The journey to the duel parlor continued with no more incidents of note. The building was the same as ever, the outside dilapidated and practically drowning in flickering neon lights, while the inside stank of cigarette smoke and broken dreams lost amid puke-colored shag carpet. The parlor side of the building was by no means closed, even considering how late at night it was, but the number of patrons surrounding the gambling tables was few and far between.

  As Phil ducked through the front door, one of the women behind the chip exchange counter started in surprise. That emotion did not stay on her face for long – after recognizing Phil's face and most likely guessing that he wasn't here for the parlor, but for the underground dueling, her face returned to its usual state of carefully cultivated blankness. That slip-up alone was able to make it quite clear how slow a night it was, a feeling Phil could perfectly understand. Her job probably wasn’t much different than working the graveyard shift at the local 24/7 store, but without all the meth heads coming in at three in the morning to try and barter scraps of stolen copper for a pack of smokes.

  A dull ache sank in. Now that they were out of the cold winter night, the various blisters and burns across their bodies shrieked in protest with every movement the men made.

  Without pausing they made their way to the grimy elevator near the back of the duel parlor. It too was the same as always, filled with flickering yellow lights that struggled to light up a space even as small as the elevator. No words were shared between the two men during their descent, and even Lumina was wrapped up enough in the solemn atmosphere to remain silent.

  The elevator lurched to a stop, the lights poking out from its roof weakly protesting the sudden movement by flickering weakly one last time before they went out altogether. The elevator door creaked open, seemingly unaffected by the lethargy the lights were experiencing.

  Opening up in front of their eyes, the concrete room was as bare as they’d ever seen it. Over half of the bleachers were empty, though the remaining third had straggled handfuls of duelists scattered across its surface. Inside the battle box dueled two men Phil neither recognized nor remembered. The first man, a man with a beard but no hair on any other part of his face, sat smugly in his seat.

  Two grey-armored skeleton knights stood in front of him in a defensive formation, monsters that Phil belatedly recognized as two copies of Skull Knight #2 (1000/1200). The second man, a man with lots of hair but no beard, was on the offensive, ordering a purple-armored elf on his side of the field to take a swing at one of the skeleton knights with its staff. This monster was no one Phil recognized, though one of the large TV screens above the box denoted it as a monster called Ancient Elf (1450/1200).

  Their cards seemed rather ordinary, even for the slightly heightened level of ability that the underground arena tended to have. The interior of the box was dim, though the lack of light did not seem to be caused by any card or effect. Perhaps the lights inside were beginning to fail, or this was some sort of low-power mode reserved for late-night duels frequented by duelists of a skill level that wasn’t worth betting over.

  Walking past the battle box, Phil and Jean continued their search for Chet. There were three steel doors set into the back wall of the underground arena. The door in the middle was familiar, the very same door that would lead out to a short hallway and end at the room with the water channel. Unlike before, there were no yakuza standing outside this door. However, that did not particularly alarm Phil – perhaps owing to the time of night and the general lack of duelists in the arena, there weren’t many yakuza hanging around at all. Two of the men sat behind the betting table, one loitered near the elevator, and a fourth was sitting at the very top of the bleachers for a birds-eye view of the room.

  Honestly, it wasn't even certain that Chet would be here, but this was as good a place to start looking as any.

  Phil tested the handle of the door on the left. It jiggled slightly but did not move. Locked. The door on the right was next. This one opened instantly without a sound, moving quietly on well-greased hinges. Past this door was a short hallway, no longer than three or four feet, and at the end of that hallway were two more doors. Phil pushed through, approaching one of the doors as quickly and quietly as he dared.

  Once he was only a foot away from the door on the right, a series of muffled voices could be heard leaking from behind the door. It sounded like one man in a heated argument with two other men.

  Phil eased the door open to peek through, his eyebrow arcing in surprise at the scene before him.

  It was the men’s restroom. That itself was of little surprise to Phil. There had to be one somewhere down here since no duelist would want to ride back up to the main floor every time they wanted to take a leak.

