Hikaru put away his Duel Disk and deck, and walked down off the stage.
As he came down, he happened to see the Nordic trio, and waved a greeting to them.
The three were just about to respond with something when they noticed this Light's teammates walking over this way.
Originally, when they saw Jack and the others coming this way, the three had been about to leave, but to their surprise, Hikaru stood right where he was, stopping here.
What did this mean?
"Good work, Light." On the other side, Yusei and the few others walked over right at this moment.
Yusei looked to the left, smiled, and said: "Yusei, these three are participants from the Nordic side."
Yusei?
The three noticed Yusei Fudo.
The "new King"?
Dragan narrowed his eyes slightly.
So this was the Yusei Fudo who had defeated Jack Atlas?
Yusei looked at the three with some slight puzzlement.
Why did Hikari specifically point out these three people?
He took another careful look at the three, and suddenly recalled their information, to be precise, a small bit of data.
So he hurriedly extended his hand toward Halldor. Halldor, not understanding why, extended his hand too, feeling a bit puzzled.
What's going on?
"How lucky. I've always wanted to meet you... You're the chosen of the 'Aesir,' right?"
The three were taken aback at once.
By the looks of it, this Light hadn't introduced them to Yusei Fudo, so how could he guess their identities all at once?
"You guessed right." Halldor responded without losing his composure. "We're duelists blessed by the Aesir... By the looks of it, you're something similar?"
He raised his head to look behind Yusei.
Aside from Jack Atlas, he didn't recognize any of the others.
But that lean-looking guy seemed not to be an ordinary person either.
And while he was observing, Dragan had already locked eyes with Jack Atlas, beginning an unblinking staring contest like an elementary schooler. Bommer, a bit speechless, elbowed Dragan, but to his surprise, that Crow across from them was even more impressive than him, directly smacking the back of Jack's head with his hand.
"What are you doing! What are you doing!" Smacked by Crow like that, Jack thought they were about to argue over the time matter again, and was instantly a bit triggered.
Crow put his hands on his hips, shook his head helplessly, and sighed.
This idiot doesn't use his brain at all.
"Sorry. My friend has some old grudges with your friend." Bommer spread his hands and offered a bit of explanation.
But Dragan didn't have such a good temper. He just snorted coldly and said: "Jack Atlas, not participating in the competition yourself, letting your teammate expose your ace ahead of time, as lowly as ever. A person like you isn't fit to be called King at all."
???
A whole forehead of question marks appeared on Jack.
"Halldor, Bommer, we should go register too."
Clearly, he didn't want to waste any more time here with members of Team 5D's.
Hearing this, the other two of the Nordic trio naturally wouldn't go against their friend's wishes. They gave Team 5D's a brief greeting, then turned and left.
"Baffling." Jack was somewhat at a loss.
"There's probably some misunderstanding." Yusei didn't dwell too much on this issue. If it was a misunderstanding, it could be cleared up; if it was a true conflict, there were ways to resolve it. Since they were WRGP participants, since they were duelists, then Jack and that man would naturally have a time to face off, and it could be cleared up then.
"Nordic... Aesir..."
Yusei silently lowered his head and thought for a moment.
He'd seen information about the Aesir in Zone's data, but in the history "Zone" had experienced, the three Aesir hadn't performed particularly well in the "War of the One God", it could even be said they'd been defeated before they even had a chance to participate, so he only had a rough understanding.
Unknown opponents, huh...
Unknown enemies represented entirely new possibilities and uncertainties. But for Yusei, this was a good thing.
In the history Zone experienced, since they were eliminated before they even got a chance to participate, then there was all the more chance to link up together!
Thinking of this, he thanked Hikaru once more, because he knew Hikaru must have noticed the Nordic trio's abnormality earlier, which was why he'd deliberately blocked their path.
Now that they'd run into each other, trying to communicate a bit was good too.
It was just a pity there wasn't more contact.
But he didn't dwell on it too much, and called Hikaru to head toward their "team hall."
Before leaving, Hikaru gazed off toward the spectator seats.
He wasn't specifically looking for anyone, just taking a simple glance, but unexpectedly, with just a casual glance, he actually saw someone who surprised him.
It seemed to be Yugo, but Yugo couldn't be sitting in the Pendulum team.
It was Yuya Sakaki.
His heart was a mix of flavors, and for the first time he felt a bewilderment about the "future."
This tomato... what's he like now?
