—now displayed a stark message: [Initial Bound Card - Cannot be Traded. Cannot be Removed from Deck (May be Replaced with Same Archetype Cards)].
Including that card supposedly worth 87 million Eva Points—Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
Cannot be traded. Cannot be removed from deck. How the hell was he supposed to sell it?!
Why make such unnecessary restrictions?!
But as someone victimized by capital schemes living in poverty-stricken District 32, Amano immediately understood the underlying logic.
This was Mainframe Eva's ironclad rule to prevent starter card farming exploitation.
Currently, the minimum market trading price for cards was 1,000 points. But initial starter cards cost only 500 points each.
This method of acquiring legal cards at half the minimum market price—if not restricted by rules—would absolutely be abused by dirty capitalists. They'd use poor people's identity qualifications to infinitely farm starter cards and produce cheap inventory.
Duel Monsters cards held tremendous importance within Eden Tower's economy.
For capitalists, as long as the profit margin was large enough, even human beings themselves could become disposable resources.
Never underestimate capital's moral floor. Never overestimate capital's conscience.
That's why Mainframe Eva managed card trading with exceptional strictness.
The "cannot be removed from deck" restriction—replaceable only with same-archetype cards—also prevented wealthy elites from completely abandoning their identified archetypes and only purchasing rare meta cards.
Untradeable cards meant absolute unchangeable ownership.
Forget buying or selling—even if someone stole your bound card or won it through a contract duel, the card data would automatically transfer back to the original owner through the Eva system.
In other words, this Blue-Eyes White Dragon was now soul-bound to Amano Rei. More firmly bound than even Solomon Muto's legendary bond—the kind you literally couldn't shake off. As for that 87 million? Forget about it.
After accepting he wouldn't get the money, Amano suddenly remembered that anonymous forum post.
[Kaiba Chiaki's bounty is actually a scam! She just wants to lure out any other White Dragon users in Eden Tower so she can secretly eliminate them! Run while you can!]
Back when Blue-Eyes White Dragon wasn't in his possession, Amano wouldn't have believed such rumors for a second.
But now that Blue-Eyes was bound to him? Better safe than sorry. Assume the worst-case scenario.
If this alternate universe genderswapped Kaiba had the same personality as anime Kaiba Seto—the kind who'd kidnap someone and rip up their card rather than allow a fourth Blue-Eyes White Dragon to exist—
His situation might actually be dangerous.
Fortunately, the Duelist Service Center's gene identification space was completely isolated and sealed. Absolutely nobody could have seen him draw Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
Carefully hiding Blue-Eyes among his other deck cards, Amano finally felt safe enough to exit the testing space.
The moment he opened the door, however, Amano discovered a crowd of people blocking the entrance.
Everyone wore expressions of amused curiosity.
Strange. The testing space walls were made of special non-transparent glass. There's no way they could have seen inside...
A young man stepped forward, face full of curiosity as he asked Amano:
"Dude, did you just shout 'HOLY CRAP—BLUE-EYES WHITE DRAGON!' in there? Did you actually pull—"
Amano: "..."
What good is a sealed space if you don't install proper soundproofing?!
"You heard wrong! Completely wrong! Nothing like that happened!"
Amano quickly pulled his collar up to cover his face and rushed through the crowd of onlookers, fleeing the scene at maximum speed.
Due to the extremely special circumstances, cautious Amano decided against walking home on foot like he had that morning. Instead, he spent 60 Eva Points to board a cross-district train and quickly return to District 32.
On the train, gradually calming down, Amano started feeling like maybe he'd panicked unnecessarily.
Setting aside the anonymous post's extremely low credibility, he was just an insignificant nobody from bottom-level District 32. There's no way he'd easily attract the attention of top-district financial magnate Kaiba Chiaki.
Rather than hiding it nervously, he should figure out how to use this completely soul-bound Blue-Eyes White Dragon to create actual value.
First: Blue-Eyes White Dragon's combat power was more than enough to crush most duelists in the lower districts.
Second: His deck consisted entirely of vanilla monsters, meaning Blue-Eyes White Dragon could play a crucial role in enabling powerful Dragon-Type monsters from his Extra Deck.
Third: He absolutely needed to find ways to make money.
Amano checked the balance displayed on his wrist terminal.
He'd repaid Kikawayu's 1,000 points yesterday, plus various miscellaneous expenses today.
[Remaining Eva Points: 2,320]
Enough for daily living expenses. But nowhere near sufficient for installing Shio's auxiliary prosthetic limbs.
While renting the computer terminal earlier, Amano had looked up prosthetic prices. Currently, even the cheapest auxiliary prosthetics required 100,000 Eva Points minimum.
The road ahead stretched long and difficult.
Contemplating the uncertain future, Amano leaned against the window and fell asleep on the empty city train.
When he woke, the train had long since reached District 32's terminal station.
Yawning lazily, Amano walked toward home, only to discover a completely out-of-place luxury car parked outside his door.
The luxury car looked somewhat familiar. Hadn't it appeared yesterday too?
And that red-haired girl who'd come with the luxury car—the same one who'd watched his duel from a distance yesterday.
The red-haired girl seemed to be talking with Kikawayu outside his front door.
The girl's beauty easily matched Kikawayu's, complemented by neat, fashionable clothing that created jarring dissonance against District 32's poverty-stricken streets.
Suddenly, a system notification appeared.
[Finesse Wein: Affection 55]
Since the system displayed a prompt, she qualified as a pursuable target with potential rewards.
But Amano felt puzzled. A girl he'd never met before somehow had 55 initial affection points for him?
Was he really that handsome?