The Starting Deck I'd brought with me after transmigrating had finally taken shape. After checking and confirming that everything was in order, Kira naturally began to feel the itch to play.
No card player could possibly finish building a deck and not want to test its strength.
So his first choice was naturally to head straight to the dojo his predecessor had belonged to and find a fellow member at random to bring him the joy of a duel.
When he arrived at the dojo, he saw a group of students gathered together and making a racket the moment he stepped inside.
"As expected of Brother Sato, he actually Successfully Leveled Up!"
Kira raised an eyebrow and looked over curiously.
Standing in the middle of the apprentices was a blond guy with a hairstyle that looked like he might be pretty good at cards. He sounded modest, but the pride on his face was impossible to hide. "Not at all, not at all. I just got lucky and reached Three Stars. It's nothing special, haha."
"Level three! Brother Sato should be the first level three in our dojo, right?"
"That's amazing!"
Kira frowned and searched through his predecessor's memories before finally understanding what they were talking about.
The Duelist Star Rating System was a strength evaluation metric KaibaCorp adjusted in real time based on each duelist's registered record within the company system. It was the same system that had appeared in the Yu-Gi-Oh! DM anime.
Under normal circumstances, duelist ratings ranged from Level One to Level Eight, for a total of eight tiers. During the Battle City arc of the DM anime, both Duel King Yugi Mutou and Seto Kaiba had been rated Level Eight.
However, it was also clear that this system was not absolutely authoritative. Sometimes, personal factors came into play. Take Katsuya Jonouchi, for example—the man Kaiba had contemptuously called "a commoner."
Jonouchi had been called "the World's Third Best Duelist, second only to Yugi and Kaiba" by Pegasus, yet KaibaCorp's system only rated him Level Two, an amateur rank.
It was hard to say that president Kaiba's personal grudge against the commoner had not played a part in that.
But that had been during the Battle City era. By now, Katsuya Jonouchi had long since been adjusted to Level Eight, the highest tier among duelists in the conventional sense, and was known to the world as a Legendary Duelist.
Meanwhile, president Seto Kaiba had arrogantly adjusted his own rating to level ten.
Only two level ten duelists existed in the world. One was Seto Kaiba himself, and the other was Yugi Mutou, who had long since retired after sealing his cards.
This setting was partly because president Kaiba believed himself to be a tier above all living duelists, while also representing that Yugi Mutou was the only opponent in the world he acknowledged as qualified to match him.
Well, saying "match" was actually a bit of an exaggeration. As everyone knew, president Kaiba had arranged countless duels with Duel King Yugi Mutou throughout his life, yet had not won a single one so far.
And Kira's predecessor's rating in the system was—
One star.
The king of trash players.
Kira: (ヘ｀;)
Obviously, it was because his predecessor had been bad yet loved playing anyway. He often went to the KaibaCorp arenas to play ranked matches, but lost more than he won. Over time, his rating had naturally plummeted all the way to the bottom of the abyss.
Ordinary people had to play ranked matches in the arena to raise their ratings, though matchmaking in the arena apparently only allowed them to reach Four Stars at most. To climb any higher, they had to participate in public competitions.
Only then did he remember that when he had looked up Duel Academy's admission requirements before, there had seemed to be a rule stating that a KaibaCorp-certified duelist needed to be at least level three.
In this system, Levels Seven and Eight were either Legendary Duelists or top experts in the pro scene. Most Pro Players were level six, while a small number of lower-tier professionals were level five.
Most amateur duelists clustered around Level Two. Level One was for rookies below average, while level three already counted as an expert.
So Duel Academy requiring Three Stars or above for admission was actually a fairly high bar.
But that was only natural. At this stage, duel education in this world was still in its infancy, and there were not many schools to choose from. The academy Kaiba had founded was among the best of them, and both its quality and the enormous resources invested in it were obvious to all.
At the beginning of the GX Anime, the principal had also mentioned in a speech to the entire school that the academy's admissions were strict, which was why every student present was an elite. Even the background students in the anime, including the underachieving poor students of Slifer Red dormitory, were theoretically stronger than most duelists outside.
"So if I want to get into the academy, I need to grind rating first?" Kira's mouth twitched.
The apprentice surrounded by everyone was named Koji Sato. He was already the Big Brother of this small dojo. It seemed he had gotten lucky this week and reached Three Stars, so everyone was congratulating him.
Kira happened to be looking for someone to arrange a duel with, and after considering it, he decided he might as well challenge the Big Brother.
Although the nameless extras in the anime all seemed rather weak, Kira knew that only practice revealed the truth. He could not casually draw conclusions based on preconceived notions without personally testing things.
This was the perfect chance to see how strong duelists in this world really were.
The dojo encouraged its students to arrange duels and spar regularly. Sato had just gained a major rank boost and was in high spirits, so naturally he had no reason to refuse a challenge.
The students scattered around the dojo immediately gathered onto the Duel Field to watch when they heard there was a match to see.
"Seriously? That Kira guy? He challenged Brother Sato?"
"Wasn't he only one star? Isn't he just asking to be crushed?"
