Fujiwara Yūki poked the light screen with his fingertip. The panel gave a soft pop, like a soap bubble bursting.
Rows of data appeared, their lettering as neat as an Excel spreadsheet.
[Soul Power Duel Shop] [Host: Fujiwara Yūki] [Soul power level: Lv1 (0%)] [Duel coins: 0]
There were no limited-time pop-ups, no red first-purchase notification, not even a mascot girl hawking goods.
"Nice. At least it's not a browser game trying to fleece me."
Yūki scanned the modules below: [System shop], [Archetype packs], and [Standard card pool].
He tapped [Archetype packs].
The interface immediately displayed a passage of utterly impersonal text.
[Defeat a duelist with an individual name to analyze their deck's core data and unlock the corresponding archetype pack.] [Initial cost per draw: 300 duel coins.]
"Got it. Beating nameless grunts won't earn me packs. I have to pick on some poor sucker with an actual name."
Yūki casually closed the panel and looked toward the plastic Deck Boxes piled in the corner by the desk.
They were everything the body's previous owner had left behind.
He walked over, undid the topmost latch, and tipped the stiff paper cards neatly onto the desk.
There were at least seventy or eighty.
Yūki spread the pile with his right hand as though shuffling mahjong tiles, running his fingertips over the cards one by one.
The first was [Cannon Bird], a Level 5 Machine Normal Monster with 1,400 ATK.
The second was [Giant Soldier of Stone], a Level 3 Rock vanilla with 2,000 DEF.
The third was [Flame Manipulator], Level 4, with 900 ATK-even weaker than Cannon Bird.
The fourth was [Final Flame], a Normal Spell that dealt 600 damage to the opponent.
Yūki rubbed between his eyebrows, forcibly suppressing the heart attack this gave him as a ten-year Duelist.
Playing with this stuff was like charging barehanded onto a modern battlefield. Even an elementary schooler could pull out a 2,000-ATK vanilla and blow him away, card box and all, three times over.
The previous owner really hadn't been wronged in the slightest by getting beaten up every day.
His fingers continued rummaging through the wastepaper pile.
Suddenly, his fingertip stopped on a card's rough corner.
Yūki pulled it out.
The artwork showed a dark blue-green mechanical behemoth, with flat, pitch-black wings like a B-2 bomber. Layers of heavy armor encased its body, and two eerie green electronic eyes gleamed coldly in the shadows.
[Stealth Bird] [Level 3 / DARK Attribute / Winged Beast] [ATK: 700, DEF: 1,700] [Effect: Once per turn, during your Main Phase, you can change this card to face-down Defense Position. When this card is successfully Flip Summoned, inflict 1,000 damage to your opponent's Life Points.]
Yūki stared at the card, his eyes instantly lighting up.
Seventeen hundred defense!
In an era when Level 4 low-level monsters generally had fourteen to sixteen hundred attack, that seventeen-hundred backside was as hard as granite!
Even deadlier was its effect.
Flip it up, smack, blast away a thousand life.
After blasting them, it could tuck itself away and go face-down again!
In a 4,000-Life-Point format, all he needed to do was park this big bird in the back row, set a couple of protection cards around it, and let it do four sit-ups, flipping back and forth...
Even if his opponent had Blue-Eyes White Dragon or even Obelisk the Tormentor enshrined on the field, they could only watch their life bar burn to ashes.
"They actually left Stealth Bird at the bottom of the box like scrap paper..."
Yūki shook his head, then scattered the rest of the pile completely and picked through it with flying fingers.
Another one.
A big green face grinned foolishly with its mouth wide open-[Pot of Greed].
Next came two Trap Cards with gold gleaming along their edges-[Mirror Force], and that mental-warfare wonder that could bounce an opposing boss monster's attack straight back into its owner's face, unchanged-[Magic Cylinder]!
At the very bottom of the Deck Box, Yūki even dug up two forbidden treasures that had been gathering dust.
