"Hmph, Pegasus, didn't you say that Seto Kaiba had been eliminated?" According to our satellites, Seto is currently approaching your island." One of the five Kaiba Corp executives on the monitor spoke with a dissatisfied voice.
"Oh? Kaiba boy~ is coming for a visit?" Pegasus stood up from his chair with enormous delight. He knew that Kaiba was still alive after the last chaos at the mansion; it was for this very reason that he had kidnapped Mokuba.
"Don't worry, Pegasus, we will do everything we can do to stop him. Seto will not be able to take a single step on your island!"
However, unlike what the executives expected. Pegasus was not happy to hear this threat.
"NO! You will not be touching a single hair on Kaiba boy's~ body. Our contract is only valid until we defeat Yugi boy~, so you should be able to wait until then, I assume. I want Kaiba Corp as well as the brilliant mind of Kaiba boy~" Pegasus declared as his long silver hair parted, revealing his Millennium Eye, which was giving off an eerie yellowish-black light.
***
Above the calm sea reflecting starlight, the sound of a helicopter propeller was drowning out the waves. Piloting the helicopter, Kaiba was feeling furious.
First, he had lost to the despicable midget Yugi Muto, then his brother had been kidnapped, and finally, there was the infuriating Yutaka Minami who had humiliated his beloved Blue-Eyes. If he could tolerate this, his name would not be Seto Kaiba!
Kaiba's gaze fixed on the island ahead of him with a mixed feeling.
"Hmph! Duellist Kingdom – such a low class can only be concocted by a low-class person like Pegasus. Without Seto Kaiba participating, how could they claim they would be crowning the King of Duels!?"
That was when Kaiba looked at the briefcase sitting next to him, and an unpleasant memory surfaced in his mind.
"EXODIA! OBLITERATE!!!"
Remembering the scene of Yugi using Exodia to destroy his three Blue-Eyes White Dragons played countless times in his mind during this journey.
Then there was also the humiliation he would not forget for a lifetime.
"Meteor Black Dragon! Finish it with Infernal Meteor Crash!"
Compared to the scene of Exodia destroying his dragons, this one was even more vivid in his mind.
"Hmph, Yu↑ta↓, you will pay for humiliating my Blue-Eyes like this! After I deal with you, I will find a way to defeat the Exodia of Yu↑gi↓"
"But before that, I must defeat the rat that dared to cooperate with Kaiba Corp executives and kidnap Mokuba! Maximillion Pegasus! You will rue the day you made an enemy of Seto Kaiba!"
***
"Yuta, what are you doing?" Tea asked as she saw Yuta sitting by himself by the campfire while the others were already trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in.
"Updating my deck," Yuta replied without even lifting his head.
Hearing his reply, Mai's ears perked up immediately. She did not duel against Yugi or even see him duelling, so from her perspective, Yuta was her greatest adversary in this tournament for the championship.
"Wow, Yuta, you change your deck after every single duel. Isn't that bad?" Tristan also joined in on the conversation.
"Not really; even though I rebuild my deck each time, I don't change its core structure. Tristan, I remember your family was running a car dealership. So, you can think of a deck as being similar to a car. What I am doing is overhauling and modifying the car. But no matter how much I modify it, it will always have the same engine.
For example, let's examine my deck; what do you think is its core? Seeing the gang gather around him, Yuta decided to hold an impromptu deck-building session.
Mai: "Sheep tactics?"
Yugi: "Graveyard Resources?"
Tristan: "Effect Damage?"
Tea: "Red-Eyes?"
Joey: "That monster that attacks directly?"
Everyone gave an example they thought was right, and it also made them notice there were so many different ways Yuta's deck could be played. Joey, being simple-minded, based his deck on dice cards, equip cards, and warriors. So his tactics were singular. The same also applied to Mai, who only focused on pumping out one Harpy after another. Tristan and Tea were newbies, so their decks didn't even have a playstyle, just monsters that they found pleasing to the eye.
Perhaps only Yugi's deck could rival Yuta's in terms of diversity, but since Yugi was a cheater who could print cards on the spot, it remains uncertain whether his deck could truly be considered versatile. After all, who could tell for certain whether he printed a new card during the duel?
"All of you are correct but also wrong. The core of my deck can actually be considered one thing, no, two things. Draw and Red-Eyes. I value draw cards because of consistency. That way I can always draw my combo pieces quickly and finish the duel as fast as possible. But this also makes my deck a little rigid. Because of all the draw cards, my deck can be called a burst type, I believe. If my deck is unable to defeat the opponent quickly, it will inevitably lose. This is essentially an all-or-nothing strategy. That's where Red-Eyes comes in. As a dragon known for its infinite potential, it can adapt to any and all circumstances. So if my combo can't defeat the opponent, it is up to the Red-Eyes to finish the duel. Thankfully Red-Eyes has not let me down until now."
*ROAR*
Red-Eyes expressed its support for Yuta's deck-building strategy. It could hold up the sky with one claw so there was no way it could lose, so Yuta could confidently give the last line of the defence to Red-Eyes.
