As expected, Yu Xuan's invitation was accepted by both Manjome and Asuka.
After he separately revealed the "Ritual of Machine Angel" and "Carbon Dragon" cards—which he had modified and coincidentally belonged to these two individuals respectively—they were shocked but then boarded the ship almost without hesitation.
Printing cards isn't just about knowledge and technique; it also depends on destiny. While some senior students might have a stronger knowledge base at this stage, they generally can't compare to original characters in terms of destiny.
Manjome goes without saying; a top student, he learns everything quickly. In the original, he later directly transformed into researching Duel Physics, following a research path. Honestly, Yu Xuan always felt that he was naturally a research-oriented talent more than a duelist.
Asuka actually had a similar feeling; when planning her graduation, she considered staying at the school to teach and conduct research. Sometimes, Yu Xuan would think that if they directly switched to research positions instead of going to the front lines to duel, they might not have suffered such damage to their reputations as in the original.
At the same time, if card printing involves destiny, Yu Xuan believes that research conducted by people who already have a close connection with a specific deck might increase the success rate. Therefore, Asuka was more suitable than others for the Electronic Angel project.
Aside from Electronic Angels, he could currently think of significant enhancement potential for Heroes and Cyber Dragons.
Cyber Dragons were temporarily shelved, partly because he hadn't met Ryo Marufuji yet and wasn't familiar with him. He might consider bringing Kaiser on board later. However, he didn't remember many real Cyber Dragon cards that were significantly stronger than the anime cards. If he wanted to enhance them, he would have to print new cards, which would increase the development difficulty by a notch, and it wasn't guaranteed to work.
Of course, his small laboratory was just newly built and merely a prototype. The current lack of technological capability doesn't mean it will remain that way in the future. Once a large team is formed in the future, with funding and technology increasing, let alone enhancing existing cards, perhaps even entirely new card series could be printed.
As for Hero decks, Masked Heroes are generally much stronger in real life cards than in the original, but at the moment, Jaden seems to only have Elemental Heroes.
And asking Jaden to do scientific research would be truly difficult for him. He's the type of high-destiny player who "can print cards on the spot if the atmosphere is right," but he usually either skips class or sleeps during lessons. Asking him to take on a research position is indeed impractical.
Two days later, Yu Xuan finally received news from the research team at Kaiba Corporation.
The research group leader excitedly informed him that through the spiritual insight clues he provided, groundbreaking progress had been made in the development of the Chaos Soldier card theme, urging him to come and see it immediately.
The group leader was quite agitated, calling almost past midnight and saying he would immediately send someone to pick him up. However, Yu Xuan stated that he still needed to ask for leave from the academy and that it wouldn't be too late to rest at night and go the next day.
So, early the next morning, a helicopter emblazoned with the KC Group logo flew to Duel Academy Island. Yu Xuan boarded it, taking a special flight directly to the legendary dueling sanctuary, Duel City Domino City.
Which was also the location of Kaiba Corporation headquarters.
Upon arriving at the Corporation Headquarters Tower, the plane had just landed when the white-coated group leader excitedly rushed forward, grabbing Yu Xuan's sleeve and pulling him inside, incessantly recounting their team's tireless research over the past few days.
However, even if he hadn't said anything, Yu Xuan could tell from the circles under this guy's eyes, which seemed even more exaggerated than last time.
He wanted to tell him, Brother, you should take it easy. We have a long road ahead, and I'm counting on you for future Chaos enhancements. It wouldn't be good if you overworked yourself to death.
But the group leader seemed to have plenty of energy. He quickly led Yu Xuan to their laboratory, where a room full of people seemed to have been eagerly awaiting their arrival.
Yu Xuan saw a researcher immediately stand up and walk to the end of the laboratory, to a cylindrical device on the wall that he didn't immediately recognize.
The group leader and another person each pulled out a key, inserted them into two different keyholes, and rotated them in opposite directions. With a click, the mechanism unlocked, and a keypad popped out from inside.
Then, the two separately entered a set of passwords, and after iris and fingerprint authentication, the cylindrical device rumbled, slowly rotating as it extended outwards.
Inside, several cards were sealed.
