Who wouldn't want to be a hero?

By the time Yūki pushed open his front door, his hands were already itching.

He tossed his schoolbag onto the couch without even bothering to straighten his shoes.

He had spent the entire train ride working it out in his head.

Over seven thousand Duel Coins, three hundred a pull-that meant twenty-five packs.

Three cards per pack.

Twenty-five packs meant seventy-five HERO-related cards.

In the OCG environment, that was only about as many cards as opening two Booster Packs would get him.

But this was an Archetype Pack. The pool consisted entirely of Jaden's Elemental HERO lineup, so every card he pulled would be relevant to the core engine, with no chance of straying into anything strange.

Unless his luck was particularly bad, putting together a reasonably strong HERO Deck shouldn't be a problem.

At that thought, Yūki's mind suddenly took a turn.

If he actually pulled cards like Elemental HERO Neos and Flame Wingman... would there be spirits inside them?

He sat down on the edge of the bed, his expression shifting slightly.

After all, cards in this world had spirits.

Jaden had more spirits than could be counted. Those Elemental HERO spirits were almost all gathered around him; he simply couldn't sense them yet.

Jaden had only truly begun sensing spirits when Little Yugi gave him Kuriboh.

That was also when Jaden's strength began improving by leaps and bounds.

Duelists who commanded spirits were generally a cut above those who had none.

But the cards from the system were different.

The system generated them out of thin air. They didn't even share an origin with the cards circulating in this world.

Put plainly, they were two separate things.

Though he believed that, given the system's capabilities, the cards it produced should be recognized by this world's rules.

Could the system be giving me nothing more than a card-a card without a soul?

Yūki stared at the ceiling and thought for a few seconds.

No answer.

Turning a question like that over in his head wouldn't get him anywhere.

He would know once he pulled them and took a look.

Besides, this was twenty-five packs.

Giving me a Neos wouldn't be asking too much, right?

In this world, Neos was a rare card on the same level as Red-Eyes Black Dragon.

He sat cross-legged on the bed, briefly closed his eyes, and stirred his mind.

A translucent system panel appeared before him.

He went straight to the Archetype Pack tab.

At the moment, there was only one lonely pack listed there.

Its cover bore that familiar silhouette.

A green body, white wings spread, a dragon's head lowered-it was Flame Wingman.

The gold-stamped [E] logo in the bottom-left corner gleamed in the panel's faint light.

Something stirred in Yūki.

No more hesitation.

He poured all his Duel Coins into it in one go.

The panel flashed.

Twenty-five packs snapped into view before him, floating in rows, every Booster Pack back printed with Flame Wingman's silhouette.

Yūki reached out and tapped the first pack.

Three streaks of light sprang out, and the cards flipped over.

Avian, a vanilla.

Burstinatrix, a vanilla.

Clayman, a vanilla.

Yūki's eyes widened.

"..."

Three vanilla HEROes.

All low-level monsters, not a single high-level one among them, and even the highest ATK was only twelve hundred.

"Three vanillas in the first pack? This is ridiculous."

He couldn't help complaining aloud. "Come on, give me some rare cards."

Unwilling to give up, Yūki tapped the second pack.

Elemental HERO Sparkman, Skyscraper, Polymerization.

"..."

Yūki was even more speechless.

What kind of luck was this!

Elemental HERO Sparkman was another low-level vanilla, Skyscraper was a Field Spell Card, and Polymerization was a fusion spell so common it was everywhere.

He could find a whole stack of these three with a casual rummage through a card shop, and they would barely cost anything combined.

If he had spent real money pulling these from the system, it would have been a crushing loss.

He stared at the remaining twenty-three packs for two seconds.

Opening them one at a time was taking too long.

He steeled himself.

"Open all."

The moment he spoke, all twenty-three packs burst open at once.

White light filled the room as dozens of cards flipped, hovered, and arranged themselves in midair.

Yūki instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes.

When the light faded, his eyes lit up.

"Holy shit!"

Neos!

The card hovered steadily in the front row, its white-and-blue body and the red gem on its chest gleaming in the light.

"Neos! And Elemental HERO Stratos!"

Yūki shot upright on the bed.

He had the core engine.

Neos was the core successor of the entire Elemental HERO lineup in its later stages, while Elemental HERO Stratos was the most versatile monster in the Contact Polymerization system.

Pulling those two meant he had the skeleton of an entire deck right there.

He flipped through the cards, his eyes growing brighter with every one.

There were loads of Fusion Monsters.

Elemental HERO Absolute Zero, Elemental HERO Shining Flare Wingman...

Put these cards together, and forget reasonably strong-he could practically take the deck straight into a duel.

As Yūki kept flipping through them, he suddenly stopped.

Five Flame Wingmen.

Five whole copies.

"..."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Does this thing really drop that many?"

Five copies of the same signature monster from one Archetype Pack-the system's drop rates really had no consistency.

But he soon lost interest in complaining about the drop rates.

Because he noticed something more important.

Among this pile of Fusion Monsters, there were many he had never seen in a duel in this world.

Some of the card faces even looked unfamiliar to him.

He combed through his memories, his heartbeat quickening as he went.

A few belonged to series the Kaiba Corporation would only release in the future.

And a few others...

Were cards Jaden would print himself in the future.

In the anime from his previous life, Jaden had relied on the spirit behind him to print cards on the spot during duels. Those cards didn't even exist in the world at this point in time.

Yet every one of them lay among the cards he had just pulled.

Yūki stared at those cards for a long time.

The room was quiet, with only the sound of his own breathing.

A conclusion slowly took shape in his mind.

The system's cards transcended this world's timeline.

Whether they were future Kaiba Corporation products or cards someone would only create in the future, as long as they had existed in the "future," the system could put them in his hands ahead of time.

That fact alone was worth more than any number of powerful cards he could pull.

Duelists in this world competed through talent, spirits, and soul power.

What he held in his hands was an information advantage spanning the entire timeline.

But why aren't there any Masked HERO cards?

Did I just open too few packs and happen to miss them?

Yūki took a deep breath and suppressed his surging thoughts.

He wouldn't think that far ahead for now.

He turned his gaze back to the spread of HERO cards before him.

Vanillas or rares, he had the core engine, and enough Fusion Monsters too.

These alone were enough to assemble a pretty powerful HERO Deck.

He reached out and "took" the Neos card from midair. It settled into his palm, feeling no different from a physical card.

Neos stood silently in the card art, the red gem motionless.

Yūki stared at it for two seconds.

He still couldn't make anything out.

With my level-two soul power, maybe I still can't sense spirits.

Or is there a spirit in the card that simply hasn't acknowledged me yet?

He would keep that question in mind for now.

He closed his hand around the card, suddenly finding it a little funny.

When he first transmigrated here, he had planned to take a degenerate route, the kind specifically meant to make other people miserable.

These righteous, sunny HERO cards originally had nothing whatsoever to do with him.

Yet after all those twists and turns, he now held an entire Elemental HERO lineup in his hands.

Yūki lowered his head to look at the Neos in his palm, the corner of his mouth lifting.

All right, then.

After all, who wouldn't want to be a hero?