Chapter 10. HERO's Painful Combo Lines! Dark Law's Intimidating Power!
The Duel Monsters world instantly fell back into silence.
By contrast, the 5D's world, the ZEXAL world, and the worlds that followed were full of anticipation for this so-called HERO.
If, earlier, Blue-Eyes White Dragon had shown them a high-ATK, high-Level, hard-pressing deck, then now, what they wanted to see from the HERO engine was a different kind of uniquely charismatic combo deck.
But because there were so many sub-archetypes involved, they had to calm down and think it through.
After all, even in the VRAINS world—the newest era among them—they had never dared to put that many other sub-archetype cards into a single deck.
...
5D's world.
"Yusei, what do you make of this HERO deck?"
"With that many sub-archetypes, can it really all mesh well?"
Crow Hogan rubbed his chin and turned to Yusei Fudo beside him.
"Not sure."
"You know this—every deck has infinite possibilities."
"My Stardust and my Synchron monsters mesh just fine, don't they?"
"These HERO cards are really hard to call."
Yusei Fudo answered absentmindedly, rubbing his chin.
Seeing this, he now wanted even more to witness what his Stardust and his Synchron monsters looked like in that higher world.
Could it be that Stardust Dragon has no future?
No.
Stardust Dragon definitely has a future.
And the Synchron monsters do too.
"Yes, multi-sub-archetype builds are normal."
"Like Jack's deck—his Red Dragon Archfiend build also runs some other cards."
"I've got a good feeling about this engine."
Akiza Izinski, however, took an optimistic attitude toward the HERO engine.
That made Jack and Crow shut their mouths and take another look.
...
VRAINS world.
Yusaku Fujiki's eyes lit up; what he picked up on wasn't just the multi-sub-archetype angle.
It was that the Extra Deck construction actually included several Link Monsters.
This engine could even touch the products of their Link era.
"Hey! Interesting, interesting!"
"Link HERO?"
"So this engine can slot in Links too!"
"And this list also runs Maxx 'C' and Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring?"
"Heh heh heh! Now that's fun!"
Aoi Zaizen, playful and mischievous, pointed at the few Link Monsters in the HERO Extra Deck, as well as the hand traps both versions of the list were running.
Akira Zaizen also cast a surprised look at the HERO construction.
Link—the newest summoning method.
If HERO could slot in Links, it had to be reevaluated.
"Hahaha! I really like this engine!"
"My Gouki can't wait to duel it!"
Go Onizuka grinned broadly, the cards in his hand of course being his ace Gouki deck.
With a deck that has extremely strong Special Summon ability, plus the terrifying pressure of Links, Gouki still carries real deterrence in their world.
"It's starting."
"Let's keep watching."
Takeru Homura spoke coolly.
The big screen flickered quickly.
Master Duel gameplay came up next.
...
The Noble HERO Player: "Hello, dear viewers! Today I'm bringing you an introduction to the HERO engine."
The Noble HERO Player: "As a 'soul deck,' HERO has plenty of fans, so I'll cut to the chase. After we look at the list, we'll start with a few standard HERO combo boards."
The Noble HERO Player: "First is Combo Line 1, the extremely bricky, forced line."
As soon as he finished, the footage played HERO's Combo Line 1.
"Activate the Spell Card—A Hero Lives!"
"Per A Hero Lives' effect, if I control no face-up monsters, I pay half my LP and Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower 'Elemental HERO' monster from my Deck."
"So here we just Special Summon Elemental HERO Shadow Mist."
"Because one of Shadow Mist's effects is: if this card is Special Summoned, you can add 1 'Change' Quick-Play Spell Card from your Deck to your hand."
"We choose to add Mask Change here."
"Then use Mask Change to bring out Masked HERO Dark Law."
[Card Name: Masked HERO Dark Law (Level 6)]
[Attribute: DARK]
[Type: Warrior]
[ATK/DEF: 2400/1800]
"That's right, Combo Line 1 ends like this. Set your back row if you have it. If you have hand traps, try to disrupt."
"For example, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, Maxx 'C', and the like."
It was a simple, straightforward line that even a non-beginner duelist could follow, plus the self-inflicted, massive LP loss.
And yet no duelist dared to doubt that the line was correct.
Not just because this was the play after bricking or after being disrupted, but because this Dark Law—
that's right,
this Masked HERO Dark Law on the field is insane.
Effect 1:
While this card is on the field, any card sent to your opponent's Graveyard is banished instead.
What does "banish" mean?
Any duelist can understand this—even those in the Duel Monsters world.
If the opponent's deck isn't built to handle banish interactions, then anything they try to send to the Graveyard will go to the banished zone instead, which wrecks any mill-focused deck as well as ordinary builds.
If you don't answer it, any resource you send to the Graveyard just gets banished.
Trying to combo becomes slow-motion self-destruction.
That previous Blue-Eyes deck—seeing this on the field—would be about to cry and pass out.
Effect 2:
Once per turn, if your opponent adds a card from their Deck to their hand, except during the Draw Phase, you can activate this effect: banish 1 random card from your opponent's hand.
It is a powerful effect aimed at searching, and even as a once-per-turn, random banish is still tremendous disruption.
In the GX world, Jaden Yuki was floored.
Aster Phoenix was floored too.
The other teachers, professors, and students were floored as well.
This HERO mash-up didn't look so simple after all.
Elemental HERO linking into Masked HERO.
So the mixed sub-archetypes really weren't an accident, huh?
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