  The occupant, however, was the surprising part. Or to be more specific, what the occupant was doing.

  “AAAAHHHHHH!!!!! I WON’T LET YOU! AAAAAHHHH!” Mac N’ Cheese screamed inside the men’s restroom, fingers clawing away at his skin to leave deep gouges that wept lines of bright red blood onto the tile floor. The man was thrashing around, stumbling from place to place, only to pause, scream again, and smash his own head against a sink hard enough to put a large hole through the porcelain surface.

  The man was shirtless, but mercifully there was a pair of dirty boxers around his waist to hide the important bits. Muscles rippled under his skin, along with several golden tattoos that Phil could have almost sworn were brand-new since their duel. He certainly did not remember seeing them before. The tattoos appeared to glisten under the dim lights in the restroom.

  Even the shapes of the tattoos were odd, completely out of place in 90s-era Japan. On his chest was a large golden Egyptian hieroglyph that looked similar to an eye. It gazed unblinkingly into the mirror. On his back, only visible after the man twisted to face the mirrors on the wall and started to flex his biceps, was a large serpent. The serpent was coiled over itself, its body twisting and turning to form several loops, almost like it was trying to create two infinity symbols with its own body, while the head stuck out to watch Phil with one beady eye.

  Despite how the snake twisted, it still looked completely flat, as if the tattoo artist hadn’t made the slightest attempt to make it look 3D, abandoning any shading or depth techniques that would be common for an animal tattoo. This serpent tattoo was new without a doubt. Parts of it were still scabbed over, and other parts openly wept tiny droplets of blood. Phil’s skin felt like it was crawling just looking at the snake tattoo. Not because of the blood. He’d seen much worse before. No, it was the tattoo. Something about it felt ominous, almost sickeningly evil, but for the life of him he couldn't tell what that something was.

  “AAAAHHHH!!!!! THE DEMONS ARE TAKING CONTROL!” The man continued to scream, ramming his head through another sink to make sure no one could ever wash their hands in this restroom again. His eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth was coated with bloody flecks of foam that dripped down to splatter against the tile floor. “I DON’T WANNA DO IT! DON’T MAKE ME! PLEASE! I CAN FEEL THE ROACHES MOVE UNDER MY SKIN! AAAAAHHHH!!!!”

  Phil moved away from the door. It closed quietly behind him, and the screaming stopped like a light was flicked off. For a second there was silence, and then what sounded like a series of very loud slurping noises came from the other side of the door. The noises sounded remarkably similar to what a dog (or a madman) would make while eagerly drinking out of the toilet, but Phil ignored it. They had bigger fish to fry than some dude having a mental breakdown in the men’s bathroom. This was probably a daily occurrence for Mac N’ Cheese anyway.

  There was little point in checking the other door in the hallway. If this one was the men's restroom, the other was likely the women's restroom. Phil and Jean retreated back into the main room and turned their attention to the middle door. Cautiously opening it, the same hallway as before was revealed. There were several doors set into the sides of the hallway, and one at the end. They knew the one at the end would lead to the water channel room, but the doors on the sides of the hallway were still unknown factors.

  One by one they tested the doors. One led to a closet filled with coats that reeked of mothballs. The second one led to nowhere at all. There was nothing but a sheer concrete wall behind it. The third door held a room with a table, some chairs, and a refrigerator, appearing to be a break room of some sort. Phil slipped in and quickly riffled through the refrigerator, looting a ham sandwich in a plastic bag and two cans of soda he didn’t recognize. The cans each bore the same picture of a watermelon, so he could only assume it was melon-flavored. Attached to the plastic bag was a sticky note with the name 'Chet' written on it. Phil smirked, ripped open the bag, and tore the sandwich in two, giving one half to Jean and keeping the other half to himself.

  “Fuck you Chet.” Phil said through sips of the melon soda.

