World 108: One Move Deep

The heroes had many questions. "So do we keep calling you Scarlet Rose now? Or is Lilah fine?" Some more harmless than others. "I suppose Lilah will do right now. Even if I havent called myself that in years." All told, they took the news about Scarlet's identity rather well. "Well thank god. Calling you both Scarlet was confusing anyway." Dharma knew which Scarlet she would rather distrust, and the others shared that feeling. Though the fate of Tycho Rivers still put a damper on their mood, the fact that tens of thousands of duelist were calling in to assist the counter-Continuum offensive kept their spirits up overall. And everyone who could fit in gave their support: league duelists and dueltainers, admins and former members of Millennium. Only the inner circle heard about Lilah's personal story, but everyone heard about her findings.

"Wait, can we get back to the subject? Your plan, can we even do that?" And they were told one thing: the Legacy Items had to be destroyed.

After Vigionair gave them a brief explanation of what the Legacy Items were, Lilah followed it up with their plan for those seven items. "We have studied the items thoroughly, and I know how to decompose them. It is the only way we can return everything to normal. If STHEREA returns to a merely virtual environment, Continuum's influence will cease to expand. At that stage it will be easier for us to isolate it. The problem is.. their current whereabouts." Lilah switched on a holographic projection of the worldmap, and pointed out seven locations. "The obelisks?" Charles surmised what each of those locations meant. "Yes. What we thought before was not entirely true. The Obelisk does not keep moving around, Scarlet Fever has created seven of them in total.. duplicates from the original tower. I accessed the machines at Renner's facility to pinpoint their locations. Now the next part is speculation, but the fact that she specifically created seven Obelisks leads me to believe that each Obelisk holds one of the seven legacy items." The scarlet duelist hypothesized. "I would have suggested that myself if you hadn't." Charles nodded along with her. Coincidences could not be trusted when it came to Scarlet Fever.

"But do we really have to destroy the legacy items? What about the Creator?" Crescent Aurora chimed in. Though she'd freed herself of the addictive power of His legacy, she still wondered if it would be wise to remove the last thing that proved He existed. "This is about Him to begin with." Lilah replied, bringing her own personal input this time. "Scarlet Fever wants to find him, the Creator. I do not know how, but she is obsessed enough to try anything. I can say this is fact, because I would feel the same desire in her place. We would want to understand the meaning of it all, the meaning of STHEREA and of thought itself. What better way than to find the one who created everything. But if she does find him, she will also lead Continuum straight to Him. And I have no idea what this process will do to the world around her either, only that she would not care about the consequences. She has to be stopped, no matter what."

"And we will stop her. Just tell us how." Dyzanthium boldly declared. "Well we would not have called you here if we weren't ready. Lilah and I decided that it was best if I developed the antimeasures this time, just in case." As far as he could tell, she truly did not have any compromises in her avatar or any such weaknesses that Fever could exploit. Nevertheless it would be dangerous to use her ideas against the enemy with the same potential way of thinking. "And I made these.." Vigionair held up a cube with blank data cards. "Cards? Figures?" Sigment chuckled. "Not just any cards. These are weapons based on the energy used by the legacy items, specifically the Chalice. Hansen managed to transfer its unique counter-item properties into the CID drones, and I repurposed the data for those CIDs into what you see here now in a smaller amplified shape." He would have gone on about the specifics of this craftsmanship if he could find the time. But today he would keep the explanation nice and simple. "Take the card, insert it into the item when you find it, and it should destabilize them to the point of their powers shorting out. Since we cannot destroy the Obelisks without letting another pop up in its place, this is our next best option."

"And now we have the numbers. We have seven small armies at our disposal." Charles said with a smile. There were many more duelists to count besides the ones he could see. The ones inside were merely the leaders. "We will split up into seven groups, each one will attack one of the obelisks. This is our last chance.. our last stand. Because this is what's at stake. If we fail now, than Continuum will win and the world will turn into an emotionless never-ending nightmare. It would make us all immortal, at the cost of never feeling anything again unless it allows us to feel that way. It would just be a world of slaves fulfilling basic functions and nothing else. I do not know about you, but I do not want that." He wanted to make sure everyone in the room understood the severity of their situation, why they were all summoned here. Most were quiet at first, but luckily he had his wingman at his side. "Hey! That was a nice speech, boss! Could have used some catchy slogans, but not bad for a first time! I say we do what he says!" Madam Blanche clapped enthusiastically. As the host of the party, she got him a lot more attention.