"But isn't that too dangerous? What if Red-Eyes is also unable to defeat the opponent?" Mini Yugi furrowed his brows. As a player who liked playing strategic decks, he could not understand Yuta's aggro mentality.
"Then I lose, simple as that. One should know that no deck or strategy is invincible in this world. Only a deck that can print cards during a duel is invincible, but that's impossible, right? So instead of trying to decrease how you can lose, I believe it is better to maximise your chances of winning."
Hearing Yuta's words and Yami's machinations during the Shadow Game, Mini Yugi felt like he was called out but decided to keep shut. After all, cheating was not a glorious thing, but it was acceptable in a life-or-death duel.
Mai looked thoughtful and murmured to herself, "Instead of decreasing ways to lose, maximise ways to win, huh?"
"Anyway, do you need help choosing cards?" Joey asked cheerfully; he really liked the feeling of deck building.
"Honestly, I don't know; my deck size has almost reached 60 but for a deck like mine, this is not a good thing. So I need to trim my deck as much as possible, to 40 if possible. That way I can find my combo pieces more easily and even the fallback option, which is my Red-Eyes."
"So what are the cards you absolutely need?" Tea approached this situation as if it were a home economics lesson from school. In that class, there was one assignment where students needed to calculate their weekly expenses based on a given budget. So she thought this situation might be similar.
"Good question! First of all, I definitely need 3X Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity. That's already six cards. Then I obviously need to put in my Red-Eyes and also my little cuties Bacon Saver and Kuriboh!"
Seeing the adorable piggy card, Mai felt like eating bacon all of a sudden. It definitely was not because she was traumatised by this card or anything. She just simply craved bacon, that's all.
"I wanted to say this for a long time, but your choice of cards is really interesting, Yuta. This might be the first time I have seen someone aside from me playing Kuriboh in their deck," Yugi said as he also took out his Kuriboh from his deck.
"In fact, that baffles me as well. After all, Kuriboh is such a useful life-saving card; why no one plays it is bizarre to me. I suppose the reason is that most duellists do not include draw cards in their decks. Without draw cards, duellists rely on natural draws, making situational cards like Kuriboh frustrating to draw when they lack strong monsters and need to turn the game around. Since I have a lot of draws, it has no effect on me, but you are the surprising one for including one yourself, Yugi."
"Haha, that's not true. I don't have as many as you, but I also have draw cards in my deck," Mini Yugi said as he scratched his head and took a Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity from his deck. These cards also allowed him more room to be a little bit more flexible with his card choices so he could understand where Yuta was coming from. But he still felt Yuta was too extreme for adding 6 whole cards just for drawing. 6 cards for drawing, Graceful Charity draws a total of 9 cards, and Pot of Greed is 6. So with these cards, Yuta could draw a total of 21 cards, which was overkill from Yugi's perspective.
On the other side, Mai was also looking thoughtful. She almost wanted to take out a notebook and furiously start taking notes. These two were legendary duellists that were difficult to encounter anywhere else in the world. One was someone who had defeated Kaiba, the previous strongest duellist in the world, and the other was someone who had made it to the nationals and almost became the champion. Since both of them could agree on certain points, it indicated that these were important lessons all duellists needed to learn.
At this point Mai even wanted to stuff her deck full of draw cards. Even if she was not planning on adding life-saving cards to her deck, it would also allow her more room to add more spells that could help her get out of sticky situations or even more trap cards.
According to Mai, trap cards were the future of the duelling world, but she had no intention of sharing this info. As long as you researched your opponent beforehand and added a specific trap card to counter them, nothing could stop you in this world!
If Yuta could hear Mai's thoughts, he would be sweating bullets as she was going down the route of underworld players more and more. She would eventually become the scourge of the duelling world if she continued in this manner.
"Anyway, that's nine cards. I guess I also need to add 2X Witch of the Black Forest, Cannon Soldier, and Scapegoat because they are too useful for searching and finishing the game. Additionally, I need to include Meteor Dragon and two copies of Poly. Poly can be considered the card that brings out the most potential from Red-Eyes."
"Yes, fusing two monsters brings out the potential of both cards. I also use Polymerization a lot in my deck as well." Mini Yugi nodded. Even though their play styles were vastly different, he noticed that the cards they chose to add to their deck as auxiliary cards were mostly similar.
"That's already 16 cards, which means the deck is almost halfway full..." Ugh, there are too many cards I want to add, though. For now, let's also add Lycanthrope and its ritual spell. Oh, I almost forgot about the Metalmorph. Since I am adding Metalmorph, I might as well add Zoa too. That makes 20 cards."
Author's note: I am making it so that Metalmorp cards are in the extra deck and do not take up deck space, but they still have their orange border. Though honestly, it has always confused me why they were never made fusion monster cards like Thousand Dragon in the first place, since both are special summon cards that need to fulfil specific situations. Heck, the future Dragon cards exactly work like this! Anyway, this is the author's setting. If you are feeling bothered, just assume it's because of MC's luck; Metal Zoa and REBMD are always at the bottom of the deck.
