Chapter 1: The GX world is too sunny

You Xuan slowly opened his eyes, looking around at the unfamiliar environment in a daze.

It was a room he had never seen before, yet it exuded an inexplicable sense of familiarity. Sunlight spilled through the window lattice, dappling the soft floor like flickering stardust. Even the air seemed to become light and transparent under the warm sun.

A dull ache throbbed in his head, and strange images and unfamiliar fragments flashed through his mind. Some instinct seemed to tell him from the bottom of his heart about the extraordinary situation he was facing at this moment—

——He had transmigrated.

You Xuan looked around at the surrounding environment, his gaze quickly drawn to the computer on the desk.

The computer was on, displaying a search engine page, yet it was not any search engine he had been familiar with before.

The large characters marked on the search box clearly read, "Kaiba Search."

And what made him feel even more peculiar were the trending news items below the search box.

"Research team at Toto University discovers new form of 'Summoned Skull'; Fiend decks may be in for a major buff!"

You Xuan: "?"

Out of curiosity, he clicked to take a look. The report stated that the research team had developed the new potential of the well-known Fiend-type monster "Summoned Skull" after working day and night, and had already published a paper in an authoritative top-tier international Duel Monsters journal.

A team spokesperson said they had already spoken with Maximillion Pegasus, CEO of Industrial Illusions, and Industrial Illusions was already assisting them in the development of new cards.

If he couldn't even recognize that this was a transmigration into what kind of world after seeing this, then You Xuan had truly wasted so many years playing cards.

This was the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, a plane where, as everyone knew, cards were supreme, and the foundation and laws of the entire world were built upon playing cards.

Below the trending searches, there was an even more outrageous one.

"International conflict in the Middle East eases; leaders of the two countries have decided to reach a negotiation through a Duel."

You Xuan: "."

After reading the headline, a picture seemed to form in his mind. On a battlefield filled with smoke, two armies stood in opposition, both sides fully armed with guns and artillery pointed at each other.

At this moment, the generals of the two armies walked out of their positions, revealed the Duel Disks and decks on their arms, and decided to resolve the territorial dispute with a tense and exciting game of Yu-Gi-Oh!.

That is just too damn ridiculous.

But this was exactly how this world operated.

Duel Monsters was the only way to reach the pinnacle of the extraordinary in this world and master the divine power to rewrite the laws of reality across time and space.

His brain gradually shook off the dull state, and new memories seemed to be slowly absorbed. You Xuan quickly sorted out his identity in this world.

Fujiki You Xuan, male, currently an... apprentice at a Duel Dojo?

Although it was called a dojo, it actually felt like a social card-playing training class. Unlike those formal Duel Academies, Duel Dojos were social training institutions that one could enter as long as they paid the registration fee.

In the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, playing cards could naturally not be called neglecting one's proper work. On the contrary, if one could really learn to play cards well, the future would naturally be bright.

Duel Monsters cards had developed to the point where almost every industry was closely related to playing cards. These days, even opening a company for business required a company-dedicated Duel agent, specifically to help the company handle all matters that needed to be dealt with by playing cards in business affairs. It was even said that in Domino City, known as the "Duel City," under the operation of the Kaiba Corporation, it had reached the point where one could not settle down without registering a deck.

But this did not mean that this path was easy. Although his predecessor worked and studied, working part-time to earn tuition while learning at the dojo, striving to move towards the path of a true Duelist, both he himself and those around him actually knew that his hope was slim.

Because he was bad.

It was true that a Duelist had a bright future, but at the same time, this industry was also too competitive. This world was different from his previous life; a Duelist was a profession recognized as being very dependent on talent, and not everyone had the potential to become a master.

Putting everything else aside, if a person couldn't even draw the cards they wanted to draw, then what kind of Duelist were they?

You Xuan thought about it and felt that the development path his predecessor insisted on despite such hardship was not wrong in itself.

In this world, whether one wanted to seek the extraordinary or make a career in the city, Duel Monsters was the first choice.

So since he wanted to take this path, his greatest reliance was the accumulation from many years as a hardcore card player in his previous life.

