Chapter 32: If You Have No Money, Why Play Yu-Gi-Oh!

On an island in the sea, at the Duel Academy headquarters.

After being busy for most of the day, Principal Samejima finally managed to secure a brief moment of leisure. He went to his office, leisurely brewed a cup of tea, and used this rare break to review this year's entrance exam results, along with several duels that had caught his interest.

He hadn't expected Professor Cronos to personally enter the arena; it was blatantly obvious he was intentionally making things difficult for a certain jellyfish-headed freshman. Yet this student named Jaden Yuki was truly formidable, managing to defeat the academy's highest-ranking practical combat instructor, who was using his own deck, right during the entrance assessment.

Principal Samejima took a sip of tea, feeling quite satisfied with the extraordinary potential Juki had displayed.

Naturally, he then turned his attention to the practical duel of this year's top scorer. It was said that aside from the open-ended subjective questions, this student had achieved perfect scores on all written exams, narrowly surpassing Daichi Misawa, who had also scored near-perfectly, making for a very impressive performance.

"Let's see this person's practical performance and deck construction."

"What in the world is this?"

Principal Samejima couldn't help but scratch his shiny bald head.

He reasoned that having been in the duel world for many years, he could certainly be considered well-traveled and knowledgeable. Yet he had truly never seen a construction like this before.

"No, if I must say, when I was young, I once had the fortune of witnessing it at an invitational tournament hosted by Kaiba—the deck used in his later years by the legendary King of Games, Yugi Muto, after he became famous. It seems to carry a hint of that same flavor."

"It is said that during the late stage of the King of Games' duel career, many opponents who attempted to challenge him ended up furious and frustrated, their faces twisting in such distortion by the end of the match that they looked as if they were cosplaying Marik Ishtar from the Duelist Kingdom era."

"It's just a bit like that unlucky examiner opposite him in the assessment duel right now."

"However, the evolution of the duel world over these many years has long proven that this was the King of Games' unique specialty, not something others could easily imitate. Over all these years, mainstream deck construction has still leaned toward the direction guided by Seto Kaiba, and after the King of Games sealed his cards and retired, such unconventional techniques, while not completely nonexistent, have become very rare."

"Unlike traditional professors represented by Cronos, Principal Samejima does not insist that students must strictly follow textbook standards to learn tactics and construct decks."

"It's just that ordinary students generally lack the ability to innovate and develop independently. But based on his many years of teaching experience, Principal Samejima felt at a glance that this student named You Xuan might just possess that ability."

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

Thinking of this, Principal Samejima immediately felt a surge of anticipation.

Looking at Jaden Yuki on the roster, then glancing at Fujiki You Xuan beside him, the principal leaned back in his chair, took a leisurely sip of tea, and couldn't help but reveal a smile of gratification.

"In this small Duel Academy, we have simultaneously recruited two great talents, the Sleeping Dragon and the Young Phoenix."

"Truly a cause for celebration."

Duel Academy's efficiency was quite high; within a few days after the exams, candidates were already able to query their scores, results, and admission information.

As entirely expected, You Xuan received his admission notice.

Of course, with still a month before classes began, there was no rush to immediately board the island. However, the new class of freshmen had already completed registration, and those students who had passed the cutoff were already counted in advance as this year's prospective freshmen.

Holding his newly issued student ID information, You Xuan logged into Kaiba Corporation's card query system through the academy channel. As expected, the options for purchasable cards had increased.

However, he quickly flipped through them, first recording any cards currently in stock that he felt might be useful into a list, then analyzing them one by one.

Most of them were deemed potentially useful but might require specific deck constructions or be used for combos; these were all listed first and set aside for further discussion.

The cards he decided to buy immediately were generally versatile cards that could function in most decks, with these being primarily happy red traps.

For instance, "Causal Cut," which could send an opponent's monster directly to the Dimension by discarding one hand card, and also the perennial banned card "Ring of Destruction" from back when it hadn't yet been brutally nerfed—capable of destroying one monster while both players took damage equal to that monster's ATK, a powerful tool for flipping the table when unable to win, known in the underworld as the "Draw Wheel."

Besides these, he was even more delighted to discover that the universal microtransaction channel actually offered hand traps.