"Yuta, aren't you going to add the cards you traded from me?" Joey asked nervously. Truth be told, he wanted to see how Yuta would play his cards if they were in his hands. That way, he could find new ways to play his own deck and get better as a result.
"Your cards, huh? I guess if we add the Joey package, we need to add 3X Baby Dragon, 2X Time Machine (one from Keith), 3X Kunai with Chain, Gearfried the Iron Knight, and Blue Flame Swordsman. Since I added the baby dragon, I also need to add my dragon package: Dragon Nails, Gunfire and Stamping Destruction. That makes 31 cards; 9 more to go, and I haven't even started with my trap cards. Ugh, this is agonising..."
"Yuta, I want to ask, why are you not hiding your deck from us? Aren't you afraid that if we know your deck structure, we will make targeted adjustments?" Mai asked the question that kept itching her heart.
Yuta looked at her like he was looking at an idiot.
"Do you think you can beat me even if you knew my deck?" He said sarcastically, of course, this was a joke for him. After all, he had already bricked twice, so it wouldn't be surprising to him if he bricked a third time and lost anyway. He was not Yugi, so he could definitely lose. Furthermore, as long as it was not a Shadow Duel, he did not mind losing every now and again.
However, to Mai's ears this sounded like a blatant disregard. It was always like this. From her perspective, Yuta always looked down on her. No matter what she did, she could never get Yuta to treat her as an equal, and for someone like Mai, who valued her pride above all else, this felt worse than death.
She swore that one day she would defeat this guy and make him crawl under her. Just the image itself was beautiful beyond words in her mind.
Seeing Mai's colourful expressions, Yuta was confused again. He felt that her personality should have been different in the anime, but he couldn't pinpoint what had gone wrong; this version of Mai seemed more like an annoying little brat compared to the seductive older sister vibes she had in the show.
Weird.
"Anyway, I should also add Princess of Tsurugi, not for any other reason but because I think she looks cool..." Though, in reality, Yuta's true aim was to determine whether he could incorporate any personal cards into the Red-Eyes archetype.
After all, Gearfried and Baby Dragon were bound to be members of the Red-Eyes tribe in the future, but he was curious if he could add a card that was not there originally, so he intended to keep Princess in his deck at least until the GX era.
If by then she had not joined the archetype, it meant she was hopeless. If she did, by a stroke of luck, he would have to be more careful with his monster choices in the future because any one of them could be a potential member of the Red-Eyes tribe.
"Yes, I agree! One should not just focus on utility when making a deck. They should also look pleasing! That was how I made my deck. After all, strength is temporary, but cuteness is for life!" Tea nodded like a pecking chicken while sharing her views. Her deck was made up of adorable fairy cards, which spoke volumes to her preferences. This also reminded Yuta of the Magician of Faith she had in her deck.
"Speaking of which, Tea, do you want to trade for your Magician of Faith? I think it would work wonders in my deck, but the choice is yours, obviously."
"Yeah sure, if it helps you win, that would also be a testament to our bond. Now that I think about it, you have the same cards as Yugi and Joey. If you add my card as well, it would be like we are all fighting together! Tristan, why don't you give one of yours as well?" said Tea, taking out her card and excitedly giving it to Yuta.
"Okay, in my deck I also have a Jinzo#7 since you like using it, I will give it to you."
"Okay, so with the 2X Jinzo#7 and the Magician of Faith, I have a total of 35 cards, and I still haven't added my trap cards..."
Seeing that Yuta didn't add her Harpie's Feather Duster, Mai looked displeased. Wasn't he the one that clamoured that it was valuable enough to stay in a VIP suite for a month before?
"Why are you so obsessed with traps anyway? You can just crush anyone with brute force with this deck, right?" Joey asked.
"You don't understand, Joey, traps are life! If you don't have enough traps in the deck, it just feels very awkward. Anyway, Let's add Negate Attack, Threatening Roar, Ancient Lamp, Damage Diet and Graverobber. With this I already have 40 cards, but I still need to add other staple cards as well. Like Feather Duster, Monster Reborn, and Heavy Storm. There are already 43 cards like this. Oh, there is also Pillage that steals a card from the opponent. So that makes it 46 if I count all the cards? It seems like I made a mistake with the maths before.
Anyway, I still need to add 1 Tribute to the Doomed and 1 Sangan, which brings the total to 48, meaning I need to remove 8 cards if possible... I can reduce two Kunai, I guess?
I can also reduce 1 time machine.
You know what? Forgoe Heavy Storm as well; I think I can make a 44 card deck work?" Yuta said to himself after finishing his deck adjustment.
The deck could certainly be improved further, but he felt there was nothing else he could do at the moment.
"Nice, do you wanna take it for a spin pal?" Joey asked excitedly.
"Before that, Joey, how about we remake your deck as well? I think I have many cards here that can make your deck stronger, or rather cards that are better suited to your play style." Yuta said with a smirk.
He still remembered promising himself that he would make a better deck for Joey with Bandit Keith's cards, and he intended to keep his promise.
He was also curious how far Joey could go with the Gun Dragon archetype now that he did not have the Red-Eyes in his deck.