Chapter 32

Island in the sea, Duel Academy headquarters.

Principal Samejima, who has been busy for most of the day, finally has a moment of leisure. He comes to his office, leisurely brews a cup of tea, and takes advantage of this rare break to check the results of this year's entrance exam, as well as some duels he is interested in.

He didn't expect Professor Cronos to take the field personally; it was already obvious that he was intentionally making things difficult for a certain jellyfish-haired freshman. But this student named Yuki Judai is truly formidable, actually defeating the academy's head of practical dueling who was using his own deck in the entrance assessment...

Principal Samejima takes a sip of tea, very satisfied with the extraordinary potential shown by student Judai.

Then, naturally, he also takes a look at the practical duel of this year's first-place student. It is said that this person's written exam scores were perfect except for the subjective open-ended questions, surpassing the second-place student Misawa Daichi, who also had near-perfect scores, showing a very impressive performance.

So let's look at this person's practical performance and deck build...

What on earth is this?

Principal Samejima cannot help but scratch his shiny head.

He thinks he has been in the dueling world for many years and can be considered well-informed. But he has really never seen such a build.

No, if he had to say, when he was young, he had the fortune to see the deck used by the legendary King of Games, Mutou Yugi, in his later years at an invitational tournament hosted by Kaiba, and it seems to have a bit of that flavor.

It is said that in the later years of King of Games Yugi's dueling career, many opponents who tried to challenge him ended up furious, and their twisted expressions at the end were just like cosplaying as the player Malik during the Battle City era...

It's a bit like that unlucky examiner opposite in the assessment duel before his eyes.

However, the evolution of the dueling world over so many years has long proven that this is the King of Games' unique skill, which others cannot easily imitate. For so many years, mainstream dueling builds have been leaning towards the direction guided by Kaiba Seto, and this kind of unorthodox skill, while not completely gone after the King of Games retired, is already very rare.

Unlike traditional professors represented by Cronos, Principal Samejima does not insist that students must learn tactics and build decks according to textbook standards.

It's just that ordinary students don't have that ability for innovation and independent research. But Principal Samejima, based on his many years of teaching experience, feels at a glance that this student named You Xuan might have it.

Could it be that the academy has recruited a newcomer with such rare talent this year?

With this thought in mind, Principal Samejima cannot help but feel a bit expectant.

Looking at Yuki Judai on the roster, then looking at Fujiki You Xuan next to him, the principal leans back into his chair, takes a leisurely sip of tea, and cannot help but show a gratified smile.

In a small Duel Academy, two great talents, Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, have been recruited at the same time this year.

Truly a joyous occasion.

The efficiency at Duel Academy is still quite high. Within a few days after the exam, the examinees can already check their scores and results, as well as admission information.

Completely as expected, You Xuan receives the admission notice.

Of course, there is still a month until school starts, so there is no rush to land on the island immediately. However, the academy's new freshman class has already completed registration, and these students who passed the cutoff are already counted as this year's reserve freshmen.

You Xuan takes his newly received student ID information, logs into the Kaiba Corporation's card query system through the academy department channel, and sure enough, the options for purchasing cards have also increased.

However, he quickly flips through it, tentatively recording the cards he feels he might use from the ones in stock, and makes a list. Then he checks and analyzes them one by one.

Most of them are ones he feels might be useful, but might need to be combined with specific builds or combos; these are all listed and set aside for discussion.

The ones he decides to buy immediately are generally generic cards that can play a role in most decks; these cards are still mainly the happy red traps.

For example, "Causal Cut," which can send the opponent's monster to another dimension by discarding a hand card, and the eternal old forbidden card that didn't suffer a miserable castration back then, "Ring of Destruction"—which can blow up a monster and deal damage to both sides equal to the monster's ATK, is a sharp tool for flipping the table when you can't win, known in the world as the Draw Ring.

Besides that, he is even more pleasantly surprised to find that there are even hand traps in the universal in-app purchase channel.

As the saying goes, a thousand defenses are hard to guard against hand traps; unlike trap cards that are set on the field and easily guarded against and cleared, hand traps that can be discarded from the hand to activate effects have been the mainstream of Yu-Gi-Oh since their birth, and even continue to this day.

