Chapter 32: Why Play Yu-Gi-Oh If You're Broke?

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Duel Academy Headquarters, on an island at sea.

Principal Samejima had finally managed to free himself after being busy for most of the day. He returned to his office, leisurely brewed himself a cup of tea, and took advantage of this rare moment of rest to review the results of this year’s entrance examinations, along with several duels that had caught his interest.

He had never expected Professor Crowler to personally step into the arena. It was obvious that he had deliberately set out to make things difficult for that jellyfish-headed freshman. Yet this student called Jaden Yuki was remarkably formidable. During the entrance examination, he had actually defeated the academy’s highest-ranking practical authority while the man was using his own deck...

Principal Samejima took a sip of tea, thoroughly pleased by the extraordinary potential Jaden had displayed.

Naturally, he also took a look at the practical duel of this year’s top-ranked applicant. According to the reports, the student had scored full marks on every written section except the open-ended questions, beating out the second-place Daichi Misawa, whose score had also come close to perfection. His performance had been exceptionally impressive.

Now, let us see how he performed in the practical duel, and how he built his deck...

...

What on earth is this?

Principal Samejima could not help scratching his shiny bald head.

He had spent many years in the dueling world and considered himself fairly well-read in the field. But he had rarely seen a deck built like this.

No, come to think of it, there was one thing it vaguely resembled: the deck used during the later years of the legendary King of Games, Yugi Muto, whom Samejima had once had the honor of seeing at an invitational tournament hosted by Seto Kaiba in his youth.

It was said that during the final years of the King of Games’ dueling career, many opponents who tried to challenge him ended up sputtering with rage. By the later stages of the duel, their twisted expressions looked almost like a cosplay performance by Marik from the days of Battle City...

...

Rather like that unfortunate examiner sitting across from the student in the entrance examination.

Yet the evolution of the dueling world over the years had already proven that this was the King of Games’ unique specialty, something others could not easily imitate. The mainstream of deck construction had continued to move in the direction pioneered by Seto Kaiba. After the King of Games sealed away his cards and retired, such unorthodox techniques had not vanished completely, but they had become exceedingly rare.

Unlike traditional professors such as Crowler, Principal Samejima did not insist that students follow the textbook’s standard tactics and deck-building methods.

Most students simply lacked the ability to innovate and develop their own strategies. But with his many years of teaching experience, Samejima could tell at a glance that this student named Yugen might possess exactly that talent.

Could it be that the academy had actually recruited a newcomer with such a rare gift this year?

The thought filled Principal Samejima with anticipation.

He looked at Jaden Yuki’s name on the roster, then at Fujiki Yugen’s beside it. Leaning back into his chair, the principal took another leisurely sip of tea and revealed a gratified smile.

This little Duel Academy had somehow recruited two prodigies in a single year.

How delightful.

...

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...

Duel Academy was quite efficient. Within a few days of the examination, the applicants were already able to check their scores, results, and admission information.

Just as expected, Yugen received an acceptance notice.

There was still a month before the start of term, so he was in no hurry to set foot on the island. The new class of students had already completed their registration, however, and all of those who had passed the admission standard were now officially considered prospective freshmen for the year.

Using the student number he had just received, Yugen logged into Kaiba Corporation’s card-search system through the academy portal. Sure enough, the number of cards available for purchase had increased as well.

He quickly skimmed through the listings, first recording every card in stock that he thought might prove useful and compiling them into a list. Then he went through the cards one by one, analyzing them.

Most of them seemed potentially useful, but required specific deck builds or existed mainly to enable particular combos. He set those aside for further consideration.

The cards he decided to buy immediately were generally versatile staples that could contribute to most decks. Among these, the majority were the sort of delightful face-down traps that made opponents miserable.

For example, Karma Cut, which could banish an opposing monster by discarding a card from your hand. Or the perennially forbidden Ring of Destruction, back before it had been brutally nerfed—a weapon for those who would rather flip the table than lose. It could destroy a monster and inflict damage to both players equal to that monster’s attack points. Among duelists, it was fondly known as the Draw Ring.

To his even greater surprise, he discovered that the magical in-app shop also carried hand traps.

As the saying went, one could defend against a thousand things and guard against ten thousand, but hand traps were the hardest to stop. Unlike Trap Cards, which had to be set on the field and could therefore be anticipated or cleared away, hand traps could be discarded directly from the hand to activate their effects. From the moment they had first appeared, they had remained a central part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! metagame—even into the present day.