"Heh. Well, who would we be if we said no?" One of the dueltainers stepped forward, a man Charles did not recognize at first. "Imperius?"

It was him, the gladiator. He looked like an entirely new person without his gladiatorial armor. "The one and the same! I believe I speak for all of us dueltainers and league duelists when I say we are devoting ourselves to this cause! Just point us in the right direction!" He sounded just as noble as he did in the virtual world however. "Hey! I thought that was you! I didn't think you would come.. what with the.." Blanche did not say his name out loud. But the same man that put him in the hospital bed was of course hiding inside the room at this very moment. "You speak of the invisible one? Ha! I never hold a grudge. I made the same mistake as he did once.. I am willing to put the past behind us for the sake of a better future!" He stated magnanimously. "Ha. Well okay." Blanche laughed along with him, and made a mental note at the same time to make sure Hydra and he were not on the same team.

"Nakana." Elsewhere in the room a different small team formed itself, with Nakana and Zanbatou at the head. "You.. what do you want from us?" And a certain former ace duelist wished to be a part of that team. "To help you in any way or form." Abigail pledged herself to the daughter of Shintaro. "Do you think this will be the way to redemption, miss Abigail?" Nakana at first regarded her with the same cold indifference that she had wanted to show her ever since their last encounter. Yet her curiosity thawed that feeling. "I do not seek anything. I simply believe that it is what I have to do." If she were to be rejected, Abigail would accept that as well. "Tsk. If I did what i felt, you would not be standing here. I know there is a difference between you... and her. But she is not here anymore, and you are. Why would you help me, when my heart will not let me help you?" Nakana did not understand why she would put herself through all that. "Because you already helped me. You released from her, even if you did not intend to." Abigail owed her, she could not see it any other way. "

And so the remaining teams formed their own groups of 'commanders'. Charles and Blanche would of course stay together, and took Jenna and Hydra with them as support. Vigionair would used the bulk of Millennium's duelists for his squad. Aurora and Wagner joined up with Therese and her admins, while the four champions led a whole league of elite duelists. So too did Donna and Giganoto pair up with the dueltainers and speed duelist crowds. Finally Scarlet took the remainder. "These are the seven locations. More and more closed systems are popping up across the world and it seems Fever has selected the most inhospitable areas for her endgame." The obelisks were found deep within the deadly rainforest, the arid desert or in the middle of the polar icecaps. Only duelists protected by their avatar's outer shell could survive in such terrains. "I believe we are settled on our destinations now. The communication network should keep us up linked with each other. We are to infiltrate and locate the items so we can destroy them. Are there are any last questions?"

"Just one." Jenna raised her hand. "Where did Midsummer go?" Out of all duelists known to her, she noticed a distinct lack of his creepiness as of late. "Midsummer? He was with us when we arrived here.. But he is no longer here is he?" A quick scan of the house told Lilah as much. "Then I can only think of one person he would run to. But we cannot let his recklessness endanger our plan. We will proceed without him. You have the coordinates, you have the mods, you know what must be done.. Go."

...

Midsummer found himself at the heart of chaos. He returned to the Exeter branch office, where the battle between Echo and Continuum still waged on. He did not talk to her until her victory became certain, until she destroyed yet another one of the endless drones. "Lady Echo. I am glad to see that you are still with us." The masked duelist approached her carefully. "Midsummer. It is not safe for you here." She answered him without looking back at him. There seemed to be a lull in the action for now, but she knew better than to assume this to be the end of Continuum's attacks. "It is not safe anywhere, Echo. I feel I am safest with you. I want to help you."

"There are others, who need your help more.. Midsummer. I can do this alone. I had hoped that you would have come to value them by now." Echo spoke with a slightly more accusatory tone, still averting her gaze. "I care for them too. But none of them are as important as you. If we lose you, we lose the world." Midsummer replied earnestly. "I cannot lose, Midsummer. I only lose those around me." The lady in blue stated and finally looked up. "It's tired of losing to." She could no longer sense the presence of her younger sibling. The Obelisk itself had teleported away long ago, but this fact concerned her a lot more. "She is changing her plans." Her eyes looked over the horizon. "I will do the same. You can follow me if you want, Midsummer. But just remember.. I cannot keep you safe."

