At this moment, the young man walking behind Yūrei wore a deep frown, his expression betraying complete uncertainty about where they were going—and more importantly, where the path of his life was headed.
Whether in the game plot or the original anime, Marufuji Ryo had always been incredibly popular. He had legions of supporters, fans who loved him almost as much as they loved the Cyber Dragon deck he wielded. His character design fell into that "calm, collected type"—the cool-headed genius who stayed composed under pressure. Whether he appeared as an opponent or an ally in the later stages of the story, he'd always been impressive. Competent. Someone who commanded respect.
But right now? Right now, this young man was at the absolute lowest and most vulnerable point of his entire life.
He'd just stepped out of the ivory tower of Duel Academy—that protected, idealistic environment where talent was nurtured and dreams flourished. He was a fresh graduate who'd encountered massive life upheavals almost immediately after entering the brutal professional world.
Simply put, he was at his most vulnerable to manipulation. Psychologically fragile. Desperate for someone, anyone, to throw him a lifeline.
Which made this the perfect time to recruit him.
After being rejected during their first meeting several days ago, Yūrei hadn't pushed. He'd played it cool, kept his distance. He'd simply left a business card with Ryo and told him that if the losing streak continued—if he truly felt like he'd reached a dead end with nowhere else to turn—he could try contacting Yūrei through that card.
That business card had been a stroke of genius. A good item Yūrei had managed to acquire from the Manjoume Family resources over the past few days of settling into his new life.
The Manjoume Family—known to players of the card god game as 'the Bank,' which was both accurate and hilarious—was naturally a massive, powerful entity. In the game's setting, they were involved in practically every Duel-related industry you could imagine, and they operated all of them with ruthless efficiency. Professional dueling management and talent representation was one of the family's primary business ventures.
Given that such a famous dueling industry family existed, Yūrei had calculated that as long as Marufuji Ryo wasn't a complete idiot, he would definitely come here at least once before heading down to the Underground Duels to become some pervert's slave like he did in the original plot.
And in fact, that's exactly what had happened.
Just as Yūrei had predicted—just as he'd known would happen, because he'd literally seen this play out before—after losing one more match and finding his path narrowing even further, Classmate Marufuji Ryo had come knocking at his door.
Perfect. Everything was proceeding according to plan.
Right now, Yūrei wasn't explaining where they were going or what they were about to do. He simply led Marufuji Ryo forward through the estate grounds while asking in a deceptively casual tone, "Since you've come looking for me of your own accord, I'm guessing that means you still haven't broken that losing streak. You've failed in professional dueling once again."
He glanced back, catching Ryo's wince.
"If I'm not mistaken," Yūrei continued smoothly, "you're currently in a state of being almost 'at a dead end.' Your options are running out fast. And..." He paused for effect. "You might not even be that resistant to the words 'Underground Duels' anymore, are you?"
Ryo's jaw clenched, but he didn't deny it.
"In fact, I'd bet that before today—maybe even yesterday or the day before—someone from the Underground Duel World already contacted you. Am I right?" Yūrei's voice took on an almost sympathetic quality. "Let me guess what they said. They tempted you by claiming they just wanted you to test your skills, see if you could find a new breakthrough in a different environment. They probably assured you that you wouldn't actually have to become an underground Duelist permanently. Just a few matches. Just to see how it felt. Just to get that winning feeling back."
He turned his head slightly, not quite looking back at Ryo but clearly waiting for a response.
"That's what that recruiter said to you, wasn't it?"
Marufuji Ryo, who'd been walking with his head down, suddenly looked up. His pupils constricted sharply, genuine shock flashing across his features.
How the hell does he know that?
"I hit the mark?" Yūrei let out a theatrical sigh. "Man, isn't this just... forcing a good person into prostitution? Classic predatory recruitment tactics." His tone sharpened slightly. "You haven't already agreed to their offer, have you?"
The guy in front of him—this Yūrei or You Ling or whatever his name was—they'd only met a handful of times, and yet he seemed to possess almost prophetic abilities. It was genuinely spine-chilling, like he could read Ryo's mind or see the future or something equally impossible.
Marufuji Ryo shook his head quickly, perhaps more defensively than necessary. "No. No, I didn't agree to anything."
