Chapter 135: Returning To His World

With the duel finally coming to an end, Yumi let out an exhausted sigh. He looked up at ZEUS, watching as the gigantic mecha's faceplate opened and Roze leaped out. She landed on the ground in front of her Master, while the enormous machine behind her slowly began to fade away.

Looking into the distance, Yumi spotted Raye walking back with Paradox's Deck in her hands. Further behind her, Okita Souji was carrying Z-one's ridiculously large Deck, with Oda Nobunaga sitting comfortably on top of it.

However, before Yumi could say anything, he noticed something strange happening around them.

Massive walls of bright white light had begun spreading across the area, gradually swallowing everything in their path. The light was growing closer, and it didn't take long for Yumi to realize that something was wrong.

Before he could even voice his question, he heard hurried footsteps coming from behind him.

Turning around, Yumi saw Hoshino running toward him.

"Sensei-"

"No time to talk." Hoshino quickly cut him off as she stopped right in front of him. Her expression was unusually serious as she looked directly at him. "You have to leave this world now. The world is correcting itself. Everything that originated from this world's timeline will remain, but any anomalies will be erased!"

Without wasting another second, she threw a card toward him.

Yumi caught it and turned it around, only to find that it was completely blank.

"Master, we need to leave now."

Chaos suddenly appeared behind him. With a swing of its claw, it tore open a rift in space, creating an escape route for them.

"The timeline is correcting itself," Chaos repeated.

Seemingly understanding the consequences of having altered the timeline too much, Yumi quickly snapped back to focus. The usual confident smirk soon returned to his face as he raised his head and met the worried gaze of his teacher.

Although they hadn't known each other for very long, their relationship as teacher and student had always been more of a title than anything else. Even so, Yumi had genuinely enjoyed their time together.

Hoshino had shown him a level of care that he hadn't really expected from someone who had no particular reason to look after him. She had treated him kindly, almost like a mother looking after her child, despite having no obligation to do so.

Likewise, Yumi had no real obligation to stay behind and risk his life for her or anyone else in this world.

Yet, despite how brief their time together had been, their relationship had still become something meaningful to him.

There wasn't much else he could say.

"Take care, Sensei."

With those final words, Yumi turned around and leaped into the rift. Chaos followed closely behind him, and the opening soon closed, leaving nothing behind as the world's timeline settled back into place.

Hoshino watched as the rift disappeared and the entire world became a bright white blur.

Then, she slowly opened her eyes.

Rubbing her sleepy eyebrow, she looked out the window of the teacher dormitory room. In the distance stood the school building, completely intact and undamaged. Students and staff were going about their daily lives as usual, with no indication that anything unusual had ever happened.

Everything had returned to normal. With the world's timeline reset, no one in this world retained any memories of the events that had taken place in the previous timeline.

To everyone here, those events had never happened in the first place.

...

Falling out of a spatial rift high above the ground, Yumi widened his eyes slightly before overlapping his body with Dark Law. He landed heavily on the ground, bending his knees to absorb the impact before straightening himself up.

Looking around, he quickly realized that he was on another island. However, what caught his attention was the massive, old-school dueling arena standing in the middle of the forest.

"Wait a minute... Is this Duelist Kingdom?"

Yumi couldn't help but murmur as he walked closer to get a better look at the enormous structure. Rather than being surprised, he seemed more amused by the sight. It certainly wasn't every day that he found himself somewhere like this.

Still, he soon remembered why he had come here in the first place.

His original objective hadn't changed. He needed to find a way to bring Duel Academy back to the real world.

With that in mind, Yumi quickly got onto his D-Wheel and drove straight into another spatial rift.

A moment later, he reappeared in a forest.

This time, however, he didn't immediately leave. Instead, he stopped near the treeline and looked toward the familiar figures in the distance.

There, he could see his past self interacting with Hoshino-sensei for the first time.

"To think I actually get sentimental..."

Yumi murmured beneath his breath, letting out a light chuckle.

Somewhere along the way, he had apparently grown attached to his new teacher. In fact, before opening the previous spatial rift, he had subconsciously thought about her, which was probably why he had ended up traveling back in time and seeing her one more time.

It wasn't exactly something he had planned.

Of course, he already knew that Hoshino wouldn't remember him. There were also much bigger consequences to consider if he continued interfering with the timeline, so there was little reason to linger here any longer.