Team 5D's had a dedicated team storeroom in the upper district. After Hikaru walked into the storeroom, he took off his mask, took a good breath of fresh air. Seeing that it really was Hikaru beneath the mask, Jack exclaimed it was unbelievable.
That Hikaru's duel, how could it have looked like that?
Hikaru explained with a smile that the duel hadn't been participated in by "him," but was a duel carried out by the "god" he supported.
At this, the few of them immediately understood.
They knew Hikaru's true "supporting god" was an otherworldly god named Tierra. Recalling it now, the monsters Hikaru used in that duel did have a style rather different from what he usually used.
But no one dwelled on this trivial matter. As partners with a "life-and-death" friendship, the three of Team 5D's didn't pay too much attention to the matter of gods, and instead began discussing other things.
First was...
"Hikari, look here." Yusei led Hikaru to the storeroom's enormous wall. He pressed a button, and the huge wall slowly moved, finally becoming a wall filled with screens.
Yusei pressed a switch, and various images began appearing one by one on the screens.
There was the Uptown, the Downtown, the suburbs, and even some places Hikaru had no impression of.
"In the half year you were back in your dimension, while I adapted to my body and prepared for the competition, I also, following Zone's plan, built more observation screens. Now, the whole world has places that can be observed."
Yusei said something utterly terrifying very calmly.
"Though, outside the City, there are still relatively few places that can be observed. But it already counts as covering the entire planet."
As he spoke, he selected several targets and pointed them out to Hikaru, saying these people were the God's Chosen of such-and-such pantheon, and those people were the believers of so-and-so.
But
"From when Lulu mentioned this to me, up to just after your duel ended, I haven't found your friends." Yusei frowned, looking at the screen.
"Could they be in the wilderness regions?" Hikaru was a bit worried.
"No, if it were the wilderness regions..." Yusei shook his head and opened up other programs.
The screens of the entire wall became a huge planet, with countless dot-arrays within it, their purpose unknown.
"These locations are the nodes of our dimension's spacetime fluctuations. Including the God's Chosen of otherworldly gods, spirits that came to our world by chance, passage channels from other dimensions, dimensional channels of future people... I've already confirmed it. Not a single point that could possibly produce a dimensional gate has appeared in a desolate, uninhabited place."
Hikaru knit his brow.
"You mean..."
"I'm afraid it's not that they're really lost somewhere, but that... someone deliberately hid their tracks." Yusei nodded, but couldn't help knitting his brows. "And it's an existence powerful enough to interfere with the future-science equipment Zone provided.
At the very, very least, it's a god on par with Wiraqocha Rasca."
Hikaru rubbed his face to clear his head, closed his eyes and thought carefully for a while, then suddenly raised a finger and asked: "In that case, Yusei, has anyone wearing bizarre costumes or hiding their identity recently registered for the WRGP competition in your dimension?"
Yusei looked at Hikaru.
Hikaru met his gaze for two seconds, then smacked his hand against his own forehead with a clap.
There were more than a few of those.
He himself was a disguised person!
But then he thought of another possibility: "There seems to be another possibility... Supposing they were neither randomly teleported into a human city, nor deliberately erased from existence... is it possible they're in this world's subspace?"
Something like the Reverse World.
He thought about it and told Yusei about his own world's concept similar to the "Reverse World." Yusei pondered for a while, and couldn't deny it either.
"Then there are two possibilities." Hikaru pinched the space between his brows.
Fortunately, the range could already be narrowed down. Not bad.
After discussing all this with Hikaru, Yusei told him a few more details.
In fact, recently Team 5D's had been doing pretty well.
Unlike the original work, because Goodwin hadn't suddenly launched an attack, but instead became "Grand President," Jack, his number-one underling, naturally still had a job, with a monthly salary that was an astronomical figure to others.
And Crow, as a hero who had saved two children, was the first Downtown citizen to gain the Uptown's recognition. He was quite popular in the Uptown too, his work went very smoothly, and many Uptown children liked to play with him. His career was genuinely going well.
Needless to say for Yusei, he was well-received in both the Uptown and Downtown. He even had an ultra-luxurious "person behind the scenes" supporting him, commanding a great deal of technology that didn't exist in this era, and had advanced a step further in D-Wheel modification technology.
Precisely because of this, if Hikaru needed it, he could seek help right here at their base, and Hikaru wouldn't need to rest at his previous stronghold anymore.
Until the WRGP ended, their competition base couldn't possibly be inspected.
