Wait, Where Am I?
1: Chapter 1: Into the VRAINS!
Wait, Where Am I?
In the year 202X, technological development suddenly exploded for reasons no one could explain.
Technologies that had previously belonged firmly in the realm of science fiction were announced as completed breakthroughs almost overnight, with practical applications supposedly right around the corner.
What confused everyone was where some of that miraculous technology ended up.
Instead of revolutionizing medicine, energy, transportation, or any of the other fields that might have changed humanity for the better, a surprising amount of it went straight into video games.
Major game companies around the world rushed to announce upcoming press conferences and unveil their newest projects, most of which amounted to glossy promises and ambitious trailers.
A few of the more capable studios went a step further and demonstrated genuine working technology, sending players everywhere into a frenzy.
With the entire industry scrambling to capitalize on the boom, even KONAMI—the company that normally seemed perfectly content to sit around and live off its old successes—finally decided to get moving.
After all, owning the rights to one of the most famous trading card games in the world while somehow lacking a proper official online game using the Master Rules was becoming rather embarrassing.
This time, though, KONAMI appeared to have discovered something resembling a conscience.
With the help of the newly developed technology, the company announced the upcoming release of an official game titled Yu-Gi-Oh!
MASTER DUEL.
It would support the Master Rules and include not only ordinary competitive play, but also a variety of single-player modes, including Duel Chronicle content.
That alone would have been enough to attract plenty of attention, but the biggest announcement was something Duelists had dreamed about for years.
In addition to all existing platforms, MASTER DUEL would support both real-world holographic Dueling and fully immersive virtual-world Dueling.
Yes, technology had somehow advanced far enough to create functional virtual worlds.
Nobody knew how.
“Boss, the game goes live tomorrow.
Is there anything else you need?” “Hmm…
no.
Actually, one thing.
Where’s the database?” “This way, please.” …
As a Duelist, Jamie St.
James had always possessed a rather unusual relationship with luck.
Sometimes, his luck was absurdly good.
How good?
Back when a certain man was still terrorizing the competitive environment, Jamie had received his monthly living expenses from his parents and, on a whim, bought three booster boxes.
From those three boxes, he pulled three copies of exactly the same card.
Dun!
Dun!
Duuun!
Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon.
Not merely ordinary copies, either.
All three were 20th Secret Rares, among the highest-rarity versions available.
Yes.
That man.
The card affectionately treated like everyone’s beloved “Red Daddy” when it sat on their own field, only to become “that red bastard” the moment it appeared on the opponent’s.
Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon was already Limited at the time, so Jamie could only put one copy in his Deck.
That did absolutely nothing to stop him from carrying the other two around and shamelessly showing them off.
Unfortunately, Jamie’s luck could also be catastrophically bad.
Only a few days later, he proudly carried his freshly built, high-rarity Dragoon-focused Deck into a card shop, ready to make everyone admire his shiny new toys.
Then someone showed him the newest Forbidden & Limited List.
Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon: Limited → Forbidden.
Jamie stared at it.
His world collapsed.
The timing was so perfectly cruel that he began wondering whether the universe had something personal against him.
Combined with several unrelated matters that forced him to go AFK from the game for a while, by the time he eventually returned, the format had already changed.
A new king had taken the throne.
Its name was Destiny HERO – Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer.
The newest member of the “if you can’t beat it, play it yourself” club had arrived alongside its good friend Fusion Destiny, while the apparently immortal Predaplant Verte Anaconda continued slithering around the format despite countless Duelists wishing for its death.
Once again, Jamie’s strange luck activated.
He pulled a Prismatic Secret Rare Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer.
This time, however, he was nowhere near as excited.
As a Drytron player, he had little reason to shove the DPE package into his main Deck.
The two simply did not work together particularly well, so he threw together a DPE Swordsoul build, played a few games for fun, and then mostly forgot about it.
Later, new card information began coming out.
The Albaz and Despia lines, both of which Jamie liked, were receiving new support, and since the overall strategy revolved heavily around Fusion Summoning, it had excellent synergy with Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer.
Jamie was just preparing to sit down and seriously study the new build when another Forbidden & Limited List dropped.
Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer survived.
His faithful companion did not.
Fusion Destiny: Unlimited → Forbidden.
