1500 By now, Yushin was completely convinced: he really had ended up in some version of the Yu-Gi-Oh!
world.
As everyone knew, in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, dueling skill reigned supreme.
Just about anything could be settled with a card duel.
Case in point: even after a whole cult had captured him and locked him in a cell, when it came time for the actual sacrifice, they still had to sit down and duel it out properly.
Yushin couldn’t help but ask, “So wait, you guys settle your sacrifice ritual with a card duel first?
What happens if you lose?
Wouldn’t that be a little awkward?” The moment the words left his mouth, the dead-silent cavern nearly split apart with laughter.
The black-robed man presiding over the ritual froze for a moment, then burst out laughing.
The cultists lined up on either side below lost it too, stifled laughter rippling through the crowd and filling the entire altar chamber.
The same thought crossed everyone’s mind: today’s sacrifice clearly had no idea what was going on.
Not only did this guy not know to be scared, he was apparently thinking about winning.
Could you believe that?
Just having that thought was ridiculous enough to be funny.
The black-robed presider’s tone carried a condescending amusement.
“Sure.
If you can actually beat me, Ryan Valerio, today, not only will I take your place as the sacrifice, I’ll hand over my position as this cult’s Ritual Arbiter to you, starting right now.” The laughter from the surrounding cultists only grew more unrestrained.
The role of Ritual Arbiter wasn’t something an ordinary follower could ever hope to reach.
Every arbiter who’d ever presided over a ritual had been put through layer after layer of screening by the cult, judged to have dueling strength worthy of the position before being allowed to take it.
The sacrifices for these rituals, meanwhile, were usually nothing more than low-level duelists pulled from the slums known as the Satellite.
Most of these low-level duelists struggled just to get enough to eat.
The dueling knowledge they had access to was limited, the opponents they could sharpen their skills against were limited, and even the Monster Cards available in the Satellite were painfully limited.
Duelists like that had narrow horizons, weak skills, and cheap decks.
Next to the cult’s Ritual Arbiter, it was basically a bare-handed child going up against a warrior armed with a blade.
So as far as Arbiter Ryan was concerned, this was a duel he genuinely didn’t know how to lose.
The cult’s rules required the ritual to take the form of a duel, sure, but in practice it was really just a formality everyone went through.
As for the possibility of an arbiter actually losing mid-ritual?
That had never once happened in the cult’s history, and it probably never would.
Yushin thought it over, then asked, “So what deck am I using, then?” Arbiter Ryan said flatly, “Since you were chosen as the ritual sacrifice, your deck is naturally still on your person.
We haven’t touched it.” Yushin patted himself down, and sure enough, quickly pulled a worn, well-used deck out of an inner jacket pocket.
“Oh, give me a second, then.” Yushin started flipping through the deck.
“Let me see what’s actually in here first.” Every cultist present: ???
Was this guy seriously reading through his own deck for the first time, right there on the spot?
Arbiter Ryan blinked too, caught off guard.
He suddenly recalled a report from one of his subordinates earlier: today’s sacrifice had apparently struggled violently during capture and hit his head.
Looking at this now, maybe the hit had actually knocked something loose?
Some broke nobody from the Satellite who couldn’t even remember his own deck, and he was fantasizing about actually beating him in the ritual?
Beating him, the battle-hardened Ritual Arbiter himself?
Arbiter Ryan nearly laughed himself sick out of sheer disbelief.
Meanwhile, on Yushin’s end, his frown was only deepening the more he looked through his deck.
Absurd.
Forget everything else, just take the Monster Cards.
The whole deck was spotless, wall-to-wall vanilla monsters, not a single exception mixed in.
So-called vanilla monsters were Normal Monsters with no special abilities at all, nothing but an ATK and DEF stat.
Most of them dated back to the earliest generation of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Modern Yu-Gi-Oh!
monsters came standard with at least three effects apiece these days.
If your card’s effect text box wasn’t packed full, you were almost embarrassed to show your face.
In his past life, Yushin had played plenty of Yu-Gi-Oh!
and picked up a decent amount of know-how, but even so, actually pulling off a win with a deck of nothing but vanilla monsters was going to be rough.
But~ it was fine.
The endless hours in that temple had nearly driven him out of his mind.
Now that he’d finally found living people he could actually talk to, and there were cards to play on top of it, there was no way he was passing this up, no matter what.
Worst case, if things looked bad, he could just pull the plug and disconnect, bail out the moment he couldn’t win.
After all, right now he was just a spirit riding shotgun.
This body wasn’t even his real one.
And looking on the bright side, maybe the dueling landscape in this world would turn out to be more like the early anime era?
Sure, his own deck was full vanilla, but as long as his opponent wasn’t some modern-era duelist who’d spend the first three and a half minutes just monologuing through an opening combo, this might actually be winnable.
Yushin skimmed quickly through the deck in his hands, then looked up, eyes bright and clear, meeting the arbiter’s gaze head-on.
“Got a Duel Disk?” Ryan nodded.
“Of course.” As he spoke, one of the cultists below tossed a Duel Disk up onto the altar.
Yushin caught it and ran a hand over its casing.
Its design didn’t quite match any version he remembered from the anime, but it felt heavy and cold, solid in his hands with the genuine weight of real metal.
Yushin strapped on the Duel Disk and slotted his deck in.
A faint mechanical whir sounded, and he watched his deck shuffle itself at high speed inside the slot, feeling an odd flicker of excitement.
So he was actually playing real Yu-Gi-Oh!
now.
“Duel!” “Duel!” [Yushin, LP 4000] [Arbiter Ryan, LP 4000] Arbiter Ryan said, “Who goes first will be decided by our great lord.
Whichever of our Duel Disks lights up first earns the right to choose who takes the first turn.” Yushin raised an eyebrow, not entirely sure whether the guy meant this was random chance, or if some actual dark god was rigging the outcome behind the scenes.
The indicator light on Arbiter Ryan’s Duel Disk lit up first.
Arbiter Ryan let out a low chuckle.
“Looks like the first turn’s mine, then.
My turn, draw!” Yushin quietly took note of what he was seeing.
Drawing on the first turn…
that was an old-era rule, from before Yu-Gi-Oh!
ARC-V.
In modern Yu-Gi-Oh!, the player going first doesn’t get to draw.
Judging by that, he could guess he was probably in some world built off an early-era Yu-Gi-Oh!
ruleset.
Arbiter Ryan declared, “I Normal Summon Fiend Dragon in Attack Position!” [Fiend Dragon, ATK 1500] “Then I’ll set one card face-down.
Turn end.” Arbiter Ryan slotted a card into his Duel Disk, and a dark, face-down card materialized on the back row.
That opening move eased Yushin’s nerves a little.
One monster up front, one card in the back…
good, good.
At least there wasn’t some three-and-a-half-minute opening monologue chaining through a dozen effects.
If it had been that, he might as well have had his right to play Yu-Gi-Oh!
revoked outright, and could’ve just started thinking about pulling the plug and bailing.
He still couldn’t say for sure exactly which version or era of Yu-Gi-Oh!
he’d landed in, but it looked like it leaned toward the earlier side.
If that was the case, then this was a duel he could actually work with.
When it came to Yushin’s turn: “My turn, draw!” Yushin drew his card, glanced over his hand, and went quiet.
Uh…
It was a little funny to admit, but faced with a vanilla monster boasting a terrifying attack power of 1500, he honestly, no joke, might not be able to get past it.