By now, Yusuke was completely certain that he had ended up somewhere in the Yu-Gi-Oh!
universe.
After all, everyone knew how things worked in Yu-Gi-Oh!
: dueling was practically the highest authority in society, and almost any problem could be settled with a card game.
Just look at his current situation.
An entire cult had kidnapped him, locked him in a cell, and dragged him to an underground altar to be sacrificed, yet even at the final step they still had to pull out a Duel Disk and play cards with him first.
That naturally left Yusuke with a question.
“So even your sacrificial rituals have to be decided by a Duel?” he asked curiously.
“What happens if you lose?
Wouldn’t that be incredibly awkward?” The words had barely left his mouth before laughter shattered the oppressive silence of the cavern.
The black-robed officiant froze for a moment before bursting out laughing.
The cultists lined up on either side of the altar quickly lost their composure as well, muffled chuckles spreading through the chamber until the entire ritual site was filled with laughter.
They were all thinking more or less the same thing.
Today’s sacrifice clearly had no idea what kind of situation he was in.
The guy wasn’t even scared.
Somehow, he actually seemed to think he could win.
The thought alone was absurd enough to be funny.
“Very well.” The black-robed officiant looked down at Yusuke with open amusement.
“If you can defeat me, Ryan Valerius, today, then not only will I take your place as the sacrifice, I’ll even hand over my position as Ritual Arbiter of the Order to you.” The laughter around the altar grew even louder.
Ritual Arbiter was hardly a position an ordinary believer could hope to attain.
Every arbiter entrusted with presiding over the Order’s ceremonies had been selected through multiple rounds of screening and judged to possess the dueling ability necessary to conduct its sacred rituals.
The sacrifices, on the other hand, were usually nothing more than low-level duelists dragged in from the slums known as Satellite.
Many people in Satellite struggled just to get enough food to eat.
Their opportunities to study dueling were limited, the number of skilled opponents they could practice against was equally limited, and even the variety of Duel Monsters cards available in Satellite was painfully small.
As a result, most duelists from the area had limited knowledge, mediocre skills, and cheap Decks assembled from whatever cards they could get their hands on.
Compared with one of the Order’s Ritual Arbiters, they were like an unarmed child facing a trained swordsman with a blade in hand.
As far as Ryan was concerned, there was simply no way for him to lose this Duel.
The Order’s rules demanded that every sacrifice be carried out through a Duel, but in practice the match itself was little more than a ceremonial formality.
A Ritual Arbiter losing during a sacrificial rite had never happened in the Order’s history, and Ryan saw no reason to believe it ever would.
Yusuke thought about that for a moment before asking, “Then what Deck am I supposed to use?” “Since you were selected as the sacrifice, your Deck naturally remains in your possession,” Ryan replied indifferently.
“We never touched it.” Yusuke searched through the clothes of his borrowed body and soon found an old, worn Deck tucked into an inner pocket of his jacket.
“Oh, give me a second.” He immediately started going through the cards.
“I need to see what’s actually in this Deck first.” The surrounding cultists stared at him.
“…?” Seriously?
Did this guy need to read through his own Deck right before the Duel?
Even Ryan was caught off guard.
Then he remembered something his subordinates had reported earlier.
Apparently, today’s sacrifice had struggled fiercely when he was captured and had struck his head during the process.
Looking at him now, perhaps that blow had genuinely rattled something loose.
This penniless nobody from Satellite couldn’t even remember what cards were in his own Deck, yet he still entertained the fantasy that he might win the ritual?
Against Ryan, a seasoned Ritual Arbiter who had fought countless Duels?
Ryan almost laughed again.
…
Meanwhile, Yusuke’s expression grew more troubled with every card he checked.
This was ridiculous!
Forget the rest of the Deck for a moment.
Just looking at the Monster Cards told him everything he needed to know.
Every single one of it was a vanilla Normal Monster.
Not one Effect Monster anywhere.