Of course, early hand traps were not as fierce as modern ones, and were mainly defensive shield-type effects to block attacks. Its origin is naturally the mascot continued from the DM era, the Kuriboh in Yugi's hand that can directly negate battle damage by discarding it.

So when he finds that there is actually a Kuriboh in the rare card column, You Xuan buys it without hesitation on the spot, and is also somewhat surprised that such a rare thing can still be seen without being snatched away by others.

But that makes sense. Judging from the anime, duelists don't seem to be particularly interested in low-level monsters with weak combat power that can only block a hit once; even Kuriboh, apart from being rare and uncommon, most of its other extra value comes from being the "mascot of the first King of Games."

Then he even discovers that there is a column called "Theme Pre-built" in the academy department. He clicks on it and takes a look; it's probably pre-built decks with specific themes, sold as a whole package at a fixed price.

Among them, he even sees the legendary "Elemental HERO."

But thinking about it, it's a matter of course. In the first episode of GX, when Cronos saw Judai's deck, he called it a "very common HERO deck"; in this era, the HERO deck itself is also a civilian build. It's just that as Judai printed more and more new cards in the later stages, it gradually began to leave the ranks of civilians...

Every card player has a HERO dream to a greater or lesser extent. Since he has come to this era of GX, You Xuan also curiously tries to query it.

And then he abandons his HERO dream at light speed.

The monsters are basically just the famous four "Feather" heroes, and there are only two or three fusion HEROes in stock, followed by a bunch of exclusive accessories for various "Feather" heroes. Things like Spark Blaster, Feather Shot, Burst Return, etc...

Various cards that even student Judai only used once in the anime and then disappeared; what stands out is that the meaning is unclear.

At a rough glance, he finds that it is simply not a deck that an ordinary person can handle. Almost every Spell/Trap card needs to be used in conjunction with a specific HERO normal monster, and even if you use superglue to forcibly bind them together, the applicable scenarios for each combination are too limited. In actual combat, it's definitely a hand-card accident that makes you doubt life.

So the fact that student Judai could use these things to win through most of Duel Academy in the early stages is a skill that has already left 99% of duelists out of reach...

Elemental HERO is not considered for the time being. You Xuan continues to flip back.

Then he discovers that the vehicle deck "roid" series of Judai's little brother Marufuji Sho is also on the list.

His eyes light up, and he hurriedly flips through the card list in the build.

Marufuji Sho's roid deck is also not a rare deck in the current environment, and it has also performed mediocrely in the physical card environment for many years, never having any competitive strength, belonging to a relatively marginalized entertainment deck.

But there is such an early god card in this deck that Marufuji Sho used in the anime, yet has not been made into a physical card by Financial Group K for nearly twenty years.

Sure enough!

You Xuan's gaze immediately locks onto that specific card in the deck, and then he buys this build without hesitation.

The cards in the build cannot be sold separately; if you want to buy it, you have to buy the whole set together. But it doesn't matter; the build itself is not expensive, and in the current environment, even if you buy the whole build for just this one card, it's not a loss.

【Kiteroid, Level 1, ATK 200, DEF 400.

Effect:

1) You can discard this card from your hand to make the battle damage from a direct attack on the player 0.

2) When this card is in the Graveyard, you have one chance to make the battle damage from a direct attack on the player 0.】 (Anime effect)

This card has not been made into a physical card in reality; it is only exclusive to the two games "Tag Force 3" on PSP and "Duel Links" in history. It can be used as a hand trap once and a graveyard trap once; one card can block two hits. In the GX era, where hand traps were extremely scarce, it is undoubtedly a life-saving artifact.

You Xuan is immersed in the pleasure of buying, buying, buying, and another wave of reinforcement. The card inventory is becoming more and more substantial, and the deck configuration is becoming more and more free, but the wallet that just bulged up is also rapidly consumed.

You Xuan tentatively decides to keep some money on hand and not spend it all. He exits the interface, sighs softly, and looks up at the sky.

Sure enough, the seniors have a saying that is right.

If you have no money, why play Yu-Gi-Oh...

(End of chapter)