Then, unable to suppress his suspicion any longer, he frowned and asked, "But... how did you know about that? How could you possibly know they approached me?"
"Heh heh." Yūrei's eyes narrowed with amusement, and something darker. More knowing. "Do you feel like I have prophetic abilities? Like I can always hit the mark, always know what's happening in your life before you tell me?"
He let that hang in the air for a moment, watching Ryo's increasingly unsettled expression.
"Well, here's something else I know, Classmate Marufuji Ryo." His voice dropped lower, more intimate and more threatening at the same time. "You might have even entertained some darker thoughts lately. Some ideas you're ashamed of."
Ryo's breath caught.
"Besides the Underground Duels," Yūrei continued relentlessly, "you've even considered another option, haven't you? You've thought about trying to return to the Duel dojo where you trained for so many years. Your home dojo. The place that raised you and taught you everything you know."
He paused, letting the words sink in like knives.
"And for the sake of power—for the sake of breaking through your current limitations and finding victory again—you've considered backstabbing your own mentor. Betraying the man who believed in you."
Ryo's face had gone pale.
"You want to release the darkness within your heart," Yūrei said, almost gently now, like a confessor hearing sins. "To claim that legendary 'Dark Electron' card set from the Cyber Style Dojo for yourself. After all..." His smile turned sharp. "As long as it's for victory, no means are too extreme. Right? The ends justify the means. That's what you've been telling yourself late at night when you can't sleep."
At these words, Marufuji Ryo completely lost his composure.
His head snapped up, and he stared at Yūrei with bloodshot eyes, his entire body going rigid with shock and something approaching fear.
Because holy shit—if the previous guesses could potentially be explained away by good intuition or an extensive information network, what Yūrei was saying now was genuinely, impossibly terrifying.
What Yūrei had just described struck at the deepest, darkest secret buried in Marufuji Ryo's heart. A secret he hadn't told anyone. Not his friends, not his family, not even himself most of the time. It was merely a wicked thought that had surfaced during his worst moments over the past few days—intrusive thoughts born from desperation and self-loathing.
But what made it even more chilling, what made Ryo's blood run cold, was the mention of 'Dark Electron.'
Those words represented the most hidden, carefully guarded secret of the Cyber Style Dojo where Marufuji Ryo had grown up. The so-called 'legendary cards' that existed more as myth than reality to most students.
Unless you were the current designated successor of the Cyber Style, or unless you'd reached the level of a reserve Dojo Master, ordinary Cyber Style Duelists would never even know about Dark Electron's existence. It was forbidden knowledge, passed down only to those deemed worthy.
And yet this stranger—this mysterious rich kid he'd met less than a week ago—knew about it. Knew about Ryo's darkest impulses. Knew everything.
The shock thundering through Marufuji Ryo's chest had reached an unsurpassable level. When he finally managed to speak, his voice came out raspy and broken, barely more than a whisper.
"How... exactly... do you know about 'Dark Electron'?"
And what he actually wanted to ask—what he was almost too terrified to voice—was: How do you know what I'm thinking? How do you know about my wicked thoughts? Can you read minds? Are you some kind of psychic? What the hell are you?
Yūrei thought to himself with barely suppressed amusement: Of course I know. I watched the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime when I was eight years old, dude.
I've even played the game, and the plot develops exactly the same way there too.
Whether in the game storyline or the anime plot, this is precisely what you do. After turning to the dark side in the future and becoming Hell Kaiser, you return to your hometown in your edgy leather outfit, beat up your poor mentor who doesn't deserve this treatment, and steal the Dark Electron cards. One could say you're very 'filial' to the man who raised you.
But obviously, at a time like this, he couldn't just say, "Because I saw the plot in the animation, my guy."
That would kill the mystique entirely. Ruin the carefully constructed atmosphere of profound knowledge and supernatural insight.
No, now was the perfect time to project an air of deep mystery and act cool. Maximum dramatic effect.
So instead, Yūrei smiled with practiced arrogance—the kind of smile that suggested he knew secrets mortals couldn't comprehend—and turned his head to look straight ahead. He stopped speaking entirely, leaving Classmate Ryo to follow behind him in stunned, confused silence, lost in increasingly frantic thoughts about what kind of person he'd gotten involved with.
