Chapter 64: Raise One Point, Surpass a Hundred!
[Academy Network Connection Successful. Entering Point Shop]
[Monster Reborn] [Exchange Cost: 30,000 Points]
[Confirm Exchange?] [√]
[Exchange Successful]
[Graceful Charity] [Exchange Cost: 200,000 Points]
[Confirm Exchange?] [√]
[Exchange Failed] [Insufficient Remaining Points]
[Painful Choice] [Exchange Cost: 300,000 Points]
"..."
"I'm poor! Nowhere near enough!"
After browsing Eva Academy's point shop card exchanges, Amano couldn't help his soul's lament.
Even though the "warm-hearted and kind" Chiha-senpai had prepared a 120,000-point gift package on enrollment's first day—
Looking at the point shop's dazzling array of rare cards, Amano still felt 120,000 was nowhere near enough!
After all, 120,000 couldn't even exchange for [Graceful Charity], let alone other powerful cards.
For Amano, a card game enthusiast from his previous life, using these cards wasn't just about powerful effects—it carried a taboo thrill of legally playing banned cards impossible to use before.
Super satisfying!
However, after officially using the point shop, Amano discovered an issue.
Cards exchanged from the point shop all bore [Untradeable] markers. Meaning you couldn't exchange ranking points for cards to sell for money—reasonable enough.
Second point: after Amano exchanged one [Monster Reborn], the second copy's cost suddenly jumped from 30,000 to 60,000 points.
Meaning if you wanted three copies in your deck, it required increasingly higher costs.
This situation probably encouraged students to explore different card combination possibilities.
Like how the second [Monster Reborn] cost 60,000 points, but you could choose 20,000 points to exchange [Premature Burial]—equally capable of reviving Graveyard monsters—as substitute.
Or maybe this restriction purely prevented stuffing three [Pot of Greed] copies for bug exploitation.
Of course, though these powerful banned cards remained beyond Amano's current exchange capacity, 120,000 points more than sufficed for exchanging Magic/Trap cards synergizing with vanillas he'd liked earlier.
Don't underestimate these vanilla-specific cards—they weren't comparable to Yui's shop's 1,000-point trinkets.
Like this [Unexpected Dai]—at critical moments, even better than Dark Hole.
Finally, while browsing cards, Amano noticed some Magic cards related to his current card archetypes.
Ritual Spell [Chaos Form]
Though a Ritual Spell, it was a card with effect text mentioning both "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" and "Dark Magician."
As yesterday's duel demonstrated when Chiha used it—regardless of academy, anyone could use Ritual Summons.
Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician's [Chaos Form]...
Whether [Magician of Chaos] or [Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon], both held tremendous appeal for current Amano.
What card enthusiast could refuse cool and powerful cards?
[Chaos Form]'s exchange price: 10,000 points.
Not that Amano couldn't afford it—but Ritual Monsters didn't exist in the Extra Deck.
Even with Amano's system granting full Dragon-Type Extra Deck access, Ritual Monsters existed in the Main Deck.
Just having Ritual Spell cards accomplished nothing without monsters.
Yet this point shop required ranking 1000 or higher to unlock monster card exchanges. And you could only exchange cards from archetypes you already owned.
Equivalent to—without HERO-related cards, you could never exchange a complete HERO set from nothing.
Currently ranked 1,120, he wasn't far from unlocking the monster shop.
Human greed truly was endless. Previously using trash vanillas worked fine for dueling, but when presented more options, the "gotta catch 'em all" impulse emerged irresistibly.
Amano closed his Eva terminal.
"Finally done playing around?"
When Amano looked up again, he saw Nanki'in Sakuya's cold yet beautiful cool-faced moe expression.
"Getting addicted to your terminal first day of school—you're really carefree, Amano Rei."
If connecting to campus network wasn't required for card exchanges, Amano wouldn't need to exchange cards in the classroom so early.
Currently, Amano sat inside Synchro Academy District 15's Class 1-E classroom.
With too many academy students, dividing into district campuses for classes was unavoidable.
Originally planning to join Fusion Academy, Amano accidentally entered Synchro Academy. After separating from companions, he'd assumed everyone around would be strangers.
Yet life was unpredictable—across multiple districts, Amano and Nanki'in Sakuya ended up assigned to the same district and class.
"Speaking of which, why are you here too?" Amano asked doubtfully.
Each Synchro Academy district's first-year had seven classes total, divided A through E by order.
Class assignment basis: each student's middle school period grades.
Class A had best grades, Class E worst.
So Amano's doubt about Sakuya was also classmates' collective confusion about both of them.
One was the Nanki'in Family's young miss. The other was the mysterious Synchro powerhouse who defeated Kaiba Chiha during entrance exams.
How did these two end up assigned to Class E?
Actually, Amano being assigned Class E wasn't strange—he completely lacked middle school grades.
Even having defeated Chiha during entrance exams, systematic class placement still calculated from middle school period grades.
"Something happened before." Sakuya answered.
The yakuza young miss's answer remained simple and cold. But the instant she turned toward the blackboard, Amano faintly caught very subtle blush on the girl's cheeks.
"Teacher's coming."
"Shh, stop talking."
Footsteps from the hallway rang like warning bells, instantly silencing the previously noisy classroom.
Amano glanced at his wrist terminal's displayed time.
—6:45 AM.
Right, dawn had broken just half an hour ago.
Yet Synchro Academy required every student arriving by 6:30 AM.
This posed no difficulty for Amano. After all, lower district early-to-bed, early-to-rise lifestyle had already set his biological clock.
But looking at other classroom students' exhausted expressions, clearly they hadn't adapted to this early schedule.
The classroom door opened. An upright middle-aged man holding a thermos walked slowly in, seemingly deliberately making his footsteps echo on the classroom floor.
"I'm your Class 1-E homeroom teacher this year, Kondo Tsuyoshi. You can call me Teacher Kondo or Dean Kondo!"
"Kondo Tsuyoshi—I saw that name on the academy website, isn't he the dean of students... Oww!"
The interrupting student didn't finish before a precisely flying chalk piece struck his head directly.
Year 5026 still using blackboards and chalk—Amano strongly suspected this existed purely for chalk projectile discipline.
"Don't worry about my identity—manage your own identities!"
Saying this, Kondo turned, vertically writing a line along the blackboard's edge.
[Days Until Next Monthly Exam: "30"!]
"I don't care about your Class E middle school grades. Once entering Synchro Academy's higher division, it's a fresh start. And in Synchro Academy's higher division, the most important thing is!"
Tap tap tap—accompanied by crisp chalk tapping, Kondo wrote two large characters on the blackboard.
—"POINTS"!!
"Points determine your life's important indicators! Only high ranking points give opportunities entering upper districts! Especially you rear-rankers with dense point intervals—every single point increase represents massive ranking jumps!"
"Raise one point, surpass a hundred people!"
Alright, now Amano understood.
Why 6:30 AM arrival.
Synchro Academy was running Chinese-style education.
***
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