Chapter 27

【Onizuka Lei Ming, LP 0】

The final attack ended, taking away all his remaining Life Points, and in this Shadow Duel he had initiated himself, it also represented the end of a duelist's true life.

At this moment, he couldn't even feel the pain brought by the Shadow Duel's impact.

Because he had already begun to lose all sensation in his body.

Just now in the duel, he had boasted that being caught by him was the opponent's misfortune of a lifetime.

Now looking at it, whose misfortune was it really...

This young man was strong, but he felt different from the strong people he had met before.

How to put it, it's as if...

It's as if the duel in his eyes was completely different from the understanding in everyone else's eyes.

This was also the first time in history that Lei Ming had such a thought after playing cards with someone—

—Dueling is so hard...

After being defeated, Lei Ming fell to the ground, and then his body was shrouded in a layer of golden light, which then dispersed into light spots and disappeared.

Just like those who lost their cards and died in the GX Dimension World arc.

Fujiki You Xuan gasped.

Good fellow, Shadow Duels are indeed dangerous. Being wiped out to the ashes after losing is too horrifying...

Fortunately, he was more skilled.

However, in his view, this person's K-language level didn't even reach the entry level. How could he be a Shadow Duelist if he was this bad? It's a miracle he's survived this long playing life-or-death cards.

No.

Fujiki You Xuan realized that he was still carrying the inertia of his previous life's thinking.

Can't think like that either. In this world, a duelist's strength is still more important for "god-draws," and as for the K-language of interpreting card text, it might just be an embellishment.

Hmm, it's indeed a dangerous world, can't have the slightest relaxation.

Still need to collect more powerful cards to improve strength, that is the royal way.

For example, starting from right now.

Fujiki You Xuan walked up, leaned over, and picked up the Duel Disk that the already-dead Lei Ming had dropped on the ground.

Since the person was gone, the deck naturally became ownerless property.

So Fujiki You Xuan said solemnly: "It was a good duel. Rest assured and go, buddy. I will inherit your deck and your will."

Saying this, he stuffed the deck into his pocket.

As he left, he seemed to feel a chill on his back, as if a cold wind had blown past.

The next morning.

Sunlight sprinkled lightly on the floor of the room through the gaps in the curtains. Fujiki You Xuan opened his heavy eyelids in a daze, his blurred vision struggling to focus.

Seemed to see... a girl?

Silver hair fluttering, holding a staff in one hand and covering her mouth with the other, half of her spirit-form body penetrated into his body as he lay on the bed, her bright eyes wide open, peeking and looking around, as if she was examining him.

However, as soon as he opened his eyes, an "!" seemed to pop up on the girl's head, and she suddenly turned her head and drilled back into the deck inside the Duel Disk leaning against the table, with no movement.

Fujiki You Xuan: "..."

After the toss and turn last night and the first cooperation between master and servant, Fujiki You Xuan learned that the Silent girl was not intentionally targeting or not acknowledging him as her master, she was simply "silent."

In other words, she was autistic.

Hmm, as the saying goes, like master like servant; it seems quite reasonable for the spirit of an autistic player to be autistic.

Regardless, she did help in the encounter last night. Sure enough, in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, it's too dangerous to go out without divine artifacts or spirits by your side.

And he wasn't sure if it was psychological, but he felt that when he was playing the life-or-death cards yesterday, with Silent Magician in the deck, something seemed to be different from previous duels.

It was a feeling that was hard to describe clearly. But it was like touching his own deck, every time he drew a card, he could vaguely feel a certain rhythm.

It was as if before this, his deck was just a tool for dueling, just like the Duel Disk.

But in that match, it was the first time he had the illusion that "the deck seemed to have come alive."

Of course, this feeling is very metaphysical, and the possibility of overthinking cannot be ruled out.

"Regardless, still need to become stronger..."

The sudden encounter with life-or-death cards made Fujiki You Xuan realize once again the importance of playing good cards in this world; this is even more reliable than carrying an arsenal on your back when going out.

And with the review of the recent continuous battles, he also developed some new understandings.

Many anime characters' decks often make people marvel from a card player's perspective: how did they make such a system work?

But if based on the strength of certain "seafood-headed" players who "never brick no matter what the system is," and then look at their decks, you will find a similar characteristic.

That is, they are stuffed with things of un-known meaning (crossed out).

That is, they have solutions in their decks for almost any situation they face.

Real-world decks generally pursue stability and efficiency, but even top-tier decks occasionally encounter situations where "the whole deck can't get past."

That is, facing a certain board, a certain specific situation, you clearly know that all the cards in your deck construction, no matter which one you pick, cannot get past that board.

This situation may be very rare, and even if you encounter it occasionally, you just surrender, which doesn't affect the status of a mainstream deck. But it's different in this world.

Shadow Duels only have one game; if you win, you live, if you lose, you die; there is no chance to surrender and try again.

So some decks that look like they are stuffed with things of un-known meaning actually achieve the idea of "almost no board that can't be passed."

