Loren tilted his head up, his expression lost. When the white light blasted through him, at first it hurt so much he could barely stand.
But soon, he couldn't even feel pain anymore.
It was like as his life force faded, even his senses left him. His body felt like a puppet with all its strings cut by that last attack—he fell backward, as if plunging into endless void, like Lucifer's nine days and nights of descent...
Then he landed in an embrace.
Loren strained to look up. It was his most special card—the Cameraclops.
The spirit that was like his father's incarnation, that had always protected him.
"Dad..." Loren said softly.
The photographer nodded at him.
The duel had only just ended, and as everyone's attention was still on the field, Kira suddenly spoke to the always-silent Arbiter across from him: "Now you can rest easy, right?"
The Arbiter, who had watched the field with an unreadable expression, glanced at him.
"Oh?" he said calmly. "My last swordsman lost—why should I be at ease?"
"That was your plan, wasn't it?" Kira smiled. "Whether it was your swordsman or the enemy, whoever lost, the soul is still yours.
After all, Doma's three swordsmen are just high-quality duelist souls you were going to consume sooner or later."
Kira paused, eyes narrowing.
"And besides, as the real killer of his father and his people, isn't it normal to feel relieved?"
Everyone was shocked at these words. Even Kaiba's always-calm expression shifted as he frowned and looked over.
But no one was as stunned as Loren himself.
He had already closed his eyes in the photographer's embrace, his consciousness nearly gone. But hearing this, his eyes snapped open and, by sheer will, he struggled to stand.
Bathed in shrinking green light, he stared wide-eyed at the Arbiter.
"You... what did you say?"
But the Arbiter didn't look at him, only at Kira with interest.
That was as good as admitting it.
But with his status, and at this point, there was no reason to deny it.
"Who knows?" Kira replied, saying nothing more.
He actually didn't know—he just guessed.
The three swordsmen, and Shell he'd encountered before, all had the same background: a tragic past, a desire for revenge, a reason to serve Doma. But in the end, everyone found the one who created their tragedy wasn't some outsider, but the very one they served.
It's a classic trope—nothing new.
Maybe the Orichalcos just lacks creativity, or believes that tropes work because they're effective. Why bother making it new? As long as it works.
So Kira's random guess turned out to be right.
"It... was all you!?"
Loren stared in disbelief at the Arbiter.
"Yeah." ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novel·fire·net
The Arbiter nodded, admitting it openly.
"To be a Doma Swordsman, you need a vast darkness within and the drive to control it," he said calmly. "Waiting for such darkness to form naturally is too slow and inefficient.
Instead, I hand-pick the most promising seeds, and train them myself."
"Yeah," the Arbiter said casually. "It was I who spread the virus in your hometown, destroyed that place.
I infected your father, and made sure he died in front of you."
Whether from rage or fading life force, Loren could barely speak.
Frankly, the fact he could still stand and question was a miracle. Normally, after losing the duel, the Seal of Orichalcos would have already drained his soul. If he hadn't been jolted by Kira's words, his soul would have been taken by now.
He was resisting the barrier's power through sheer obsession, anger, and will.
"Oh, by the way. The rumors of 'KaibaCorp conducting secret inhumane experiments' and 'KaibaCorp developing bioweapons'—those were spread by me, too."
The Arbiter chuckled.
"I arranged for informants to leak clues to your father, kept baiting him along.
He thought he was digging for justice, but he was just following the breadcrumbs I left, like a puppet.
Even when he finally uncovered a big secret and was killed for it, he was only acting out a script already written for him."
The Arbiter spoke with indifference, as if narrating something trivial.
Even Mokuba was angry: "Saying we researched bioweapons…"
Ever since Gozaburo died, KaibaCorp had stopped all weapons development to focus on new card printing technologies, much less bioweapons.
But Kira thought, maybe it's not entirely wrong.
If a powerful enough dark duelist could manifest the power of a virus deck, maybe it could be used as a bioweapon.
After all, card powers are limitless—anything could be sealed in a card. So technically, you could say KaibaCorp made whatever you want...
Loren was furious. Veins bulged on his forehead as he tried to charge at the Arbiter. The Cameraclops tried to stop him, but Loren's rage spread, turning into green light that even corrupted the monster—its eyes reflected the Orichalcos's green glow, like fury bursting out from within.
"Kill you! Kill you—!"
He tried to punch, but was blocked by the green barrier he himself had triggered, pounding on it helplessly. The barrier had shrunk to his face, the suction from above growing stronger.
"Good, very good. The angrier you are, the more your darkness grows."
The Arbiter nodded with satisfaction.
"Become my sacrifice—disappear forever into darkness."
Loren finally exhausted the last of his strength.
An angry soul was drawn from his body, up the green light, vanishing without a trace.
PS: Bonus Chapter at 2000 PS