Thinking of this, You Xuan immediately sat down at the computer and started searching.

First, he had to determine which era and background he had transmigrated into. There were many parts of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and the later the anime, the closer it was to the physical card environment. Therefore, the later the environment, the smaller the advantage for a transmigrator.

After a simple search, he quickly obtained the information he needed.

This was the most classic basic dimension, the place where dreams began, the world with the story background of "Yu-Gi-Oh! DM" and "Yu-Gi-Oh! GX."

The current time node should be after the end of DM, before the start of GX or in the early stages of the story. In this way, You Xuan had a rough concept of the current Duel card environment.

So now let's look at the predecessor's deck.

You Xuan: (─?? ─)

No, are you serious about this deck?

Spreading the whole thing out to look at it, a bloated sixty-card deck... no, this thing couldn't even be called a deck, it was just a pile of cards.

First of all, on the monster side, there was a handful of Normal Monsters with no effects—this kind of thing was what card players generally liked to use a term that Kaiba often had on his lips to describe: "Vanilla."

Then the entire construction was simply a case of "the Eight Immortals crossing the sea, each showing their own special powers," and there was almost no synergy between any two cards. If one randomly drew six cards at the start, they were all doing their own thing. You Xuan highly doubted what kind of combat power these things could have when put together.

However, looking again, he seemed to have grasped the predecessor's deck construction logic a little.

It wasn't that it was useless, it was mainly just expensive.

That feeling was probably like the two episodes in the GX anime plot where Manzaimu's two rich and foolish brothers appeared. Those two nouveau riche had plenty of money but their card-playing level was completely amateur, yet they believed in the theory that money was supreme, firmly believing that the expensive ones were the best.

So they spent money like crazy, buying a dozen of the most expensive rare cards to form a "pay-to-win" deck to challenge Manzaimu, yet in the end, they were blown up by the temporary deck Manzaimu built from waste cards he picked up from a dry well behind the school.

Clearly, the predecessor had committed the same problem as those two nouveau riche in the anime. Many cards in the deck might have been earned by him working hard part-time, and even after seeing the outrageous market price, You Xuan felt there was reason to suspect that the reason he transmigrated was because his predecessor had worked too hard and died suddenly.

However, looking at the few cards in his hand that were nominally super rare but in his view had unclear significance, he couldn't help but silently feel it wasn't worth it for his predecessor.

In the world of playing cards, many strong cards were indeed very expensive, but expensive ones were not necessarily good. Many cards in this world were expensive simply because they were "rare." For example, some cards were made from archaeological artifacts, and some were made from diamond rings and gemstones as raw materials.

There were even some that were simply because the summoned monsters looked very good and were widely sought after, but the production was not high, so the price was expensive—especially some "female bodhisattva" type fairies who were well-endowed but also revealing.

So after flipping through the entire deck, You Xuan visually estimated that it seemed like only those few expensive traps were slightly useful.

It looked like the initial deck had to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

You Xuan thought about it and used the internet again to check the competition videos of current professional Duelists, roughly understanding the environment and ideas of current mainstream Duelists.

Sure enough, just as the anime showed. The Duelists of this era generally still pursued the crushing of power, striving to make their high-attack, handsome ace monsters to achieve suppression on the field.

After watching several competition recordings, You Xuan couldn't help but sigh.

What a simple and honest world.

In short, it seemed that most Duelists currently had a common problem—

——It was too sunny.

In the world today, there were eight measures of "underworld" index, the former Duel King Yugi Wu Teng occupied one, and the people of the world owed him two.

Now that Yugi Wu Teng had sealed his cards and stopped appearing, Duelists all over the world took Seto Kaiba, the legendary Duelist who pursued power suppression with a mouth full of "Crush! Destroy!", as their role model, and the entire environment was suddenly filled with a sunny atmosphere.

Thus, You Xuan's construction idea was decided.

He was going to bring a little bit of "underworld" fun to this sunny card world.

It's back, this time the background starts from GX.

New book requests for collections and recommendation tickets, especially requests for follow-up reading!

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 2 =====