Let him stew on that, Yūrei thought with satisfaction.
At the same time, from the corner of his eye, Yūrei scanned the system interface floating in the air before him—the light screen that only he could see, invisible to everyone else in this world.
Displayed on the system screen was data related to the person behind him: his current recruitment target, Classmate Marufuji Ryo.
Character profile. Deck information. Psychological state analysis.
And more importantly—things like favorability rating and conquest probability percentage.
Seeing those particular metrics, Yūrei couldn't help but frown slightly. What the hell? Why is this set up like some kind of dating sim? I can understand having a favorability system, but it even has a damn 'conquest probability' stat? That's... that's kind of sketchy when you think about it.
Though I guess it makes sense given the system's warnings about 'beloved disciples' and romantic entanglements. The system's basically expecting this to turn into some kind of mentor-student romance situation. Or worse, a full-blown harem if I recruit multiple disciples.
Great. Just great. I came here to save people from bad timelines, not to accidentally seduce them.
But complaints aside, Yūrei actually understood perfectly well what was being displayed on this system screen.
Especially this favorability system—it was incredibly familiar to him. In fact, it was exactly the same as the display in the card god game from his previous life. A direct port of the game mechanics into reality.
As a gacha mobile game, characters in card god were intrinsically bound to specific decks and card pools. Many cards required pulling the associated character first before you could obtain them. For example, if you wanted to use a deck piloted by a certain character in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, you'd have to wait for that anime character to enter the gacha rotation, then pull them from the banner to unlock their signature cards.
As for cards related to the extensive card lore stories—the interconnected narratives woven through the card artwork and flavor text—the developers would select a representative character from that storyline and put them into the gacha pool for players to pull.
And favorability was the key to unlocking the full extent of those cards.
In the game, after successfully pulling a character, the first step was cultivation. You'd spend time with them—take them into duels, complete bonding events, utilize the classic home system where they'd hang out in your personal space, deploy them as support in the assist system. Many different activities could increase favorability, allowing you to obtain the character's related cards step by step as your relationship deepened.
In the game, it had all been perfectly innocent—just friendship and mentorship mechanics. But now that this was reality, with the system actively warning him about romantic complications and calling disciples his "beloved disciples"... yeah, the implications were a lot more loaded.
Especially with terms like "conquest" being thrown around. The system wasn't even being subtle about expecting relationship drama.
For instance, taking Marufuji Ryo as an example—he was a Five-Star Character in the game, one of the higher-tier pulls—upon initially summoning him, you'd immediately unlock Cyber Dragon and a basic related deck. Nothing fancy, but functional.
Then, as the character's favorability rating reached certain threshold values, more Cyber Dragon-related cards would progressively unlock. The stronger support cards. The powerful fusion options. The tech choices that made the deck truly competitive.
If you were in a hurry and didn't want to grind out the favorability naturally, you could also burn through some simple consumable items to speed up the process—gift items, bonus training modules, that kind of thing. Regardless of your approach, cultivating characters wasn't particularly difficult or time-consuming.
After all, actually playing the card game with its complex mechanics and competitive meta was already hard enough. Once you'd spent real money to pull the character from the gacha, the developers weren't going to torture you further. You just had to do some symbolic nurturing activities, and the full deck would be yours to use.
However, in this real world—this living, breathing version of the game world that Yūrei had transmigrated into—the mechanics worked slightly differently.
If he didn't personally know someone, if he hadn't established an actual relationship with them, he naturally couldn't just unlock cards based on some abstract favorability meter. The system needed something more concrete.
So in this reality, the favorability system had evolved into something more substantial: 'conquering' characters through genuine relationship-building, trust, and demonstrated competence. Proving yourself worthy of their loyalty and their cards.
Yūrei had to actually earn Marufuji Ryo's respect and allegiance, not just click through dialogue trees until a progress bar filled up.
The thought made him nostalgic, actually.
In his previous life, back in his original world, Yūrei had already cultivated the character Marufuji Ryo once before in the card god game.
When the game first launched, likely due to Cyber Dragon's decent popularity among fans and its moderate competitive strength in the meta, the related Marufuji Ryo character had appeared as a 'Launch Five-Star'—one of the premiere characters available from day one.