For Hikaru, this was indeed good news.
If he could spend less effort on things, then a more comfortable life was definitely better. Who wouldn't want to not have to think about all that trouble every day and just enjoy life?
"Can this monitor of yours surveil other things?"
"No... I didn't install that many functions." Yusei hesitated. "This isn't a surveillance device. It's an instrument I use to observe our world's life cycle... I don't want to use this kind of method to 'surveil' others."
It was precisely for this reason that he had no idea when Carly Nagisa had been lured by the Earthbound Immortals.
Hearing this, Hikaru couldn't help nodding repeatedly in amazement.
"This guy can already rival you." Beside him, even Tierra was a bit shocked.
Last time she'd thought this person was a living saint; now she was even more certain.
"It's a Number." After returning to the base from the team, Jack Atlas, who had found himself a little table to drink coffee, heard the two's conversation and spoke up.
"A what?" Yusei was puzzled.
"A Number?" Hearing this, Hikaru blanked for a moment too. "Numbers have appeared in your world too?"
Hearing this, Jack slammed his coffee cup onto the table with a clap, quite irritated: "You've encountered them too? That kind of troublesome thing... That foolish woman, she should've just honestly stayed a reporter, but no, she had to investigate some secret incident..."
"She said she'd discovered an exclusive big scoop that could shock the world again, and then went off alone." Bringing this up, Jack seemed quite agitated.
So that was how it was?
Hikaru had been wondering: over here, Carly Nagisa hadn't been killed by "Arcadia," so how exactly did she get tangled up with the Earthbound Immortals? So it was Number-related.
According to Jack, that kind of Number card seemed able to trigger the user's inner heart. Although Carly Nagisa kept saying it didn't matter, she still couldn't let go of having failed to help Jack before. Even though, in Jack's view, resolving his knot was already far more than enough compared to anything else, she still held onto it in her heart.
As a result, first the Number card triggered the desire in her heart, then it awakened a slumbering Earthbound Immortal, and just like that, she muddleheadedly became one of the "God's Chosen."
"Idiot." Beside them, the passing Crow couldn't help cursing him again. "Isn't it because you, idiot, don't speak like a human being every day."
"What does that have to do with me?" Jack retorted.
"Wait..." Hikaru hurriedly interrupted the two's ever-present bickering. "You're saying Carly was affected by an inter-dimensional card and then became one of the God's Chosen, right? Then where did that inter-dimensional card come from?
Did someone give it to her? Where's the card?"
Holding his coffee cup against his lips, Jack knit his brows, recalling: "That card flew away afterward... In that direction, it should be the nobles' area, right?"
"There are nobles too?!" Hikaru was startled. "You still have living nobles here!?"
Two batches had already been killed off, and there were still living nobles!?
Did Goodwin not exterminate them all?
"No," On the other side, Yusei cut in. "I understand now, Hikari. This is a blind spot."
Indeed, the vast majority of nobles who had colluded with the Fusion army were already dead.
But when it came down to it, it was hard to go from luxury to frugality. Among the nobles still alive, there might well be those wanting to seize the "One God" war to regain their status.
It wasn't impossible for them to pursue inter-dimensional power!
And not only that.
The nobles who had cooperated with the Fusion army had also once experimented with dimensional technology, so in their hands, there might not be no "subspace" residue.
These were all things outside his observation range!
"I understand now," Jack set down what was in his hand, producing a crisp clinking sound on the table, then picked up his helmet and tucked it at his waist.
"Jack?" Yusei asked.
"Amagi, you're looking for your friends, right." Jack Atlas looked at Hikaru and laughed. "Since you chose to hide your identity, then whether it's truly necessary or not, you don't want to expose yourself easily.
Maybe you have a way to sneak in like during that Arcadia time, but in the end you can't investigate thoroughly.
Consider it repaying you for the matter of me messing up in my busyness and failing to make it to the qualifiers in time. I'll go use my authority to search directly.
Conveniently... I also want to properly let them know the consequences of provoking me."
As he spoke, he had already walked out the main gate, bidding farewell to the few of them.
Hikaru and the other two buddies looked at each other, then couldn't help saying: "Is he always like this?"
Referring to abusing his authority.
The two silently nodded.
Hikaru was a bit speechless.
Never mind, it was fine. One more helper.
But at the same time, Hikaru was still a bit worried.
No matter which of the two possibilities Yusei had guessed, it felt like Zane and Bastion's situations wouldn't be too good...