The desert stretched endlessly beneath a pale sky, yellow sand rolling all the way to the horizon.
At its center stood an enormous golden temple, isolated in the middle of that barren expanse.
Its walls gleamed as though plated in gold, and its architecture evoked the grand temples of ancient Egyptian pharaohs—solemn, extravagant, and imposing.
Yet all that splendor only made the silence more unsettling.
The temple was completely empty, with no trace of another living soul.
Yusuke had no idea how long he had been trapped there since transmigrating.
Months, perhaps?
Maybe years?
He honestly couldn’t tell.
There was no day or night in this place, no sunrise or sunset, as though the passage of time itself had lost all meaning.
He had wandered through every side chamber and corridor in the temple more times than he could count before finally being forced to accept one bleak fact: he was the only living person here.
Loneliness was a slow form of torture.
Given enough time, it only grew worse, steadily wearing away at a person’s sanity until there was nothing left.
The one fortunate thing was that, for some reason, Yusuke no longer seemed to need food or water after transmigrating.
No matter how much time passed, his body never felt hungry or thirsty.
Unfortunately, that only applied physically.
Mentally, his craving for food had grown stronger with every passing day.
The longer he remained trapped in this godforsaken place, the more desperately he missed all the food from his previous life.
At this point, if someone gave him access to a food delivery app, Yusuke was fairly sure he could eat the delivery guy along with the order.
Just when he was beginning to think the endless silence might finally drive him insane, something changed.
With nothing better to do, Yusuke was idly running his fingers over the old stonework beside one of the corridor pillars when he noticed that one brick felt slightly loose.
He paused, then instinctively pressed harder.
A dull grinding sound came from inside the wall.
The apparently seamless stone surface sank inward before sliding aside, revealing a hidden doorway.
Yusuke’s heart tightened.
For the first time in what felt like forever, he felt something resembling anticipation, though it came tangled with a fair amount of unease.
Suppressing both his excitement and caution, he carefully stepped through the opening.
Beyond the concealed passage lay a small, sealed chamber.
It was decorated just as lavishly as the rest of the temple, yet the room itself was almost completely empty.
Almost.
At its center stood an ancient stone pedestal.
Floating half an inch above it was a golden octahedron, slowly rotating in midair.
The object looked as though it had been cast from a single piece of pure gold.
Its eight polished faces were perfectly symmetrical, and embedded in the center was a raised Eye of Horus.
The design immediately reminded Yusuke of the Millennium Items from the old Yu-Gi-Oh!
anime.
It certainly shared the same aesthetic, but he was absolutely certain that none of the seven Millennium Items had ever looked like this.
Yusuke slowly raised a hand and touched one of the golden facets.
The instant his fingertip made contact, lines of light flared across the octahedron.
Golden radiance spread over all eight faces while streams of light stirred within the Eye of Horus.
Before Yusuke could react, an invisible force seized his consciousness and pulled it toward the eye as though its pupil had become a whirlpool.
The next moment, the world seemed to turn upside down.
His thoughts were projected through the strange artifact and thrown into an endless void.
For a while, Yusuke felt as though he were traveling through a kaleidoscopic tunnel, its colors twisting and folding endlessly around him.
At the far end lay a darkness resembling outer space.
Countless points of light were scattered throughout the void.
When he moved closer and looked carefully, he realized that each glimmer vaguely resembled a human figure.
The one nearest to him was already extremely faint.
A moment later, it went out completely.
Yusuke moved toward it.
The instant he drew close, an irresistible force suddenly latched onto his consciousness and dragged him toward the extinguished light.
A violent sense of separation tore through him.
It felt as though half of his awareness had remained behind in the empty temple, while another, thinner fragment of his consciousness was forcibly shoved into a completely unfamiliar body.
Yusuke tried to make the body stand.
The sensation was like fitting a brand-new engine into a car that should have been sent to the scrapyard years ago.
After struggling for quite some time, he finally managed to force his eyelids open.
The first thing that hit him was the smell.
Damp mold filled his nose, mixed with rust, rotting wood, and a faint sour stench.
His blurred double vision gradually cleared, revealing rough, blackened stone walls.
There was no natural light overhead, only an old oil lamp caked in dust and grime.
Thick iron bars stood directly in front of him, layered with rust.
Cold seeped through his thin clothing and into his skin, while somewhere nearby, water dripped steadily into a puddle.
Each hollow splash echoed through the darkness.
Yusuke quickly realized that this newly acquired body probably belonged to someone who had died only moments earlier, and whoever that person had been, they had apparently been locked inside a cell.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Judging by what had just happened, the artifact resembling a Millennium Item had somehow allowed him to split off part of his consciousness and project it into somebody else’s body.
‘So what am I now, some kind of spirit possessing people?’ Yusuke was thoroughly confused.
Usually, when a spirit took over someone’s body in stories, the original owner was at least still around and occasionally let the ghost play on their account.
In his case, the account owner seemed to have already died, and Yusuke had simply hijacked the account while the corpse was still warm.
Before he could fully adjust to the unfamiliar body, footsteps sounded outside the cell.
