“[Rhinotaurus]!
FIRE attribute, Beast-Warrior type, a full 1,800 attack points!
And as long as two or more monsters are destroyed on the field during the Battle Phase, this card gets to attack a second time!” Kai dropped his voice low, smugness practically leaking out of it.
“I shelled out a fortune for this on the trading market!
With this ace, once we’re in the Ruins and trouble shows up, big brother Kai’s got your back!” Watching Kai’s ‘I’m invincible’ expression, Nate couldn’t help cracking a smile.
An 1,800-attack monster as an ace?
With brutally strict destruction conditions just to land a double attack?
The card had a bit of an effect, sure, but in this environment it was basically a blank vanilla.
It seemed the Deck-building level of this world was even more primitive than he’d imagined.
“Kai, I appreciate the thought.” Nate smiled and pushed the card back.
“Better keep this ace for your own protection.” With that, he stopped paying attention to Kai’s confusion and called up the System in his mind.
He remembered that right after awakening, the System had clearly mentioned something about a beginner’s reward.
“System, open interface.” [Command received.] The cold electronic voice sounded in his head, and the next second a faintly azure-glowing tech panel hovered before his eyes.
The interface was unusually sparse, just two options: [Card Pool] and [Backpack].
“The beginner’s reward should be in the backpack.” Nate tapped it open, full of anticipation.
But once he saw what was inside, he couldn’t help freezing.
Empty.
Bone empty.
Forget a prebuilt Deck, there wasn’t even a single basic Normal Monster.
“Don’t tell me I have to pull from the Card Pool myself?” Refusing to give up, he tapped the [Card Pool] button beside it.
[Conditions not met.
Card Pool currently locked.] Nate: “…” So I awakened a defective System?
Other people transmigrate and get handed Tearlaments, Branded, or Eldlich right out of the gate, and here I am where even the beginner’s gift pack glitches out?
“System, didn’t you say there was a beginner’s pack?
Where is it?
Why don’t I see anything!” Nate demanded inwardly.
[The pack has been distributed.
Host, please check your inventory.] Distributed?
But I don’t see anything at all.
Nate was about to argue when a line from the moment the System awakened suddenly flashed through his mind: [all Extra Summoning rights unlocked].
Could it be…
the reward wasn’t on the System panel, but in…
The thought hit him and his head snapped down, his gaze landing on the Extra Deck zone of the Duel Disk on his left arm.
The instant his eyes focused, a translucent virtual panel that only he could see popped open.
Resting quietly in the Extra Deck slots were fifteen cards.
No art.
No level.
No text description of any kind.
But on the card frames, four colors wove together in perfect harmony: the purple of Fusion, the white of Synchro, the black of Xyz, and the blue of Link, the four lights drifting slowly across the blank card faces.
Nothing on them at all.
What was this supposed to mean?
Staring at the fifteen identical four-color blank cards on the panel, Nate nearly laughed in exasperation.
So this was the System’s beginner’s reward?
It wanted me to cosplay Yugi Muto, was that it?
Every time I’m about to lose, shout something like “maybe, just maybe” and then conjure a card on the spot for a comeback?
Was this thing seriously custom-made for the Pharaoh?
Wait…
Something occurred to Nate, and a wild idea detonated in his mind.
To confirm his guess, he immediately asked inwardly.
“System, my Extra Deck, as long as a certain condition is met, can it directly manifest the corresponding card?!” The instant the words landed, the System’s voice rang out again.
[Correct.
As long as the Host satisfies the Summoning conditions on the field or in hand, the blank card will ignore real-world card pool restrictions and automatically materialize into ANY corresponding Extra monster from the entire Yu-Gi-Oh card pool!
And to outsiders, it will appear as a genuine physical card.] [Furthermore, when monsters on the field meet the conditions, related Extra monsters will be generated accordingly.] Hearing this, Nate drew a deep breath and forced down the corners of his mouth as they tried to shoot upward.
Understood.
As long as the conditions are there, I can print whatever I want.
In a world where people were still mostly swinging Battle Ox at each other, with only a vague grasp of advanced Summoning, this was a flat-out dimensional-tier curbstomp!
When an ordinary expert’s Deck got studied through and through, it would get hit with counter cards.
But that was useless against him.
Please.
Not even he knew what these fifteen blank cards would become from one second to the next.
How was anyone supposed to counter that?
Still, once the euphoria passed, Nate quickly cooled down.
No matter how broken the Extra Deck was, it still needed the materials from the main Deck working in concert to Summon anything.
Take the Hero Deck the school had handed out.
Forget Elemental HERO Neos, it couldn’t even scrape together a single decent material.
At that, he turned to Kai beside him.
“Kai, you got any spare junk cards you’re not using?
Let me have a look.” Kai looked puzzled.
“You’re adjusting your Deck?” He sighed.
“Makes sense.
That garbage starter Deck the school hands out, even a dog wouldn’t touch it.
