Chapter 180. Yu-Gi-Oh! "Talking Your Way Through" Cheating Exposed! Strict Inspections of Infernity Back Row and the Handshake Kill!
Across every Duel World, the Duelists immediately started lambasting Weevil Underwood in the group chat for this disgraceful behavior!
The other worlds' protagonists even started giving Weevil some "homeland-style greetings."
Weevil Underwood was numb.
He hadn't expected that just watching a short video today would dig up his blunders from Duelist Kingdom for another round of public flogging!
Yugi Muto looked a little wistful.
Indeed.
If Weevil hadn't thrown Exodia into the sea back then…
He really doesn't know, with the bond between them and Pegasus, who else could have been their opponent.
Perhaps…
That was a kind of tempering, too?
In the short video,
the progress bar had only crept past one-third!
The channel "Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection" moved on to the next set of cheating methods!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Let's continue!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Those first few were just appetizers."
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "For in-person Duels, there are even more cheating and 'talking your way through' tricks than you think."
"For example, 'fabrication out of thin air'!"
"Because many card effects require specific conditions to activate,"
"lying to make the opponent believe in conditions that don't exist became a kind of cheating!"
"A representative example is the monster card 'Thunder Dragon.'"
"Its effect is: discard this card from your hand; add up to 2 'Thunder Dragon' from your Deck to your hand."
"Here's the problem."
"How do you know the cards I added were actually 'Thunder Dragon'?"
"For instance, if I already have 2 'Thunder Dragon' in hand, I can pretend to activate 'Thunder Dragon,' then 'search' 2 more 'Thunder Dragon' from the Deck."
"In reality, I search for other cards—because you can't look at my hand!"
"After I finish searching, I just show you the 2 'Thunder Dragon' that were already in my hand, right?"
"As a result, this method got popular for a while, and you'd see all kinds of Decks that had nothing to do with 'Thunder Dragon' randomly stuffing 3 copies in."
"You'd be baffled, right? 'Why are you running Thunder Dragon in this Deck?'"
"Now think about it again—does it click?"
The next cheating method
left Duelists from every world at a complete loss!
Damn!
It really would work!
In an in-person event—
activate a single 'Thunder Dragon,' then 'search' one 'Thunder Dragon' and one other card.
Finally show 2 'Thunder Dragon' from hand.
If you're not careful—or the judge doesn't notice—
then yeah, you can pull off a flawless cheat!
Duel Monsters world.
After hearing this one,
even Seto Kaiba was stunned.
He really did run Thunder Dragon!
And his little brother Mokuba Kaiba—he also seemed to run Thunder Dragon!
They had never considered using it to find key cards like this!
"Third-rate Duelists are a dime a dozen!"
"They'll come up with anything for a cheat!"
"Heh… even 'Thunder Dragon' doesn't get spared?"
Seto Kaiba gave a cold laugh.
He really was shocked by this method.
Because for search cheating—
if you don't look at the hand, there's no way to confirm what was actually searched!
That makes the judge even more important!
VRAINS world.
Even the well-traveled Yusaku Fujiki couldn't keep a straight face after hearing the Thunder Dragon shenanigans!
He hadn't expected
that Thunder Dragon's effect could be weaponized for in-person cheating!
The key is—
the feasibility is very high!
If you're caught, you bluff.
You might actually get away with it!
"Pfft! Can't they just play the card game straight?"
"Why do they have to pull stunts like this?"
Skye Zaizen covered her mouth, laughing.
Other Duelists wore complicated expressions.
Cheating methods… they really are endless, huh?
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Likewise, 'Dark Armed Dragon' uses a similar 'fabrication' angle!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Its summon condition is: you can Special Summon it only when you have exactly 3 DARK monsters in your Graveyard."
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "In early tournaments, Decks built around 'Dark Armed Dragon' usually ran a ton of DARK monsters."
"At that point, you could use all sorts of recycling, banish-send, banish-recover tricks to lower the opponent's vigilance,"
"or scramble their thoughts so they feel like your Graveyard already stacked lots of DARK monsters."
"Then you falsely claim you meet the count and fabricate the Special Summon of 'Dark Armed Dragon'!"
"There were even Duelists who tried to use face-down, ineligible monsters as Fusion Materials to Fusion Summon."
"All three are bold! But they're great for bluffing if you're caught!"