After watching his past self and Hoshino walk away, Yumi activated his D-Wheel once more and disappeared through another spatial rift.

Returning to his own world, Yumi got off his D-Wheel and took out the blank card his Sensei had given him.

After summoning the HERO Spirit Leonardo da Vinci and subjugating her, much like he had done with Oda Nobunaga and Okita Souji, the confused super genius finally understood what was going on. Not that she had been given much time to figure things out before getting beaten up the moment she appeared.

Once she had recovered enough to understand the situation, Da Vinci began to research and finally figure out how they could bring Duel Academy back in less than a day.

According to her hypothesis, the process wasn't particularly difficult. Since Duel Academy hadn't originated from the Spirit World and had instead been brought into this dimension from the human world, traces of the original spatial rift still remained.

All they needed was a sufficiently large amount of Spirit Energy to force that rift to expand. If they could gather enough, they could reopen it to a point where it would allow Duel Academy to return to its original location.

With that settled, Yumi went to inform his friends and the others responsible for keeping the place under control.

Naturally, everyone was happy to hear that he had finally found a way to bring them back. However, there was still one major problem they needed to solve.

Where were they supposed to get such an enormous amount of Spirit Energy?

After discussing it for a while, they eventually came to the conclusion that an intense Duel would be the best way to generate the energy they needed. A Duel on a sufficiently large scale should produce enough Spirit Energy to force the spatial rift open.

With Yumi being one of the people responsible for the Duel, the next question was who would be his opponent.

Unfortunately, there weren't many people in Duel Academy who could actually keep up with him. In fact, the number of Duelists capable of holding their own against Yumi for more than two turns could probably be counted on one hand.

And that was where the argument began.

Yumi sat cross-legged nearby, watching as Celina and Jaden argued over who should be the one to Duel him.

Out of everyone present, these two were arguably the ones who had grown the most under his influence. Both of them carried the ambition of becoming the next King of Games, and both had developed a strong desire to surpass the person standing at the very top of the Dueling World.

Yumi Uzushi, The Strongest.

Naturally, neither of them was willing to back down from an opportunity where they knew he would put in the effort.

Their argument quickly grew more heated, with both insisting that they were the better choice. Meanwhile, their friends were already trying to separate the two before a discussion about who would get to Duel Yumi turned into an actual fight.

Yumi simply watched from the sidelines.

He had to admit, seeing the two of them fight so hard for the chance was rather entertaining.

...

After nearly an hour of arguing back and forth, the discussion finally came to an end when Celina literally threw the No. 1 Slifer Red Slacker away.

And just like that, the decision of who would be Dueling Yumi was made.

With Jaden knocked out cold, Celina had no choice but to step up and take his place.

Now, inside an empty classroom, the two of them had the room to themselves. Yumi and Celina were sitting at opposite ends, each with their Deck spread out across their respective desks as they made their final preparations for tomorrow's Duel.

"Yumi, are you sure this is going to work?" Celina asked, looking across the room at him.

"Most likely. And even if it doesn't, it's not like we can't try something else." Yumi replied casually, resting his legs on the desk as he finished arranging his Deck.

Their Duel had been scheduled for the following day. It was already getting late, and considering Yumi had just finished a one-versus-three Duel not too long ago, he was particularly eager to start another one tonight.

Celina looked at him for a moment before hopping off her desk and walking over. Without asking, she casually sat on the edge of the desk where Yumi had his legs resting, looking down at him from her slightly higher position.

Their eyes met. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and the silence between them gradually became a little awkward.

Their relationship was... complicated. Even Celina herself wasn't entirely sure what to call it. They had become closer than she had originally expected, and some of the things that had happened between them had left her with more questions than answers.

Yumi, on the other hand, wasn't exactly someone who could be called faithful in the traditional sense.

That was something she had already come to understand.

Still, after getting to know him better, Celina had found herself thinking about him more often than she would have liked to admit. Whenever her thoughts drifted back to their more personal moments together, she couldn't help feeling embarrassed. Even now, the thought alone was enough to bring a little warmth to her cheeks.

For someone as tomboyish as her, Celina was surprisingly hopeless when it came to romance.

She knew she liked Yumi. That much was certain.

But liking someone and deciding that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with them were two very different things. She wasn't ready to make that kind of decision, especially when everything between them had happened so quickly.

