Chapter 2: Initial Deck

Fujiki You Xuan logged into the card inquiry websites of both the Kaiba Corporation and Industrial Illusions, searching for the card pool currently available for direct purchase on the market.

First was "that card" that any card player who transmigrated here would undoubtedly look for as long as their IQ was online—

——Pot of Greed.

Or rather, the super-strong draw engine unique to the early anime world represented by Pot of Greed.

Pot of Greed, which could unconditionally draw two cards from the deck. It was this simple and crude effect that made this card a ten-thousand-year forbidden card that would rot in prison in the physical card environment, becoming a representative of a life sentence that would almost never be released in the foreseeable lifetime.

Its fellow sufferer was "Graceful Charity," which could not only draw three cards from the deck but also choose two cards from the hand to discard into the graveyard. As Yu-Gi-Oh! developed into an era where graveyard and hand resources were almost indistinguishable, the terrifying degree of this "cheat" that drew three and came with graveyard dumping had already surpassed Pot of Greed.

However, these cards were not highly valued by Duelists in the DM anime, but by the GX period, it seemed that Duelists in the anime world had also begun to notice their power. After all, in the GX anime, one could already see the protagonists having at least one Pot of Greed and one Charity, and in the Duel of the heroine Asuka, one could even see the situation of Pot of Greed passing to Pot of Greed, the scene was very brutal.

On the monster card side, Fujiki You Xuan began to have a bit of difficulty choosing.

Because after looking through the entire card pool, he really couldn't find one he liked. As a transmigrated card player, he really couldn't use those monsters that had to honestly gather offerings for Tribute Summoning, and even after summoning them, they were just whiteboards with an attack power of two thousand or so...

It wasn't that there were no relatively high-quality monsters, but many were priceless and couldn't be bought at all.

For example, the first one he thought of was Jinzo, one of the signature monsters of the previous protagonist group's Joey Wheeler. It was a Level 6 monster, only needed one offering to summon, yet had a decent attack of 2400, and also had a "trap sealing ability" that was quite overpowered in the early environment—as long as it was on the field, Trap cards could not be used.

Fujiki You Xuan remembered that in the physical card environment of this era, this was also a very high-quality single card and a regular in competitive deck constructions.

However, after searching for it, it was out of stock.

Jinzo belonged to highly rare cards and was in a long-term out-of-stock state, completely unavailable for purchase.

This made Fujiki You Xuan a bit depressed. He quickly realized that another important factor for the difference between the anime environment and the physical cards was that the difficulty of obtaining cards was different.

In reality, they could check which cards were in the entire card pool of the current version at any time and could use almost any card to achieve any construction. But the Duelists in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world didn't have this convenience.

There were some other cards he wanted, but after just glancing at the price, he couldn't help but gasp.

Farewell.

Fujiki You Xuan clearly knew that cards in this world were almost directly equal to weapons and strength, so he had long been prepared for a major hemorrhage, ready to obtain necessary cards at all costs.

But saying that was one thing, yet looking at the heaven-defying price tags of some rare cards, he pondered that even if he sold himself, it seemed he couldn't afford them...

It wasn't an exaggeration, but the literal meaning of that.

Sure enough, the price difference between ordinary cards and rare cards in this world was outrageous. The price of general cards and ordinary card packs was not much different from the reality of his previous life, and everyone could afford them. But the value of some rare cards was not an exaggeration to say that one card was worth a house.

And that was just the general rare cards that could be bought. Like the "Blue-Eyes White Dragon," which was well-known to have only three in the world and all were in the hands of Seto Kaiba, that was even more out of the question.

Continuing to learn, he discovered that besides car loans and house loans, there was even something called "card loans." As the name suggested, it meant you could take out a loan to buy cards...

"So the feeling of having no cards is so painful," Fujiki You Xuan pouted.

Fortunately, even under such restrictions, he barely designed a construction idea using the cards he could obtain.

The prototype of this construction was the milestone in the history of Yu-Gi-Oh! physical card competition, the first-ever World Championship winning deck in history.

Hand Destruction.

Perhaps every novice Duelist who entered the pit through the anime would have some unrealistic fantasies about playing cards, such as the confrontation of high-attack big brothers like in the anime, intense offensive and defensive exchanges, and head-on duels, hitting "GG" in a hearty battle...