KONAMI had not even bothered with an intermediate step.
That was one brutal hit.
Apparently, the company had finally become fed up with a Destiny HERO refusing to follow his intended destiny.
Instead of staying inside HERO Decks where he belonged, fighting evil alongside his fellow HEROes, Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer had spent his days getting rented out to practically every villainous Deck in the format, acting as anything from an accomplice to the mastermind himself.
Which raised an obvious question.
If DPE was the problem, why not simply ban DPE?
Why ban Fusion Destiny, an important support card for the HERO strategy itself?
Did that even need to be asked?
They still had packs to sell.
“F**K KONAMI!” Jamie stared at the Prismatic Secret Rare Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer in his hand.
Somehow, the card did not seem quite as dazzling as before.
Even a Destiny HERO could only lose his shine beneath the merciless oppression of corporate greed.
“Whatever.
Since MASTER DUEL is launching, KONAMI’s mother gets one use of Monster Reborn.” There was no point mourning a banlist when he could simply play some cards instead.
Jamie picked up the virtual-login device that had just arrived, carefully put it on according to the instructions, and struck the coolest pose he could manage.
“Into the VRAINS!” Pure white light swallowed his vision.
A moment later, countless streams of data began pouring past him like waterfalls.
They gradually faded away, revealing what appeared to be a login screen.
Before Jamie could enter his account information, his attention was drawn toward the login button itself.
It looked almost like a crystalline gemstone, and before he gave the matter much thought, he instinctively pressed it.
Emerald light immediately flooded his vision.
Then everything disappeared.
…
Beneath a bright blue sky dotted with white clouds, a clean-cut young man sat dejectedly on a park bench.
He held a Deck box in each hand, both filled with carefully sleeved Yu-Gi-Oh!
cards.
“All I did was say ‘F**K KONAMI’ a few times.
Did they really have to throw me into another world over it?” Everything was far too real compared to what had been advertised.
The game interface refused to respond no matter how many times he tried calling it, and after combining that with everything he had seen and heard since arriving here, Jamie had reached a fairly obvious conclusion.
He had transmigrated.
He had already been sitting in the park for a while, and by listening to the conversations of people passing by, he had managed to gather enough information to identify his current location.
This was Domino City.
For any Yu-Gi-Oh!
fan, that name was impossible not to recognize.
Even more importantly, only two nights ago, a certain dragon-obsessed CEO had made an extremely public announcement declaring the beginning of the Battle City Tournament.
During the two days since then, quite a few Duelists had already acquired their Duel Disks through various means.
Some of the more hopeless card addicts had not even bothered waiting for the official tournament to begin and were already arranging private Duels using the newly announced rules.
Jamie had always been fairly adaptable, so the fact that he had been thrown into another world did not bother him as much as one might expect.
He was already here.
What else was he supposed to do?
Besides, supernatural forces undeniably existed in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Maybe he would eventually stumble across a way home.
Until then, the sensible choice was to establish himself here and figure things out one step at a time.
And as a hopeless Duelist whose fingers were already itching for a game, Jamie was seriously considering finding someone and playing a few rounds first.
Conveniently, the two Decks he had prepared before logging into MASTER DUEL had somehow traveled here with him.
One was a ridiculous gimmick Deck he had put together for laughs.
The other was a pure fun Deck that represented everything he had originally loved about casual Dueling.
If he brought either of them onto MASTER DUEL and tried playing against merciless OCG veterans running Eldlich, whatever degenerate nonsense happened to be popular that week, or Floowandereeze, he would probably get dismantled before he could accomplish anything.
But here?
This was the Duel Monsters era.
Surely they would be playable.
“Kuri, kuri!” “What’s wrong, Kuribohrn?
Hm?
My necklace?” A tiny, fluffy white spirit hovered beside Jamie’s shoulder, pointing one little paw toward the crystal pendant hanging against his chest.
This little creature was Kuribohrn, a Duel Monster spirit from his gimmick Deck, and its existence was the main reason Jamie was already convinced that supernatural power was real in this world.
He was just about to follow Kuribohrn’s hint and examine the pendant he had worn since childhood when a short figure suddenly stopped directly in front of him.
“You just said ‘Kuriboh,’ didn’t you?”