  Once they’d successfully stolen Chet’s lunch, Phil moved to the fourth door. This door felt cold to the touch, almost uncomfortably so. The last bit of Phil’s half-sandwich disappeared down his gullet and he jiggled the doorknob. It moved readily. The door swung inward on greased hinges. Immediately Phil’s breath fogged up, as if he was still outside in the snow. It certainly felt cold enough for that. Past the door was another short hallway that ended with a sliding steel door. The walls of the hallway were spotted with frost.

  Phil stepped forward while Jean cautiously peeked around the corner into the main hallway to keep watch. So far no one had disturbed their search, but neither of them knew when that might change.

  The sliding steel door was far heavier than the regular doors in the hallway. To have even a chance of moving it, Phil was forced to set his melon soda down on the floor to use both hands. The door creaked open with a small shriek of protest that echoed out along the frosty hallway. Soon it was open enough for Phil to squeeze his slim frame through it, and Jean slipped down the hall to join him.

  Once they were past the sliding door, it was clear this room was the reason for the frosty hallway. The entire room was a freezer, a large industrial one normally seen in a meat-packing plant or someplace similar. The cold air felt wonderful on his burns. They no longer cried out in pain from even the slightest touch of a breeze. From the faint sigh of relief behind him, Phil could tell Jean felt the same.

  There was no time to enjoy the cold, though. Phil’s eyes widened, surprised not at the size of the freezer, but by what it contained. Hanging from the ceiling were perhaps 20 or 30 meat hooks. Yet, these meat hooks did not hold the carcasses of pigs or other animals ready to be butchered.

  They held people.

  A dead body hung from each and every meat hook. Men and women alike were silent in death, though mercifully there were no children among their numbers. Each body was stripped of clothes and devoid of its head. Their hands were bound behind their backs. Carved into the flesh of the stomach of each body was a strange sigil, though from the lack of blood around the sigils, Phil knew they had to have been carved well after their deaths. The air in the freezer was calm. A part of him almost expected to smell the stench of death and decomposing flesh, but it was far too cold for that. Instead, all that wafted through the air was the faint scent of incense, for some strange reason.

  Jean let out a muttered curse of disgust in French, but Phil suppressed the rising bile in his mouth in favor of getting a closer look at this frozen hellscape. At first, the sigils were only faint, crude lines in the flesh, but as Phil got closer, the stranger and more familiar they appeared. The first detail that stuck out to him was that while many of the sigils were different, they weren’t all different. There were seven different types of sigils, no more and no less. One was in the shape of a crude eye, another was a crude triangle, the third was like a line with a circle at the end of it, the fourth was a circle with five lines hanging off the bottom…

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Phil’s eyes flew wide open before he’d even finished glancing over the fifth, which took the shape of a crude T with two more lines hanging off the top edges of it. He’d seen these before. Only at that time, they were illustrations in a particular manga he’d been reading. Unbidden, Phil’s mouth opened, and he began to speak toward no one in particular.

  “Eye. Puzzle. Rod. Ring. Scale. Key. Necklace. What the fuck.”

  Hewed into the stomachs of each corpse were crude carvings of the seven Millennium Items. Each corpse only had one carving, and the different types of carvings were lined up in rows as if to sort them by item. The corpses with an eye carved into them were lined up with the other eyes, the ones with a ring lined up with other rings, and so on.

  Jean walked up next to Phil. His face was pale, but the man appeared to have mastered his disgust. From his reaction, Phil could tell this wasn’t the first dead body Jean had seen in his life.

  “But why?” Phil muttered both to himself and Jean. “What does it mean? What’s the point of all this? Why here, why now? How would the yakuza even know about all this shit?”

  “You recognize these?” Jean asked, his eyes scraping across the room with a considering gaze.

  “Not the bodies obviously, and I have no idea what this is supposed to do… but the symbols on their stomachs, those are all symbols of powerful magic items. They date all the way back to ancient Egypt. The Millennium Items, that’s what they’re called. Made from literal blood sacrifice. This is ancient Egyptian occult-type shit. I have no fucking idea how the yakuza know they exist.”