[Confiscation], which could expose the opponent's entire hand and precisely tear it apart, and the ultimate torment bird that robbed opponents of their Draw Phase-[Yata-Garasu].
The formerly messy desk was instantly divided into three distinct sections.
On the left were over seventy innocent vanilla monsters with absolutely no synergy.
In the center was the [Stall-burn core], built around [Stealth Bird], [Magic Cylinder], [Mirror Force], and [Giant Soldier of Stone].
In the shadows on the right, Yūki neatly stacked [Confiscation], [Delinquent Duo], [Yata-Garasu], and [Don Zaloog], tucking them into a hidden compartment.
"For grinding points at school and handling regular exams, turtle-shell burn will be more than enough to make those attack-obsessed brats question their lives."
Yūki lightly tapped Yata-Garasu's artwork twice, a playful look in his eyes.
"As for hand destruction... I'll keep that as my reserve side deck. When I run into an unreasonable opponent, or feel a match is ending too slowly, I'll bring it out and teach them how to spell 'cruel.'"
Turtle-shell torture in the main deck, soul harvesting in the side deck.
Very reasonable. Very healthy.
Yūki sat back down at the computer and deftly opened Domino City's largest card marketplace-[KC-Online].
He typed the first name into the search bar:
[Stealth Bird].
The page loaded instantly.
Stock: [999+].
Unit price: 1,200 yuan.
Below it was a buyer's comment dripping with superiority.
[What a garbage bird. Seven hundred attack, and it breaks if you touch it. Who gives a crap about taking off a thousand life? Even a dog wouldn't run this!]
Reading that review, Yūki laughed out loud on the spot.
"Even a dog wouldn't run it?"
"Thanks, Mr. Innocent. I hope you can still talk that tough when you face it in a duel."
He placed the order, buying two more copies outright to run the maximum in his main deck.
Next, he searched for the defensive core.
[Level Limit - Area B].
A Continuous Spell that forced every Level 4 or higher monster into Defense Position as long as it remained on the field. They couldn't even stand up!
At 1,500 yuan each, he bought two outright.
[Wave-Motion Cannon].
A Continuous Spell, a back-row countdown wonder that stored up 1,000 damage each turn. Four turns, one shot, game over!
At 2,000 yuan each, he bought two.
Finally, he added two copies of the generic draw card [Pot of Greed], along with [Just Desserts], which dealt damage based on the number of opposing monsters.
He clicked checkout.
The total charge on the screen settled at eighteen thousand yuan.
Yūki opened a drawer, dug out the trust bank card his parents had left him, and rapidly entered the password.
Payment successful.
Outside the window, the sky had gone completely dark.
The night breeze slipped through a gap in the window, stirring the flat alloy wings of the [Stealth Bird] on the desk.
The main deck was packed tight with forty cards: maximum copies of Stealth Bird, gravity fields, Wave-Motion Cannons, and all sorts of diabolical Netherworld Traps.
In the hidden compartment inside his portable Deck Box, the hand-destruction side deck was likewise ready to deploy.
An official red pop-up appeared in the bottom-right corner of the computer screen:
[Notice from the Domino City Education Bureau: Registration for Duel Academy's autumn admissions selection this year will officially close at 5 p.m. the day after tomorrow.]
Yūki stopped what he was doing and opened the drawer on his right.
Inside lay an application form crumpled by the body's original owner.
Because of his limited ability, the original owner had filled the "Personal star rating" and "Past results" fields with crossed-out ink, too insecure to submit it.
Yūki pulled out the form, picked up a pen, and decisively checked [Practical test · Comprehensive selection] under his preferred option.
Then he folded it and put it in an envelope.
"Two days until registration closes, and over a month until the assessment."
Yūki laid the cold [Stealth Bird] atop the envelope, an intensely aggressive smile curling his lips:
"Tomorrow, I'll head to the school's duel club... and let those senior disciples who worship high attack experience what it means to hit an iron wall and get shaken to death."
Before you continue