"I am content with that, lady Echo."

...

The seven groups teleported to the outskirts of each closed sector, kept out of sight by Vigionair's technology. Vigionair himself wound up teleporting to the other side of the planer, on a muddy beach underneath a grey sky. "Geez. What happened here?" Cherry found herself in awe at the ruins displayed before them.. ruins of large rusted ships beached like whales. "This is a ship graveyard." Vigionair explained succinctly. "I guess.. It's hard to believe this is real. You'd think people would clean this mess up." Cherry sighed. Places like these reminded her of how much she did not like the world. "Just stay on your guard. I will scan the area." They were still in the right place, the obelisk poked out behind the shipwrecks like a watchtower. They were supposedly invisible, but the duelists who came with Cherry and V still felt uncomfortable.

"Hey Cherry. Shouldn't there be more people here? Whatever happened to Ezra.. and Melyria, or Ulysses? Why didn't we wait for them?" Lorelei the Fairytale duelist was one of them, and she seemed rather disappointed that there weren't any more prominent figures. "Hey, the message went to everyone who could pick up a dueldisk. But I guess half of them are in jail or something. I dont think Ulysses is gonna want to help me after what I did either.." She guessed he would still be nursing the hangover he got from losing their last duel. Cherry Anise did wonder if Melyria or Prospero were going to show up, though she did not extend that hope towards Ezra. Of course, according to Charles, the leader of Millennium went insane anyway.

"Okay. I have scanned the region." Vigionair claimed, putting his large suitcase computer aside. "There are not a lot of duelists within the area. A few dozen Karakuri drones and some humans; likely under the influence of Continuum. We should be able to bypass them. But if not, we still outnumber them." Right now a few hundred duelists were waiting to teleport in at his command. "Are we really going in first?" Hearing him again made Cherry question her decision to join forces with the encrypter. "Yes. That way I can send the data to the other teams and help them prepare their own assault. Logistically, we only need to destroy one legacy item. But we cannot risk the chance that some of these Obelisks are decoys." Vigionair started to head towards the Obelisk. This unusual setting put the notion in V's head that this specific location could be a place of less importance to Continuum. But then someone showed up that made him change that theory. "Wait! Hold!" He made the group stop advancing and looked up.

It was Continuum. The entity came down from the top of the Obelisk. "Whoa. Is that Prospero? Did he show up after all?" Lorelei gasped. "It's not him. Not even close." Cherry grumbled with a softer voice. "I guess Echo's command on it ran out by now. You think we can still fool it too, oldtimer?"

"It is possible. I always modify the frequencies of my cloaking barrier. But it may have detected something else." His scans, their teleportations, their communication network: there were too many factors to keep track off. "Therese? Charles? Scarlet? Are you seeing what I am seeing?" Thanks to their network they could at least see feeds of each others progress so far, and it did not seem like any of the other teams ran into complications like this. "I do. What are you going to do? Do you need help?" Charles asked. His teammates were still carefully checking out their own sector, and from the look of things he could spare some of them. "No. We stick to the plan. This could just be a routine." Therese herself insisted. "Following the plan has not always worked out well for us. Even if this is just a routine, we may not be able to get inside without alerting it. And Scarlet Fever at the very least should anticipate some of us... Though she may not be able to anticipate just how many of us there are..."

V moved away from the rest of the duelists to fiddle with a few settings on his dueldisk.. and immediately got Continuum's attention. "V? What are you doing?" Cherry freaked out. "Adjusting my frequency. But only mine. It still cannot see you, or hear you. Make your way to the Obelisk.. you should be able to phase inside of it and insert the protocol. You do not need me for that." Vigionair looked away from her and straight at Continuum. The entity teleported right in front of him in the blink of an eye. "Do you have a deathwish, V?" Cherry cried out. "Hardly. But my defeat is not even guaranteed. As long as the enemy plays by the rules of the game, it can be defeated. And every strategy has its countermeasures. The entity's are quite evident. Continuum has given me enough time to analyze its playstyle. Too much perhaps. Now go. I wont be able to maintain my vocal and visual scramblers for much longer!" He luckily did not need to repeat himself. Cherry and the other Millennium duelists ran off in the opposite direction and raced towards Scarlet's construct. "Now then.."