However, that was the fake Yu-Gi-Oh!.

The real Yu-Gi-Oh! was that only one person could play Yu-Gi-Oh! at this table of two people.

The safest way to win was always to obliterate the possibility of the opponent's tactics, making the opponent unable to play cards at all. This concept ran through the beginning to the end, it was so today, and it was the same in the early card-playing environment.

【Hand Destruction】 was a deck built on this idea. As the name suggested, its tactic was to destroy the opponent's hand so the opponent had no cards to play, and could only stare blankly and idle from the moment they sat at the table, which could be considered the ancestor of the "underworld" realm.

The opponent facing this deck would have their understanding of dueling completely subverted, and that poor person would experience a series of three combos in just a few minutes: "blood pressure soaring," "I'm playing your mother," to "summoning my fist in attack position."

So if one had to say what the biggest flaw of this type of deck was, it might be that the user's personal safety was difficult to guarantee...

Of course, Fujiki You Xuan couldn't remember the entire construction of such an ancient championship deck, and he couldn't get his hands on some rare cards. So he just borrowed its idea and made a new construction himself.

As for some empty positions in the deck, let's just stuff in more traps with decent single-card quality for now.

Actually, some traps, in Fujiki You Xuan's card player view, couldn't be considered profitable, and might not be very easy to use. It was mainly because having too many traps easily collapsed the opponent's mentality.

He wasn't a devil, and he didn't go out of his way to mess with other people's mentalities out of bad taste. Mainly, psychological warfare was also a part of dueling, and sometimes collapsing the opponent's mentality before emptying their LP was also a very effective tactic.

Hmm, that was it.

Continuing to browse the webpage unintentionally, his eyes suddenly lit up when he scanned a certain page.

Jinzo, stock quantity 1.

Fujiki You Xuan immediately slid the page back and clicked to inquire. However, he was immediately rejected by the webpage.

"No access permission."

"Academy Department exclusive card."

Fujiki You Xuan was stunned.

Academy Department? What was that?

After another round of surfing and searching, he suddenly realized.

The so-called Academy Department referred to the Duel Academy. It was the world's largest Duel Academy established by Seto Kaiba himself, who personally handled everything. He specifically bought an entire island as the academy headquarters and filled the academy with resources.

Students on the island had the opportunity to have priority access to the newly released card packs, and had channels to purchase rare cards that were completely unavailable to the outside world, and could also enjoy "bone-breaking" discounts when purchasing.

Even putting aside the academy's hardware facilities and teaching staff, just the rare cards and discount strength were enough to make people jealous.

Even for students with excellent enough grades, grades and credits could be used to redeem cards. For a world where one card could be sold for a sky-high price, this could save students a huge deck-building budget.

Not to mention that students graduating from the Duel Academy would have the most solid graduation diploma in the Duel world, and whether they wanted to enter the professional world, work for the Kaiba Corporation, or Industrial Illusions, they could get priority internal recommendation opportunities.

Flipping down, Fujiki You Xuan even glimpsed Chaos Sorcerer!

Chaos Sorcerer, Level 6, attack power 2300. It could be directly Special Summoned by banishing Light and Dark attribute monsters from the graveyard, and had a powerful effect of banishing one monster on the opponent's field from the game once per turn.

Because it had similar summoning conditions and effects to the more famous "Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning," it became its lower-tier substitute after Black Luster Soldier was listed as a forbidden card, and was jokingly called "Little Beginning" by card players, belonging to the first-line combat power in the current version environment.

In this world, Black Luster Soldier was a super rare card. In the anime, it was known that only Duel King Yugi Wu Teng had one, and there was also an exhibition card in Yugi Wu Teng's replica deck in the GX anime, and apart from that, it had never been seen again.

So wanting to get a "Big Beginning" was almost impossible. But if he could buy a Chaos Sorcerer, that would also be excellent.

Besides that, there were other quite good rare cards, all of which were difficult to see on the outside market, and the prices were indeed "bone-breaking" compared to the market price.

Seeing this, Fujiki You Xuan took a deep breath.

Decided.

Let's take the Duel Academy entrance exam first.

If he couldn't pass, he'd try again.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 3 =====