Despite acquiring Slifer, Seto had not forgotten about Voarse Raider. He and Mokuba spent the next hour searching for him, but after finding nothing, the brothers gave up.

"It's no use," Seto said, after a while. "We need to go on."

Mokuba nodded.

"Anyway," the boy said. "We have Slifer. He should be a lot more powerful than Voarse Raider…"

He paused as he came across another piece of papyrus.

"Did you leave this here?" he asked Seto.

"No; that must be the new one," Seto replied, taking it. He quickly read the hieroglyphs with ease.

"There is but one thing to do
Should you wish to complete task three.
Traverse the towering mountain
And guide the peak into the sea.
"

"Are you sure that's what it says?" asked Mokuba, his eyebrows arched. "I've heard of moving mountains before, but I always assumed that they were speaking metaphorically…"

"And they try to make it seem so easy," said Seto, derisively, as he reread the ancient script. "'One thing to do…' Who are they kidding?"

"Maybe you are over-thinking it," suggested Mokuba. "Maybe it's just something easy to trick us… I've got it! We go find the highest mountain, grab a rock from the peak, and throw it into the ocean!"

"Somehow, I doubt it," Seto replied. "Fortunately, we're still in the mountain range, so we don't have to travel too far. Slifer!"

He tried to summon the large dragon, but it did not appear.

"What's wrong?" asked Mokuba, as Seto examined the red capsule.

"Forgive me," came a voice from within the capsule. "But my powers, vast as they may be, are restricted in this world. My capsule now has a seal that can only be broken upon your leave of this world; then, I can aid you. Thoth and Ra have similar restrictions upon them."

"So we have Slifer, but we can't use him?" asked Mokuba. "And even if we find Obelisk and Ra, we can't use them, either? How does that help us? You don't even have any other monsters, besides Blue-Eyes!"

"That may be true, but don't forget that we still have to find Obelisk and Ra," Seto replied. "We don't have to send them back into their capsules when we find them. And all three of the Egyptian Gods will prove to be useful when we get back and face Bandit Keith. And don't forget that my trust lies first and foremost with the Blue-Eyes White Dragon."

"And what about Harpy's Brother? He's still out there somewhere, looking for Obelisk and Ra, too! And he's going to set Kazejin on us after he finds him! And who knows; maybe Sanga and Suijin are out there, too!"

"Then we'll beat them to the other Gods," Seto went on. "I am not about to be outdone by Duel Monsters, Mokuba."

"Well, you nearly were," Mokuba reminded him. "If I hadn't gotten Harpy's Brother to drop Slifer's capsule, who know what would've happened!?"

"This discussion is over."

"Seto--"

"Without Slifer, we have to use our other dragons. I, of course, shall remain bonded to the Blue-Eyes," Seto went on. "Can Kaiser Dragon keep up?"

"Kaiser Dragon will be fine," said Mokuba. "But I'm not so sure about Blue-Eyes… or you, for that matter. You're really getting obsessed with that armor, Seto. Don't you think you should try going back to your old battle style of staying human and summoning the dragon?"

"That isn't enough," Seto replied. "If I'm struggling as it is with the additional power, can you imagine how much worse it would be without it? This isn't like using a Duel Disk."

"I know that," Mokuba said. "Give me some credit of intelligence! I'm just saying that you might be using that armor more than you should be! It might have some long-term effects!"

"I'll be fine," Seto insisted.

With that, he took to the skies. Mokuba leaped back onto Kaiser Dragon and followed him, wanting to believe that his brother indeed knew what he was getting himself into. Unfortunately, this wouldn't have been the first time Seto had gone in over his head.


The brothers searched the mountains from the skies and quickly found the highest mountain, the peak shrouded in more mist than the previous peak that had housed the Wind Turret.

"Sure is warm and stuffy up here," said Mokuba. "There must be some geysers around here or something. That would account for the extra steam. Can you see anything ahead?"

"Barely…" Seto replied, trying to tap into the dragon's powers of infrared sight. "You might be right about the geysers; there's definitely something up ahead, though it's impossible to tell form here."

"Then let's just get that rock already--" Mokuba began, but he was cut off upon a low rumbling. "An earthquake?"

And then Seto understood.

"Mokuba, don't go any further!"

"Why not?"

"That isn't a geyser at all; it's a lava pit."

"What!?"

"It makes sense now," said Seto. "'Guide the peak into the sea'… It's talking about the lava flow. This volcano is going to erupt, and we need to see that the lava reaches the water."

"And… how do we do that…?"

"You're not doing anything," Seto replied. "I kept quiet about you battling the Harpies, but you are not going to be anywhere near this volcano if it's going to be spewing lava everywhere."

"But how are you going to get the lava to go to the sea?"

"I'll have to improvise as I go," he replied. "Now get out of here before this thing goes off."

"Right…" said Mokuba, though he didn't like the idea at all. "Come on, Kaiser Dragon."

