Yugi Muto hadn’t retired?
That caught Yusuke completely off guard.
Once he learned that this place was Satellite, he had naturally assumed he was somewhere in the setting of Yu-Gi-Oh!
5D’s.
Yugi Muto, as everyone knew, had been active during the original Yu-Gi-Oh!
Duel Monsters era.
Several years later came the events of Yu-Gi-Oh!
GX, by which point most of the legendary duelists from Yugi’s generation had already withdrawn from the public stage.
The timeline of Yu-Gi-Oh!
5D’s was even further removed from those first two generations.
As far as Yusuke remembered, the only character from the original era still running around in 5D’s was the legendary living fossil himself, Tetsu Trudge.
Trudge was practically a franchise-spanning miracle.
He had appeared all the way back in the very first chapter of the original manga as the upperclassman who bullied Yugi.
Making him one of the first people in modern times fortunate enough to receive one of the Pharaoh’s Penalty Games.
Then, somehow, by the third series he had become an officer with Sector Security, spending his days playing cat and mouse with Yusei Fudo.
Well…
calling it cat and mouse might have been generous to Trudge.
Most of the time, it was more like watching the mouse toy with the cat.
As far as Yusuke knew, aside from that miraculous living fossil, none of the original generation should still have been active by the 5D’s era.
Yet Yukine had just told him that Yugi hadn’t retired at all.
“Yeah.
I saw Yugi Muto on TV at Duel Academy just last month,” Yukine said.
“He’d been invited to an event in America hosted by KaibaCorp.” The mention of KaibaCorp immediately gave Yusuke another question.
“What about Seto Kaiba?
Is he still around too?” The anime from his previous life had never explained in detail what had happened to Kaiba by the 5D’s era.
There had, however, been plenty of fan speculation that he had eventually found a way to chase his favorite rival into the afterlife for another Duel.
Of course, that particular rival would have been Atem, the Pharaoh who had returned to the afterlife, rather than the Yugi Muto who was apparently still alive and kicking in the present day.
“Of course he is.
Why wouldn’t he be?” Yukine laughed, looking increasingly convinced that her brother had hit his head somewhere.
“Brother, what are you even talking about?
KaibaCorp is the largest corporation in the world.
The development of Ener-D and most of the explosive technological progress humanity has made over the past decade are credited to President Kaiba.
Seto Kaiba is even regarded as one of the most influential people alive today.” Yusuke fell silent.
“…” Kaiba was still around too?
After thinking for a moment, Yusuke couldn’t resist asking one more question.
“Then what about Jaden Yuki?
Have you heard that name before?” “Of course I have.” Yukine answered without hesitation.
“He won the seventh Battle City tournament ten years ago and became the third King of Games.
He’s also known as the King of Heroes!
He’s still considered one of the strongest duelists in the world today.
How could anyone not have heard of him?” She paused before adding, “Oh, and supposedly he once challenged Yugi Muto himself.
The Duel was never made public, but most people say Yugi probably won.
Though apparently the two of them are actually very close in private.” Yusuke stared at her.
“…” Jaden had become a King of Games?
And judging from the way Yukine spoke about him, he was apparently still quite active.
If Yusuke remembered GX correctly, Jaden had certainly reached the level of the world’s strongest duelists toward the end of the series, but he rarely participated in major public tournaments.
By the end of the anime, he had never officially received the title of King of Games.
Yusuke rubbed his temples.
‘Where the hell did I end up?
Is this even 5D’s anymore?’ What kind of timeline was this?
He was starting to feel as though he had spawned onto a map where every legendary monster from the previous generations was still wandering around at max level!
…
By then, they had more or less finished their modest dinner.
Yukine stood and carried the dishes into the kitchen.
Yusuke got up to help wash them, only to be pushed back out by his sister once again.
“I already told you, Brother.
Just sit down and relax.” Yukine puffed out her cheeks.
“What’s gotten into you today?
You keep asking weird questions, and now you won’t stop trying to steal my chores.” With no other choice, Yusuke gave up.
