Chapter 63: The Choice of the Strong

A few days ago, Mokuba sent over the list of rare cards he had previously mentioned were originally scheduled to be shipped to Duel Academy, exactly as promised.

Just as Yuxuan had anticipated, his eyes immediately caught the "VWXYZ" series occupying a prominent position on the list. Naturally, without a moment's hesitation, he claimed the entire series first.

Because these items were originally slated for the internal sales channels of Duel Academy, their prices were set at levels completely unheard of in the outside world. Moreover, the prize money Yuxuan had previously collected from Kaiba Corporation was still mostly untouched, so his budget remained quite ample at present.

Next, he had his eyes on "Mallet" (known in the anime as "Card Shuffle"), which Manjoume had used in the series. Its anime effect allowed the user to shuffle any number of cards from their hand, including this card itself, back into the deck, and then draw the exact same number of cards.

It belonged to the category of cards that could replace any dead cards in hand during a hand-bricked situation.

In the real-life card game, it was nerfed to "shuffle and replace cards in hand excluding this card," instantly turning it into a card that resulted in a minus-one in card advantage, severely reducing its practical utility.

Yuxuan thought about it: with its anime effect, a hand-exchange that didn't result in card disadvantage wasn't entirely unusable. However, in this anime environment dominated by the Power of Destiny, even deck search effects weren't very favored, let alone something like this.

Besides, he had stockpiled a large number of anime-exclusive draw filters, so under normal circumstances, he would have even less use for the Mallet.

Still, checking the price, the Mallet seemed to be in the cheapest tier within the entire card box. And although it wouldn't be needed for standard play, it might come in handy if he ever wanted to play certain specific trick decks, so he went ahead and took three copies.

Following that, he also saw that crucial plot-related card, "Winged Kuriboh's Evolution" (Wings of Transcendence). It was a rare card that allowed Winged Kuriboh to evolve into LV10 by discarding two cards from the hand.

However, there was only one person in the entire Duel Academy who possessed Winged Kuriboh, so this card practically had the words "Exclusive to Jellyfish-Head" stamped all over it...

What Yuxuan had in his possession was a regular Kuriboh, not a Winged Kuriboh, so this item was completely useless to him. Thus, he decided to leave it for classmate Judai.

Though, once he finished picking these out, there didn't seem to be anything left for Manjoume.

"Don't worry, we'll allocate some other rare cards as replacements before shipping to Duel Academy," Mokuba told him.

Well, Yuxuan figured that even if these good things ended up in Manjoume's hands, they might just end up ruined in the water anyway. To prevent any waste, he graciously accepted them.

There were only two days left until the start of the new semester at Duel Academy.

On the day before his departure to board the island, he made one last trip to the dojo to bid farewell to the master and his fellow students.

Upon entering, he saw the students sitting in seiza on the floor one by one, heads hanging low. Master Takeuchi was standing at the front, spitting as he lectured them.

Curious, Yuxuan walked over and listened for a moment, gradually grasping the whole story.

Simply put, the Master was dissatisfied that the dojo had recently become overrun with toxic, underhanded tactics, with the students each starting to take joy in griefing society.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. The students quickly discovered that while all the martial brothers in the dojo had become practitioners of these dirty tactics, the fun was diminished when dirty tactics clashed with dirty tactics. Consequently, they began turning their guns around, shifting their targets to the nearby dueling arenas.

As a result, rumors of the Silent Dojo began spreading through several arenas in the surrounding area. Legend had it that every single duelist in this entire dojo was an emissary from hell, taking pleasure in dragging everyone they crossed paths with down into the shadow realm. Regardless of whether their own side could win or not, the bottom line was that the opponent wasn't allowed to play the game.

What was even more terrifying was that this momentum was spreading like a plague, showing signs of further propagation wherever these people went...

Master Takeuchi probably never imagined that one day their Silent style of dueling would truly become prominent, yet not in the way he had envisioned, but rather by "silencing the opponent through dueling"...

By this time, the deck build Yuxuan had used in the Luna Cup had been thoroughly studied by the dojo students. Right now, every single person in the dojo had stuffed their decks with Mirror Force, Bottomless Trap Hole, Torrential Tribute, and the Three Sacred Treasures of Hand Destruction, highlighting nothing if not copying someone else's homework.

Of course, Yuxuan had long anticipated that this day would come sooner or later. It was just that he was still a nobody right now, at best a local dark horse who had pulled off an upset against Ryuzaki in an amateur-tier tournament, so his fame probably still had a lingering local heat, meaning only those close by were currently studying his build. But if he were ever to become as famous as Yugi or Kaiba, countless people would inevitably study his deck. Some would research counters, while others would inevitably imitate it.

However, with his increasingly deep understanding of the anime environment through recent consecutive duels and research, Yuxuan was also beginning to realize something: the decks used by duelists in this world weren't successful just because of build strength alone.

Much like the early days of GX, Professor Kagemaru's student, Kagurazaka, stole Yugi's deck to duel Judai, only to be utterly crushed by Judai. Following that, both Judai and Kaiser Ryo explained this theory in their own ways.

According to Kaiser, a duelist must use a deck they have poured their emotions into and built with their own hands; only then would the deck respond to the duelist's heart and unleash its maximum power. Using someone else's deck to duel, no matter how closely one imitated the strategy, ultimately wasn't one's own possession and could never win a duel.

Yuxuan's interpretation of these words was roughly that the act of copying homework would diminish a duelist's own "Power of Destiny." Perhaps the strength of the copied deck was higher, but the hand-brick rate would increase and the top-deck rate would drop, ultimately doing little to improve one's personal strength.

Therefore, many times in the anime, dueling required pursuing the utmost "soul." Sometimes it wasn't just for the sake of looking flashy and cool, but because without soul, one was likely to be at a disadvantage when trading blows with experts...

So Yuxuan had actually been giving some thought to related matters over the past couple of days. The ideal state should be to maintain a competitive mindset, using methods including but not limited to crushing the opponent's mental state to achieve suppression, while also finding ways to bring out the advantages of his spirits.

In other words, finding a balance between competition and soul.

But that referred to situations involving experts.

As for the level of these companions in the dojo, however, he felt that copying homework and relying on these dirty tactics for dueling wasn't a bad thing at all.

Judging by his observations anyway, the students' levels of the Power of Destiny were mediocre at best; most of them lacked talent and would likely struggle to make any progress throughout their lives. Yet switching to a powerful build genuinely and visibly improved their win rates.

Look, these past couple of days, the brothers who copied his homework and went to the arenas for matches seemed to have a rather decent win rate.

It just hurt the dojo's reputation a little...

"We duelists should all believe in our own decks!"

Master Takeuchi was currently reprimanding the students for their behavior.

"A deck built with one's own feelings poured into it is unique to every single person!"

Although it sounded righteous and solemn, at this moment, a student couldn't help but peek out and whisper quietly.

"But Master, I saw you pick up a 'Confiscation' just the day before yesterday, and a 'Delinquent Duo' three days ago..."

Master Takeuchi: "......"

He pondered for a few seconds.

Then he placed his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest.

"I simply happened to share great minds with classmate Yuxuan! It is completely normal for powerful duelists to have similar choices when it comes to cards."

All the students: "......"