"What a surprise."
Vetrix stood at the edge of a high-rise, the metal railing beside him gleaming coldly. Three hundred meters below his feet, the city's veins were awakening in the night. Traffic on the main roads had become ribbons of gold and red light, taillights trailing comet-like paths. Traffic signals changed with mechanical regularity, intersections constantly spitting out new points of light that converged into thin lines in the distance.
"His name was Aster Phoenix, wasn't it?" Vetrix asked.
"It seemed so," his son V said from behind him. "He was a top player in this world's Professional League, with very few defeats so far. He was a very strong opponent.
IV was defeated by this man—"
V did not continue. Vetrix and his two remaining sons looked down at the city below.
The glass curtain walls of office buildings cut neon advertisements into geometric patches of light. Every seven seconds, the LED screens displayed Duel King Fujiki Kira's bright, infectious smile in an endorsement ad. At the spiraling interchanges, the roof lights of double-decker buses drew broken arcs around the bends. An occasional ambulance cut through the traffic, its blue lights piercing the flowing amber like a scalpel slicing through honey.
"It seemed this dimension was indeed quite dangerous," Vetrix said leisurely. "IV had simply been too arrogant. That was why this happened, wasn't it?"
III, who had remained silent, could not help but say, "But Father, Brother IV did it for us, for you—"
"Mm, yes, I knew. It was quite a pity."
Vetrix still wore a smile, as though the person who had just been captured was not his son.
"Well, we still had to thank IV for his contribution. He had fulfilled his mission, after all."
As he spoke, Vetrix produced a card from somewhere.