Chapter 3: Do Normal Monster Decks Dream of Hypnotic Sheep (Normal Monster)?
With no one around, Hayato casually pulled out the square metal object he had touched from his pocket.
It was a tin box, and it wasn't locked, so he could open it directly.
"What truly amazing technology, creating something out of nothing."
Opening the tin box, a stack of Cards was neatly placed inside. According to the Sai Q Duelist System in front of Hayato, this Deck was his beginner's gift package.
This morning, just after arriving at the classroom and seeing the starfish-haired Mutou Yuugi, a semi-transparent virtual screen suddenly appeared before Kobayashi Hayato's eyes. It read, "Welcome to the Sai Q Duelist System, please claim your Initial Card Pack," along with a "Confirm Claim" button.
After trying it, Hayato found that no one else seemed to be able to see or touch this transparent screen except for himself. Furthermore, he could adjust the screen's visibility simply by thinking, making it appear instantly when needed and disappear instantly when not, without obstructing his view.
Considering the many eyes in the classroom and his lack of understanding about how the System distributed the Initial Card Pack, and since the "Claim" button had no time limit, Hayato deliberately waited the entire morning, holding back from claiming it. Only now, with no one around, did he actively touch the claim button.
The back of the Cards featured the vortex pattern that Hayato was extremely familiar with. The familiar brown and gold color scheme made Hayato, alone in this foreign world, feel a sense of closeness. Taking out the Deck, Hayato began to check its construction card by card.
3☆ Normal Monster, Warrior-Type EARTH Attribute "Gaia The Fierce Knight",
3☆ Normal Monster, Warrior-Type EARTH Attribute "Man Eater",
4☆ Normal Monster, Warrior-Type EARTH Attribute "Gatekeeper",
3☆ Normal Monster, Warrior-Type EARTH Attribute "The Judgement Hand",
As he looked, Hayato's speed in flipping to the next Card grew faster and faster. After a long while, he half-opened his eyes and calmly complained, "Although I expected it, there's no way I'd get a competitive Deck like Tri-Brigade or Floowandereeze in the DM Era. But I thought at the very least it would be the overworked Elemental HEROes."
"Aren't these all just fodder Normal Monsters!"
He quickly browsed through the sixty Cards contained in the tin box. The number of Monster Cards was a staggering 50, with only ten Spell Cards, all of which were strange Cards with un☆clear☆ef☆fects. If the Monsters were powerful, it might be acceptable, but without exception, all fifty Monster Cards were Normal Monsters, commonly known as "Normal Monsters". Most were low-level fodder barely qualified to be walls, with terribly poor stats.
From the "Card Pile" he had just flipped through – Hayato really didn't want to call this a Deck, it was utterly useless – he drew three Cards and placed them at the very front of the Deck. Among these sixty Cards, only these three could barely catch Hayato's eye:
7☆ Normal Monster, Warrior-Type EARTH Attribute "Gaia The Fierce Knight",
4☆ Normal Monster, Warrior-Type LIGHT Attribute "Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights",
And, the future Equip Spell Card that hadn't yet been separated from the general Spell Card category, "Sword of Dragon's Soul".
"Gaia The Fierce Knight" needs no introduction. As a frequently used Card by the protagonist Mutou Yuugi in the early days, it was active many times. Later, it even became the starting point for the "Gaia" series of Cards, with a number of alternate forms comparable to the famous "King of Alternate Forms," "Gem-Knight Crystal." Moreover, its 2300/2100 ATK/DEF is top-tier among the Normal Monsters in Hayato's hand, and under the early DM rules where no Tribute was needed for its summon, it was sufficient to serve as Hayato's current ace.
The second Card, "Artorigus, King of the Noble Knights," while having decent 1800 ATK/DEF stats, what Hayato valued more was the future potential of the "Noble Knight" archetype. Although the Noble Knight Deck, which focuses on Xyz Summons and excels at using Equip Spells, didn't have the chance for its Xyz bosses to appear due to era limitations, its efficient search and recovery methods were worth Hayato's early anticipation.
As for Sword of Dragon's Soul...
A single Card increasing ATK by 700 was quite rare in the DM Era. Its side effect, "If this card battles a Dragon-Type Monster, destroy the Monster at the end of the Battle Phase," practically screamed "targeting" on the public screen. Especially for a certain card-playing addict with a dragon obsession, his ace Monster's 3000 ATK was practically tailor-made for the "Gaia The Fierce Knight" + "Sword of Dragon's Soul" combo.
In summary, the Initial Card Pack given by the System felt to Hayato like "playable, but not entirely playable," and "unusable, but not entirely unusable." Putting the Deck back into the tin box and putting it away, Hayato was just thinking of returning to the classroom when he heard the sound of several people talking downstairs:
"Hey, will he really come?"
"Y-yes."
"He's so slow~"
Peering out from the handrail of the corridor, Hayato saw several people squatting together in the bushes on the side of the school building, talking in low voices. Judging by their clothes, they didn't look like students from the school. One of them even had camera equipment on his shoulder.
As the words fell, one of the people gathered together picked up a school uniform from the ground and put it on. As he walked out of the bushes, he was still muttering, "Why isn't that kid Yugi Mutou here yet? This is about my livelihood..."
Hayato furrowed his brow, looking down with some surprise. Although he hadn't inherited the original body's past memories after Transmigration, the man downstairs putting on a school uniform didn't look like a student from the school no matter how he saw it.
It wasn't for reasons like his build; after all, in this high school, Hayato had seen people as short as elementary schoolers like Mutou Yuugi, and also Tetsu Ushio, who was nearly two meters tall like a professional basketball player. The main issue was that the man wearing the school uniform didn't have the slightest aura of a student about him. He didn't even seem like a student involved with the mafia; instead, he looked somewhat like an office worker who had struggled in the corporate world?
Just then, Hayato saw a short figure with gold, black, and red starfish-shaped hair walk out of the classroom entrance not far away, hurrying towards the Stairs with an expectant look.
Who else could it be but Yugi Mutou?
Suddenly, Hayato recalled that he seemed to know what was about to happen downstairs.
Hayato had seen a scene like this in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga in his previous life. It was about a morning popular entertainment program called Survival Morning, whose latest segment was about "bullying the weak." The director had set his sights on School Bullying. This should have been a rather excellent segment.
However, that director didn't have the intention of finding a real victim of School Bullying. Instead, he directly chose Mutou Yuugi, who looked very easy to bully, as the "protagonist" of the program. Then, he found people to pretend to be students and "bully" him, filming it himself.