"Is it finally over?" Hoshino exhaled a long breath and looked at the space where the Five-Headed Dragons no longer existed, gradually feeling relieved.
"Who would've thought we'd be playing this VR game from morning until night," Yugi (Yami) sighed, feeling a bit of indescribable fatigue. "But at least we managed to clear the game and rescue Kaiba."
"Hmph, I could've cleared it on my own, even without you guys."
"Kaiba, if you don't say thank you at a time like this, you'll be cursed by the heavens!" Jounouchi threatened, displeased with Kaiba's attitude.
"Alright, alright, we didn't rescue Kaiba just to get a thank you," Hoshino, having anticipated Kaiba's attitude, tried to smooth things over with a helpless smile.
"But BB, now that the Big Five have been defeated, we should be able to leave this space, right?"
"Of course~ Leave such a simple task to your final boss-type kōhai~"
With a light wave of her baton, the surrounding scene, filled with data, scattered and dissipated. The 2D flat Dragon God's Domain, which had served as their battleground, gradually returned to its three-dimensional shape, once again enveloping the group.
"Are we back? The original Dragon God's Domain." Mokuba looked around at the familiar yet still unsettling surroundings.
"Even though the Five-Headed Dragons have been defeated, this place still feels so creepy, doesn't it?" Jounouchi, perhaps due to fatigue, massaged his shoulders and stretched his arms.
"It's probably just the game designer's twisted sense of humor," Hoshino tried to convince herself, though she couldn't shake the feeling that something else was hidden in this eerie space. However, she didn't want to delve deeper.
"But why haven't the Duel Monsters disappeared? The battle is already over." Jounouchi shook his Duel Disk, glancing at the still-present monsters.
"Yeah, according to the usual rules, the summoned monsters should automatically disappear once the battle is over, but now..." Yugi frowned deeply.
The Dragon Master Knight and Crimson Demon Dragon – Siegfried Alter, still on the field, stood motionless, their poses unchanged since the end of the battle.
A few seconds of contemplative silence passed.
Then, a gentle voice broke the brief pause.
"The battle is not yet over."
"Mana?" Drawn by the voice, everyone turned their gaze to Mana, who had remained unnoticed since the battle began.
"Who is this girl?" BB suddenly asked, her large eyes observing Mana up and down. "She isn't one of the players who came with you, right?"
"Mana is a resident of this world," Hoshino explained to BB, though she was more concerned about what Mana had just said. "She's the princess of the Gran Empire, captured by the evil dragon."
"Master, are you messing with BB~?" BB flashed her trademark smile.
"Hmm?"
"In the Gran Empire of this world, there is no princess."
"..."
"!!!"
Hoshino suddenly felt a chill down her spine. BB's words surpassed any ghost story she had ever heard, making her skin crawl.
"Mana... are you?" Kaiba, equally shocked, managed to ask with difficulty.
"Lord Kaiba, I didn't lie to you. I am indeed the princess of the Gran Empire," Mana said, her head lowered, her bangs covering her eyes completely.
"However, I was chosen as a sacrifice, the princess of the Gran Empire from a thousand years ago."
"A thousand years ago?" Everyone gasped, realizing that Mana, whom they had thought was just an ordinary girl, carried such a secret.
"Why would an old lady from a thousand years ago be in the Dragon God's Domain?" Jounouchi, skeptical, raised an eyebrow.
"Jounouchi, read the room!" Hoshino elbowed Jounouchi heavily, whispering a reprimand.
"I died a thousand years ago." Mana's tone, once filled with royal etiquette, gradually changed, becoming sorrowful and chilling.
"The me you see now is just a wandering spirit within the Dragon God's Domain..."
"Is that so..." Although Mokuba disliked ghosts and spirits, he couldn't bring himself to hate the tragic Mana in front of him.
Faced with Mana, who shared his appearance but had a miserable fate, Mokuba, driven by sympathy, gently took her cold, small hands.
"It's over now, Mana. The Five-Headed Dragons have been defeated by my brother and the others. You should be able to rest in peace."
"No... not yet..."
"Huh?"
"My body, which neither ages nor disappears, is nothing more than a vessel for the world's evil over the past thousand years."
"Huh? What are you talking about, Mana?" Frightened by Mana's sudden words, Mokuba's hands trembled slightly as he held hers.
"Yes, the one who has driven this world into a cycle of calamity every century... the mastermind behind it all!" Mana's words, spoken with pauses, barely formed coherent sentences.
