Lithon LP: 1100

Chaos Number 4: Tesseract Polycore Dragon: Thunder-Type/Xyz/DARK/Rank 4/ATK 4100/DEF 2800 – 0 OLU

Spell & Trap Zone: Number Wall

Stranger LP: 3650

Number 128: Eva the Celestial Lord: Immortal-Type/Xyz/DARK/Rank 7/ATK 2800/DEF 1700 – 1 OLU

Spell & Trap Zone: Life Star Aegis

Field Zone: Cosmic Space

"Well, this is... unexpected," Ylidar said, her black eyes locked with the cubical gaze of Lithon's new monster. "A Chaos version of a Number you don't have anymore. Care to explain?"

"If you insist," Lithon smirked. "This is the second Chaos Number I ever created, formed using the same methods as those that created Synthetic Chaos, and which was still being fine-tuned at my lab when I dueled the Deltas, so they never knew I had it. I lost its base form to them, but I retained its Chaos form." He paused, glancing up at it, and speaking more to himself than to Ylidar. "Though until I received those Number and Chaos support cards from Gilag, I never expected to Summon it."

"Ah, Gilag," she nodded, understanding. "I see. So that must be where you got Number Wall, Glorious Numbers, and Necro Chaos from."

"And others besides."

"Hmm. Out of curiosity, have you created any other Chaos Numbers this way?"

"None. I lost the rest of my Numbers to the Deltas before I got a chance." Having seen his fill of the new dragon, Lithon turned back to face his Barian opponent. "Now, let me test out the strength of this one. Go, Tesseract Polycore Dragon, attack her Over-Hundred Number now!" The impossible dragon opened its mouth wide, and from it, released a jet of bright yellow flames that crackled with electrical currents. Eva was consumed by the inferno, and Ylidar had to cross her pitch-black arms in front of her face to guard from the blast.

Stranger LP: 3650 → 2350

"As simple as that," Lithon nodded. "See? Even your Over-Hundred Number is powerless before my Chaos."

"Are you sure about that?" Ylidar asked, lowering her arms and fixing Lithon with that dark stare once more.

"Hmm?" Lithon glanced up at the steadily clearing smoke, and saw – to his astonishment – Eva, standing exactly where it had been mere moments ago, apparently unfazed by the attack. "What's this? Why wasn't is destroyed? Polycore Dragon is still a Number, so it should be able to destroy-"

"Ah, but Eva has another effect," Ylidar cut in. "It can't be destroyed in battle by any monster, whether it's a Number or not."

Lithon gritted his teeth. "So it can't be destroyed by battle, and can negate any monster effects I activate? You might as well hang a big banner around its neck saying 'this thing is immune to monsters'!"

"Yes, I suppose you could say that," Ylidar replied, a trace of amusement entering her distorted, strangely echoed voice.

"Hmph! I end my turn," Lithon grunted.

"My turn, draw!" A quick glance at her drawn card made Ylidar's pitch black eyes narrow. "Interesting... dangerous, but I suppose, if I must..."

"What're you muttering about now?" Lithon snapped. The Barian woman looked back at him, and Lithon had to repress a shudder. The alien appearance he could deal with, but god how he hated those eyes.

"Eva's power alone has become insufficient," she replied calmly. "Her effects alone won't let me do much more than fend off your attacks. To actually defeat Polycore – and subsequently, you – I need more power."

"More power?" Lithon said questioningly. Then, "Wait... no, you can't mean-"

Ylidar raised the card she'd just drawn up high, silencing Lithon mid-sentence. "I activate the Spell Card, Rank-Up-Magic Barian's Force!" His fears confirmed, the scientist shielded his eyes as a sudden blaze of rainbow-hued light half-blinded him. "With this, I can Rank-Up and Chaosify an Xyz Monster I control, to Summon a Chaos Xyz from my Extra Deck that's one Rank higher!" Behind her, the celestial sorceress morphed into an amorphous mass of deep crimson, then shot upwards, into the depths of the dark galaxy portal that opened up in the realms of space above them. "I use the Rank seven Eva to reconstruct the Overlay Network! Chaos Xyz Change!" The bolt of red energy disappeared into the portal, which exploded like an inverted volcano spewing out not lava, but green-tinted shadows. "Descend forth, Chaos Number 128: Yugen Eva the Illustrious Lifelord!"