  Phil was stumped. The biggest question of it all, the one bouncing around his head like a rubber ball thrown by a strongman, was ‘what even is the point of all this?’

  Money? These weren’t exactly priceless artifacts, nor were they well-known to the public. The cash wouldn’t be worth drawing the heat from the cops over this many missing people. Petty cruelty? The yakuza were cruel, but their cruelty (from Phil’s limited experience) always seemed to serve a monetary goal. Besides, the items were magic shit. How would an organization of petty gangsters even know they existed?

  Were they working with someone else? Did the entire organization know or was this a more of ‘need to know’ basis among the top brass? Were they led by a mage like how Tragoedia had controlled the American Duel Academy? If so, insanity like this wouldn’t necessarily be out of the ballpark – Phil remembered quite well how insane Tragoedia had been, both from personal experience and secondhand knowledge. Hell, apparently Kaiba had fought against a fucking skinless corpse in the academy raid. Not to mention how Gecko’s friend had been mind-controlled, or the purposeful collateral damage Tragoedia had gone out of his way to inflict several times during their turbo duel.

  “Magic? Some sort of ritual?” Phil muttered. He stroked his beard with his hand, but even that failed to generate any ideas in his head. Even if it was magic in some way or another, it would hardly matter if he couldn’t figure out its purpose or why it was being done on yakuza turf. The more he looked at the hanging corpses, the more it felt to him that the ritual theory was the correct one. The meat hooks were all pierced through the bodies in the same spot, directly through the right lung. Large chunks of congealed blood hung around that wound, meaning it was likely made when the corpses were fresher – or worse, when the people were still alive and had their heads attached. Their skin was mottled with blue and grey hues that suggested frostbite. The room was certainly cold enough to cause it.

  Phil moved forward to inspect the closest corpse. The wound from the meat hook was jagged. The skin was heavily torn, as if the body had thrashed around quite a lot after the metal had pierced through. Nor was the torn skin entirely centered directly above the meat hook. It was torn all around. As if there was a struggle, instead of any natural tearing caused by gravity slowly pulling the body down while the meat hook stayed where it was. Peering behind the back of the body showed its hands were bound tightly with twine, which was soaked all the way through with blood. Deep grooves were carved into the wrists of the body, like whoever this was had attempted to break through the bindings off of adrenaline and desperation alone.

  The sickening feeling in Phil’s stomach deepened. These people were alive when the hook went through. Phil fought through the rising bile in his throat to ask Jean for a boost. The man leaned slightly down with his hands cupped. Phil used the cupped hands as a boost, placing his hand on top of Jean’s head to keep his balance while he looked around with the added height.

  Their necks were as clean as could be. No splatters or lumps of congealed/frozen blood.

  Phil hopped down.

  “Their heads were cut after they died.” Phil shakily said. “Had to be, if they were that clean. No congealed blood like there is around the hook.”

  This was, of course, done with an amateur’s eye. Phil was no detective. His only experiences with bloodshed were the injuries he’d sustained and inflicted at the academy, and a few car wrecks he’d seen and assisted at during his time as a Boy Scout back on Earth. Yet, the signs were pretty obvious. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out.

  Jean looked as sick to the stomach as Phil felt. “Monsieur… you don’t suggest…”

  But Jean’s eyes showed it all. The man knew as well as Phil did that these people, these poor, poor people, had died in this room. A meat hook had been shoved through each of them, straight through the right lung, and they’d drowned in their own blood. And then, far too late for it to be any sign of mercy, their heads had been sawed off and crude carvings of the Millennium Items had been etched into their flesh.

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Merde…”

  The shock did not stay in Phil’s body for long, soon replacing itself with a sort of tired numbness that overpowered even his disgust.

  “Lumina? Any ideas?”

  Lumina stepped forward and gazed down the rows of bodies. Unlike Phil and Jean, there was no shock in her eyes, only a form of jaded acceptance hinting that she’d seen worse before.

