Yugen logged into the card query websites of both Kaiba Group and the International Fantasy Association to search for card pools currently available for purchase.
The first card any card enthusiast who travels here would undoubtedly search for, as long as they have some intelligence—
—Pot of Greed.
Or rather, the powerful draw engine unique to the early anime world, represented by Pot of Greed.
Pot of Greed allows you to draw two cards from the card deck unconditionally. It's this simple and crude effect that has caused this card to be eternally banned in the physical card environment, becoming the symbol of indefinite imprisonment, unlikely to ever be released in our lifetime.
Its similarly unfortunate counterpart is "Angel's Charity," which not only allows you to draw three cards from the card deck but also lets you select two cards from your hand to discard to the graveyard. With Yu-Gi-Oh! developing into an era where the graveyard and hand resources are near indistinguishable, the terror of this draw-three-plus-grave-filling ability has already surpassed that of Pot of Greed.
However, in the DM anime, these cards weren't much noticed by duelists, and by the GX era, it seemed the duelists in the anime world began to recognize their formidable nature. After all, in the GX anime, you could see the protagonists each having at least one Pot of Greed and one Angel's Charity, and in female protagonist Asuka's duels, you even saw scenes of Pot of Greed chaining into another Pot of Greed, an extremely fierce play.
When it came to Monster Cards, Yugen started to have some decision-making troubles.
Because he couldn't really find a single card that caught his eye in the entire pool. As a card enthusiast who had traveled here, the cards that required careful tribute summoning and only had an attack power of around 2000 once summoned were really not useful...
There were relatively better-quality monsters, but many were overpriced, with no availability, and simply couldn't be bought.
For example, the first thing that came to his mind was Artificial Human Soga, one of the signature monsters of the older protagonist group's Joey Wheeler. It is a level 6 star monster requiring only one tribute to summon, boasting a decent strike of 2400, and a notably overpowered "Trap Lock" ability in the early environment—in simply his presence, prevents the use of Trap Cards.
Yugen remembered that in the physical card environment of this era, this was also a very high-quality single card, a regular in competitive upper-tier card deck constructions.
However, a search revealed it was out of stock.
Artificial Human Soga falls into the category of highly rare Rare Cards, perpetually out of stock, and simply unavailable for purchase.
This left Yugen a bit frustrated. He quickly realized that another crucial factor contributing to the difference between the anime environment and the physical cards was the difficulty in acquiring cards.
In the real world, they could always check the current version of the complete card pool and use almost any card for any construction. But in the Yu-Gi-Oh! World, duelists didn't have this convenience.
There were also some cards he wanted, but upon a glance at the price, he involuntarily sucked in a breath of cold air.
He bade goodbye.
Yugen was clearly aware that cards in this world were almost directly equivalent to weapons and strength, so he had long prepared for the necessary card acquisitions, no matter the cost.
But to see such sky-high prices for certain rare cards, he reckoned he couldn't afford them, even if he sold himself...
It wasn't an exaggeration, but quite literally so.
Sure enough, the price gap between ordinary cards and rare cards in this world was outrageous. Regular cards and common card packs were priced similarly to the real world from his previous life, affordable for everyone. But the value of some Rare Cards was akin to a single card equating to a house, without exaggeration.
And those were the generally available rare cards. The likes of the globally known three "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" cards, all in Seto Kaiba's possession, were completely off the table.
Further research revealed that this world even had card loans, similar to car and mortgage loans. As the name implies, you could take out a loan to buy cards...
"So this is how exasperating it feels to have no cards..." Yugen muttered.
Fortunately, even with such constraints, he managed to devise a construction idea using available cards.
The prototype of this construction was actually the milestone-winning deck in Yu-Gi-Oh's physical card competitive history, the first-ever world championship-winning deck.
Hand Destruction.
Perhaps every beginner duelist, lured in by the anime, had some unrealistic fantasies about card playing, like the high-powered duels seen in the anime, intense exchanges of attack and defense, and straightforward confrontations, ending with a thrilling battle...
But that's the fake Yu-Gi-Oh!
The reality of Yu-Gi-Oh! is that only one of the two players at the table gets to play Yu-Gi-Oh!
The safest way to win is to eliminate any tactical possibilities of the opponent, not letting them drop a card at all. This philosophy holds as true today as it was in the early card-playing environment.
[Hand Destruction]is exactly a deck constructed on this thinking. As the name suggests, its tactic is to destroy the opponent's hand, leaving them with no cards to play from the start, effectively stunned and inactive, akin to the Underworld Realm's ancestor.
Opponents facing this deck will have their notions of dueling completely overturned, experiencing in a matter of minutes the infamous "blood pressure shooting up," "Do I hit you or not," followed by "summon my fist in attack position."
So if we must say what the biggest flaw of such a deck is, it could be that the user's personal safety is quite hard to guarantee...
Of course, Yugen couldn't remember the entire composition of such an ancient championship deck, and some rare cards were also unavailable. So he only borrowed the idea to create a new build.
As for some blank spots in the deck, he stuffed them with decently competent Trap cards in the meantime.
Honestly, from Yugen's card enthusiast perspective, not all of those traps seemed worth it, and they might not actually be that effective. A lot of times, it's just about playing mind games to mess with the opponent's mentality.
He wasn't some devil looking to amuse himself by messing with others' mindsets. Mental warfare is also a part of dueling, and breaking down an opponent's resolve before depleting their life points sometimes proved to be quite an effective tactic.
Yeah, that's the plan.
Browsing casually on the web, his eyes suddenly lit up as they scanned a certain page.
Artificial Human Soga, stock quantity: 1.
Yugen immediately scrolled back to the page and clicked for details. But then the webpage refused him.
"Access Denied."
"Academy Department Exclusive Card."
Yugen was taken aback.
Academy Department? What is that?
After some exploration online, he finally understood.
The so-called Academy Department refers to the Duel Academy. Personally organized and established by Seto Kaiba, it's the largest Duel Academy in the world. He specifically purchased an entire island to serve as the academy headquarters and fully equipped it with resources.
Students on the island have priority access to the newly released card packs and have channels to buy rare cards that are entirely inaccessible from the outside, with discounts so hefty it's laughably immense.
Even setting aside the academy's hardware and teaching faculty, the rare cards and discount perks alone are enough to make anyone envious.
For students with excellent grades, their academic scores and credits can even be exchanged for cards. In a world where a single card can fetch a sky-high price, this saves students a significant card-building budget.
Not to mention, graduates from the Duel Academy bear the strongest credentials in the Dueling Realm, standing a great chance of getting referrals to professional circuits, Kaiba Company, or the International Fantasy Association.
As he scrolled further, Yugen even noticed Chaos Wizard!
Chaos Wizard, level 6 with 2300 attack power, could be special summoned by banishing Light and Dark Attribute monsters from the graveyard, and it has the formidable effect of banishing an opposing monster once per turn from the game.
Like the more famous Chaos Warrior - Messenger of Creation, it shares a similar special summoning ability and effect that allows banishing an opponent's card. But the Chaos Warrior itself is a Super Rare Card, with only three known copies, all in the hands of Duel King Muto Yuugi, with one featured later in the GX anime as a replica in Muto Yuugi's exhibition deck and nowhere else seen.
Therefore, acquiring the Great Opening seems impossible.
If some of the remaining rare cards were within reach, and the pricing appeared to be heavily discounted compared to the outside world, then this realization took Yugen's breath away.
He had made up his mind.
He would apply to the Duel Academy.
And if he didn't make it, he'd just try again.