The students laughed and joked nearby while the two combatants took their positions at opposite ends of the hall.
Koji Sato was relaxed. Having just climbed in rating and returned to the dojo to arrange a duel, he looked at all these Junior Disciples with the lofty air of someone standing above the mountains.
He now felt like a grandmaster coming to instruct the younger generation. This duel was no longer about sparring to improve himself. On one hand, he could offer some guidance to his juniors; on the other, it satisfied his need to show off in front of them.
Well, the latter probably mattered a little more.
Why wouldn't it?
He was a Three-Star big shot facing a One-Star junior. How could he possibly lose?
The two Duel Disks unfolded, and each drew five cards.
"Duel!" x2
Kira, LP 4000
Koji, LP 4000
"I'll go first. Draw."
Kira drew from his deck.
This was still the era when the first player could draw a card. In his previous life, the first player had not been allowed to draw for many years already.
Turn order was generally determined randomly by both Duel Disks, though the player who got first turn could also choose to give it up.
He swept his eyes over his opening six cards and could not help nodding slightly. It was not exactly a "perfect hand," but it was decent enough.
"First, this card."
He pulled out the first card and inserted it into his Duel Disk.
"I pay 1000 Life Points to activate the Spell Card, Mischievous Twins, from my hand!"
Kira, LP 4000 → LP 3000
As the card was inserted, a holographic projection of the green Spell Card appeared in front of Kira. Two little demons, one red and one blue, flew out together, with the numbers "1" and "2" above their heads respectively.
"This card's effect makes my opponent randomly discard one card from his hand, then choose another card from his hand to discard."
A simple and brutal heavy weapon of hand destruction from early tournaments. A violent one-for-two trade that immediately put the opponent down two cards from the start.
It was easy to imagine why something this vicious received the same treatment as Pot of Greed. It had been a Permanently Banned Card ever since Kira had started playing cards. So after all these years of playing, this was his first time personally slapping one down.
The demons lunged forward and, without a word, snatched a card from Koji's hand, as if saying, Hand it over.
Koji frowned, then selected another card himself and sent it to the Graveyard.
After that, Kira made no further moves. He smoothly drew out three cards from his hand—
—set all three, then ended his turn.
Then he made a welcoming gesture.
All right, now it was his turn to play Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Any real-life card player facing those three ominous backrow cards would have already started sensing the chill of the underworld and broken into a cold sweat. But as the saying went, ignorance was bliss. Duelists in the sunny atmosphere of the anime had no idea how serious the problem was.
Koji even retained the gentle smile of a friendly senior, speaking in an instructive tone. "Didn't draw any Monster Cards on your first turn? Junior disciple, you need to pay attention to properly balancing monsters, Spells, and Traps when Deck Building.
"Then it's My Turn. Draw!"
"Wait."
Kira interrupted him with a sweep of his hand.
"The moment you draw, my Trap has already activated. Open Set Card, Trap Card—Drop Off!
"Activate it during the opponent's Draw Phase and discard the card he drew directly to the Graveyard."
Koji: "!"
After hesitating briefly, he sent the card he had just drawn and had not even had time to warm up to the Graveyard zone of his Duel Disk. Then he looked down at his hand and finally began to realize something was wrong.
Up to this point, neither side had even played a monster. It seemed the duel had not truly begun, yet half of Koji's six opening cards were already gone, leaving him with only three.
And he faced an even more painful problem.
He did not have any monsters in his hand either.
One of the two cards discarded by Mischievous Twins had been a Lower-Level Monster, and the card sent down by Drop Off just now had been another. He only had three cards left in total, and not a single monster he could play.
But it did not matter.
"Tch, if that's the case, then I'll activate this Spell Card from my hand—"
Koji swept his hand out and directly played another card from the three he had left.
Monster Reborn!
A Revival Spell that could Revive from Graveyard one monster. From DM through the GX Era, it had been a highly sought-after Comeback God Card in both reality and the anime.
"I'll use Monster Reborn to revive this guy—Zera the Warrior, revived in Attack Position!"
This time, a warrior clad in green armor and wielding a greatsword appeared. He stood majestically in the center of the field, becoming the first monster to appear in this duel.
Zera the Warrior, ATK 1600
If he had a choice, Koji certainly would not have wanted to use the precious Monster Reborn to revive such a worthless monster. But he had no other cards to play. Hesitation in a duel meant defeat; he had to seize this opportunity and establish an offensive rhythm.
"Open Set Card—Bottomless Trap Hole." Kira calmly flipped over one of his backrow cards. "When my opponent summons a monster with 1500 or more Attack Points, that monster is destroyed and banished."
Thus, Zera the Warrior, who had entered the field at the cost of a Monster Reborn and had not even steadied his footing, stepped straight into a dark hole that opened beneath him. He fell in and exploded with a boom into a cloud of smoke, vanishing without a trace.
Koji: "."
Only two cards remained in his hand, and his field was still completely empty.
Perhaps it was an illusion.
But Koji Sato seemed to feel his blood pressure beginning to rise.
Before you continue