Of course, early hand traps were not nearly as vicious as their modern counterparts. Most were defensive effects intended to take a hit for the player. Their true origin could be traced back to the mascot that had carried over from the Duel Monsters era: the Kuriboh in Yugi’s hand, which could be discarded to negate battle damage.

So when Yugen found a Kuriboh listed in the rare-card section, he bought it without the slightest hesitation. He was also somewhat surprised that such a rare item was still available, rather than having already been snapped up.

Then again, it made sense. Judging from the anime, duelists did not seem especially enthusiastic about low-level monsters with weak combat ability that could only block a single attack. Aside from its rarity and scarcity, Kuriboh’s other major value came from its status as “the mascot of the first King of Games.”

He soon discovered another section in the academy shop called “Themed Preconstructed Decks.” After opening it, he found that it offered complete decks built around specific themes, sold as bundled sets for a fixed price.

Among them was even the legendary Elemental HERO archetype.

That was only natural, he supposed. In the very first episode of GX, when Crowler saw Jaden’s deck, he described it as “a very common Hero deck.” In this era, Hero decks were essentially budget builds. It was only later, as more and more new cards were printed for Jaden, that they gradually left the ranks of ordinary players’ decks.

Every card enthusiast carried at least a little hero dream in their heart. Since he had arrived in the GX era, Yugen decided to search it out of curiosity.

Then he abandoned his hero dream at light speed.

The monsters consisted almost entirely of the famous Four Useless Heroes. There were only two or three Fusion Heroes in stock, followed by a pile of exclusive accessories for various useless heroes: Lightning Gun, Feather Shot, Spark Blaster, and so on...

They were all cards that even Jaden had used only once in the anime before they vanished without a trace. Their defining feature was their complete lack of discernible purpose.

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At a rough glance, Yugen immediately realized that this was not a deck an ordinary person could handle. Almost every Spell and Trap required a specific vanilla Hero in order to function. Even if one forcibly glued the cards together with industrial-strength adhesive and somehow assembled them in hand, every combination was far too situational. In actual duels, the deck would produce bricked hands so consistently that it could make anyone question their life choices.

The fact that Jaden had used this collection of cards to fight his way undefeated through most of Duel Academy during the early part of the series already placed him beyond the reach of ninety-nine percent of duelists...

Elemental HERO was temporarily out of consideration. Yugen continued scrolling.

He then discovered that Syrus Truesdale’s vehicle-themed “roid” deck was also among the available preconstructed sets.

His eyes lit up, and he hurriedly opened the list of cards included in the build.

Syrus’s roid deck was not a rare strategy in the current environment. Even in the real-life card game, it had performed mediocrely for many years and had never possessed any serious competitive strength. It was, at best, a marginal casual deck.

But this deck contained one divine early-era card that Syrus had used in the anime—one that, nearly twenty years later, had still never been printed as a physical card by Konami.

There it was!

Yugen’s gaze immediately locked onto that particular card in the list, and he bought the entire set without hesitation.

The cards in a preconstructed set could not be purchased individually; the whole deck had to be bought at once. That was fine. The set itself was inexpensive, and in the current environment, buying the entire deck for the sake of that single card was still an excellent deal.

Kiteroid, Level 1, 200 Attack, 400 Defense.

Effect:

1. You can discard this card from your hand to make the battle damage from one direct attack against a player become zero.

2. While this card is in your Graveyard, you can make the battle damage from one direct attack against a player become zero once.

(Anime effect)

This card had never been released physically. Historically, it had appeared exclusively in two games: Tag Force 3 for the PSP and Duel Links. It could serve once as a hand trap and once as a Graveyard trap. One card could block two attacks. In the GX-era environment, where hand traps were exceedingly scarce, it was unquestionably a lifesaving treasure.

Immersed in the pleasure of shopping, Yugen had just completed another round of upgrades. His card pool was growing richer, and the number of possible deck configurations was steadily increasing.

Unfortunately, the wallet that had only recently begun to recover was being drained just as rapidly.

Yugen decided, for the time being, to keep a little money in reserve rather than spend everything. He closed the interface, sighed softly, and gazed mournfully up at the sky.

As expected, the seniors had been right about one thing.

What was the point of playing Yu-Gi-Oh! if you had no money...?

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