Soon the sound of running water came from the kitchen, accompanied by Yukine softly humming a cheerful tune.
Maybe it was because Yusuke had praised her cooking so enthusiastically, or perhaps she was simply happy that her brother had spent so much time talking with her today.
Either way, she sounded noticeably happier than before.
With nothing else to do for the moment, Yusuke took out the cards he had looted from the cultists and began sorting through his haul.
From the perspective of someone accustomed to modern Yu-Gi-Oh!, most of his newly acquired cards still weren’t particularly impressive.
Even so, they were unquestionably better than Fujishiro Yusuke’s original Deck full of Normal Monsters.
Most of the useful cards had come from Ryan.
After sorting through them, Yusuke quickly realized that the former Ritual Arbiter had apparently been something of a Dragon fanatic.
Most of his Deck revolved around Dragon monsters, though that was hardly surprising.
Dragons had always been one of the largest and most heavily supported monster Types in Yu-Gi-Oh!
If there were two things this game would never run out of, it was players obsessed with Dragons and players who couldn’t resist filling their Decks with pretty-girl cards.
Among Ryan’s cards, one of the first that caught Yusuke’s attention was the Assault Wyvern he had used during their Duel.
A Level 4 monster with 1800 ATK was already quite respectable in an environment like this, and that wasn’t even counting its useful effect, which allowed it to Tribute itself after destroying a monster by battle to Special Summon a Dragon from the hand or Graveyard.
A card of this quality was probably considered genuinely powerful in Satellite.
Looking at it from that perspective, Yusuke could understand why Ryan had been so confident in his own dueling ability.
Another card Yusuke selected was Masked Dragon.
It only had 1400 ATK, but when destroyed by battle, it could replace itself by Special Summoning another Dragon directly from the Deck.
As a longtime player, Yusuke clearly remembered how highly valued monsters with those kinds of floating effects had been during the early eras of Yu-Gi-Oh!
They had remained relevant in the real competitive game for quite a long time.
Considering the extremely limited card pool Yusuke currently had access to, Masked Dragon was easily one of the better cards available to him.
Most of the cards he had recovered from the other cultists were useless.
There was one exception that Yusuke considered decent: the Equip Spell Axe of Fools.
Its main effect increased the equipped monster’s ATK by 1000, with the drawback of negating that monster’s effects.
Putting everything else aside, Yusuke figured an Equip Spell capable of granting a full 1000 ATK was probably quite formidable in Satellite’s dueling environment.
Thinking about it that way, perhaps his first impression had been a little unfair.
By the standards he remembered from modern competitive Yu-Gi-Oh!, the cultists’ cards looked laughably outdated, but within Satellite they might genuinely have qualified as elite duelists.
Yusuke finished sorting his collection and replaced some of the weaker cards in his Deck with the better cards he had just acquired.
It was still an unstructured pile of unrelated cards, but its overall strength had improved considerably.
Yusuke remembered that competitive Yu-Gi-Oh!
in the real world had gone through a similar period in its early years.
For a long time, many of the strongest competitive Decks had essentially been “good-stuff” piles built by selecting individually powerful cards from all over the card pool rather than committing to a single archetype.
There had even been a period when many players considered most archetype-focused Decks released by Konami too weak for serious competition, while carefully assembled collections of powerful generic cards dominated tournament play.
Of course, that had been a very long time ago.
Looking down at the newly upgraded pile in his hands, Yusuke suddenly felt as though he had been transported back to those ancient, lawless days of early Yu-Gi-Oh!.
He was even starting to feel like finding someone and testing the new Deck out.
Almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind, a violent pounding came from the front door.
Yusuke put away his Deck and looked up.
“Who is it?” “It’s me—Itagaki from the Fang Gang!” a rough male voice shouted from outside.
The moment she heard him, Yukine hurried out of the kitchen, her small face turning pale.
“Oh no…
It’s the Fang Gang.” She swallowed nervously.
“They’re here to collect the protection money…”