A bewildered light flickered in Vampire Fraulein’s dark crimson eyes, as if what she was seeing had completely exceeded her brain’s processing capacity.
“Huh, wait a second, both of you seem to be the same master, but there’s clearly two of you…” She sounded like she was tying herself in mental knots just saying it, her eyes practically starting to spiral with that classic anime-character look of total confusion.
Even though she didn’t seem to have worked out what was going on, Yushin understood immediately.
With whatever perception her spirit-nature gave her, she seemed able to sense the bond between herself and her duelist.
That let her recognize both the person in front of her now and the one back in the temple as her holder, even though her eyes clearly showed her two completely different people.
Which was exactly what had short-circuited her.
“Don’t worry about it if you can’t figure it out.” Yushin thought it over, then said, “Also, you don’t need to call me master.
I’m Yushin.
Just use my name.” Mostly because the title sounded a little strange, and combined with her whole look, it kept making him think of some kind of themed roleplay costume.
“Mm-hm.” Vampire Fraulein nodded.
“Got it, master.” Yushin: “…” Whatever.
Let her do what she wanted.
It wasn’t important anyway.
Still, the fact that Vampire Fraulein could actually teleport all the way over to his body in the Satellite genuinely surprised him.
Maybe this was some unique ability of Duel Monster Spirits, using their own duelist as an anchor point to teleport around?
But over there, she’d looked like a ghost, without a physical body, unable to touch anything in that world.
And based on Yushin’s experience with Yu-Gi-Oh!
as a franchise, Monster Spirits existing in that ghostly state were normally only visible to a small handful of duelists with a “Spirit Affinity” talent, like Jaden Yuki.
Everyone else, ordinary people, generally couldn’t see or hear the spirits around them at all.
An idea struck Yushin, and he said, “Can you go back to the temple again?” “Sure.” Vampire Fraulein nodded.
Then, with another whoosh, Vampire Fraulein vanished into thin air from the Satellite side.
The next instant, the pale girl in her Gothic dress flickered back into existence inside the temple’s gilded halls.
She really could just teleport at will…
Yushin felt a little envious.
He wanted to know how she managed to slip out of this massive cage so casually, but unfortunately, even when he asked, she was just as confused about it as he was.
She just could, somehow, for reasons she couldn’t explain.
That was all she knew.
Back in the temple, Yushin reached out and gave Vampire Fraulein’s pale cheek an experimental pinch.
It felt soft, a little cool to the touch, not bad at all.
The girl took two steps back, covering her cheek.
“Ow, what are you doing, master?” Yushin didn’t answer, lost in thought instead.
Over here in the temple, she was solid, visible and touchable, but on the Satellite side she’d turned into a mere phantom.
Was there some difference between the two environments?
Seeing him lost in thought for a while without saying anything, Vampire Fraulein tilted her head and leaned in from behind him.
“What’s wrong?
Is there anything I can help with?” Yushin snapped out of it and gave her a smile.
“Oh, there’s plenty you can help with.” Yushin said.
“Looks like neither of us is getting any sleep tonight.” Vampire Fraulein: “?” And then the two of them really did spend the better part of the night at it.
What they were actually testing was the question Yushin currently cared about most: whether this card could actually be used safely, and whether it posed any risk to him.
After trying it out every which way, Yushin gradually started to piece things together.
At first, whether he tried summoning Vampire Fraulein with his Duel Disk or activating her monster effect, he didn’t feel any effect on himself at all.
At the time, he even wondered whether the whole “feeding on life force” thing had only ever been a passive that triggered while she was unconscious, and now that she was awake, the passive had simply switched off.
Or maybe testing on his own just wasn’t accurate enough, and the passive only triggered during an actual duel.
But after further testing, he quickly ruled both possibilities out.
Because he discovered that summoning Vampire Fraulein with his Duel Disk and activating her effect really wasn’t entirely without cost to him.
When he focused hard and paid close attention, he could faintly sense something like his own life essence being drawn out of his body, flowing into Vampire Fraulein’s.
Except the amount being drawn was so vanishingly small that even trying hard to notice it, he could barely detect it at all.