They grew steadily louder, breaking the stagnant silence of the cavern.
Two figures stopped behind the iron bars.
Both were wrapped from head to toe in black robes, their hoods pulled low enough to conceal most of their faces.
Worn bone pendants hung from their sleeves.
The taller one produced a key and turned it in the lock with a sharp click.
The heavy barred door swung inward, letting a gust of cold air into the cell.
“It’s time for the sacrificial ritual,” the tall figure said flatly.
“Move.” Yusuke understood immediately.
Apparently, the original owner of this body had been captured by some kind of cult and prepared as a sacrifice.
A normal person would probably have started panicking at this point.
Yusuke, however, wasn’t afraid at all.
If anything, he was a little excited.
For one thing, his real body was still back inside that strange temple.
Right now, he felt more like a spirit remotely controlling this borrowed body, so if anything genuinely dangerous happened, he could probably just sever the connection and leave.
More importantly, the endless isolation in the temple had nearly driven him insane.
After who knew how long without seeing another person, suddenly encountering two living, breathing human beings who could actually talk—even if they happened to be cultists—was strangely refreshing.
From the cultists’ perspective, however, there was something deeply unsettling about the situation.
Why was today’s sacrifice looking at them with such enthusiasm?
Before either man could figure it out, Yusuke calmly stepped out of the cell on his own.
“Lead the way.” The two cultists exchanged a look.
Was it just them, or did this guy seem almost eager?
Still, a job was a job.
They quickly resumed their grim expressions and positioned themselves on either side of Yusuke before escorting him toward the ritual site.
The formation was obviously meant to prevent him from escaping, but Yusuke couldn’t have cared less.
In fact, he spent most of the walk pestering them with questions.
“So what cult are you guys with?
What god do you worship?
What kind of ritual are we doing today?” “Is the altar far?
Is the ceremony complicated?
Do I need to prepare anything beforehand?” “Come on, say something.
If you’re going to sacrifice me to an evil god, the least you can do is tell me which one.” “Oh, right!
What are your names?
Maybe when I meet your evil god in person, I can put in a good word for you…” The tall and short cultists had started out wearing the solemn, mysterious expressions expected of proper servants of darkness.
But after listening to Yusuke chatter for long enough, the taller one finally cracked.
“My name is Ellis.
Our dark lord—” “Shut up!” the shorter cultist snapped.
Ellis immediately ducked his head and fell silent.
To be fair, this wasn’t their first time escorting a sacrifice.
Most victims screamed, begged, collapsed in terror, or fought desperately to escape.
They had never encountered someone who spent the entire trip excitedly interrogating his captors, much less someone whose questions were starting to make the cultists themselves want to answer.
They were supposed to be the unsettling ones here.
Yet somehow, there was something about today’s sacrifice that made them uncomfortable.
After passing through a long, narrow tunnel, Yusuke finally saw the ritual chamber.
It was an enormous underground cavern with jagged stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
Thick candles burned throughout the chamber, sending trails of dark smoke curling upward.
At the center stood an altar built from black stone, with fragments of animal bone embedded along its edges.
Rows of black-robed cultists stood silently on either side with their heads bowed.
A single figure waited atop the altar, his broad black robes falling all the way to the ground.
The officiant raised one hand.
His deep voice echoed through the cavern.
“Today, we offer this sacrifice.
Through flesh and blood, and through the ritual of battle, we dedicate this offering to our lord.
May the Supreme One bestow his grace upon us and cleanse this world of its sins.” He turned toward the congregation and raised his voice.
“Bring the sacrifice to the altar!” The two escorts turned around and reached for Yusuke— Only to discover that nobody was behind them.
Their hearts skipped a beat.
They frantically looked around, convinced for one absurd moment that the sacrifice had somehow escaped.
Then they looked up.
Yusuke hadn’t run away at all.
He had already climbed onto the black stone altar by himself!
The entire congregation stared at him.
“…?” They had conducted plenty of sacrifices before.
Never once had the victim climbed onto the altar without crying, struggling, or even needing to be escorted.
Yusuke walked to the center of the platform and stopped.
When he noticed that the officiant seemed momentarily at a loss, he decided to help him along.
“All right, let’s get this moving.
What’s the procedure?” The officiant stared at him.
“…” Today’s sacrifice had almost managed to make him forget how to perform his own ceremony.
Was this man actually looking forward to it?
Still, as a professional cultist, the officiant forced himself to continue.
“The offering to our lord must be completed through a ritual of battle.” Yusuke blinked.
“How does that work?
We fight each other here?” As he spoke, he was already rolling up his sleeves.
The officiant shook his head.
“Such primitive methods are beneath the supreme teachings of our lord.” He swept aside the outer layer of his black robe.
Strapped to his arm was a black Duel Disk, its dark metal surface catching the candlelight.
“We shall conduct the ritual of battle through sacred cards and offer to our lord the soul revealed through the Duel!” Yusuke’s eyes immediately lit up.
The soul of a card-game addict that had been dormant beneath months—or possibly years—of crushing isolation came roaring back to life!
‘Wait, we’re dueling?’ He should have said so sooner.
Now Yusuke was wide awake!