For many Yu-Gi-Oh! old-timers, "Volcanic" should be a pretty familiar name.
This Card Deck was once a legend of its era, and even for Yugen, back in the day he and his little buddies once unanimously crowned it "the strongest Card Deck."
Back then everyone played cards only with the kids around them, nobody knew anything about official tournament banlists and such, and everything they knew about Yu-Gi-Oh! came from the anime. So of course all the rules they used came from the anime too.
For example, just like in the anime, everyone's starting Life Points were 4000.
For many Duelists, Life Points are just clouds in the sky, only divided into "has" and "has none." But for a Card Deck like Volcanic it was different—at least back in its prime, Volcanic in a 4000 LP environment and Volcanic in an 8000 LP environment were two completely different concepts.
The reason is simple: this is a burn Card Deck with "solitaire" practically written on its face.
Pretty much whenever people mention Volcanic, the first thing that comes to mind is its signature piece of artillery: "Flaming Cannon." From the basic "Flame Cannon," to the upgraded "Flaming Cannon - Trident Style," then to the later Physical Card upgrade "Volcanic Flame Cannon"—together they form the core of Volcanic.
What the various Cannons all have in common—and also Volcanic's basic game plan—is discarding Flame Race Monsters as ammunition to blow up the opponent's cards on the field and directly burn Life Points for damage.
Most of the other Monsters with the Volcanic name also share the same trait of dealing direct burn damage.
And because after you use Flaming Cannon you're restricted by "you cannot attack this turn," this Card Deck naturally has great synergy with various lockdown tactics.
So this legendary Card Deck—packing card destruction, burn, lockdown, heavy traps and every kind of solitaire trait into one—was born. Especially in the local offline 4000 LP environment among the kids back then, it was absolutely a nuclear-weapon-class killing machine. In the end, it even evolved into a consensus among classmates: "Whoever uses Volcanic doesn't get to play with us."
So the buddies who specialized in Volcanic were helpless too. In order to have their classmates continue to grant them the right to play Yu-Gi-Oh!, they had no choice but to promise that they wouldn't be the first to deploy the Volcanic arsenal...
In the slow-paced early environment, a solitaire-representative Card Deck like this was of course beloved by card nerds who took "getting back at society" as a hobby. Not to mention, this Card Deck appeared in the anime and even there had a very impressive showing, so its popularity naturally skyrocketed.
In the anime, the Volcanic user is Ossin O'Brien, the mercenary who appears in the Yubel arc.
From the moment he appears, this guy radiates a level of cool that's completely different from most of the side characters in the show. In his first Duel in the anime he faces the main character, Yuki Judai. And the anime clearly states that at the time, his strength was above Judai's.
O'Brien, as a mercenary, accepted the commission to "draw out all of Yuki Judai's potential," but the client required that in this Duel he was allowed to lose but not allowed to win, and he had to lose nicely, making Judai's victory hard-fought.
So O'Brien deliberately held back and let Judai win, but judging from how that Duel was going, he very likely could have won.
And unlike Ed Phoenix, who had also beaten Judai before—Ed came in at his peak, first taking down the show's power ceiling Caesar and then Judai, but after that it was basically a straight nosedive, especially after he got Blood Demon D, when he basically never won again.
O'Brien, on the other hand, later in the Otherworldly Dimension Chapter relied on his Volcanic to force an extreme one-for-one against Overlord Judai, and with that performance he's been a regular nominee in the fans' "Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Supporting-Role MVP" debates for many years.
Keihei has been working with Yugen for quite a while now, and he's observed plenty of Duels, so he more or less understands Yugen's Duel philosophy.
So now, after just a quick look over this Card Deck, Keihei immediately faintly grasped what Yugen had in mind.
His expression turned a bit weird as he handed the Card Deck back to Yugen and asked, "So... which unlucky soul is going to have the honor of helping you test out your new Card Deck's firepower this time?"
"Hard to say."
Yugen shrugged, then continued.
"But I have a feeling I'll be using it soon."
"Oh? So you've already got a target in mind?"
Keihei silently felt sorry for that not-yet-met victim.
"Sort of. Before long I'll probably be up against a slightly troublesome opponent, so this should come in handy... mm, hold on, let me take this call."
Yugen pulled out his personal terminal. Now that he more or less counted as a public figure, his personal contact info was relatively confidential. There weren't many people who could call him directly.
He swiped the screen and glanced at it. It was Joey.
"Mr. Joey Wheeler, did your meeting with President Beckas go smoothly?"
Yugen had heard from Judai that Joey had gone to Duel Kingdom Island for an appointment.
"That's what I'm calling about. Things are a bit complicated. To put it simply, it looks like Beckas was being controlled, by that so-called Light of the Cosmos or something..."
Yugen raised an eyebrow.
"The Light of Destruction? On Beckas?"
"Yeah. And then we just had a Duel..."
Yugen nodded. "Since you're still talking to me now, it seems Beckas's luck wasn't so good."
"Ahahaha, you saw right through that, huh."
Mentioning that he'd just taken Beckas down, Joey couldn't help smugly rubbing his nose, but he quickly shook his head.
"That's not the point. Beckas is unconscious now, but before he passed out he told me some important things. For example, he mentioned an important card... something like a Sword Fighting Card.
He said that with his own power he couldn't complete it, so he controlled Beckas and used the Father of Duel Monsters' power to finish that card..."
"Huh?"
Yugen froze.
A Sword Fighting Card completed using Beckas's power... which one?
"And also, Beckas said that they've set their sights on that kid."
"Who?"
"Yuki Judai!" Joey said. "They said Judai is approaching the root of Darkness or something. Anyway, it sounded like that Light-of-the-Cosmos faction really cares about him."
Yugen thought for a moment.
Hmm, come to think of it, after Judai got the power of Ultraman he was already a holder of the Darkness of the Universe. Now he's also obtained the Overlord's Power, so if at this point a Light of Destruction with a god's-eye view were looking down from above the Earth, Judai probably would look like a walking Black Hole on the planet's surface...
So them locking onto him is actually pretty reasonable.
"I've already tried to contact Judai, but it feels like all his contact channels have been cut off. No matter what I do I can't reach him, not even through Duel Academy Island."
Joey sounded a bit anxious.
"I'm afraid something's already happened. I'm on my way back now. See if you can..."
"Calm down," Yugen cut him off. "You know what Judai is capable of, and you've seen what the Overlord can do. So tell me: if someone really took advantage of us being away and went to the island to try to ambush the current Judai...
...is that really something worth worrying about?"
Joey was taken aback, thought for two seconds.
Then he blankly scratched his head.
Yeah, what's there to worry about?
What the hell am I panicking for?