"Chazz... was defeated?"
In the audience, Little Brother A and Little Brother B were in complete disbelief.
As classmates in the Duel Academy's Middle School Department, they were well aware of Chazz's strength. To put it bluntly, even in the elite-filled middle school, Chazz was undeniably the top of their class.
And yet this Chazz, was casually defeated by a newcomer in his first tournament?
Is this newcomer a monster?
The red-haired girl next to them was also in shock for a while, then turned to the two: "It seems like your big brother lost."
The two little brothers looked at each other, pondered for a moment, then spoke.
"Oh, we must have been mistaken. At first glance, he looked a bit like him, but on a closer look, it turns out he's not our big brother," said Little Brother A.
"Yeah, yeah, really looks a lot like him, hahaha..." said Little Brother B.
The red-haired girl squinted: "So are you saying their names are also the same?"
"Yeah...yeah."
The two little brothers, despite themselves, gritting their teeth.
"What a coincidence."
"..."
This was an unexpected outcome, leaving the audience incredibly surprised. But perhaps no one was more frustrated than Chazz himself.
It's one thing to lose, but the strangest thing was the uncanny feeling that the opponent hadn't even exerted any effort.
Throughout the duel, it felt as if the opponent was taking it easy, like they were saying, "I'll just play around with you." It didn't feel like they were serious.
The opponent didn't even summon a single Upper-Level Monster!
Chazz believed he had maximized his field presence and applied enough pressure. But the opponent handled it lightly, as if effortlessly resolving his full strength... no, more accurately, it felt like he was hitting a pillow.
Throughout the match, Chazz felt like the atmosphere was building up, accumulating and building some more, almost ready to explode, yet oddly, there was nowhere to vent...
In any case, he had never encountered such an annoying situation before.
"Hold on."
He couldn't resist calling out as the opponent retrieved their Duel Disc and turned to leave the field.
Yugen paused, turning back around.
"Who... are you exactly?" Chazz asked through gritted teeth, unwillingly.
Yugen met his gaze and simply smiled faintly.
"Just a passing One-Star Duelist."
With that, he turned and walked away gracefully, leaving Chazz feeling as though he'd been stabbed again, just wanting to spit blood.
One-Star?
What kind of dumb system and dumb evaluation mechanism, can you really call this Level One?
No matter what, Chazz's journey ended in the quarterfinals this time, and he might get reprimanded by his two brothers when he goes back. And losing to Ryuzaki would have been fine, but he lost to an unknown nobody, and the way the cards played out was enough to cause a brain hemorrhage...
He must have had the worst luck ever to run into this guy.
If nothing else, Chazz was certain of one thing.
For the rest of his life, he never, ever, ever wanted to see this scheming bastard again.
...
...
Yugen reviewed his matches from the past few days, learning from the experiences through real battles with local duelists.
Although he hadn't encountered any tough opponents in this tournament so far, the process made him realize a flaw in his previous strategy.
It was that he couldn't simply apply the physical card environment of old to the animated environment.
Hand destruction was a deck that once dominated the competition and had strong pressure even here, but relying solely on this tactic may work against ordinary duelists, but against experts in the animation, its effectiveness might be reduced.
Firstly, the animation had draw engines that didn't exist in physical cards, so drawing five or six cards with one card wasn't impossible.
Additionally, the strong characters in the animation could often turn the tide with a single card, even when their hand was empty and field barren. It's not metaphysics, there's an explanation for it. As they say in the original work, "For true duelists, everything is inevitable, even drawing a card can be created."
In the later stages of the GX animation, every time Yuki Judai faced a tough situation, he would wear special contact lenses, not just for looks. In the form of activating the Overlord's Power, Judai could achieve a higher level of Divine Drawing Power, placing him among high-tier strong players in the animation's Extraordinary System.
Judai in Overlord form, even with a random 40-card deck from the card pool, could potentially crush ordinary players with top-tier decks.
"It would be great if I could somehow get some Divine Draw skills..." Yugen sighed.
At first glance, it seems like time-traveling into Yu-Gi-Oh! means you could succeed just by being good at the game, but without some extraordinary foundation, mixing in the late-stage environments filled with supernatural elements isn't easy.
It's well-known that in Yu-Gi-Oh!, the simplest and most direct way to reach the Extraordinary Tier isn't through practice, but by getting a Back Spirit to possess you. But as far as he knew, most of the Back Spirits in the original work already had their hosts, so where was he supposed to find one to deceive...
For now, he decided not to think about it. What he could do at the moment was to study the environment as much as possible, optimize his card deck, and make tactical adjustments.
Yugen was still in the stage of exploring during practical battles, and his card deck hadn't fully taken shape yet.
His next opponent was named Kajimoto Sei, a Duelist Level Five. His background listed several public match results and was marked as a "true disciple of the Telekinesis Flow Duel Dojo."
Telekinesis Flow. Yugen thought hard when he saw this.
If he remembered correctly, this style briefly appeared in the later stages of the GX animation. It had a competitive relationship with the Electronic Flow Dojo inherited by Marufuji Ryo, and in the end, a Telekinesis Flow master, who held the lineage, appeared to challenge the dojo, using the Artificial Human Soga.
In the half-day before the match, he reviewed recordings of his opponent's recent public matches. Kajimoto Sei seemed to use a card deck centered around "Mechanical King," a series of ace monsters from Kaiba Company that turned against them, primarily used by one of the "Five Great Lords" in the DM animation.
According to the Telekinesis Flow duelist who challenged Marufuji Ryo in the animation, their flow's ace should be the Artificial Human Soga, but obviously, Kajimoto Sei's card deck didn't have it.
But then again, it made sense. While the Electronic Ultimate Dragon was the ace of the Electronic Flow, there was only one in the dojo, passed down to the flow's only legitimate heir, representing the flow's identity.
Kajimoto Sei was merely an apprentice of the Telekinesis Flow and clearly wasn't qualified to inherit the flow's ace yet.
Having watched his opponent's previous match recordings, Yugen already had a good sense of their tactics. He had also adjusted his card deck to prepare for the match.
He checked his card deck one last time before the match to ensure everything was in order. He stood up, inserted the card deck into the Duel Disc, and got ready, striding through the dimly lit passage toward the arena.
The host had already warmed up the audience and announced the match. As Yugen climbed the stairs to the stage, he saw that his opponent had also appeared in the opposite field. Their gazes met in mid-air, igniting an invisible spark.
Yugen took his position on the field, and the Duel Disc unfolded.
This match shouldn't be too much of a problem.