Yugen slowly opened his eyes, vaguely looking around at the unfamiliar surroundings.
It was a room he'd never seen before, yet it oddly felt familiar. Sunlight streamed through the window, dappling onto the soft floor, like shimmering stardust. Even the air felt light and clear in the warm sunlight.
His head ached faintly, and strange images and unfamiliar fragments of memories flashed in his mind. Some kind of instinct seemed to tell him deep down that he was facing an extraordinary situation—
—He had transmigrated.
Yugen scanned his surroundings, his gaze quickly drawn to the computer on the desk.
The computer was on, displaying some kind of search engine webpage, but it wasn't any search engine he was familiar with from before.
The large text above the search bar clearly read, "Kaiba Search."
What he found even stranger were the trending news headlines below the search bar.
« East Capital University research team discovers new form of 'Summoned Skull', Fiend decks to receive a major boost! »
Yugen: "?"
He curiously clicked it open to read. The news stated that the research team, after countless days and nights of study, had developed new potential for the famous Fiend-type monster "Summoned Skull," and had already published their thesis in an internationally authoritative top-tier Duel Monsters journal.
The team's spokesperson said they had already spoken with Industrial Illusions CEO Pegasus J. Crawford, and Industrial Illusions was assisting them with new card development.
If he still couldn't recognize what world he had transmigrated to even after all this, then Yugen had truly played card games in vain for so many years.
This was the Yu-Gi-Oh world, a world where everyone knew cards reigned supreme, and the entire world's foundation and laws were built upon card dueling.
There was an even stranger hot search below that.
« Middle East regional international conflict eases, two nations' leaders decide to reach an agreement through a duel »
Yugen: "."
After reading the title, an image seemed to form in his mind. On a smoke-filled battlefield, two armies stood in a stalemate, both sides fully armed, long guns and short cannons pointed at each other.
At this moment, the two military leaders stepped out of their respective positions, revealing their duel disks and decks on their arms, deciding to use a tense and exciting game of Yu-Gi-Oh to resolve their territorial dispute.
This was just too damn absurd.
But that was how this world operated.
Duel Monsters was the only path to transcend and wield god-like power, capable of altering reality across time and space, in this world.
His brain gradually emerged from its dazed state, new memories seemingly slowly absorbed. Yugen quickly clarified his identity in this world.
Fujiki Yugen, male, currently a... duel dojo apprentice?
Although it was called a dojo, it felt more like a social card game training class. Unlike those regular Duel Academies, duel dojos were social training institutions where one could enroll simply by paying a fee.
In the Yu-Gi-Oh world, playing cards naturally wasn't considered idleness. On the contrary, if one could truly master dueling, their future would undoubtedly be bright.
As Duel Monsters cards developed, almost all industries became closely related to dueling. These days, even opening a company required a dedicated company duel representative to help the company handle all matters requiring dueling in business affairs. It was even rumored that in the city of Domina, dubbed "Duel City," under Kaiba Corporation's operation, it had now reached a point where one couldn't get household registration without registering their deck.
But this didn't mean the path was simple. Although Yugen's predecessor worked part-time, earning tuition while studying at the dojo, striving towards the path of a true duelist, both he and those around him knew that his hopes were distant.
Because he was terrible.
A duelist's future was boundless, it was true, but at the same time, this profession was incredibly competitive. This world was different from his previous life; being a duelist was a recognized profession that heavily relied on talent, and not everyone had the potential to become a master.
Putting everything else aside, if a person couldn't even draw cards, what kind of duelist could they be?
Yugen thought for a moment and felt that his predecessor's determination to endure such hardship to persist on this path was not wrong.
In this world, whether one wanted to seek transcendence or make a career in the city, Duel Monsters was the first choice.
So, if he wanted to walk this path, his biggest reliance would be the experience accumulated over many years as a "Boss-level" card player in his previous life.
With that thought, Yugen immediately sat down at the computer to investigate.
First, he had to determine which era and background he had transmigrated to. Yu-Gi-Oh has many series, and the later the anime, the closer it gets to the real card environment. Therefore, the later the environment, the smaller the advantage for a transmigrator.
After a simple check, he quickly obtained the information he needed.
This was the most classic foundational dimension, the place where the dream began: the world background of « Yu-Gi-Oh! DM » and « Yu-Gi-Oh! GX ».
The current time node should be after the conclusion of DM, either before GX began or in its early story. With this, Yugen had a general concept of the current duel card environment.
Now, let's look at his predecessor's deck.
Yugen: (─? ? ─)
This deck? Are you serious?
Opening the full view, it was a cumbersome sixty-card behemoth. No, this thing couldn't even be called a deck; it was just a pile of cards.
First, on the monster side, it was a large handful of normal monsters with no effects whatsoever—the kind of cards card game veterans usually described with a word Kaiba Corporation's CEO often had on his lips: "Useless."
Then, the entire structure was a hodgepodge, almost no two cards had any synergy. Randomly drawing six cards would result in each card doing its own thing. Yugen highly doubted these things could possess any combat power worth mentioning.
However, upon closer inspection, he seemed to somewhat grasp his predecessor's deck-building思路 (thought process).
It wasn't useful, but it was primarily expensive.
That feeling was probably like the two naive but wealthy brothers of Manjome who appeared for two episodes in the GX anime storyline. Those two rich kids had money, but their dueling skills were completely amateurish. Yet, they worshipped the theory of money is supreme, firmly believing that expensive meant best.
So they desperately poured money in, buying the most expensive rare cards to build a "pay-to-win" deck to challenge Manjome, only to be ultimately defeated by Manjome's makeshift deck constructed from discarded cards he picked up from the old well behind the school.
Clearly, his predecessor had the same problem as those two rich kids in the anime. Many cards in the deck were probably acquired through his desperate part-time work, and after seeing their absurd market prices, Yugen felt he had reason to suspect that his transmigration was due to his predecessor overworking himself to death.
However, looking at these few cards in his hand, which were nominally super rare but seemed meaningless to him, he couldn't help but silently feel it wasn't worth it for his predecessor.
Many strong cards in the card game world are indeed expensive, but expensive doesn't necessarily mean good. Many cards in this world are expensive simply because they are "rare." For example, some cards are made from excavated artifacts, and many are made from materials like diamond and sapphire.
There were even some that were simply expensive because the summoned monsters looked beautiful and were widely sought after, but their production was low—especially some "voluptuous yet cool and refreshing" female spiritual entities.
So, flipping through the entire deck, Yugen felt that only a few of the expensive trap cards seemed to have some use.
It seemed the initial deck would have to be completely torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
Yugen thought for a moment, then again used the internet to check out videos of current mainstream professional duelist competitions, getting a general understanding of the current mainstream dueling environment and meta.
As expected, just as the anime showed. The common mindset of duelists in this era was still to pursue overwhelming power, striving to bring out their high-attack, cool ace monsters to gain field dominance.
After watching just a few recordings of matches, Yugen couldn't help but sigh.
What a pure world!
In short, it seemed that most duelists currently shared a common problem—
—They were too "sunny".
Currently, of the eight dou (a unit of measure) of "yin" index in the world, the former King of Games, Yugi Muto, alone occupied one shi (ten dou). The rest of the world owed him two dou.
Now that Yugi Muto had retired his deck, the duelists of the world all looked to the legendary duelist Seto Kaiba, who constantly pursued overwhelming power with "crushing destruction," as their role model. The entire environment was immediately filled with a "sunny" aura.
Thus, Yugen's deck-building idea was decided.
He wanted to bring a little bit of "Yin" fun to this "sunny" card world.
Back to the start, this time the background is from GX.