In a boundless expanse of pure white, there was no direction, no boundary, not even one's own shadow—only eternal silence and the ground beneath one's feet faintly glimmering with a cold light.
This was Z-ONE's Domain, a unique space that virtually no one could enter without Z-ONE's permission.
Kira brought the pile of D-Wheels he had just packed up, along with the mechanical wreckage left after the explosions, and dumped it all here. Charred gears, severed circuits, twisted alloy frames... The fragments stood out starkly against the empty whiteness, like filthy bloodstains splashed across snow.
"Hey, you there?"
Kira raised his head and called into the infinite void.
After a moment of silence, the space rippled slightly. Z-ONE's enormous Nautilus Floating Device appeared out of thin air and slowly descended before Kira.
"What now?"
"Something happened just now. Someone hacked into my database and tried to investigate Iliaster and my origins. I caught him."
Kira pointed at the scattered wreckage on the ground.
The blue eyes beneath Z-ONE's mask narrowed slightly.
"A machine?"
"Yeah. It felt like a replica of Breau from Unicorn Team," Kira said. "The imitation was flawless—I have to admit it. Until he self-destructed, I really thought he was the real one.
"To perfectly replicate a duelist's personality and implant it into a machine body, creating a duplicate capable of passing for the original... That should be beyond the technology of this era, right?"
"No. It isn't possible."
Z-ONE spoke.
"Let me see..."
As Z-ONE spoke, the mechanical fragments floated amid a data stream, as though reassembled by an invisible force. The scorch marks faded, the warped metal returned to its original shape, and the circuits reconnected—until a complete mechanical humanoid appeared in midair. Its face was smooth metal, featureless except for a dark-red optical lens flickering