Chapter 41: Welcome to Heartland Island

*FWEEEET!*

The blaring whistle of the cruise ship sounded out as it slowly pulled away from the harbour, its name was the S.S Wanderlust. Given the way things seemed to be named in this world Drake was surprised that the ship wasn't named Heartland. Like the city, the mayor and the island they were heading to on board this luxury liner.

14 decks, 360 meters in length, with three swimming pools, five restaurants and an assortment of facilities that would make any experienced traveller drool at the extravagance. The crown jewel of the fleet. It seemed no expense was being spared for the second round of the WDC. A pity that the journey would be just a short five hours. Drake intended to enjoy every minute of it as he lounged on a deck chair with a coffee by his side, his long white coat which he had changed back to for the second round hung on a peg behind him.

The Sun was bright in the clear sky but cold, it was still too cold this early in the morning for most people to be out enjoying themselves, but there were a few besides Drake. Of course, for Drake who could survive the temperatures at 20,000 feet, the morning chill was nothing.

As he was trying to relax, his eyes closed he felt a shadow fall over him.

At first, he thought it was one of the waiters but Drake already had his coffee that he had ordered and the shadow remained unmoving. Opening his eyes Drake was greeted with the unexpected sight of a black masked woman standing over him, a smug smile on her lips.

Wyvern!

The Black General was pleased seeing the shock on Drakes face as he stared up at her, before she plonked herself down on the deck chair next to him with a soda in her hands. The two watched each other in silence for several minutes until at last her patience ran out.

"Why aren't you tearing this ship apart?" She asked the man beside her that so fascinated her.

"Why would I do that?" Drake calmly replied.

"To find that rouge Number of course, or don't you want to save the boy?"

"What would be the point?" Drake said.

He knew Wyvern was taking about Number 96, and Drake knew that the Number was definitely on board. And even now Bronk was traversing the corridors in a fruitless search for the Number that had stolen his friends' body. Drake could feel the dark energy of the Number permeate every inch of the ship like a blanket of fog since the moment he had first step onboard. Which was the problem.

Number 96 knew it was being hunted and had been clever to disperse his aura over the entire ship, leaving Drake, or anyone with similar abilities, no way to pin him down. 14 decks, 360 meters in length, hundreds of cabins and corridors. Drake didn't even bother to waste his time when all the Number had to do was lock itself in a cabin for the entire trip. It wasn't like he could ask captain for permission to search all the other duellists cabins. And if he tried to use force then he would be thrown out of the WDC.

So Drake had decided to enjoy the first class treatment the ship offered, until New Order's Black General had shown up that is.

Wyvern was unhappy with Drakes reply as she twisted her hair around her fingers. After the rampage he had recently gone on in the city to find this Number, she had expected him to be rushing about in a frantic search. But here he was, relaxing in the sun and drinking coffee.

New Order wanted to capture the rouge Number themselves for a number of reasons and had its operatives who had made the second round searching through the ship this very moment. For a moment when Wyvern had spotted Drake she thought that she could use him to track down the Number, be it now seemed that Drake had no intention of acting at this point.

"Why fight the Orichalcos?" she asked curiously.

"With your strength you could easily become the sixth General if you joined us Atlas. You could even become second under our king with ease."

"Not interested. Even if I were interested in the Orichalcos, then I wouldn't join a small force like New Order." Drake answered truthfully. If he ever found himself with a mad desire for power, world domination and a lack of morals then he would directly deal with the Orichalcos God Beast and its handler directly rather than waste time with the local small fries.

Wyvern felt the contempt in his voice when he talked about New Order, but not when he mentioned the Orichalcos. She felt it was strange, for in her mind the two were practically one and the same.

"You can't defeat the Orichalcos." She told him.

She had been born with a powerful gift of shadow magic and encountered many strange and wonderous things, but throughout her life she had never felt anything that came close to the power of the Orichalcos God. The power wielded by her king.

"Perhaps." Drake admitted. If he had to face the full power of the God Beast this very moment he would almost certainly lose, the power difference between them was simply too great to ignore. But he was not without hope. And he would not give up the fight.

He looked at the woman sat next to him seriously. She seemed a lot more normal than the last time they had duelled. Compared to the last time where she kept going on and on about the nature of power and the powerful, she was a much calmer.