The orange symbol of one-hundred-and-twenty-eight flared across the sky again, a darker, more sinister shade than before. Likewise, the monster that dropped from the portal seemed infinitely more deadly than its previous form... yet, at the same time, so much more glorious. Its skin, once pale white, was now a dark grey bordering on black, not unlike that of the woman who'd Summoned it. Conversely, its robe – now falling like curtains from a polished gold piece of armour sculpted to the monster's shoulders – no longer reflected the vast, serene void of space, but now seemed to embody an entire galaxy, with waves of glittering stars moving across the velvety garment as if caught in a great invisible hurricane on a cosmic scale. The robe also fluttered of its own accord, even though there was not a breath of wind inside the arena. Just as its cloak had gained new lustre, the sorceress' eyes were now a piercingly bright shade of yellow, boring right into Lithon's own gaze like two miniature suns. And finally there was its sceptre, which was now longer than the monster holding it, and which shone bright gold with flecks of silver dotted along its length, and a bird claw-like structure holding the crystal orb at the end. Two crystalline Overlay Units hovered in front of it.

Chaos Number 128: Yugen Eva the Illustrious Lifelord: Immortal-Type/Xyz/DARK/Rank 8/ATK 3200/DEF 2900 – 2 OLU

"This card's powers, as you will soon see, are a step up from Eva's," Ylidar said loudly. "For instance, rather than simply being immune to Cosmic Space specifically, this card is immune to all Spell effects. Which includes Field Spells like Cosmic Space."

"I should've expected this..." Lithon growled, staring up at the newly-glorified monster above him. "You're a Barian. Of course you would use Barian's Force."

"Naturally," Ylidar replied. "I was lucky. Not all Barians are permitted to freely wield this power, but I was given this card as a precaution when I was granted the job of watching over this world. I never expected to duel, so I likewise never expected to use this card. Indeed, I almost turned it down."

"Eh?" Momentarily distracted from the dazzling sorceress, Lithon turned his incredulous eyes onto his Barian opponent. "Why would you turn down such a gift?"

"You should've worked that out already, Lithon."

"Enlighten me," Lithon replied.

"Fear," Ylidar said simply, looking up at her monster. "You made a contract with your Chaos Number when you first used Barian's Force, didn't you? Well, I feared that contract. I admit this freely – I was terrified of giving my Number so much power over me, as we were relatively new to each other at the time, so I still didn't fully trust it."

Lithon mulled this one over for a moment. "I see..." he said slowly. "And what, pray tell, motivated you to stop being such a filthy coward?"

Ylidar had to suppress the urge to snap back. No more outbursts. She had to keep her temper in check. "In short, you," she said. "You with your blatant disregard for life in general, you with your greed and obsession with power, you with your thin veil of justifications... you make me sick. I'll do everything I can to prevent you from winning this duel. The Professor's band may not be able to extract Number 89 from you, but let's just see how my Barian powers manage. That is, of course, once you lay defeated at my feet!"

"Just you try it!" Lithon replied, holding his duel disk in front of himself once again.

"With enormous pleasure," Ylidar said. "Battle! Yugen Eva, attack Polycore Dragon!"

"Attacking a monster with a higher ATK?" Lithon muttered. "Either that thing has an effect, or-"

"Yugen Eva's effect activates!" she declared. "During the Battle Phase, I can detach one of Yugen Eva's Overlay Units to activate this effect!" One of the diamond-shaped Overlay Units burst into a shower of light particles, which were absorbed into the sorceress' ornate sceptre.

Chaos Number 128: Yugen Eva the Illustrious Lifelord: 2 → 1 OLU

"Now, for the rest of this turn, any monster that battles with Yugen Eva will be destroyed at the start of the Damage Step, irrespective of ATK," Ylidar continued. "So say a fond farewell to your Chaos Number."