Vigionair's LP: 8000 Continuum's LP: 8000

-TURN 01-

"As they say...Let's get this show on the road." Vigionair removed his invisibility barrier completely to place three cards face down in the spell/trap zone... "Hello Continuum. I've seen your work. You decompose everything that has a name or type or element. So I will only summon when the time is right, and defend with the cards you cannot destroy until then! And besides that I have one more advantage.. experience!" The cipher duelist ended his turn, at which point Continuum activated a monster that V would be very familiar with : Thunder Dragondark. By discarding it from the hand, Thunder Dragondark could add another Thunder Dragondark from the deck to Continuum's hand. "Oh that is right. You defeated Prospero, who formed the base for this drone." Therese Hansen said, still talking through the intercom. "Yes, but it is so much more now. We should not under-estimate it." He may have talked boldly, but he was also sweating nervously. "Well, we can still hear and see everything. We are here if you need help." The woman from Exeter offered. Though they could not say too much without giving her own position away..

-TURN 02-

On the next turn, the chaos entity discarded the second Thunder Dragondark to draw the third one. That however would be the end of its Thunder-based tactics for this turn. Continuum activated a field spell with that same maddening texture. "Chaos zone huh?" The two duelists were transported to a grid dimension as dark as the cosmos. "And Chaos Grepher.." Inside that zone, Continuum normal summoned the muscular silverhaired swordsman(4/1700/1600) [Zone 3], whose red eyes burned with the power of chaos. It could discard one LIGHT or DARK monster to send a monster of the opposite attribute from the deck to the graveyard. Continuum discarded the final Thunder Dragondark to send the Chaos Valkyrie. "I guess Scarlet Fever is really not interested in talking to me." V sighed while his silent foe continued, banishing the Light Chaos Valkyrie and one of the Dark Thunderdragons to special summon a monster made of chaos: The Chaos Creator(8/2300/3000) [Zone 2]. Chaos Valkyrie could also send one random LIGHT monster from the deck to the graveyard, if something or someone banished her. But its effects could not be activated this turn.

"Two dark monsters and one Light monster? The outcome is obvious then. But I've got my own deja vu treatment waiting for you! I activate Crackdown! It takes control of one monster as long as I control this continuous trap!" He flipped his first se card to snatch control away of the Chaos Creator. "I see! If you cannot summon your own monsters, you simply steal his!" Therese wanted to applaud him for ingenious move. However if something were to destroy that trap card, Chaos Creator would be returned to Continuums side of the field. And the next card that appeared, the Chaos Dragon Levianeer, could do just that. Continuum special summoned this old favorite of Prospero by banishing two DARK monsters and one LIGHT monster from the graveyard: the remaining Dragondarks and the Ascended of Thunder discarded by Chaos Valkyria. Levianeer(8/3000/0) [Zone 4]: a sharp grey-scaled dragon with right green energy running down its wings like lightning, could destroy two cards on the field if it banished both DARK and LIGHT monsters to special summon itself. "V!"

"Ha. Exactly as I predicted. I activate Hyper Galaxy! I tribute two monsters with two thousand or more attackpoints on either side of the field to special summon Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon!" Levianeer would get to destroy two cards, Crackdown and the middle set card, but it would not live to see the consequences. That very same set card flipped face-up and tributed Chaos Creator along with the Chaos Dragon; purifying their darkness with the light of the galaxy. Hyper Galaxy resolved and placed Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon(8/3000/2500) [Zone 3] down in front of Vigionair. "Hey!? But what about the skill card?" Jenna cried out. Right on cue, Continuum activated Vector Breakdown to prepare the Galactic dragon for destruction. "That is where my third card comes in! Since I control Galaxy-Eyes, I can activate Photon Stream of Destruction and destroy Vector Breakdown!" Galaxy-Eyes proved to be quicker than the continuous skill. Its own breath blasted away with the power of the quickplay photon spell, letting it tear the Vector card into scattered particles of light. "That should be the end of that!" From here on in he could perhaps have a more normal game.

