"You Xuan-kun seems really calm, doesn't he?"
Professor Daitokuji sat in his alchemy lab chair, cradling his cat named Pharaoh, his hand stroking the plump feline.
Daitokuji had mostly been slacking off since entering Duel Academy. The lab was supposedly scientific resources provided to him by the academy, but in reality, it had mostly been gathering dust for years.
After all, Daitokuji's persona at the academy was that of a lazy slacker, and he had to maintain this image in front of both students and the academy. So, no one had ever seen him seriously conduct research, and this lab was basically no different from being abandoned.
Until now.
When You Xuan first pushed open the door, he was almost greeted by a wave of musty air. The floor was covered in dust, and sunlight streamed through gaps in the glass, forming rays of light where countless dust particles danced.
You Xuan spent a little time cleaning up the lab. Since then, it had basically been in his sole use.
"What?" You Xuan, who was diligently working at the experimental table, looked up.
"About the tag duel." Daitokuji tilted his head, continuing to pet his cat. "You don't seem nervous at all."
"Oh, that? There's nothing to be nervous about, is there?" You Xuan said, lowering his head and continuing his work.
"Besides, Jaden doesn't look tense either." You Xuan casually added, "I invited him yesterday to research decks for the tag duel, but he refused. Said something about... Hayato's dad showing up? Anyway, he had something else to do and couldn't make it."
However, You Xuan did have an impression of that plot point after Jaden mentioned it. Apparently, it was about their dorm's Koala-bro's father, who felt his son wasn't making progress at the academy all day, and wanted him to drop out and return home. Afterwards, Hayato dueled his dad, and although he lost, he successfully convinced his dad to change his mind and allow him to remain at the academy.
Hayato's dad used some kind of "Drunken Master" deck, a series of unclear meaning that still hasn't been OCG/TCG released.
According to Professor Daitokuji, Hayato's dad was supposedly an inheritor of some "Satsuma Dimensional Style," said to be a very famous duelist in the world. It was reportedly a one-hit kill dueling style enlightened from famous sword techniques, possessing the powerful ability to instantly defeat opponents.
However, judging from that duel in the anime, his deck's performance seemed a bit underwhelming...
You Xuan felt a bit strange. The so-called world-renowned duelist's actual performance seemed to be less than what was expected, but on second thought, he couldn't entirely dismiss it. After all, in the anime, Hayato's father only summoned two monsters in total. The audience actually didn't know what else was in his deck. Perhaps he intentionally held back because he was dueling his son.
Over the years, Konami K Company has proven more than once that if they want to, even the most ancient or weakest card sets can instantly jump several generations in power with just a few ridiculously strong "boss monsters."
He still couldn't casually underestimate the world-renowned top duelists.
"Haha, Jaden is different." Daitokuji chuckled. "That child just has that innate talent; there's rarely anything that can make him nervous. But there are rumors that your opponents for the tag duel might not be simple. Do you already have a countermeasure?"
"Well, something like that." You Xuan smiled.
He already had a bold idea. If things went smoothly, with a little help from Jaden's "miracle draw" ability, he should be able to give the Paradox Brothers double the fun.
"Leaving that aside for now, I'm done here."
You Xuan stood up and handed a card to Daitokuji.
"Professor, please advise."
Daitokuji took the card and adjusted his glasses. "Let me see."
You Xuan hadn't been in the card-making course for long. Although he had shown extraordinary talent and was receiving private lessons from Daitokuji, his current technique was temporarily stuck at the "replication" stage. That is, trying to replicate relatively easy-to-copy low-rarity cards. Only after his skills were proficient could he consider more advanced card-making.
Daitokuji glanced at the card You Xuan handed him. "This time, you're trying to make a bicycle, huh? I heard you really like this card. Not bad, not bad, you actually managed to replicate it so quickly... Hmm!?"
Professor Daitokuji's squinted eyes almost failed to open again, and his glasses nearly slipped down his nose. This was because he had clearly seen the effect of the [Doubleperson Bicamper] card You Xuan handed him.
This card can attack directly.
Wait a minute, wasn't this thing supposed to lose 500 ATK?
He looked up at You Xuan, somewhat bewildered, and only then seemed to realize something.
I asked you to copy, and you made a scientific breakthrough?
You Xuan only smiled. He had successfully proven that an earlier hypothesis of his was correct.
Many early Yu-Gi-Oh! anime viewers knew that it was common for the same card to have contradictory effects when appearing in different situations in the anime.
A representative example in GX would be the famous monster [Jinzo]. Its appearances in the GX anime had discrepancies compared to its animated effect in DM.
In DM, Jinzo's effect was "While this card is on the field, all face-down and face-up Trap Cards on the field are destroyed, and Trap Card activations and effects are negated."
However, by the GX era, Jinzo, which appeared twice (once in the early period and once in the later period), had its effect consistent with its real-life card (OCG/TCG), which was "Trap Cards cannot be activated, and their effects are negated," but it no longer scanned and destroyed all face-down cards on the field as it did in DM.
There's also "Future Fusion". Its effect differed when used by Zane Truesdale and when it appeared later in the hands of Mr. T, Darkness's henchman.
There are many similar examples, too numerous to count.
In the past, as a viewer, he just watched for fun and didn't care about the many contradictory bugs in the anime. Now that he was in this real Yu-Gi-Oh! world, he naturally couldn't be satisfied with such explanations. Especially after understanding and researching the principles of card creation, he had a new idea.
As previously mentioned, the effects designed for cards in this world are not merely arbitrary text but rather the materialization of the cards' power. So, could it be possible that when designing the same card, one designer only awakened a portion of its abilities, while another designer, when designing the same card, developed a greater potential? In that case, wouldn't the same card designed by two different designers naturally exhibit different strengths?
Or perhaps some cards inherently possess more potential that simply hasn't been unearthed yet. In the process of recreating or resetting such a card, would there be room for improvement and advancement?
Over the past period, while learning card-making from Daitokuji, he had also been trying to research this topic.
It turns out he seems to be right. For example, after his persistent experiments, he found that [Doubleperson Bicamper], a relatively simple card to modify and not particularly strong to begin with, only had its "reduce 500 ATK" restriction removed to increase its potential. It wasn't a significant power-up, making it relatively easy to develop.
But it was enough to prove his hypothesis. The anime cards that were weaker than their real-life card versions in his memory did have room for further development.
"This is truly astonishing."
Professor Daitokuji adjusted his glasses. When he looked at You Xuan again, there seemed to be a faint light in his squinted eyes. In truth, Bicamper losing 500 less ATK didn't have that much impact, but it was still a scientific breakthrough. And to achieve research results directly at the beginning of card-making studies—even for Daitokuji, this was truly a rare sight.
Is this how unreasonable so-called geniuses are?
"You might actually have a real talent for alchemy."
"Professor, you flatter me. I just followed your teachings and treated the cards with my heart." You Xuan chuckled.
However, to a large extent, it was because he knew which direction to strive for. As for others, let alone the direction of enhancement, in this world of countless cards, they had no way of knowing which cards still held untapped potential.
"Oh, right, Professor. I also tried making some other cards."
You Xuan silently pulled out a few more cards.
"Look, these two also seem a bit different from others..."
Daitokuji: "???"
There are more?
Even the widely experienced Daitokuji was silenced for a moment. After a while, he finally looked up and spoke slowly.
"You Xuan-kun."
"What is it, Professor?"
"Have you considered being promoted to Professor?"
"?"
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