Joey Wheeler struggled to remain standing as black smoke hissed across the field. His legs trembled slightly, but no matter what, he stubbornly stayed on his feet.
"I-I won..."
Joey let out a long breath.
During the climax of the duel just now, his adrenaline had been surging, and he had been too caught up in the excitement to notice anything else. Now that he had finally won and his taut nerves had relaxed, the pain immediately crashed over him like a tide.
"Ow, ow, ow..."
Joey crouched down, baring his teeth in pain.
"Damn it, that bastard really didn't hold back..."
It was obviously just a card game, yet he felt more battered than when he used to take on ten delinquents by himself. Dueling really was the most dangerous sport in the world.
"But seriously, that bastard was really strong, especially that Deck of his. What was that again?"
Joey still had questions in his heart as he thought about it.
He had never even heard of such a counterintuitive Deck before. Kaiba claimed to be the foremost Dragon-Type expert of the age, but that guy had clearly been using Dragon-Type monsters too, and his Deck felt a whole level stronger than Kaiba's.
No, the strength of the Deck was still secondary.
More than those dragons that seemed able to leap onto the field whenever they pleased at no cost, what Joey cared about was that Summoning Method called "Xyz."
What the heck was that? It had already gone beyond the Dueling Rules he knew, hadn't it?
Joey scratched his head, growing more confused the more he thought about it. Even when he had faced powerful opponents in the past, even when they brought out absurdly powerful monsters like the Egyptian God Cards that seemed to belong in