The first character many Card Game Enthusiasts had chosen to cultivate, including Yūrei himself, had been this Launch Five-Star Marufuji Ryo. It was almost a rite of passage.
With a Launch Five-Star character on your account, you could naturally cruise through the early game progression comfortably. The power level was high enough to handle all the initial challenges without too much struggle.
Then, as the game continued operating and receiving updates—as the overall power creep gradually increased with each new banner and card set release—those early Launch Five-Stars would slowly become weaker relative to the new hotness. They'd get power-crept out of the meta, unable to keep up with the increasingly absurd combos and board-states that newer characters could produce.
But all in all, whether it was the character Marufuji Ryo who'd accompanied Yūrei through his novice period, or the related Cyber Dragon deck that had carried him through those early challenges, Yūrei still liked them quite a bit. Felt genuine affection for them, even.
The days of using Cyber Dragon for progression grinding—scraping together meager F2P resources to slowly build out the deck, carefully managing his limited gem currency, overcoming obstacles during his novice period through skill and determination rather than wallet power—those memories seemed vividly etched into his mind even now.
He'd never expected to go through a similar experience again after transmigrating into this world. To once again start from scratch with Cyber Dragon as his foundation.
It seems Ryo and I are quite destined to be together, Yūrei thought with genuine warmth. Fate keeps bringing us back to each other across different realities.
Thinking of this connection—this strange bond across dimensions—just as they reached a particular door in the estate, Yūrei suddenly turned his head and smiled at Marufuji Ryo with surprising gentleness.
The expression caught Ryo completely off-guard, leaving him somewhat bewildered. That smile seemed too genuine, too warm, to come from the mysterious figure who'd just been demonstrating impossible knowledge about his darkest secrets.
What's with that look? Ryo thought, confused and unsettled in equal measure.
As mentioned before, in the card god game, if you wanted to increase character favorability efficiently and grind for relationship bonds, the best methods were none other than spending quality time together, utilizing the home system for casual interactions, and deploying them in the assist system for collaborative missions.
But besides those standard approaches, the absolute best way—the method that gave the most favorability points per unit of time invested—was Dueling.
Nothing built bonds like fighting side by side, or testing each other's skills directly.
Next, Yūrei pushed open the door in front of him with deliberate drama, using his body language to signal for Marufuji Ryo to follow him through.
Beyond the door, the view suddenly opened up into something spectacular.
What appeared before both Marufuji Ryo and Yūrei was exactly that massive, professional-grade Duel Arena setup often seen in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime and games. The real deal—a full competition-standard arena with hologram projection systems, life point displays, and elevated platforms for the duelists.
The kind of facility that normally only professional venues or extremely wealthy families could afford to maintain.
Marufuji Ryo's eyes widened despite himself. They have a private arena? Of course they do. These people are absurdly rich.
At the same time, the system's light screen popped up with perfect timing before Yūrei's vision, displaying the updated primary objective he needed to complete next.
["I Shaved, Then Picked Up a Cyber Style Struggling Man" quest updated]
[In the Card King world, there is nothing a Duel cannot solve. If there is, then make it two Duels!]
[Please make good use of your temporary trial deck to defeat this lost young man in a Duel. Thoroughly conquer him—body, mind, and spirit. Let him understand exactly who the boss is here. Recruit him from this moment forward and obtain your first loyal character in this world.]
[Remember: Dueling is communication. Dueling is understanding. Dueling is how bonds are forged in this reality. Now get out there and show him what you've got!]
Clearly, this was the most classic, utterly unavoidable segment of any Yu-Gi-Oh! story.
The "when in doubt, resolve it through cards" moment. The sacred tradition that defined this entire universe.
As the saying went in this world, Dueling was the pillar that held up civilization itself. No matter what the issue was—personal conflicts, business negotiations, life-or-death situations—as long as you pulled out your duel disk, everything became negotiable.
And if you won the duel? Then it became even more negotiable. Winners wrote the rules.
At the same time, squinting slightly at the display, Yūrei noticed that below the main system quest description, there were a few more lines of text. Small print, slightly hidden, easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.
He leaned forward mentally, focusing on those additional lines, wondering what extra conditions or warnings the system had buried in the fine print this time.
Let's see what else you've got for me, system-bro...
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