Advancement

"Brother Manjoume lost?"

In the stands, Little Brother A and Little Brother B both wore expressions of utter disbelief.

As fellow students in Duel Academy's Middle School Division, they both knew Brother Manjoume's strength. It was no exaggeration to say that even among the elite-packed Middle School Division, Manjoume was unquestionably the strongest of their year.

And yet Manjoume had actually lost so casually to a rookie in his first competition?

Was this rookie some kind of monster?

The red-haired girl beside them was stunned for quite a while as well, then looked at the two of them. "Looks like your big brother lost."

The two lackeys looked at each other, hesitated for a moment, then spoke.

"Oh, we got him mixed up just now. At first glance, he looked a little like our big brother, but on closer inspection, he wasn't." Little Brother A said.

"Yeah, yeah, he really does look a lot like him, haha." Little Brother B added.

The red-haired girl narrowed her eyes. "So what, they happen to have the same name too?"

"Y-yes."

The two lackeys forced the words out through gritted teeth.

"What a coincidence."

"..."

This match had been a major upset, and the audience was thoroughly surprised. But perhaps no one wanted to cough up blood more than Manjoume himself.

Losing was one thing, but the key was that he even had a strange feeling that his opponent had not exerted himself at all.

Throughout the entire duel, his opponent had seemed utterly at ease. It was as though he had stepped onto the field with a casual air of I'll just play around with you for a bit, never getting serious in the slightest.

His opponent had not even summoned a single Tribute Monster!

Manjoume believed he had built up his field to the limit and applied more than enough pressure. Yet the other side had handled it effortlessly, as though casually dissolving his full strength. No, more accurately, it felt like punching cotton.

Over the entire duel, Manjoume felt as if the atmosphere had been built up to that point, with setup upon setup upon setup. He had already charged up to the point of bursting, yet had nowhere to vent it...

In short, he had never encountered such an infuriating duel.

"Wait."

Unable to hold himself back, he called out just as the other side put away his Duel Disk and turned to leave the field.

Kira stopped and turned around.

"Just who are you?" Manjoume asked through clenched teeth, unwilling to accept it.

Kira met his gaze and merely smiled faintly.

"Just a passing One-star Duelist."

With that, he turned and left in style. Manjoume only felt as though he had been stabbed through the heart once more and wanted to cough up blood.

One-star?

What kind of idiotic system, what kind of idiotic evaluation system was this? You called that Level One?

No matter what, Manjoume's run ended in the quarterfinals. When he went back, who knew how badly his two brothers would chew him out. Losing to Ryuzaki would have been one thing, but he had lost to some nameless nobody, and the way that guy played cards had practically given him a brain hemorrhage...

He had to have suffered eight lifetimes' worth of bad luck to run into that bastard.

Putting everything else aside, there was one thing Manjoume was certain of.

For the rest of his life, he never, ever, ever wanted to see that sneaky bastard again.

Kira reviewed his matches from the past few days, drawing experience from real combat with the local duelists and summarizing the lessons he had learned.

Though he had yet to encounter any truly tough opponents in this tournament, the matches had made him realize a flaw in his previous line of thinking.

That was, he could not directly use the Real Card Environment from the corresponding era as a substitute for the Anime Environment.

Though Hand Destruction had once been a deck that dominated competitive play and possessed tremendous suppressive power here as well, it was fine against ordinary duelists. But against experts from the anime, its effectiveness might be reduced.

First, the anime had absurd Draw Engines that did not exist in the real cards. It was entirely possible for a single card to accelerate through five or six draws.

Second, even if the powerful characters in the anime had no cards in hand and an empty field, it was commonplace for them to turn things around with one card. This was not mysticism; there was an explanation for it. In the original's words, "For a True Duelist, everything is inevitable. Even the cards they draw can be created."

Take Judai Yuki in the later GX Anime. Whenever he faced a tough fight, he always put on colored contacts. That was not just for looks. In the form where he activated the Power of the Supreme King, Judai had God Draw Power on a higher level than usual, making him a high-level powerhouse even within the Anime Supernatural System.

In his Supreme King Form, Judai could probably crush an ordinary person using a top-tier build even if he himself held a random pile of forty mismatched cards drawn from the Card Pool.

"If only I could find some God Draw Skills somehow..." Kira sighed.

At first glance, it seemed like getting transported into Yu-Gi-Oh! meant you could soar as long as you knew how to play cards. But without some Supernatural Foundation, surviving in the later environment where Gods and Immortals filled the skies would not necessarily be easy.

As everyone knew, the simplest and most direct way to obtain a Supernatural Rank in Yu-Gi-Oh! was not cultivation, but finding a way to get a Spirit Possession. But as far as he knew, most of the spirits in the original already belonged to someone. Where was he supposed to trick one up?

For now, he would not think about that. All he could do at present was study the environment as much as possible, optimize his deck, and improve his tactics.

Kira was still in the exploratory stage, testing things out through actual duels. His deck had not yet fully taken shape.

His next opponent was named Kajimoto Makoto, a Duelist Level Five. His profile listed several public tournament results and marked him as a True Disciple of the Psychic Style Duel Dojo.

Psychic Style. Kira pondered hard when he saw the name.

If he remembered correctly, this school had briefly appeared in the later GX Anime. It was a rival of the Cyber Style Duel Dojo inherited by Zane Truesdale. Near the end of the anime, a master with Menkyo Kaiden in the Psychic Style even appeared to challenge Zane's dojo, using Jinzo.

During the half day before the match, he had watched recordings of several of his opponent's recent public duels. Kajiki Makoto seemed to use a deck centered around "Mechanical King," one of the Ace Monster series belonging to the Big Five, villains who had betrayed KaibaCorp in the DM Anime.

According to the Psychic Style duelist who had gone to challenge Zane Truesdale's dojo in the anime, Jinzo was supposedly the ace of their Psychic Style. But Kajiki Makoto's deck clearly did not include it.

But on second thought, that made sense. Cyber End Dragon was said to be the ace of the Cyber Style, but the dojo only had one copy. It was passed only to the school's sole legitimate successor and served as proof of their identity within the school.

Kajiki Makoto was merely an apprentice of the Psychic Style, so he clearly did not yet have the qualifications to inherit the school's ace.

After watching recordings of his opponent's previous matches, Kira had already grasped the other side's tactics. He had also adjusted his own deck in preparation.

He performed one final pre-match deck check and confirmed that there were no issues. Rising to his feet, he inserted the deck into his Duel Disk, fastened it properly, and walked through the dim passage toward the arena.

The host had already finished warming up the crowd and introducing the match. Kira walked up the stairs onto the stage and saw that his opponent had also appeared on the opposite side of the field. Their gazes met in midair, sparking invisible flames.

Kira took his place on the field, and his Duel Disk unfolded.

This duel probably would not be a problem.