Kira took the tablet the researcher had just brought out of the lab, unlocked the screen, and glanced over the experimental data displayed there.
"Can you tell what kind of spirit this is?"
"Sorry, the data we've obtained so far is extremely limited," the researcher said regretfully.
"We've run all the standard tests, but it looks like the information on this card is hidden very deeply—or maybe it's already completely lost."
"Completely lost?"
Kira looked curiously at the blank card.
"So you're saying it's turned into a piece of junk?"
An eye suddenly appeared in the empty card art, looking annoyed. "Hey! I can hear you!"
But Kira didn't care, and spoke bluntly right in front of the party concerned.
"If it doesn't even have a card name or info, it can't be used in a duel. For a monster that can't get on the battlefield, isn't that exactly junk?"
The eye showed anger, but after a few seconds of fuming it quickly deflated.
"Hard to… argue with that."
"Have you ever seen a similar situation on other cards?" Kira asked.
The researcher looked troubled, propping his chin as he racked his memory for a while.
"This is… extremely rare. I don't think we have…"
But after frowning for a moment, he suddenly looked like a light bulb had gone off in his head.
"Ah, right—well, it's not the same situation, but there was something similar. And it involved our president."
"Oh?" Kira was surprised. "President Kaiba?"
Mokuba was stunned for a moment too, then reacted. "Don't tell me you mean the Light Dragon?"
"Yeah," the researcher said. "It was many years ago.
Back then the president, seeking the power to defeat his archrival Dark Yugi and the Three Egyptian Gods he commanded went to find Pegasus, the founder of Industrial Illusions, hoping to obtain power surpassing the Gods."
"That did happen," Mokuba nodded.
"On that occasion, the president received two cards from Pegasus. One wasn't crafted by Pegasus himself; it was a card secretly introduced by an ancient evil force to counter the Gods—'Pyramid of Light.'
The other was designed by Pegasus's own hand, what he called the ultimate Blue-Eyes that surpasses the Gods: 'Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon.'"
Kira nodded without interrupting. He knew this story from the DM movie, Pyramid of Light.
"After that, President Kaiba fought Yugi," the researcher continued. "During the battle, in order to destroy the Pyramid of Light and the evil power within it, the Shining Dragon was sacrificed."
This sacrifice wasn't just the tribute of a duel—it was the actual monster spirit being sacrificed.
After all, in the anime the Pyramid of Light was a god-tier trap that could even banish the three Gods. Yugi's attempts to destroy it through conventional means didn't work.
In the end, the Shining Dragon burned its soul, sacrificing its own existence to unleash its ultimate ability, Shining Nova, trading itself one-for-one with the Pyramid at the limit and perishing together with it.
After the pyramid vanished, Yugi was able to call back his ace, the Gods, and finished the duel in a single blow.
"After that, President Kaiba tried every method to bring the sacrificed Blue-Eyes back," the researcher said. "The deeper our research team dug, the more certain we became that the Shining Dragon had been completely sacrificed.
When a monster's spirit is sacrificed and even the card is reduced to ashes, there's no bringing it back. But President Kaiba disagreed. He firmly believed that the Shining Dragon still existed somewhere—just sleeping, waiting for him to awaken it."
"In the end he was proven right?" Kira said.
Because he already knew the result. In the finals of Domino City, when Kaiba Seto faced him, he once again summoned the Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon that was supposed to have disappeared. So Kira naturally knew in advance that Kaiba had succeeded.
"Yes. Because it's a monster on par with the Gods, our team paid unimaginable costs in money and resources in the attempt to recreate it," the researcher said, pushing up his glasses.
"At one point we thought we'd succeeded. We reproduced the Shining Dragon card exactly like the one the president received from Pegasus. The lab was already cheering, but President Kaiba quickly poured cold water on us."
He paused, as if mimicking Kaiba's tone at the time.
"It's nothing but an empty shell without a soul. What's there to celebrate?"
"An empty shell?" Kira asked.
The researcher nodded.
"Subsequent field tests proved the president was right. We only recreated a card that looked like the Shining Dragon, but it was no longer as powerful as before. The card lacked the pressure to rival the Gods—it was just an ordinary monster card.
And once the effect text manifested, we found even the monster effect was much weaker than before.
Originally, the Shining Dragon had the ability to 'freely choose whether to accept the effects of cards,' but the card we reproduced this time lacked that resistance and became 'negate the activation of effects of cards that target this card.'"
Kira: "…"
So it became a printed card, huh?
"Let me guess—did that Shining Dragon also lack the Shining Nova ability?"
Shining Nova is the Shining Dragon's ability to tribute itself to destroy any card on the field.
"Huh? How did you know?" The researcher was surprised.
Kira: "…"
Yup, a neutered TCG version, no doubt.
"But when I faced him, the president's Shining Dragon had already recovered its peak form," Kira said.
"Yes. Because President Kaiba Seto then took that Shining Dragon to the Spirit World," the researcher said. "We don't know exactly what happened, but when he returned, the Shining Dragon's spirit had been recovered."
He paused and glanced at the card in Kira's hand.
"Thinking about it now, the Shining Dragon card we recreated then is somewhat similar to the state of this spirit now—the card's information has been lost.
It's just that this time the spirit's condition is much worse. We've only managed to excavate a tiny bit of information…"
The eye in the card art put on a smug face. "So that means I must have been an incredible monster before!"
But right after, the researcher said, "At present the only thing we can confirm is that this card's original ATK was 0."
The eye, proud a second ago, immediately wilted.
"W-What!? Impossible—your instruments must be wrong!"
Kira said nothing and quietly put the card away.
"By the way, you said you had something important to talk to me about today?"
Putting away the card, Kira looked at Mokuba.
"Oh, right. Industrial Illusions has a project and specifically requested you," Mokuba said, then added mysteriously, "Have you heard of Crystal Beasts?"