"Then why fight? With your power why throw your life away? I could make you very… happy…" she practically purred at him as she ran her finger around the rim of her glass.

Before Drake could answer the vixen, the two of them, who had been so absorbed with each other that they had ignored the rest of the world, were interrupted by a third party.

"We have an exclusive, duellists! Here and now! Fifth ranked challenger Drake Atlas and tenth ranked beauty Wyvern Black! Friends? Rivals? Lovers? Find out their relationship now on our WDC livestream interview, here with Duel Chronicles!"

"Huh?" the two duellists said together as a bouncy blond reporter and her plain looking cameraman got up close and personal with the two of them, shoving a microphone towards them. She had curly blond hair and a freckled face, wearing a blue duel gazer on her right eye and white shirt with red skirt.

As a massive Duel event it was normal for there to be media coverage, and apart from the qualifying duellists the ship was also carrying a large number of theses reporters, streamers and television people. As two of the top 10 duellists announced by Mayor Heartland, one of them a mysterious masked feme fatal and the other a striking man with legendary dragons, the two of them were hot news as unknown dark horses that had suddenly appeared in the WDC.

To find the two of them so intimately together was a scoop Megan had never expected her small time magazine to snag.

"So Drake, you don't mind if I call you Drake do you? I'm Megan the with magazine Duel Chronicles. So when did the two of you first meet?" Megan asked as she poured on the charm and began to interview Drake.

"Well… Megan..?" at her nod Drake continued. "We met during the WDC actually."

"What are you doing?!" Wyvern hissed as Drake allowed himself to be interviewed. She was part of a secret organisation! She did not do interviews!

"Ah! Could it be that the two of you fought a passionate duel, hearts poundings, pulse racing and as you fought the two of you fell or each other! Romance bloomed! After your victory you came together, finding in each other true lov-"

"Absolutely not!" screamed Wyvern. Interrupting the reporter who had let her imagination run away with her.

Romance? Love? And what did this girl mean by saying when Drake won?! Wyvern angerly thought. The duel had been a draw, a DRAW! she complained in her mind.

"Don't mind her." replied Drake.

"In fact, our passionate duel actually ended in a draw that left the two of us quite breathless." Drake teased.

"ATLAS!"

Under the current circumstances he couldn't deal with New Order as he liked at the moment, so it was fun for him to watch Wyvern's checks turn red.

"A Hah! So you are a couple then! There has been speculation ever since the release of the top 10 list that the two of you would make a perfect couple. Both of you are masters of legendary dragons with mysterious backgrounds after all. Speaking of which, tell us Drake just how did you obtain the legendary Blue-Eyes White Dragon? What's your favourite card combo? What do you think about your competition?"

The questions came in a never-ending stream at first, but before long Drake managed to clam the girl down enough so she could properly interview him, while he did so Wyvern took the opportunity to flee before this man embarrassed her any further. What if her King found out about this?! No! her King knew that he was the only person in her heart, even if… Drake Atlas was a… interesting specimen.

… A couple… the thought made her blush even harder as she returned to the task of hunting down Number 96.

---

Finally the Wanderlust arrived at its destination. Heartland Island.

Drake had enjoyed the trip, aside from a couple of interviews and some autograph requests he had an uneventful trip. Apart from the fact that the whole time he could feel a number of people watching him, but whether they had been fans, competitors, from New Order or from Dr Faker, looking was all they did.

Bronk had met back up with Drake as the ship was preparing to dock, having spent the entire trip in a fruitless search for the body snatching Number 96. Drake refrained from saying 'I told you so' as he understood the guilt that was driving him. Drake could only hope that it would not drive the boy to recklessness or crush him under its weight.

Looking out at the island they were approaching one could see a sprawling amusement park set up. Large mountains with roller coaster tracks, medieval castles, enchanted forests, prehistoric wilderness and futurist utopias arrange around a tall central tower. Hotels, Kiosks, stalls, booths, shops and restaurants along with assorted facilities were dotted around and between attractions like dodgems, spinning tea cups, carousels and Ferris wheels to name but a classic few.

"Just remember the plan." Drake said to the nervous Bronk. They had prepared as best they could and soon they would be put to the test.