At this, Yugen Eva made a sudden lunge forward and thrust her still-glowing sceptre straight into the rotating core of Polycore Dragon. The monster gave a howl of utter agony, and the tesseract within its chest – now damaged beyond repair – began to fall apart, with strange three-dimensional-looking cracks spreading across its surface. Finally, there was a blinding flash of light from the sceptre still embedded within the tesseract core, and the entire dragon disintegrated, its atoms floating away like specks of dust, until nothing whatsoever remained.

Lithon gritted his teeth. "Accursed monster... now instead of just not being destroyed by battle, it can actually banish monsters before a battle occurs."

"Correct," Ylidar nodded. "You wanted a taste of the true power of Chaos – so much so that you sold your soul to the Barian Lords. Now you get to experience what that power is like when used by someone who actually knows how to use it best."

"You think you know more about the power of Chaos than me?" Lithon asked.

"What a stupid question," Ylidar said, her brow furrowed. "I'm a Barian – of course I know more of it than you! I end my turn there."

"Is that right?" Lithon said, not even attempting to draw, but instead keeping his eyes firmly locked with the dark gaze of his opponent. "And I suppose you've delved into all the greatest secrets of Chaos and Ranking-Up, have you? You're aware of all of their potentials and limitations, and have explored every angle in an attempt to surpass them?" He gave a stifled snort of laughter. "Forgive me if I find that a little hard to swallow."

"No-one's knowledge is perfect, Lithon," Ylidar replied irritably. "But I imagine my incomplete knowledge far outstrips yours. I grew up around Chaos, after all."

"And you think that alone makes you privy to all its secrets? No... if anything, growing up with it would make you even more blinkered to its true potential. You can't look at it objectively."

"Are you insinuating," Ylidar said, slowly and dangerously, "that you've discovered more about Chaos in the past few weeks than I have in my hundreds of years growing up with it?"

"Certainly," Lithon replied. "My turn, draw!" Ylidar didn't have time to rebuff Lithon's words before he drew. "I activate the Spell Card, Card of Adversity! While I control no monsters but you control at least one Special Summoned monster, I can draw two cards!" The scientist's gaze turned from the alien woman to his new cards as he drew them... and his eyes seemed to light up with joy. "Humour me, just for a moment, and listen to what I have to say," he said, calmly transferring his drawn cards to his other hand. "A regular Chaos Xyz Change uses emotions within the user's body to ignite the spark of Chaos, and thus infuse it with a Number to create a Chaos Number. I wasn't actually aware that humans were capable of this until much later. Conversely, a Chaos Xyz Change via a Rank-Up-Magic card artificially forces Chaos into the monster, which is less refined, so a Rank-Up is used to stabilise the evolution – an elegant solution which produces more powerful Chaos monsters. So, my question is this, o great and knowledgeable master of all things Chaos: What if one were to use a Rank-Up-Magic card to forcibly insert Chaos into a Chaos Xyz Monster – a monster already infused with Chaos?"

"Impossible," Ylidar said instantly. "You can't just double the amount of Chaos infused into a monster; it'd be much too unstable."

"And the Rank-Up?" Lithon countered. "If a Rank-Up can be used to stabilise an artificial Chaos Xyz Change, why can it not be used to stabilise this too?"

"Because a Rank-Up alone isn't enough," Ylidar said irritably. This was starting to feel like simply a desperate stall for time. "You'd need-"

"You'd need something more to stabilise it properly, or else the massive Chaos energy would go out of control and annihilate everything," Lithon finished. "Yes, I know. Your knowledge on the subject is admirable, I'll give you. But your attitude towards the concept is, I'm afraid, entirely what I was expecting."

"My attitude?" Ylidar repeated. "What're you talking about?"

Lithon sighed heavily. "Oh, how do I explain this to you...?" he muttered. "You can't... imagine. You can't see beyond the limitations of Chaos, and you refuse to accept that those limitations might well be surpassable."

"Lithon, will you stop talking such nonsensical rubbish?!" Ylidar snapped. "It's obvious that you're just stalling f- wait a minute... surpassable?"