Give us a Hero Deck with no Neos, a Blue-Eyes Deck that won’t even include Blue-Eyes White Dragon, a Dark Magician Deck that doesn’t even have Dark Magician in it!” “They dress it up as ‘training the students’ ability to collect cards themselves.’ But in reality?
All the good resources get funneled to the privileged class!
I heard second-year Senior Alexis got the full [Cyber Angel] set issued to her the moment she enrolled, all because her talent was off the charts and she specialized in Ritual right from the start!” “And then there’s the ice-queen campus beauty in our year’s Class 1, Rio Kastle.
She just came up from middle school this year as the top student, and the school straight-up rewarded her with an ultra-rare [WATER attribute Xyz] Deck!” “Even the top-ranked elite classes get to claim complete Decks.
It’s only us bottom-feeder classes that get treated like pure cannon fodder!” Ranting furiously the whole time, he yanked open his backpack and pulled out a thick stack of loose cards.
“Here.
This is all the cheap stuff I dug up by the pound on the school trading forum.
See if there’s anything you can use.” Nate took the hefty pile of cards and flipped through them quickly, finding there really were quite a few good things in here.
After sifting through, he pulled out three cards.
One [Fusion Parasite], and two [Goddess with the Third Eye].
Seeing the cards Nate had chosen, Kai nearly lost it.
“Nate, are you still half-asleep?
Not one of these has an attack stat over 1,200!
And that [Fusion Parasite] has literally 0 attack!
It’s worse than a small fry!” He hurriedly drew a card from his own case and held it out.
“Listen to your brother.
I’ve got two [Rhinotaurus], one each for us.
The effect’s a bit demanding, sure, but the base stats are great!
That crippled Dark Magician Deck the school issued, its highest attacker is a measly 1,500-attack beater.
My [Rhinotaurus] beats it by a whole 300 points!” Hearing this, Nate smiled and pushed the [Rhinotaurus] back.
“No need.
Keep the good card for yourself.
[Fusion Parasite] and [Goddess with the Third Eye] might be small fry to other people, but to me, they mean something entirely different.” The shared effect of these two cards was that they could substitute for any one Fusion monster’s listed material!
To others, these cards were scrap paper.
But to him, these two were practically god-tier material!
Just having them in hand opened up an immeasurable range of plays.
While the two of them chatted and joked, they’d drifted along with the crowd to the school’s large field.
From his conversation with Kai, he’d gotten a rough sense of this world that had once been so familiar to him and now felt subtly foreign.
The world was still in the same era, only the school’s name was different, and there were now some characters he never would have expected.
As a collective first-year activity, the field was already packed with people.
On the enormous holographic screen at the front of the field, combat highlight reels of the upperclass Duel Goddesses played on a loop.
The sky full of crimson lotuses as Akiza Izinski Summoned [Black Rose Dragon], and Alexis’s dazzling poise as she Summoned [Cyber Angel], drew waves of gasps from the new students on the field, their eyes feverish.
The classes ahead had long since formed up in neat ranks, since their floors were lower, an uniform array of high-end custom Duel Disks glinting blindingly in the sunlight.
Class 10, meanwhile, had its classroom on the top floor, the 6th, and could only head down after all the other classes had cleared out, so they arrived last of all.
“Dragging their feet.
Trash class is a trash class through and through.” The moment they drew near, an undisguised sneer drifted over from the Class 5 ranks not far off.
Old Hiroshi, walking at the front, acted as if he hadn’t heard, his face dark as he directed everyone toward the last two buses.
He’d heard this kind of cold mockery far too many times, and even the students in his class had grown used to it, every one of them keeping their heads down and pretending not to hear as they shuffled silently onto the bus.
Only Nate stopped in his tracks, narrowed his eyes, and shot a cold glance at the Class 5 student who’d just spoken.
That student noticed Nate’s gaze, and seeing that someone from a class that normally waddled past with their heads down like penguins whenever they saw him would actually dare to look him in the eye, he couldn’t help being taken aback.
“Interesting.” He spoke softly, looked at Nate, stuck out his thumb, and then abruptly turned it down.
“Nate, let’s go.” Noticing Nate’s gaze, Kai patted him on the shoulder and said with a wry smile.
“Don’t bother with them.
These few elite classes up front are all like this, every one of them arrogant beyond belief.
Besides, our class is dead last in the rankings anyway.
Everyone’s already used to it.
Let them say what they want.” “Used to it?” Nate stopped walking and looked at the one who’d spoken.
“So just because our starting point is lower than everyone else’s, because our skills fall short, we deserve to be treated like a joke for the rest of our lives, trampled underfoot and laughed at as they please?” With that, Nate cast one last look toward the Class 5 ranks, drew his gaze back, and strode up onto the bus.
Kai stood frozen in place.
He stared blankly at Nate’s tall, straight-backed figure, and suddenly realized…
his friend, the one who was always dozing off in class, seemed today to have become a completely different person.