Drake reached up to grip the Golden Key that hung around his neck. A silent promise to himself.

"Attention all duellists! We have arrived at our destination, please prepare to disembark. The WDC Second Round will commence in 2 hours. Welcome to Heartland Island!" The ships PA system sounded out.

They had docked without incident and the duellists disembarked at a steady pace towards the monorail station that connected the various island areas, meanwhile the various support staff were shuttled to their working areas and the media/VIP's were taken to their hotels where they would be able to monitor the WDC without interfering with the duellists.

Drake was reviewing the rules for the second round that had finally been published once the ship had set sail, while queueing for the monorail terminal to be sent to this starting zone. Bronk had been separated from him and sent off in another group that had already departed. The island had been separated into eight island zones, the central zone which held Heartland Tower was the stage for the finals and was surrounded by the other seven which the duellists would be separated and divided between as their stating zones.

The seven outer zones were named for the WDC after field spell cards, they were known as 'Jurassic World', 'Megaroid City', 'Ancient Forest', 'Dragon Ravine', 'Pandemonium', 'Ritual Sanctuary' and 'Toon Kingdom'. In order to reach the tower, and the finals, it was necessary to acquire a special digital passcode key that had been split between the seven other zones, each fragment of the code was a reward that could be earned by fulfilling special tasks in each of the zones.

There were twenty complete codes available, meaning that there were one hundred and forty code fragments that the duellists would be competing for and the tasks could range from things like, the first duellist to win ten duels in an island zone, to completing treasure hunt like duel quests or a story duel chain.

Not only would duellists compete among each other but there were also WDC organised duel guardians, AI controlled duel bots and duel puzzles set up all over the island. If a duellist lost a duel against another competitor or a duel guardian then they would lose any code fragments they had obtained as well as half of their duel points to the winner and they would be eliminated from the competition, unless they had or could acquire within 30 minutes a 'extra life'.

These extra life's referred to a special consumable token that could be won through special challenges or purchased at special vendors with duel points. These vendors were duel monster themed robots or virtual projections scattered among the attractions where a duellist could use their duel points to purchase various duel skills or virtual cards that could be used modify their decks.

Some of these vendors also doubled as duel bots that would only allow a duellist to use their shop after they had been defeated in a duel.

The difficulty of the competition was raised even higher by the fact that each island zone was sealed off from each other, requiring duellists to meet certain clear conditions before they could open various connecting passages and obtain free passage. It could be complicated, for example acquiring a travel token by finding and clearing a hidden duel puzzle, or a simple as spending a large number of duel points to purchase this token from a single vendor.

The final section of rules concerned field rules. In certain locations special rules would be applied to all duels carried out there. Some were like a field power bonus, boosting certain types of monster or weakening others, some were restrictions and others still required the duellists to instead duel with special premade rental decks instead of their own decks.

A sleek white and blue train pulled into the station to pick up the next load of duellists for transport, with luck this would be Drakes ride. He wondered which zone he would start in? if the zone names represented the themes of the field rules one would encounter, then he hoped for 'Dragon Ravine' as it would be the most likely place a dragon deck like his would be given an advantage.

All in all, Drake though the second rounds format sounded rather fun, complicated and chaotic, but fun. There were so many different strategies one could use to reach the finals. One could work extremely hard to traverse the seven zones and acquire the needed duel codes, or one could concentrate on hunting down duellists to steal their code fragments.

And although there were twenty sets of codes, nothing in the rules stopped a duellist from collecting multiple copies of the same fragment. Meaning some duellists would end up collecting multiple copies to prevent others from completing the full passcode, or perhaps they would use the duplicate fragments in trades if they find themselves missing a final piece toward the end of the second round.

So many options. But Drake was also concerned as he finally boarded a carriage.

This kind of format would also give a certain advantage to an organisation like New Order, allowing their best duellists to rely on the cannon fodder to collect the codes and intel for them at a faster rate, or to act as sacrifices to boost their duel points in order to purchase powerful skills and cards.

*Bing*

The doors shut as the train smoothly pulled away from the station. An announcement played out over its public address system.

"Welcome Duellists. We will reach your destination in 10 minutes, your selected starting zone is Toon Kingdom."