"With the right attitude and dedication, yes," Lithon smiled. "And, of course, with the right tools behind you. I activate the Spell Card, Overlay Drop Reborn!" He slapped the card from his hand onto his duel disk with a little more vigour than normal. "With it, by discarding one Level four or lower monster from my hand, I can revive one Rank four or lower monster from my Graveyard. I discard the Level four Epignosai Resh. And now, return to me, Chaos Number 89: Synthetic Chaos!" With a great deal of grinding and clunking, Lithon's first Chaos Number emerged from the sealed form that rose up from the ground, and settled before him once more.

Chaos Number 89: Synthetic Chaos: Fairy-Type/Xyz/LIGHT/Rank 4/ATK 1900/DEF 1900 – 0 OLU

"However," Lithon went on, "Overlay Drop Reborn now forces me to detach a number of Overlay Units from one of your monsters, equal to my monster's Rank. If I can't, my monster loses all its Attack and Defence Points and its effects. Since your monster only has one Overlay Unit, I can't detach four Overlay Units from it. Therefore, Overlay Drop Reborn drains my monster of all its power."

Chaos Number 89: Synthetic Chaos: ATK 1900 → 0/DEF 1900 → 0

"So with 0 ATK and DEF, its effects negated, and no Overlay Units, how exactly do you expect that monster to improve your chances of victory?" Ylidar asked.

"Just watch and see," Lithon grinned.

And now Ylidar wasn't so sure of herself. Lithon was too confident, too smiley. She'd made the mistake of assuming Lithon was making stupid moves earlier, and he'd gotten a new Chaos Number on the field as a result. And now he was talking about surpassing the limits of Chaos? Had he drawn another Barian's Force, or maybe a card that could retrieve Barian's Force from the Graveyard? Was he really going to be mad enough to try and Chaosify his Chaos Number further? She desperately hoped that even Lithon wouldn't be that mad. He could wipe out the entire continent.

Lithon, meanwhile, was muttering to himself. From what Ylidar could hear, he seemed to be psyching himself up for something – and she had a pretty good idea what. "Dangerous... was supposed to be a last resort... but this duel, it's too good a chance to pass up... and there's testing as well; I really shouldn't use this for the first time against him without testing it first... yes, perhaps the only chance I'll get...

"Lithon, don't..." Ylidar said warningly. "Don't even think about it..."

"I told you to just watch and see," Lithon replied loudly, reaching for the card in his hand. "Watch me push the boundaries of science even further still! Watch me surpass the limits of Chaos!"

"Don't!" Now the Stranger was shouting. "Don't you dare, Lithon!"

But he was no longer listening. Raising the card in his hand up high, he called out, loudly and clearly, "I activate the Spell Card, Rank-Up-Magic Synthetic Force!"

Ylidar stopped mid-shout. "Rank-Up-what...?" she breathed.

"My very own Rank-Up-Magic card, created by science and technology! With this card, I can Rank-Up and Chaosify an Xyz Monster I control, in order to Summon a Chaos Xyz Monster from my Extra Deck that's one Rank higher!" As he spoke, Synthetic Chaos became coated in a shining crimson light, which, before long, began dragging the Chaos Number up towards a black, galaxy-shaped portal that had opened up in the sky above them. "I use Chaos Number 89: Synthetic Chaos to reconstruct the Overlay Network! Exalted Chaos Xyz Change!" The piercingly-bright crimson monster disappeared into the depths of the portal, which exploded in a violent fireball of light and flames... and pure, unrestrained power. "Arise, Consecrated Chaos Number 89: Empyreal Codec!"

Author-made cards:

Chaos Number 4: Tesseract Polycore Dragon
Thunder-Type/Xyz/DARK/Rank 4/ATK 4100/DEF 2800
4 Rank 4 DARK monsters OR 1 "Number 4: Tesseract Dragon" (Overlay Units attached to that monster are also attached to this card)
This card cannot be destroyed by battle, except by a "Number" monster. If you have 1000 or more LP, destroy this card. This card cannot be destroyed by Spell/Trap effects. You can detach 1 Overlay Unit from this card; banish 1 card your opponent controls, 1 random card from their hand, and 1 card from their Graveyard, then if 1 card of each card type (Monster, Spell and Trap) was banished this way, double this card's ATK until the end of this turn.