"These are the cards we've just completed."
The group leader handed the cards to Yu Xuan with an almost reverent gesture.
"The testing ground is already prepared."
Yu Xuan took them and glanced at them.
Indeed, they were the cards he had described before.
[Envoy of the Beginning Knight, Level 4, ATK 500, DEF 2000]
Simply put, a "Chaos Soldier" summoned using this card as a ritual material gains two effects. Once per turn, it can banish one monster on the opponent's field. Also, when it destroys an opponent's monster by battle, it can make an additional attack.
It is similar to the effect of Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, but even stronger. Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning cannot attack in the turn it uses "Dimensional Slash" (its banishing effect), but a Chaos Soldier Ritual Summoned using this card has no attack restriction even if it uses its banishing ability.
This card is LIGHT attribute, and there's another DARK attribute card with a similar effect.
[Knight of Evening Twilight, Level 4, ATK 500, DEF 2000]
Similar to Envoy of the Beginning Knight, it also grants "Chaos Soldier" additional effects when used as a ritual material. The first effect is also "Dimensional Slash," allowing it to banish one monster on the opponent's field.
The second effect allows it to randomly banish one card from the opponent's hand. However, the banished card returns to the opponent's hand at the end of their next turn.
If both of these cards could be used simultaneously as ritual materials to Ritual Summon "Chaos Soldier," then that Chaos Soldier would gain the abilities to banish opponent's monsters, make additional attacks, or banish hand cards.
In today's dueling world, it would undoubtedly be a top-tier powerful monster, finally allowing the Chaos Soldier, who had merely been a 3000 ATK Ritual Normal Monster despite being known as the "Legendary Warrior," to truly live up to its title.
In addition, the new Ritual Spell he had described last time had also been developed, and there were two kinds.
[Ritual of the Super Soldier], a Ritual Spell specifically for Chaos Soldier. Furthermore, if this card exists in the Graveyard, by banishing itself and one LIGHT and one DARK monster from the game, you can Special Summon one Chaos Soldier Ritual Monster from your hand, ignoring its summoning conditions. In other words, when it's in the Graveyard, it can make the summoning conditions of any Chaos Soldier Ritual Monster in your hand the same as Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning.
[Super Soldier Origin], allows you to select one LIGHT and one DARK monster from your hand and Deck respectively as materials to Ritual Summon a Chaos Soldier. This is currently the strongest Ritual Spell in this system.
The difficulty of printing these new cards from scratch was much higher than simply strengthening an existing original card to its real-life effect. This was only possible with the help of Kaiba's top-tier team.
In fact, Yu Xuan had also disclosed information about some new Chaos Soldier archetypes, but upon inquiry, the group leader stated that they were still trying but currently not having much success. This was consistent with what Yu Xuan had learned during his card-making studies. The more powerful a monster, the harder it is to print. Even with such a top-tier team, what they had currently developed were only support-oriented lower-level monsters and Spell/Trap cards. Powerful deck archetypes and boss monsters didn't seem so easy to create.
The research team was eager to invite him over because they wanted Yu Xuan, who possessed the Chaos Soldier spirit, to perform Ritual Summons with the newly developed cards to collect data for further development and adjustment.
This, of course, presented no difficulty; it was as simple as activating a Duel Disk and performing a set of military calisthenics against a wall.
After assisting with the tests, Yu Xuan returned from the field to the control room, where he saw that Mokuba had also entered.
"Development seems to be going smoothly, thank you very much," Mokuba said with a smile. "Once these new achievements are revealed, I imagine it will be another groundbreaking breakthrough that will shock the academic world."
The two exchanged polite greetings as a matter of routine, and then Mokuba quickly got to the point: "Later, I'll take you to see the company's inventory. Of course, don't get your hopes up too high. Our inventory isn't always fully stocked with everything. Don't even think about super rare cards like Dark Magician or Red-Eyes Black Dragon."
"It's fine, it's fine, I'll just take a casual look," Yu Xuan said with a smile.
"Oh, and also what I mentioned to you before, the surprise."
Mokuba smiled mysteriously.
"The 'Link System' I told you about last time is almost fully developed. Want to give it a try?"
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