Unfortunately, the circumstances surrounding them hadn't exactly given her much time to sort out her feelings.

After a while, unable to tolerate the awkward silence any longer, Celina finally spoke.

"Wanna do it here?"

"Heh?"

Yumi blinked.

For a moment, he simply stared at her, his brain taking a little longer than usual to process what she was suggesting.

"Tsk. Don't give me that dumb look. It makes me feel like an idiot for falling for an idiot," she complained, looking both annoyed and embarrassed.

It wasn't as if she hadn't noticed how hard Yumi had been working since this whole incident began. He had taken it upon himself to keep everyone safe, constantly looking for a way to get them out of their situation while making sure nobody lost hope.

He would smile, laugh loudly, call himself the Strongest, and tell everyone not to worry.

But Celina wasn't stupid.

She knew that much of it was just a front. Yumi was trying to reassure everyone, giving them something to rely on when things looked bleak. He didn't want them to see how much pressure he was carrying himself.

But no matter how strong he was, Yumi was still human.

He had his own limits, just like everyone else. There was only so much a person could take before exhaustion finally caught up with them. And if everyone continued relying on him without giving him a chance to rest, there would eventually come a time when even he couldn't keep going.

Celina didn't want that to happen.

She wanted him to understand that someone was looking after him, too. That he wasn't just the person everyone depended on whenever things went wrong, but someone who deserved to be cared for as well.

Unfortunately, she wasn't particularly good at expressing those feelings.

So, in a moment of impulsiveness, she had decided to offer him what she thought might make him happy.

If her sisters ever found out about this, they would either be horrified or spend the rest of their lives mocking her for it. She could already imagine the endless teasing she would have to put up with if they found out she basically wrapped herself up for a boy.

Still, she had already said it.

"So, do you want it or not?" she repeated, her face growing even redder.

"I won't mind..." Yumi began, before giving her a thoughtful look. "But how about we save that for when we've actually figured out what our relationship is supposed to be?"

That answer caught Celina off guard.

She had expected him to accept, or at the very least tease her about it. Instead, he had given her a surprisingly reasonable response.

Despite his questionable personality and his tendency to act like some sort of eroge harem protagonist, Yumi could still tell the difference between love and simple attraction.

He might not care much about his own future, and he was certainly the type to live in the moment without thinking too far ahead. However, that didn't mean he was willing to drag the people he cared about into the same uncertainty.

He understood that Celina's feelings were still complicated. A part of her affection came from the closeness they had already shared, but that alone wasn't enough to decide what they should become.

Until she could sort out those feelings for herself, he would rather not rush things.

"Okay, now you're making it sound like I'm the perv here."

Celina's flushed expression quickly returned to normal. She looked at him with an annoyed stare, clearly unhappy with how he had turned the situation around.

"What is that supposed to mean? When have I ever acted in a way that would give you that impression?" Yumi retorted, looking genuinely dumbfounded.

"Let's see..."

Celina raised a finger and began counting off his questionable traits.

"Being a chick magnet, probably being good in bed, having who knows how many girls around you by now, having an older sister who's a playboy and learning from her, acting like a playboy yourself, cross-dressing as a girl..."

She continued listing them one after another, showing absolutely no intention of stopping.

With every new accusation, Yumi's expression grew a little darker.

"Hey, this is pure slander! Are you trying to ruin my reputation?" he complained, staring at her with a speechless expression.

"What? Did I say anything wrong?"

Celina teased him as she shifted her position on the desk, casually planting her shoe against the side of his seat.

"And besides, your reputation wasn't exactly good to begin with. There's no need to worry about ruining something that's already in bad shape."

"Still, you're making me sound like some kind of twisted person who goes around playing with people's hearts."

Yumi casually leaned one elbow against her kneecap, using it as an armrest as he rested his head against his hand. Despite his complaint, he didn't seem particularly bothered by her teasing.

"Aren't you?" Celina replied without missing a beat. "You can fool everyone else, but I've gotten used to your tricks by now. I know you're a liar, so don't try to gaslight me into believing otherwise."

"That's a pretty harsh accusation."

"Then prove me wrong."

And just like that, their conversation continued.

What had started as a somewhat awkward and tense moment between the two gradually turned into their usual back-and-forth teasing. Neither seemed particularly interested in ending the conversation, and the classroom remained occupied by their voices for quite some time that night.