If this were a video game, it’d be the kind of HP drain so slow it couldn’t even keep pace with passive regeneration from just breathing.
But while Yushin felt like this drain was completely negligible on his end, repeating the process, he noticed something else: Vampire Fraulein’s originally pale cheeks were gradually flushing pink, and every so often, she’d let out an odd, low gasp.
When he asked her what was going on, she couldn’t explain it herself either, only kept insisting that her body felt like it was turning strange.
After pressing her for a good long while, piecing together her half-verbal, half-gestured attempts at description, Yushin finally understood.
What was practically negligible for him, life force drained in amounts so tiny it barely registered, was apparently already too much for her.
The reason she felt strange was because her body was sending out a signal.
Too much, this is too much, I can’t take any more.” And with that, Yushin was finally able to confirm something for certain.
The reason Vampire Fraulein had been branded a “cursed card” in the first place was most likely because her previous holders simply hadn’t been up to snuff.
An ordinary person holding this card would probably get drained dry by her unconscious passive after only a handful of uses.
But he himself apparently had nothing to worry about on that front.
His own life force was like a boundless ocean, and a single Vampire Fraulein was, at most, a thin little pipe drawing from it.
Even if he ran her to bursting, it wouldn’t affect him in the slightest.
Confirming this only made Yushin more and more curious about just who, and what rank, his real body actually was after transmigrating Seriously, who the hell even am I?
Trapped in a temple that massive for that long, never once feeling thirst or fatigue, and now it was confirmed his very life force operated on a level far beyond any ordinary human’s.
It practically bordered on immortality.
Either way, it wasn’t a bad thing.
The night passed, and Yushin soon found himself greeting his first morning in the Satellite.
Taking control of his body over in the Satellite, he got up and headed to the bathroom for a quick wash.
Passing by the dining table, he noticed a note pinned down on it.
“Brother’s breakfast is ready in the kitchen.
Off to school!
-Yukine” Yushin: “…” Could a little sister this good possibly be real?
He ate the breakfast Yukine had left him while thinking through his plans for the day.
Working a job was completely out of the question.
Not in this lifetime, not ever again.
Please.
Once you’ve discovered how fast you can make money by robbing…
er, picking up cards, why would he ever go back to grinding away like an ox at some Satellite factory?
In the Satellite, you basically played whatever cards you had on hand.
After picking up Vampire Fraulein and that whole Zombie deck last night, Yushin had already started considering building his deck around the Zombie-Type archetype.
He remembered seeing a few Zombie-Type-related cards while browsing Rude’s general store last night, though he’d only skimmed past them at the time, and since he hadn’t had any Zombie-Type resources on hand yet, he hadn’t paid them much attention.
Might as well swing by again later today and see if there was anything good worth digging up.
Zombie-Type had actually had its moment of glory back in early-era Yu-Gi-Oh!, producing quite a few generically useful cards that ended up staples in top-tier decks.
Even by the time of the 5D’s anime, real-world “Zombie Synchro” had briefly become a dominant strategy in the actual competitive scene of that same era.
Except, in the anime, it always felt like it was the villains who ran Zombie-Type decks.
Of course, at the end of the day, it all came down to the player, not the cards.
Yushin figured that a guy as handsome and sunny as himself couldn’t possibly end up as the villain, even running a Zombie-Type deck.
Right as he was thinking this over, he suddenly heard Vampire Fraulein’s voice in his ear.
“So this is human food?
It’s terrible.” Yushin quickly worked out that it was his real body, back in the temple, picking up the sound.
He turned his head to look, and there was the elegant Vampire Fraulein, parasol propped over her shoulder, holding a stale, rock-hard chunk of rye bread in her hands, taking dainty little bites while delivering her harsh review.
Yushin said, offhandedly, “That’s called bread.
It’s on the lower end of human food, not exactly representative of the average…” Halfway through the sentence, he froze.
The next instant, he whipped his head around and snatched the half-eaten bread right out of Vampire Fraulein’s hands.
Vampire Fraulein stared at him, dazed.
Didn’t he just say it was lower-end food?
And he still had to steal it from her over one crummy piece of bread?
Yushin reined in his suddenly racing thoughts and asked, his voice low, “Where did you get this bread?”