After the duel ended, Hikaru first checked in with KaibaCorp personnel to confirm the surrounding conditions. After reviewing the rescue and communication requests and finding nothing amiss, he finally carved out a mont to lie on the sofa in his single dorm and ponder life.
D/D/D Oracle King d'Arc.
The card's inspiration was likely Saint Joan or Guardian Angel Joan. This version, however, was the demon variant—could it be called "Dark Joan"?
But that wasn't important.
What mattered was that this card belonged to the "D/D/D" series.
In other words, it was from the sa series as [D/D Swirl Sli], which Hikaru had obtained after dueling mbers of the Fusion Army.
However, unlike the card he had created himself, this one had originally been given to Sartorius by Leo Akaba. That was what made it so puzzling.
No matter what, even though things in this world were unfolding differently than in the original story, so elents still closely followed the source material.
For example: Jaden's Supre King power, Aster's fated destiny, Jesse's Crystal Beasts—these were all events present in the original. In both the ani and manga, Aster had lost his father and inherited a unique set of HERO cards from him.
Similarly, the Tyler sisters also retained their distinct traits from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V.
This world was a hybrid—many things deviated from the original plot, yet many others closely mirrored or even directly replicated it.
However, the "D/D/D" Deck ending up in the hands of the one person least suited to have it?
That made no sense.
After all, the D/D/D Deck belonged to Declan Akaba!
Declan was Leo Akaba's son and the leader of the "Standard Dinsion," who most wanted to topple Leo's golden empire.
The whole "kind father, filial son" trope might be a joke for others, but Declan, determined to maintain peace across dinsions, had always harbored hostility toward his father, who had launched invasions into other dinsions, including their own ho.
Declan fighting Leo was the actual main storyline of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V!
There was no way Declan would have handed over that card.
Which is why it was such a shock for Hikaru to find a D/D/D card in Sartorius's hands.
Looks like that egg-headed man had brought plenty of fine goods from his own dinsion.
Holding the Dark Joan card in his hand, Hikaru couldn't help but feel a bit delighted.
As a standalone card, it wasn't overly powerful, but its Fusion requirents were lenient—just two "D/D" monsters. And its effect converted any damage the player would take while it's on the field into Life Point recovery.
Simple, yet practical. In this world, that's more than good enough.
Hikaru rummaged through his spare cards and eventually dug out [Dark Contract with the Gate] and [Dark Contract with the Swamp King] from the bottom of the box. Previously, those cards had been unusable, but now there was finally a reason to consider them.
He didn't need to use the D/D/D series right away, but one thing always led to another—after all, the archetype was compatible with Fiends and Fusion in general.
After stowing the cards away, Hikaru pulled out [Fla Swordsman] and [Dark Flare Knight].
Well, now they were [Ultimate Fla Swordsman] and [Mirage Swordsman].
"Hahaha! My lord, how did I do today?!" Though it asked the question, it was already laughing gleefully.
"Quiet, can't you see our lord is thinking?"
No sooner were the cards taken out than Fla Swordsman began bragging, only for Dark Flare Knight to interject.
Hikaru couldn't help but chuckle.
These two had been his longest-standing companion spirits. Over ti, they'd absorbed the power of Super Polyrization, and later the nourishnt of the Philosopher's Stone, slowly gathering the energy required for evolution.
Considering all that, one problem had always plagued Hikaru:
Why couldn't they evolve?
Eventually, it was Tierra who pointed to Dark Flare Knight and said: he didn't want to evolve into anything other than a Fusion Monster.
That mindset was clearly narrow. Dark Flare Knight had followed Hikaru long enough to know that he never cared about what type of Monster a card was—what mattered was the process of Fusion.
Still, since Dark Flare Knight himself was a Fusion Monster, he simply preferred that identity.
But after Tierra exposed this, he could no longer pretend otherwise and finally took steps toward a new form.
Fla Swordsman, on the other hand, was different.
Whereas Dark Flare Knight could evolve but didn't want to, Fla Swordsman wanted to evolve but couldn't.
Despite having gathered enough energy—by Tierra's estimation, he should have been able to evolve—it just wouldn't happen.
Hikaru once theorized that Fla Swordsman first needed to create [Fighting Fla Dragon] in order to evolve. Later, while researching [Armityle the Chaos Phantasm], another idea occurred to him.
Maybe that wasn't it…
Maybe what Fla Swordsman lacked was the ability to "pulverize" himself and then refine and recycle the resulting material.
Just like how Hikaru hoped to pulverize Armityle to extract the "Hex-Sealed Fusion" from its essence, Fla Swordsman lacked the skill to break down his power into components.
He simply couldn't do it.
After all, Fla Swordsman knew nothing about alchemy or transformation.
For soone like Hikaru, who specialized in using Super Polyrization for purification and sublimation, this was incredibly difficult.
Compared to purification and sublimation, he still had a long way to go in mastering pulverization and reconstitution.
Then, not long ago—
A card appeared and disrupted Hikaru's research entirely:
[Aleister the Invoker]!
This card didn't just elevate Hikaru's deck by a full tier. More importantly, with Aleister, Hikaru could use the [Erald Book] to attempt feats he hadn't been able to before.
Certain pages that required verification could now be directly read.
After revisiting his research and applying these insights, Hikaru successfully extracted a portion of Fla Swordsman's weapon that could serve as [Fighting Fla Dragon]'s Fusion Material. With Super Polyrization completing the purification, Hikaru finally combined it with his long-honed alchemical techniques to "sublimate" [Ultimate Fla Swordsman]!
It looked complicated, but the actual execution wasn't all that hard. Still, without Aleister and the Erald Book, Hikaru definitely couldn't have pulled it off.
Thanks to this experint, he had finally gained so understanding of the alchemy needed to extract Monsters from Fusion Monsters. Unfortunately, though he now had a foothold, Hikaru still required Super Polyrization to help. Extracting a Low-Level Monster from Armityle was still far beyond reach.
A long road lies ahead!
Still, at least now he had direction. With continued research and experintation, he could advance down this path.
Having sorted out these thoughts, Hikaru turned to look out the window.
Outside stood that pristine white building.
'Sartorius…'
Hikaru took a deep breath.
Originally, he had thought that Sartorius, destiny, HEROes—those were problems ant for Jaden and Aster, the two heroes whose fates were entwined.
But things were different now!
He thought of the classmates who had been brainwashed into joining the Society of Light and fell into a long silence.
It was true that during the Dark World attack, he had saved many people.
Even so, the threat couldn't be ignored any longer—He couldn't let Sartorius act unchecked any further!
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