  “Nothing concrete.” She said, shaking her head. “It’s probably a ritual of some sort, or at least an attempt at one. There isn’t enough here to give a complete picture of its purpose. There’s some faint magic in the air, but nothing serious. Nothing but fading remnants of whatever went on here earlier mixed with incense. These bodies are just that – bodies. Nothing feels magical about them. As for the items, symbols can have power of their own. Maybe whichever mage behind this tried to invoke the power of the items. It wouldn’t get you much, nowhere near as much as the real deal would, but as I said, symbols still can have power.”

  Phil began to relay her thoughts to Jean, but paused mid-sentence as Lumina spoke as if her words were an afterthought.

  “The theme is clear. There are thousands of symbols a mage could choose from, and going for these almost makes me think whoever this was tied in some way to Egypt. Could be a sign of their lineage, you know? Like their master's master or the master of their master's master, going back as far as you want to go, was originally from Egypt and those old habits were passed along from generation to generation. Or the goal of the ritual was related in some way to Egypt, and these symbols are meant to guide whatever power was here toward that goal. And human sacrifice… that usually means some seriously dark magic.”

  “Right.” Phil nodded, summing up what little they knew about the situation with a grim voice. “A homicidal mass-murdering Egyptian mage with ties to the yakuza that likes to hide in freezers and do fucked up rituals for who knows what reason.”

  Like it or not, no matter how long the three stared at the room-sized freezer of corpses, nothing came to mind. There was just too much left unknown at this point, and the mind of a mage crazy and callous enough to do something like this was not exactly a mind that was easily predicted.

  Eventually, they were forced to conclude that the freezer could keep its secrets for now. Chet was a bigger issue. Only once he was dealt with would they have more time to devote to the problem. In fact, considering this was done on yakuza turf, right next door to the underground arena, it was quite possible Chet himself might know something about it.

  With that in mind, Phil and Jean slipped back out of the freezer to the main hallway. Fortunately, there was still no one around to spot them. The thought worried Phil. What if Chet just wasn’t here? Waiting for him wouldn’t be the end of the world, but if they could take care of this in the wee hours of the night, it would be for the best. That way there would be fewer people around to hear Chet being eaten by a magical tadpole.

  The final few doors in the hallway each yielded nothing more than broom closets. Only the water channel room was left. Phil’s hand grasped the handle. It turned easily, allowing him to swing the door open and view the inside of the tiny room.

  “Ah, the man, the myth, the legend.” Chet’s greasy voice came from inside. “A bit early, don’t ya think? Ah, no matter. Take a seat, Philly boy! Let’s talk business.”

  The man was as sleazy and unflappable as always, staring at them from the table he sat at with a knowing grin. There were no other yakuza in the room. It was only Chet, Phil, and Jean. Lumina leaned against the far wall, a faint smirk on her face as she waited for the entertainment to begin.

  Phil took a seat, sparing only a brief glance at the channel of rushing water set into the floor on his right. As before, the table was seated precariously close to it. One wrong move would send Phil flying in, to be found weeks later on the riverbank as a bloated, drowned corpse.

  “Yeah. Business.” Phil said, making sure to keep his voice even. D.3.S. wasn’t at a state where he could force a shadow game. If his theories were right, and he assumed they were from D.3.S. Frog’s reaction, he needed Chet to agree to the bet. That meant he had to be one smooth customer. Extra smooth, with a side helping of caution. Chet’s knowledge of magic was unknown. Did he know about the ritual next door? If he did, how much did he know? Would betting their souls immediately cause alarm bells to ring in Chet’s head, as it would for an experienced mage?

  Questions among questions threatened to boil over in his head, but Phil silenced them by repeating his own personal creed in his head, a phrase he’d lived his life with for almost as long as he could remember: Just wing that motherfucker.