"Just say you misread it!"
"Honestly, to do this on the spot—if you can lie that brazenly, I respect your nerves of steel!"
"If you really can fool them, well… thumbs up!"
Indeed.
If you truly want to trick people,
you need an extremely strong mentality.
You have to stay stone-faced, steady heartbeat, and give off the air that "this is totally correct."
Otherwise you'll arouse suspicion.
But
these methods still left many Duelists from other worlds looking at each other.
Really?
Are these people actually here to Duel?
Why do they love pulling clever little cheats?
Remember!
You're here to Duel! Not to hunt for ways to cheat!
ZEXAL world.
Yuma Tsukumo and Astral looked at each other.
Isn't this just talking your way through?
Honestly… it doesn't feel any different from that!
Even if the Graveyard doesn't have 3 DARK monsters, I can still Special Summon 'Dark Armed Dragon,' right?
Even if I don't have two Level 4s on field, I can still construct an Xyz Network, right?
Thinking about it like that,
Yuma nearly tilted on the spot!
The dark side of "higher world" Dueling really is deep!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "'Handshake Kill' is also a kind of indirect cheating or 'talk-your-way-through' tactic!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Simply put, when one Duelist surrenders, they can place their palm face-down on the top of their Deck to announce their loss."
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "But precisely this customary gesture got exploited by shady Duelists!"
"How do you use the Handshake Kill? Just flip a card face-down yourself and offer a handshake!"
"When your opponent instinctively assumes they've won and starts packing up their Deck,"
"you immediately call a judge and protest that your opponent is violating procedure by tidying cards mid-Duel."
"Per tournament policy, packing up mid-Duel is a violation!"
"And without a judge present, there's no way to reconstruct exactly what happened, so it's ruled a loss."
"Now you might ask, 'Won't the opponent explain to the judge that they conceded?'"
"But the other side can say, 'Concede? I was just resting my hand because it was tired and offered a handshake to be friendly.'"
"Not to mention, conceding like this isn't an official rule—it's just an unwritten convention!"
"So the judge can't help. You just swallow the Handshake Kill."
Stunned!
Everyone in every Duel World was completely stunned by this method!
What the heck?
You can really weaponize this to disgust your opponent?
Indeed!
This unwritten concession gesture
also exists as a tacit "rule" in several of their worlds!
The player who surrenders puts down their hand to show they're no longer continuing!
But what they didn't expect
was that in the higher worlds, Duelists also twist this to snatch wins with underhanded tactics!
Joey Wheeler: "No way! I guess the higher worlds also have plenty of people as underhanded as Weevil Underwood!"
Dr. Vellian Crowler: "Mamma mia! I never imagined so many irregular ways to win! My students must not learn any of this!"
Yuma Tsukumo: "Geez, absurd. I'm lost—this concession gesture can be turned around like that?"
Yusaku Fujiki: "Looks like we still need advanced systems to Duel—even offline."
The group chat immediately erupted into wave after wave of discussion!
And the short video kept going!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "When you think Handshake Kill is already outrageous, some Duelists even dug up the 'Handshake Kill: Upgraded Version'!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "You all know this card, right? 'Yu-Jo Friendship'!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Its effect invites your opponent to shake hands."
"If the opponent agrees, both players' LP become half of the sum of both players' LP. If you have 'Unity' in your hand, you can reveal it to your opponent,"
"and in that case, both players must shake hands to apply the card's effect."
"In in-person play, that handshake is mandatory."
"Okay then—suppose a Duelist activates it and, paired with 'Unity,' forces you to shake hands."
"Then he immediately sticks his hand up his nose, digs out a booger, and grins while offering the handshake!"
"Or he rubs his own butt, digs at his butthole… and—"
"Will you shake hands?"
"Most people will instinctively pull back their hand and refuse, right?"
"Okay, now he instantly calls a judge to report you for refusing to shake hands!"
"And you lose for violating the rule."
"Of course, later on the official policy changed so you don't have to literally shake hands!"
"So this method gradually got passed."
…???
After hearing this tactic to secure a win,
every Duelist in every world fell silent.
They had thought
the "toilet OTK" was already scraping the bottom of the barrel.
But they didn't expect
that this upgraded handshake play
could also become an equation for victory!
The key is—
that action…
is disgusting.
Seriously?
There are actually Duelists who would do that?