Number 128: Eva the Celestial Lord
Immortal-Type/Xyz/DARK/Rank 7/ATK 2800/DEF 1700
2 Level 7 monsters
This card cannot be destroyed by battle. This card is unaffected by the effects of "Cosmic Space". During either player's turn, when a monster effect is activated: You can detach 1 Overlay Unit from this card; negate that effect, then you can remove all Life Star Counters from the field, and if you do, gain 300 LP for each Life Star Counter removed this way. You can only use this effect of "Number 128: Eva the Celestial Lord" once per turn.

Chaos Number 128: Yugen Eva the Illustrious Lifelord
Immortal-Type/Xyz/DARK/Rank 8/ATK 3200/DEF 2900
3 Level 8 monsters
This card cannot be destroyed by battle. This card is unaffected by Spell effects. If this card is Xyz Summoned by Ranking Up "Number 128: Eva the Celestial Lord", it gains these effects. ●Once per turn, during either player's Battle Phase: You can detach 1 Overlay Unit from this card; during this turn, banish any monsters this card battles at the start of the Damage Step. ●Once per turn: You can remove 1 Life Star Counter from each face-up monster on the field, and if you do, gain 500 LP for each Life Star Counter removed this way, then inflict an equal amount of damage to your opponent.

Chaos Number 89: Synthetic Chaos (credit to Superjad)
Fairy-Type/Xyz/LIGHT/Rank 4/ATK 1900/DEF 1900
3 Level 4 LIGHT/DARK monsters OR 1 "Number 89: Blacklight Prototype" (Overlay Units attached to that monster are also attached to this card)
Cannot be Xyz Summoned unless there are 5 or more banished cards. This card cannot be destroyed by battle, except by a "Number" monster. This card is also treated as a DARK Fiend-Type monster. You can detach 1 Overlay Unit from this card, then target 1 card on the field; banish it until your next Standby Phase.

Life Star Aegis
Continuous Trap Card
While you control a face-up monster(s) with a Life Star Counter(s) on it, other Spell/Trap Cards you control cannot be destroyed by card effects. While you control a face-up "Eva " monster(s), the effects of other face-up Spell/Trap Cards you control cannot be negated. You can only control 1 face-up "Life Star Aegis".

Fun Fact #90: So yeah, that's a thing now.

Fun Fact #91: We originally intended to handle the explanation of why no-one's tried CXCing a Chaos monster (remember: this is well before Don Thousand did it) a bit differently. In the first version, when confronted with the concept of why no-one's tried to Chaosify a Chaos monster, Ylidar would've said something along the lines of "Huh, good point, why did we never think of that?", which prompts Lithon to go into his reel about how the Barians' vision is blinkered by living around Chaos so long. But that explanation didn't sit too well. The Barians aren't that blind, and if it is possible, Alit had a prime opportunity to Chaosify Caestus again in his third duel with Yuma. But he went for Rhapsody instead. So, with Superjad's input on the matter, we eventually decided to scrap that, and go for the idea that its impossible because the sheer amount of power would rip the Chaos monster apart and blow up lots of things (that or simply make the Chaos monster go on a rampage... we haven't decided yet). That, combined with the whole blinkered vision thing, means that the Barians would most likely have never bothered trying to find a way around such a drawback, especially when the Over-Hundred Chaos Numbers are strong enough by themselves. The reason Don Thousand was able to do it with Numeronias is simply because he's Don Thousand.

Fun Fact #92: If only ARC-V could stick to the main plot about Yuto and Yuzu and all that, instead of jumping back and forth between that and the JYC filler. If NAS would just learn to pace themselves properly, they could get a brilliant story of of ARC-V (because that part of the storyline is genuinely interesting and engaging) without having to resort to filler, and without having to desperately rush the endings to get to the next season/series.

Fun Fact #93: Oh, for those who've been asking, Immortal-Type isn't a Type we made up. It's a Type from the Duelists of the Roses video game. Look it up.