As the saying goes, "You can guard against a thousand things, but hand traps are hard to guard against." Unlike trap cards placed face-down on the field, which are easy to anticipate and clear, hand traps that activate by discarding directly from the hand have been a mainstream staple in Yu-Gi-Oh! since their inception, continuing even to this day.

Of course, early hand traps were not as vicious as modern ones; generally, they were mainly "body-blocking" effects used to defend against attacks. Tracing their origin naturally leads back to the mascot carried over from the DM era: Kuriboh, the card in Yugi's hand that could negate battle damage by discarding it.

So when he discovered a Kuriboh in the rare card section, You Xuan immediately bought it without hesitation, feeling somewhat surprised that such a rare item was still available and hadn't been snatched up by someone else.

"But then again, looking at the anime, duelists don't seem particularly fond of such low-star monsters with weak combat power that can only block one attack. Even for Kuriboh, aside from its own rarity, most of its extra value comes solely from being the 'mascot of the first-generation King of Games.'"

Next, he discovered a section in the academy department called "Theme Pre-Constructed Decks." Clicking to take a look, it appeared to be pre-built decks with specific themes, sold as a complete set at a fixed price.

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

But come to think of it, that's only natural. In the first episode of GX, when Cronos saw Jaden's deck, he called it a "very common hero deck." In this era, hero decks themselves are just commoner constructions. It's only later, as more and more new cards for Jaden were printed, that they gradually drifted out of the commoner ranks.

"Every card player harbors a hero dream in their heart to some degree. Since I've arrived in this GX era," You Xuan curiously tried querying it.

Then he instantly gave up on his hero dream.

The monsters were basically only the famous four useless heroes, the fusion heroes currently in stock numbered only two or three, and the rest was stuffed with various exclusive accessories for those useless heroes, such as Spark Blaster, Wing Scatter, and Burst Return, and so on.

These were various cards that even Jaden himself only used once in the anime before vanishing into obscurity, highlighting nothing but their inexplicable nature.

At a glance, he realized this was a deck that ordinary people simply couldn't handle. Almost every spell or trap required coordination with a specific normal HERO monster to be usable, and even if one forced them together with superglue, each combination's applicable scenarios were far too limited; in actual combat, they would surely become hand accidents that make one doubt life itself.

"Therefore, the fact that Jaden could use these things to fight invincibly and punch through most of Duel Academy in the early stages is a skill that ninety-nine percent of duelists can never hope to match."

Elemental HERO was temporarily out of consideration. You Xuan continued flipping forward.

Next, he discovered that "Vehicroid," the vehicle-themed deck of Jaden's junior Sho Marufuji, was also included in the list.

His eyes lit up, and he hurriedly flipped through the card list within the construction.

Sho Marufuji's Vehicroid deck was similarly not a rare deck in the current environment; in the real-card environment over the years, its performance had always been mediocre, never possessing any competitive strength, belonging to the category of rather marginalized entertainment decks.

"But within this deck lies one specific card that Sho Marufuji used in the anime, yet which Konami has still not released as a real card even after nearly twenty years—an early god-tier card."

"Just as I thought!"

You Xuan's gaze immediately locked onto that specific card within the deck, and then he bought this entire construction without hesitation.

Cards within a pre-constructed deck couldn't be sold individually; one had to buy the whole set. But that didn't matter; the deck itself wasn't expensive, and in the current environment, buying the entire set just for this one card was still no loss.

[Kiteroid, Level 1, ATK 200, DEF 400.

Effect:

1) You can discard this card from your hand; change the battle damage from one direct attack to your player to 0.

2) While this card is in the Graveyard, you can change the battle damage from one direct attack to your player to 0, but only once.] (Anime Effect)

This card was never released in reality historically, being exclusive only to two games on the PSP: "Tag Force 3" and "Duel Links." It could function once as a hand trap and once as a grave trap; one card could block two hits. In the GX era, where such hand traps were incredibly scarce, it was undoubtedly a life-saving divine artifact.

Immersed in the pleasure of buying, buying, buying, You Xuan underwent another wave of reinforcement. His card inventory became increasingly substantial, and his deck configuration options grew ever more flexible, but his wallet, which had only just bulged slightly, was consequently depleted at high speed.

You Xuan decided for now to keep some money on hand and not spend it all. He exited the interface, let out a light sigh, and gazed up at the sky with a melancholy air.

"Indeed, the seniors were right about one thing."

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

(End of Chapter)