Aren't they afraid the opponent will respond with a literal punch on the spot?
Duel Monsters world.
Téa Gardner and Mai Valentine were already wearing expressions of disgust.
If they ran into a Duelist like that,
they'd immediately concede!
Against Duelists like that, even if you win, what joy is there?
Same at Duel Academy.
Alexis Rhodes and Blair Flannigan had the same thought.
Women from the other worlds weighed in too.
Rio Kastle: "If I run into a Duelist like that, I'm turning around and walking away."
Akiza Izinski: "If I run into that, I'll show him why I'm called the Black Rose Witch."
Carly Carmine: "Ahhh, what a shame we don't have Duelists like that over here—otherwise I'd absolutely make a front-page story."
Skye Zaizen: "Phew. Good thing Duelists in our world have standards. None of that here."
For the first time,
the group chat was filled with a lot of voices from the ladies.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Next, I have to talk about a cheat tied to a single archetype."
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "That archetype is 'Infernity'!"
Yu-Gi-Oh! Classic Collection: "Everyone knows Infernity needs your hand to be 0 to turn on its effects, right?"
"Here's the problem—what if we place bricked monsters,"
"or monsters we can't deal with, face-down in the back row as if they were Spells/Traps?"
"After all, in a tournament, your face-downs in the back row can't be inspected!"
"As long as you never activate those cards for the whole Duel, you can claim they're back-row Spells/Traps—thus turning on Infernity's 'no cards in hand' condition!"
"What's more, Infernity does run a bunch of Traps!"
"Like 'Infernity Barrier,' 'Infernity Inferno,' 'Infernity Break,' 'Infernity Force,' and so on!"
"So once you set cards, it doesn't raise much suspicion!"
"The end result?"
"In those days, lots of Infernity players always had a bunch of face-downs that never got activated all game!"
"Very mysterious! What were those cards, really?"
"People even joked that if you want to play Infernity, the first thing to learn is how to set monsters in the back row!"
"And thus came a very popular meme:"
"'Strictly inspect Infernity players' back row.'"
"Chances are a few of those are monsters!"
"Besides that, there's another card—the Field Spell 'Geartown'!"
"Its effect: when this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard, you can Special Summon 1 'Ancient Gear' monster from your hand, Deck, or Graveyard."
"Under the old rules, if you activated Geartown, then activated another Field Spell, you could trigger Geartown's destruction effect."
"That gave rise to Duelists setting non-Field cards and claiming they were Fields, then 'destroying' them to trigger Geartown,"
"pulling out an Ancient Gear!"
"Same idea as Infernity—both are 'talk-your-way-through' cheats!"
"The key is, if it isn't called out immediately,"
"it's actually hard to catch."
"Especially Infernity—who knows if those back-row sets are really Spells/Traps?"
"You can't check face-downs in person, right?"
…What?
Holy—!
Infernity and Ancient Gear…
can be cheated like that?!
5D's world.
After hearing this round of outrageous plays,
Kyosuke Kiryu was dumbstruck, frozen where he stood!
At the same time,
Duelists who hadn't Riding Duel'd him all stared at Kyosuke Kiryu in unison!
Complicated, weird, suspicious—every kind of look was there.
"Well, well."
"Kiryu! I knew your Infernity was always setting a pile of back-row Traps that never got used!"
"Now I finally get it!!"
"Those sets of yours weren't Traps at all!"
"They were your bricked monsters!"
Crow Hogan immediately started pressing him!
That left Kyosuke Kiryu flustered!
"No, no, no! Absolutely not."
"My Infernity never did that!"
"That's just other Infernity players!"
Kyosuke Kiryu rushed to explain.
Jack Atlas and Yusei Fudo traded looks.
They knew Riding Duels are regulated.
So this wouldn't happen there.
But if it's just a casual physical game, you can't be sure about that Infernity back row!
"Even though I trust Kiryu,"
"we still have to stay guarded in future Duels."
"Ahem!"
"Kiryu—if you're Dueling me, make sure it's a Riding Duel."
"Otherwise I'll have to strictly inspect your Infernity back row!"
Yusei Fudo cracked a joke to help ease Kyosuke Kiryu's embarrassment.
After all,
in 5D's, he's basically the only one who plays Infernity.
Now that Infernity's in the spotlight like this,
no wonder it's causing a stir…
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