Similarly, in reality, deck construction generally pursues a limit of forty cards, and only by being as streamlined as possible can the brick rate be minimized and operational efficiency improved. But in this world, sixty cards is the norm... no, it even seems that the deck limit in this world might be more than sixty cards.

Because the more cards there are, the more possibilities there are.

But all of this is based on the foundation of "never bricking."

So only top duelists have the ability to control such a system, and even like Yugi and Kaiba, mix four or five completely different axes into one deck, yet they don't brick at all when playing, giving people the feeling that they are dueling with four or five independent decks at the same time.

When there's really no way, drawing a card that isn't in the deck isn't impossible...

However, ordinary people without that strength blindly imitate the constructions and tactics of these top big shots, everyone holding a deck starting at sixty cards, naturally they will learn to be worse and worse, more and more bricky, and thus formed this strange environment where the polarization between experts and the bottom layer is becoming more and more serious.

So Fujiki You Xuan felt that he had realized something again.

Although the "Underworld" style is very powerful, you can't go far in this world just by relying on it. Current opponents can be dealt with just by relying on the construction, but in the future, you still have to expand more varied styles and tactics on this basis.

Deck construction is also important, and god-draw bonds are also important; both hands must be grasped, and both hands must be hard.

Playing recent games, besides making Fujiki You Xuan realize that the card environment in the anime is different, he also found that there are many other places that are not quite the same as what he is familiar with.

When watching anime before, he didn't think about it in detail, but now that he has personally traveled into it and played cards, he realized that just like the anime performance, the duelists here don't take the initiative to give you a chance to chain after activating an effect.

If it were according to the rules Fujiki You Xuan was familiar with in his previous life, many times after you activate an effect, you need to give the opponent time and ask if they have a chain. After all the cards in a chain are activated, the effects will be resolved in order.

Unless the opponent says "no response" or "GKD," you can happily play your cards without scruples.

But there is no such thing here. Whether it's in the anime or the duelists Fujiki You Xuan has personally encountered, after activating an effect, they immediately start to resolve it on their own, without this awareness at all.

However, he soon discovered that this doesn't have much impact, because the rules for chain timing in a duel are not that strict. Even if the opponent has already started to resolve the effect of the current card on their own, it won't cause your chain activation timing to be missed; you can still interrupt the opponent's operation and follow up with your own effect.

This is also a matter of course. Otherwise, wouldn't it become that whoever moves their mouth fast enough can skip the timing and not let the opponent play cards?

And this is not because the rules in the early anime were imperfect; even in the later animations that have long followed the physical card rules, it is still the same.

From the perspective of anime production, it can only be speculated that perhaps the production team decided that the dramatic effect of the anime performance is more important than strictly following the rules. Because if everyone strictly followed the rules and activated all the cards before resolving them one by one, it might affect the performance effect of some reversal designs.

Although such operations are not compliant from a realistic perspective, in general, even in the anime, it is just a performance effect and usually does not cause an impact on the situation.

Last night, Fujiki You Xuan discovered that playing cards is indeed physical labor. The PE teacher at the Duel Academy even emphasized that you can't play cards well without a good body. Fujiki You Xuan thought it was a bit funny back then, but now he has begun to understand the meaning of it.

Especially the life-or-death card game last night was indeed mentally and physically exhausting. He didn't feel it while playing, but after returning, he felt that his body had been hollowed out, and he didn't want to think about anything, just wanted to fall asleep.

Waking up after a sleep, he felt refreshed, and his brain was back online and resumed work.

The harvest from winning that game yesterday was not small. That Lei Ming was a Shadow Duelist who licked blood on the edge of a knife, and his deck looked quite valuable. Fujiki You Xuan estimated that even if he couldn't use some cards, they could sell for a good price on the market, and he could sell them to exchange for what he wanted.

And the most important thing is undoubtedly the anime effect version of "Card of Sanctity."

An artifact that instantly draws five cards, and only has the ridiculous side effect of "discarding cards after five turns," which is like mocking the opponent to their face; things like Pot of Greed suddenly became trash.

It's a pity there is only one. Fujiki You Xuan even felt that if this thing could be played at three, what a beautiful thing it would be...

In addition, what he also yearns for are the other two of the three great treasures of the DM era, "Card of Fate" and "Card of Sanctity."

Card of Fate is Joey's; basically, you throw a die, and you draw as many cards as the number thrown, and then banish that many cards from the top of your deck. It's also a heaven-defying god card, but no one else has been seen using it in the anime except Joey, and it has disappeared by the GX era.

Card of Sanctity is Yugi's; both players draw until they have six cards in their hands, a super-god-level killer. This one has been used by many others besides Yugi in DM, and it can be considered a generic card, and it also appeared in the GX era. But Fujiki You Xuan hasn't seen it on the market yet.

The three divine artifacts of DM, I want them all...

And now the greatest hope is the broad road named "Duel Academy."

It is rumored in the outside world that once you enter the academy, it will be a completely different world. A large number of rare cards that ordinary duelists can't even imagine, and the online rumor is an in-app purchase channel where "everything is available"...

It's already right in front of him.

Just three days later, the annual Duel Academy enrollment examination held at Kaiba Land.

Must win.

(End of chapter)