"Hm. That is indeed a good play to make, Vigionair. There exist no card that can recycle a skill, unfortunately." Apparently Scarlet Fever deemed his three-layered counter-attack impressive enough to start talking to him. " But we have contingencies in place for this type of setback. You will find plenty of other qualities to admire in Continuum." The entity activated the effect of its field spell. Chaos Zone {5 counters} accumulated Chaos counters each time a monster got banished, which appeared as growing white wormholes in space. And it could use those counters once the wormholes were big enough by using up at least 4 of them to special summon a banished LIGHT or DARK monster with the same level number. It took all five counters and resurrected Thunder Dragondark(5/1600/0) [Zone 3]. Only to immediately tribute Dragondark to special summon fusion Thunder Dragon Colossus(8/2800/0) [Extra Zone 2] from the extra deck.

"Contingency or not, your entity cannot strike this turn!" Vigionair pointed out how nether Chaos Grepher, nor Thunder Dragon Colossus could destroy the Photon Dragon. "That is true. But it cost you a lot to get here. I hope it was worth it." The entity ended its turn instead.

-TURN 03-

"I can do a lot with a little, Scarlet. That's rule one of being a developer!" Vigionair normal summoned a dragon of the non-galactic variety: Starliege Seyfert(4/1800/0) [Zone 2]. "You seem to be enjoying yourself now that you dont have that nasty skill to worry about." Jenna commented. "Just because a duel can be complex, does not mean I want complications. They are not the same thing after all." Vigionair said, leaving Jenna to wonder how those two things sounded any different. "And this will be very uncomplicated. My monsters will destroy theirs." Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon and its photonic breath obliterated the Thunder Dragon Colossus, while Seyfert focused released a wave of meteoric blasts that impacted against Chaos Grepher and reduced him to stardust.

Continuum's LP: 7700

"The world is already complicated enough, I quite agree." Scarlet had her own things to say about his little speech, which V favored less. "Seeking comfort in statistics and trying to reduce everything down to those statistics are not exactly the same thing either, Scarlet! I summon Photon Vanisher!" Because he controlled a Galaxy monster already, the photonic cyborg sniper(4/2000/0) [Zone 4] could also be special summoned. And with its effect, Vigionair added a second Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon to his hand. "Two cards for two cards." He activated Trade In next, discarding his level 8 Photon Dragon to draw two new cards: a trap and a spell. "Eight makes eight." Seyfert's effect involved tributing dragons to add a dragon with the same total level from the deck to the hand. It tributed the Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon on the field, and claimed the Galactic Spiral Dragon from his deck. "Those are simple facts. Nothing you do is simple: you have an addiction for the complicated, Lilah!"

"Oho? So you discovered that little secret as well." Scarlet Fever responded with more laughter. "Yeah she told us all about you and her. But your plan to turn us against her failed." Vigionair happily explained. "Well, your taunts will fall on deaf ears regardless, mister V. Unlike her, I have embraced my history. As I am sure Mephistar can tell you, if he were still here. I would show you myself, but I fear Continuum will get to you first."

"We'll see about that. I can still activate Photon Sanctuary! It creates two Photon tokens in defense mode!" Two orbs of space light(4/2000/2000) [Zones 2 & 1] appeared on the field, who prevented the user from summoning anything except LIGHT monsters. V did not plan to. "And now I have the right materials.. two Light monsters with two thousand or more attackpoints. To clarify, I am talking about Link materials!" The sanctuary tokens drifted up into the skies and opened a twoway link circuit that shot down a dark cosmic dragon imbued with the prominence of the sun: Sol Flare Dragon(2000/LINK 2) {Downleft/Downright} [Extra Zone 2]. "When Sol Flare is summoned, I can add one Galaxy or Photon monster back to my hand!" He chose none other than Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon, which would come in handy later. "Finally, I XYZ-summon Starliege Photon Blast Dragon! Which makes all monsters with 2000 attackpoints or more indestructible and untargetable!" Starliege Seyfert overlayed it with the Photon Vanisher to create the Starliege Photon Blast Dragon(R4/1800/1500) [Zone 3], which linked with the Cosmic Flare Dragon.

"Your move, Scarlet. Show me if you really did plan for everything!"

(To Be Continued in World 109: Solving the Uncertainty Principle)

New Cards used by Vigionair
Starliege Seyfert

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Hyper Galaxy
Photon Sanctuary

New Cards used by Continuum
Chaos Grepher
Chaos Dragon Levianeer

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Chaos Zone