In dueling slang, “vanilla” referred to a Normal Monster with no special abilities whatsoever, nothing beyond its printed ATK and DEF.
Cards like these had been everywhere during the earliest generations of Yu-Gi-Oh!
Modern Yu-Gi-Oh!
was an entirely different game.
These days, it felt like every monster came with three effects as standard equipment, and if the text box wasn’t packed from top to bottom, the card could barely show its face in public.
Yusuke had played plenty of Yu-Gi-Oh!
in his previous life and considered himself reasonably experienced, but even he wasn’t confident about fighting with an entire Deck full of vanilla monsters.
Still, that was fine.
The endless time inside the temple had nearly driven him insane.
Now he had finally found living people who could actually talk, and on top of that, someone was willing to Duel him.
There was no way he was passing up this opportunity.
Worst-case scenario, if things started looking hopeless, he could simply pull the plug and disconnect.
He was basically just a spirit remotely controlling this body anyway.
It wasn’t his real body.
Besides, there was always a more optimistic possibility.
Maybe the dueling environment in this world resembled the early anime.
Sure, his Deck was made almost entirely of Normal Monsters, but as long as the guy across from him wasn’t some modern combo player who spent three and a half minutes narrating his opening turn, Yusuke might still have a chance.
He quickly finished skimming through the Deck, then raised his head and looked directly at Ryan.
“Got a Duel Disk?” “Of course.” As Ryan spoke, one of the cultists below tossed a Duel Disk onto the altar.
Yusuke caught it and ran his fingers across the casing.
Its design didn’t match any of the Duel Disks he remembered from the various anime series, but it felt cold and solid in his hands, with the unmistakable weight of real metal.
He strapped the Duel Disk onto his arm and inserted his Deck.
A series of quiet mechanical clicks followed as the machine automatically shuffled the cards inside its Deck Zone.
For some reason, Yusuke found himself getting genuinely excited.
He was about to play Yu-Gi-Oh!
for real!
“DUEL!” they shouted together.
[Yusuke — LP: 4000] [Ritual Arbiter Ryan — LP: 4000] “The great lord will decide who takes the first turn,” Ryan explained.
“Whichever Duel Disk lights up first will grant its user the right to choose who goes first.” Yusuke raised an eyebrow.
He couldn’t tell whether that was simply their theatrical way of saying the result would be random, or whether some actual evil god was behind the scenes rigging the outcome.
Ryan’s Duel Disk lit up first.
A smug grin spread across his face.
“It seems the first turn is mine.
My turn—draw!” Yusuke quietly took note of that.
‘The player going first gets to draw…’ That meant they were using rules from before the Yu-Gi-Oh!
ARC-V era.
Under modern rules, the player who went first didn’t draw during their first Draw Phase.
If that detail was anything to go by, there was a good chance this world operated under an older version of the rules.
“I Normal Summon Koumori Dragon in Attack Position!” [Koumori Dragon — ATK: 1500] “Then I Set one card and end my turn.” Ryan slid a card into his Duel Disk, and a face-down card materialized in his Spell & Trap Zone.
That opening immediately put Yusuke more at ease.
One monster and one Set card.
‘Thank God.’ At least Ryan hadn’t launched into some ridiculous opening combo and spent the next three and a half minutes cycling through half his Deck while Yusuke stood there wondering whether he would ever be allowed to play the game.
If that had happened, he might as well have pulled the plug immediately and gone back to the temple.
He still couldn’t determine exactly which era or version of Yu-Gi-Oh!
this world followed, but everything he had seen so far suggested something closer to the earlier generations.
In that case, he actually had a game to play.
Yusuke’s turn arrived.
“My turn—draw!” He drew his card and glanced over his hand.
Then he fell silent.
Hmm…
This was a little embarrassing to admit.
His opponent had just summoned a terrifyingly powerful vanilla monster with a whopping 1500 ATK…
And Yusuke genuinely had no damn way to get over it!