Yushin quickly scanned the six cards in his opening hand.
The only Monster Card with an ATK higher than the opposing Fiend Dragon was a single Summoned Skull, a vanilla monster boasting a full 2500 ATK.
It looked like it was already the ace of this deck.
But Summoned Skull was a Level 6 monster.
Under Yu-Gi-Oh!
rules, only Level 1 through 4 monsters could be Normal Summoned without a Tribute; Level 5 and 6 monsters required one Tribute.
Each player only got one Normal Summon per turn.
So even though he had a high-level monster in hand, there was clearly no summoning it out this turn.
With no real room to maneuver, Yushin picked out two cards from his hand and set them, one to the front, one to the back.
“I’ll set one monster face-down in Defense Position, and set one card in the back row.
Turn end.” A face-down Defense Position monster meant a card lying face-side down on the field.
Unless the opponent attacked into it, they’d have no way of knowing what it was.
Arbiter Ryan clearly wasn’t taking it seriously, and just sneered, “A trash deck from the Satellite.
Guess all it’s good for is turtling up and taking the hits.” It was just an insult, but Yushin’s ear caught on one particular word.
“The Satellite?” He remembered that the city Yu-Gi-Oh!
5D’s was set in was called New Domino City, and that it had a section called the Satellite, a slum-like district.
Could he have actually landed in the world of 5D’s?
Yushin asked, “Is this New Domino City?” But Ryan didn’t so much as acknowledge the question.
He only had eyes for the cards.
“My turn, draw!” Ryan revealed the card he’d drawn right away.
“I summon Assault Pterosaur!” [Assault Pterosaur, ATK 1800] “Moving to the Battle Phase,” Arbiter Ryan said.
“First, Assault Pterosaur attacks your face-down Defense Position monster!” Assault Pterosaur lunged forward, its silver talons slicing into the set card.
A stone-bodied golem emerged from the flipped Monster Card and was cleaved cleanly in two.
[Rock Ogre Grotto #1, DEF 1200] Since it had been destroyed in Defense Position, though, its controller took no battle damage.
Arbiter Ryan said, “Right now, Assault Pterosaur’s effect activates!
When this card destroys an opponent’s monster in battle, I can release Assault Pterosaur to Special Summon a Dragon-Type monster other than Assault Pterosaur from my hand or Graveyard!” He held up another Monster Card from his hand.
“I release Assault Pterosaur to Special Summon Rare Metal Dragon!” Assault Pterosaur spun once in the air before its body dissolved into golden motes of light.
The light re-condensed into the shape of a card, projecting a dragon of gleaming, polished steel.
[Rare Metal Dragon, ATK 2400] “The Battle Phase isn’t over yet,” Arbiter Ryan said.
“Fiend Dragon, direct attack!
Let this clueless Satellite trash feel the pain of the dark!” With no monster left on Yushin’s field to serve as a wall, Fiend Dragon soared straight across the field, coming down right on top of him.
Its claws raked across Yushin’s body, and the force of the blow rocked him slightly, sending him half a step back before he caught his footing.
[Yushin, LP 4000 → LP 2500] In this sacrificial ritual duel, the duelists were meant to take a considerable amount of physical impact from the damage.
With Fiend Dragon’s hit landing, every cultist in the room waited eagerly, expecting to hear Yushin scream from the blow.
Hearing the sacrifice cry out in agony whenever they took damage during the ritual duel was, in itself, one of the most anticipated parts of the whole ceremony.
But unexpectedly, today’s sacrifice stayed dead quiet.
Yushin took the hit like it was nothing, brushed a bit of dust off himself, and didn’t so much as flinch, his calm expression seeming to say— —that’s it?
Did you skip breakfast?
That was enough to rattle Arbiter Ryan’s composure a little.
He wondered what exactly was going on with today’s sacrifice.
Not only did the guy not know fear, did he not even feel pain?
Arbiter Ryan frowned.
Whatever.
Either way, the sooner this was over, the better.
“Rare Metal Dragon,” Arbiter Ryan said, “direct attack!” With Rare Metal Dragon’s ATK at 2400, this hit would leave Yushin’s Life Points at a mere 100, flickering like a candle in the wind.
As far as Ryan was concerned, the guy was already as good as dead.
The monster his opponent had set up front wasn’t even a decent wall, just some fodder vanilla monster, and the set card in the back had shown no reaction through two straight attacks.
It was probably just a bluff, a worthless card.
Sure enough, today’s sacrifice was just another piece of Satellite trash, and today’s ritual was turning out no different from any of the others.
But right as Rare Metal Dragon opened its jaws and a chaotic vortex began surging out of its mouth— “Activate the set card.” Yushin’s face-down flipped up in the back row.
“Trap Card, Confusion Foil!” Ryan’s eyelid twitched.
Wasn’t that supposed to be a worthless bluff?
Yushin said, “Confusion Foil is a trap that can only be activated when I’m declared the target of a second direct attack in the same Battle Phase.
It forces the attacking monster and the first monster that already attacked me this turn to battle each other!” Ryan: “Wait, what!?” What kind of nonsensical card is that?!
The words had barely left his mouth when Rare Metal Dragon, mid-windup on what should have been a finishing blow, suddenly spun around, and the vortex in its mouth shot straight at its own teammate instead.
Fiend Dragon took the vortex head-on and let out one long, dying wail on its way out, one that might have been trying to shout something like friendly fire, but it was clearly far too late for that.
Ryan: “Aaargh!” [Ryan, LP 4000 → LP 3100] On Yushin’s end, remote-piloting his body as a spirit riding shotgun, he obviously felt no pain at all.
Arbiter Ryan, on the other hand, took the damage with his own real, physical body.
Hearing him cry out that loudly, it finally clicked for Yushin: oh, so duels actually hurt this much?
Made sense, really.
They’d already said the loser would be sacrificed to some dark god, so of course this would be a Shadow Game with real damage attached.
After all, he was in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!
now.
Duels being lethal was basically par for the course, wasn’t it?
The cultists below all shifted expressions.
“This guy actually managed to hurt Arbiter Ryan…” “That was luck.
It had to be luck!” Arbiter Ryan recovered from the pain, his expression far from pleasant.
“…Turn end.” Honestly, a trap like Confusion Foil, one that only worked after eating two direct attacks in the same turn, was admittedly a little questionable.
It wasn’t exactly practical in real matches.
But then again, Yushin was running a slum deck.
Dueling in the Satellite, you took what you could get, and you rarely had the luxury of being picky.
You couldn’t exactly expect to dig something like Magic Cylinder or Mirror Force out of a garbage heap in the slums, could you?
Then, on Yushin’s turn: “My turn, draw.” He scanned his hand again, and once more fell silent.
After a couple seconds of consideration, Yushin said, “I’ll set one monster face-down in Defense Position, and set one card in the back row.
Turn end.” The déjà vu was uncanny.
The whole turn took less than five seconds, leaving people half-convinced they were watching a rerun of the last one.
No way around it.
He’d pulled off a small trick on his opponent, sure, but the overall situation on the field hadn’t really changed.
His opponent’s Rare Metal Dragon still had a terrifying 2400 ATK, on par with the legendary Red-Eyes Black Dragon.
How was he supposed to get through that with what he had?