  If Bastion had been around at this moment and seen the thoughts in Phil’s head, he would have groaned and held his head in abject despair. However, Bastion was not here to be a limiting factor to Phil’s inherent recklessness.

  “So, Chet. I know this is quite a bit earlier than eight in the morning.” Phil began.

  Chet motioned for him to continue with an amused gleam in his eyes.

  Easy does it. Make him think you’re nothing but another overly proud duelist.

  “We’ll dive, but on one condition.” Phil held up his pointer finger.

  Chet leaned forward, resting his chin on one of his palms. “Greedy man~. What’s the condition?”

  “We duel. You versus me. I can’t accept taking the orders of someone unless they beat me in an honorable duel.”

  Chet fell silent, and then he smirked. He’d bought the ‘proud duelist act’ hook, line, and sinker. The fact that only part of it was an act in the first place made it a bit easier to sell. “Easy-peasy~. Shoulda’ led with that yesterday! Woulda’ saved you and me a bit of effort, if you know what I mean~.”

  Phil shrugged, barely able to fight off his anger to keep his face looking calm and composed. “Sorry mate, I told you. We really did need to think it over. Anyway, how about we make this a bit more interesting, ya’ get me?”

  “A bet?” Chet immediately deciphered Phil’s meaning. Quirking his eyebrow, he nodded in acceptance. “What’ll it be? Black chips? Or should we do this big-time and go for reds~?”

  Phil laughed. This was the kicker. The moment of truth. He had to sell this and sell it well. If Chet had any kind of magical knowledge, things were about to get real bad, real fast.

  “Ah, sorry mate, but we’re actually pretty short on cash to be betting over that right now. Don’t want my kidneys harvested, if you catch my drift?”

  “Of course, of course~. Then what will it be?”

  “I’ll bet my soul!” Phil laughed, keeping his voice upright as if he was springing some stupid joke. It worked. Chet doubled over in laughter, speaking between his wheezing fits with a weak voice.

  “You know Phil, you really are a card! Sure! Haven’t done that before, so let’s bet our souls! You bet yours, and I’ll bet mine! As black as coal, right on the table, hehe! You know, once you rack up some money taking dives for us, you’ll be able to go back to betting real cash, I tell ya’ that!”

  Phil could feel a rapid movement in his breast pocket. There were no shadows surrounding the table, nor ominous whispers, and the temperature of the room remained the same as it had before. Yet, from the eagerness of the tadpole in his pocket, Phil had a feeling their souls truly were on the line now.

  Jean walked up to the table where Phil and Chet sat. Rustling around in his grubby suit pocket, he produced a silvery 1-yen coin and slapped it on the table. A wary glance at Phil’s breast pocket told him that Jean had also noticed a slight change in Phil’s body language.

  “Monsieur Chet, as the challenged party, would you call the result?”

  “Tails.” Chet smirked. His smile was still greasy and self-assured. He seemed to truly believe this was still nothing more than a way to assuage Phil’s pride in the face of the inevitable, instead of the life-or-death duel it actually was.

  Jean let the silver coin tumble through the air without another word, catching it in his palm and slapping it onto the back of his other hand.

  “Tails it is.” Jean announced the result with a casual tone. Tossing the coin back into his pocket, he casually retreated from the table to lean his body against the door. Though his weight was not much to speak of, it would still give some trouble to anyone trying to burst into the room right out of the blue.

  “I’ll take the first turn.” Chet said.

  Phil rolled his eyes. By his count, every single one of his duels since he first woke up in the park had started out with him going second. The duel against Solomon hardly counted, as he had gone second on purpose, but every other time was due to a lost coin flip. He had half a mind to try and build a dedicated 'going second' deck, but Phil also knew the moment he did was when his luck would turn and every duel would start with him going first.

  No matter. Luck or no, he needed to keep his eyes open during this game. He needed to play at his best, but at the same time, the duel couldn’t fully end until any information regarding the freezer room had been pressed out of Chet’s mouth.

  Sheesh. What a pain.

  Phil: 4000 Chet: 4000

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