He left again.

"And don't think about coming back the moment my back's turned!" Seto yelled after him.

"Too late…" Mokuba mused to himself. He was already planning to take part in the completion of the task; gone were the days when he would be forced to run and hide while Seto did all the work. Mokuba had become a good duelist in his own right, and he would prove it.


After Mokuba had "left," Seto proceeded onto the top of the volcano. He hovered a few yards above the crater, glancing at the bubbling lava, trying to come up with some sort of plan. The lava was quickly reaching the rim of the crater, and would spill over in minutes.

His thoughts turned back to Mokuba; he doubted that Mokuba would stay away. He didn't even know why he had bothered telling him; out of sibling duty, perhaps. But Mokuba wasn't a fool; even he knew his limits. Or did he? Seto wasn't sure if he knew his own limits; that was what these tasks were beginning to prove. Losing to the Harpies had been a humiliating (not to mention painful) experience, and he wasn't about to allow any repeats or anything similar.

Seto's eyes fell upon large sheets of obsidian rock, and an idea came to him. Using the powers of White Lightning, he managed to carve a large depression in the rock. With another well-aimed attack, he smashed through the rim of the crater just in front of the trough. Now, when the lava rose high enough, it would spill into the depression, which he would have to continue to carve all the way down the volcano as a channel until the lava reached the water. But it wasn't impossible; not with Blue-Eyes bonded to him, anyway.

Seto congratulated himself on his scheme and proceeded to continue to carve the trench into the rock. Slifer had proved to be useful in one respect; not only had he restored all of the strength that Seto had lost during his battle with the Harpies, he had increased his strength. Seto's White Lightning hit its mark every time; slowly but surely, the trough was being carved.

Mokuba, in the meantime, was riding on Kaiser Dragon in circles around the volcano crater, trying to see what was going on within the suffocating clouds of sulfur and steam. He saw the flashes of lightning, and realized what Seto was doing. He had to admit that Kaiser Dragon wouldn't be able to provide much help, due to his hindered vision.

Mokuba was considering returning to the base of the mountain after all, but another rumbling from the crater made him pause. Even Seto, who had been in the middle of another White Lighting attack, froze, because a new sound was heard above the rumbling, which, this time, was not even an earthquake. It was a low roar, but it wasn't from the volcano. It was from something alive—and apparently angry. And only a powerful creature could withstand lava with such heat as that of the molten rocks that were among them.

Seto now flew back over the crater of the volcano, another White Lightning at the ready to greet the approaching creature.

"Anytime you're ready…" Seto growled, almost eager for some action.

He was not disappointed; a large Lava Golem emerged from the volcano crater, enraged at being awakened by Seto's trench carving.

Seto immediately launched the White Lightning at the creature. Lava Golem used the metal cage in its hand to absorb the attack, and then swung the cage at him. Seto dove out the way, realizing the beast's plan; he was going to try to capture him in the cage, and then drag him down into the volcano. Seto knew that Blue-Eyes was a tough monster, but even he doubted that the dragon could withstand the liquid fire, bonded or not.

Lava Golem attacked with its fire element now; plumes of lava emerged from its fingertips and spewed in all directions, one of them narrowly missing Mokuba and Kaiser Dragon.

"They never mentioned this in that papyrus!" Mokuba thought, trying to keep his dragon from panicking.

Kaiser Dragon shrieked, and both Seto and the Lava Golem heard the dragon's frightened cry.

"Mokuba, I told you to get out of here!" yelled Seto.

"Calm down, Kaiser, calm down…" Mokuba ordered him, still not ready to retreat.

Lava Golem roared and sent more fountains of lava in the direction of Kaiser Dragon's shrieks.

"NO!" roared Seto, more fiery than the lava around him. He sent a relentless wave of attacks to the Lava Golem, desperate to get it to ignore Mokuba and challenge him again.

His plan worked. Mokuba was alright for the moment; he had ordered Kaiser Dragon to dive out of the way just in time. He wanted to let Seto know that he was OK, but he couldn't risk attracting the Lava Golem's attention again.

Seto, in the meantime, had lured the Lava Golem out of the comfort of the volcano crater. He was hoping to lure it into a fall down the mountain so that he could return to focusing on the task.

Then, both of the brothers noticed that the lava of the volcano itself had finally overflown into the unfinished channel. Mercifully, it was slow-moving, but Seto knew that he had to finish the trench, or there would be no way to control where the lava ended up.

His lapse in concentration nearly led to his imprisonment as he narrowly avoided the Lava Golem's cage again. There was no way the creature would let him concentrate on the channel. Of course; it had to be this way. It would have been too easy for him to carve the trough without a fifty-foot magma beast breathing fire down his neck, so one had arrived.

And now, unless he figured out something soon, the task at hand would be out of his control and impossible to complete. And he would be forever sleeping beneath the volcano.