The soft morning sunlight spilled on the city's skyline, with golden rays shining through the gaps in the bustling skyscrapers, coating the streets of this former City of Duels with a thin layer of gold.
Public Security Maintenance Bureau's subsidiary, the Card Research Institute.
"Officer!"
"Officer Godwin!"
The two researchers passing by in the corridor stood at attention and saluted.
Yugen, or now known as Godwin, walked past them, waving his hand casually, indicating they should go about their business.
In this era, the Public Security Maintenance Bureau can almost be said to be the highest authority in this city. The former Officer Godwin nearly controlled all the important resources in the city, from politics to economics, research to people's livelihood.
Moreover, this institution does not take orders from the higher political circles but is fundamentally manipulated by an organization called "Taiyi" in the shadows. In the original work, Godwin, as an early-stage BOSS, seemed to act arbitrarily, only to later find out his actions never actually escaped Taiyi's control, merely a puppet. Taiyi's influence permeates all aspects of the world, nearly rivaling that of Doma during the DM era.
And the true nature of this organization is that they are future people from a ruined future timeline, led by Paradox and his group. They traveled back in time to change history and founded this organization.
Although Godwin is secretly controlled by Taiyi, this has also led the Public Security Maintenance Bureau to become the pinnacle of power in this city.
One of the perks of being the director of this organization is that some once-rare resources become readily available.
For instance, a large number of Rare Cards.
Since the birth of the Perpetual Motion Machine MOMENT, the development of Duel Monsters in this world has also intertwined with the Perpetual Motion Machine. Synchro Monsters and MOMENT are complementary, and the Public Security Maintenance Bureau, having control over the city's core Perpetual Motion Machine, naturally collaborated with the era's Kaiba Group to establish a dedicated Card Research Institute.
Yes, the Kaiba Group still exists in this era, but due to Seto Kaiba's disappearance, at least in New Tongshiyi, its influence is not as pronounced as in the dimension Yugen was familiar with. The 5DS animation only mentioned the Kaiba Group's name early on, but it never appeared again throughout, hence not having a strong presence.
Spending an entire morning soaking in the Public Security Maintenance Bureau's internal Card Warehouse, Yugen had quite a fruitful harvest.
Not to mention other things, like the Synchroist decks of protagonists Yusei Fudo, Kro Hogan's Black Feather, any components seen were naturally acquired by Yugen. These decks mostly consist of cards that aren't particularly rare, and acquiring a full set isn't difficult as long as one has enough financial resources.
In reality, during the Synchro Era, these two decks represented one peak mainstream and a World Champion. It's puzzling for Yugen why Crabbro was able to pick up such strong decks from a junk pile...
Yet, Crabbro could even hand-craft a Perpetual Motion Machine from a junk pile – perhaps in this era, even junk shouldn't be underestimated.
Additionally, what caught his eye were some scattered "Ice Barrier" cards.
Ice Barrier was also quite active during the Synchro Era; however, rather than the deck itself, this series is more famous for the Synchro Monsters that everyone in the mainstream environment loved to sideline.
Such as this representative card, Ice Barrier Light Spear Dragon.
Six-Star Synchro, without attribute or race summoning conditions, it can be summoned as long as six stars are gathered, and with an Attack Power of 2300, it's not weak. But most importantly, the Monster Effect during that environment was astonishingly impactful.
By discarding any number of hand cards, cards on the field, of the corresponding number, can be bounced back to the owner's hand.
Yes, one could discard an unlimited number of cards in one go, removing any number of cards from the field. What's more terrifying is that this effect isn't limited to once per turn.
This is why competitive duelists during the Synchro Era, at least to some extent, felt the overwhelming power of Light Gun; hence the card was eventually banned.
Of course, today the big boss has served his sentence and was later released with the limitation that "the effect of this card can only be used once per turn" after repairs. Due to these changes and the evolution of the game environment, after release, it no longer held its past glory.
However, in this era, Light Gun remains extremely powerful.
The peer to Light Gun is another Ice Barrier boss, "Ice Barrier Dragon - Trident Dragon."
Nine-Star Synchro, requiring an Adjusted Monster plus at least two other monsters for Synchro Summoning. Upon successful Synchro Summon, select up to one card each from the opponent's hand, field, and graveyard for removal from play.
No need to elaborate, anyone who faced three Trident Dragons from the opponent in one turn, losing nine cards, won't forget that fear.
Unfortunately, after wandering around for a long time, Yugen only found one Light Gun and, after half a day, still couldn't trace any sign of Big Brother Trident.
Later, with the help of the Public Security Maintenance Bureau's supercomputer to search all known card information collected by the bureau worldwide, he finally confirmed that in this world, Big Brother Trident seems not to have been born yet…
Yugen frowned.
Something's off; he remembered in the animation, even just for a moment, didn't Trident Dragon appear in some bystander's hand and was called a "top Rare Card"?
Could it be the dimension he resides in differs from the animated original in his memory…or perhaps the Ice Barrier development team has yet to create it.
So Yugen proceeded to check the team behind Light Spear Dragon's development to learn who designed these Ice Barrier cards. Upon investigation, he discovered that the team was not doing their jobs properly and, instead of working on the promising Ice Barrier, they shifted focus to develop a bunch of obscure series from the early Synchro Era.
In fact, their latest work is "Dragunite Coatl", a Level 6 Mortal Bone Adjusted Monster, which is completely meaningless in comparison to Light Gun...
Yugen was quite displeased about this.
Thus, he immediately called in the development team to harshly reprimand them at first sight. He accused them of not doing their jobs while drawing a salary, goofing off without any output for so long of a time.
The experts were utterly puzzled by the berating.
They looked at each other, seeing confusion in each other's eyes—
——Since when did our officer start caring about card printing?
Although they were indeed subdivisions under the Public Security Maintenance Bureau, the previous officers rarely concerned themselves with the affairs of these development departments. Primarily, Godwin, though able to play cards, really didn't have much insight into card development and wasn't comfortable interfering.
So, what was the matter today?
Even more surprising was that after the scolding, today the officer even provided an unprecedented innovative idea, suggesting that the previously developed Ice Barrier had great potential and recommended pausing their current projects to focus entirely on researching it.
And although it was just a suggestion, the officer described it so thoroughly, including the direction of this deck's main attack and how to enhance it, that he even specified some cards, almost naming them.
At first, they were indifferent, but as they listened further, they grew increasingly astonished.
If it were just a vague concept, it would be understandable, but how could the officer describe in such precise detail so many new cards, the development ideas which hadn't even been proposed yet?
After a round of instructions, sending them off to work, Yugen sighed.
Indeed, card printing is the primary productivity; even in the new world, he must care for it himself.
He had already begun to consider whether he should expand the card printing business to more dimensions in the future.