"Let go, Mokuba!" Hoshino, sensing something was wrong, shouted a warning, likely triggered by the lingering instinct from summoning the King of Knights in a Phantasm Summon.
"Hoshino?!" Though unsure why, Mokuba, already feeling something was off, didn't question Hoshino's warning and immediately released Mana's hands.
The moment Mokuba let go, pitch-black energy engulfed Mana, who had been wearing a white ceremonial dress.
"What's happening?" The suddenness of the event left everyone stunned, except for Yugi, who reacted immediately, and BB, who remained calm, continuously analyzing data.
"I see now. BB understands everything now!" BB, having completed her analysis, waved her baton, tapping each of the stunned group members on the head.
"What's going on, BB?" Hoshino asked, rubbing her head where BB had hit her.
"Now it's time for BB's lesson!"
"Don't bother with the details at a crucial moment like this!" Hoshino snapped impatiently, urging for haste.
"Master, you're impatient. Fine, BB will explain directly~"
"This world was never a game world to begin with; it's a real parallel world existing in a different dimension."
"A parallel world? But isn't this supposed to be a game created by the Big Five?" Kaiba asked, sensing something was off.
"The game is just a setting the Big Five imposed on this world. Do you think that with your world's current level of technology, you could develop such a realistic and advanced VR game in such a short time?"
Kaiba, now silent, accepted BB's analysis. Indeed, if this world were merely a game pieced together from data, it would be far too advanced, even compared to the most cutting-edge holographic devices available today.
Kaiba had considered this possibility before, but as someone who believed in science, he hadn't entertained the idea of a parallel world.
"I knew it! There's no way the Big Five could have developed such a high-realistic game in such a short time!" Mokuba, who had been frustrated, finally found the answer to his doubts, stomping the ground in anger.
"BB, I'm completely lost now." Hoshino, feeling a headache coming on, held her head and asked BB for help. "Could you explain it in simpler terms?"
"Yeah, even if this is a real parallel world, how does that relate to what's happening now?" Jounouchi, as confused as Hoshino, pressed for an explanation.
"Allow BB, with her superior AI summarization skills, to explain it to you ignorant humans." BB, proud of her explanation, twirled her baton.
"The current situation is that the Big Five forcibly connected themselves to this world using sacrificed souls. They are more like foreign entities rather than the final bosses of this world."
"Foreign entities? But wasn't the Five-Headed Dragons the final boss of this game… or rather, this world?" Yugi, having quickly grasped BB's summary, pinpointed the key point.
"Bingo~ You're sharp, starfish-haired boy! This world has existed for over a thousand years. Do you think the five insignificant humans who inserted themselves later have the qualifications to be this world's final boss?"
"Then, what about the legend of the Five-Headed Dragons from a thousand years ago?" Hoshino, growing more uneasy, hesitated to continue.
"Master, there's no running away now!" BB's eyes turned serious as she looked at the anxious Hoshino. "The legend from a thousand years ago and the princess captured a thousand years ago are the oldest and most authentic mysteries of this world!"
"In BB's words, the one standing before you now is the true final boss~"
"The final boss? You mean Mana?" Jounouchi, finding it hard to believe, asked. Even though Mana was engulfed in darkness, she still appeared to be just a girl the same age as Mokuba.
"She's no longer Mana. As she said herself, she's merely a vessel for the world's evil."
"But she just looks like an ordinary girl..."
"Her appearance means nothing at this point!" Even BB seemed a bit impatient with Jounouchi's dull thinking.
"Look, she's already gathering power!" BB pointed to the walls around them.
The dragon statues, which had been densely packed on the walls, had started writhing at some point, converging on the darkness that had consumed Mana.
"So those disgusting statues on the walls were alive all along." The already unsettling sculptures now made Hoshino feel even more nauseous.
"The world's evil has no fixed form; it only takes on the shape that the people of this world fear the most. The unchanging image over the past thousand years is the true origin of the legend of the Five-Headed Dragons…" BB explained, her tone turning more serious.
The countless dragon statues continued converging into the dark mass surrounding Mana, until they all finally fused into a gigantic, towering form—revealing their true nature.
[True Five-Headed Dragon (Ascension) ★★★★★★★★★★★★ (12 Stars)][Dark][Dragon/Effect][ATK 5000/DEF 5000]
"This… this is the true Five-Headed Dragon of the thousand-year-old legend?"
(*****)
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