Yutaka looked at his Student ID once again.
Domino High School
Class: 2-B
First Name: Yutaka
Last Name: Minami
Student Number: ********
Age: 18
The boy in the picture had sharp eyes. His eyes were red, and his hair was white. A clear case of albinism, which also explained why his skin was sickly pale. At least, the owner of the body seemed like he was paying attention to his looks, as the front of his hair was dyed red. Kinda like Yuto from Arc V, but the front was red instead of purple, and the backside was white instead of black. The comparison made sense because of the world he came to.
Looking at the handsome picture on the ID, Yutaka was having mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was happy. Turns out he really crossed over to a different world after all.
The bad news was he had crossed over to the world of Yu-Gi-Oh.
This was a world where everything was decided by card games. You could even duel the police on a motorcycle.
Yes, card games on motorcycles!
At first, it sounded cool, right? But then one should be reminded that losing in a game might cost you your life.
You heard it right. If you lose a duel, you might lose your life in the process. It was called a Shadow Duel.
Imagine that one day you are walking down the street to buy groceries, and suddenly you are trapped in a dark sphere, and the way out is to defeat the rare hunter that trapped you there.
If you lose?
Sorry, into the Shadow Realm with you!
As a duellist, the now Yutaka, Darren, obviously had confidence in his strength. He had managed to reach Master Rank 1 on Master Duel after all, even if he did it as a meta slave netdecker.
The problem was that he was reincarnated into the era of the first show.
The rules of the game were so convoluted during that time that a player could destroy the moon with a Giant Stone Soldier and make the ocean recede.
Yutaka had no knowledge of this era at all.
He didn't get into Yu-Gi-Oh! until after he was in high school, long after GX was over, and his first deck was Gem-Knights.
Basically, when he had started, Yugioh had already turned into a one-person game where hand traps were prevalent. So the format in this era was alien to him.
At best, he knew about cards like Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning etc.
Still, he had watched the show as a kid, so he knew about the general plotline and some of the things that would happen in the future, but that didn't mean he knew about the OP decks that could be made in this era.
His deck wasn't even that good since it had miscellaneous fish cards like Armtail
[Armtail] [EARTH]
[LV: ★ ★ ★ ]
[WARRIOR / NORMAL]
[A strange warrior who manipulates three blades with both hands and his tail.]
[700 ATK / 1300 DEF]
If his only problem was a weak deck, Yutaka could solve it by going to a Duel Monsters shop and buying a couple of packs and even trading some of his 'rare' cards. After all, he remembered that duellists in this era preferred beatsticks over trap cards and effect monsters. So he could have studied the current card pool to make a decent deck that would ensure that he became a legendary duellist by the GX era. When that era arrived, he would make a masked hero deck for himself, showing everyone the cancer combination of Absolute Zero into Vapour.
It couldn't be said that he was that familiar with the GX era, but at least he knew some of the mind-crushing cancer combos that could be made when the time comes. Then he would become a professional duellist and rake in money like Aster Phoenix.
Here comes the real problem.
He was currently on a boat heading towards the Duellist Kingdom.
Yes, before he inhabited this body, Yutaka was someone that could be considered a decent duellist in this era, even with trash cards like Armtail in his deck...
If his letter was accurate, he had finished 4th in the national tournament, where Weevil placed first and Rex placed second. There should also be a fisherman guy who came third, but Yutaka didn't even remember his name. After all, it had been years since he watched the show, so he could only remember the general flow but not every single detail and duellist, aside from some that made really strong impressions, like Bandit Keith, or those birthed play styles based on their decks, like Bonz, who could be considered the ancestor of Zombie decks.
Anyway, Yutaka of this world was a semi-famous top four national duellist, hence the reason why he was invited to the Duellist Kingdom tournament.
Why is this a problem, you say?
First of all, he had no time to adjust his deck. The best he could do was go to the common area and trade for some cards to make his deck stronger.
Secondly, his ambition.
From the moment he discovered that he was a participant of Duellist Kingdom, there was only one thought on Yutaka's mind: how to get Red-Eyes before that lucky idiot Joey gets his hands on it.
He believed that he was much more worthy of becoming its master, nay, its partner. Joey was just a guy who relied on luck. There was no way he could bring out the true potential of a legendary card like Red-Eyes Black Dragon.
As for how Yutaka can bring out Red-Eyes' potential, it was easy.
Wasn't this a world of metaphysics? So just print the cards on the spot. Yugi had once told Kaiba that if he believed a card existed, then it must surely exist when he asked how Yugi knew about Dragon Master Knight, the fusion of Black Luster Soldier and Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. It was such a BS sentence that Yutaka still remembered it years later.
Most importantly, he also had a head start since he knew about the support cards of the Red-Eyes archetype already.
His deck had potential as well.
Since the original Yutaka was a regional top four duellist, his deck contained rare cards like Monster Reborn, Heavy Storm, Witch of the Black Forest, Mask of Darkness, Swords of Revealing Light, though all of them, aside from Witch of the Black Forest, which had two copies, were one-offs.
But that was not all; most importantly, in his side deck he had found the illusive 4th Egyptian God Card.
Kuriboh!
[Kuriboh] [DARK]
[LV: ★ ]
[FIEND / EFFECT MONSTER]
[During damage calculation, if your opponent's monster attacks (Quick Effect): You can discard this card; you take no battle damage from that battle.]
[300 ATK / 200 DEF]
This card served as Yami Yugi's ultimate weapon. Just when any antagonist thought they could win the game, it would jump out and save the day, hence why it was jokingly called the 4th Egyptian God Card by the community. After all, this was the card that had almost forced the famous Kaiba into jumping off a cliff. In that fight, it was obviously Kuriboh who had cornered Kaiba to the edge; Celtic Guardian had just taken advantage of the situation to almost deal the final blow.
So yes, this card could do much more than just jump out and stop fatal damage. It could also drive people to insanity as long as you have its support cards. Though currently only Multiply is printed, and there was no way for Yutaka to get his hands on it, as the only person on this whole ship that probably had that card was Yugi, and there was no way he would trade that. Actually, even if Yugi were willing to trade, Yutaka was unsure about adding a card with such an unknown meaning (one that only works in very specific situations) to his deck.
He didn't want to admit it, but he knew that certain things needed to be said. He was not THE protagonist. It was Yami Yugi, the nameless pharaoh, residing in Yugi Muto's Millennium Puzzle.
This meant he could not depend on drawing the cards he desired, so he needed to create a deck that would not easily brick. He really wanted to perform acrobatics with his deck, but at that moment, his destiny was not strong enough; in other words, he was an unlucky mortal who needed to accept his limitations. Though he believed his situation would improve once he obtained Red-Eyes, which he thought contained a spirit, though he was not entirely sure.
A card spirit meant that a spirit was living inside the card, and if he increased his bond with it, he could draw it easier, and his destiny value would increase, which meant he could draw what he wanted easier.
That was why Kaiba could draw 3X Blue-Eyes and a Polymerization while Jaiden could draw Elemental Hero Burstinatrix and Elemental Hero Avian with a Polymerization in their starting hand as if they were glued with a 502.
Some fans even joked about whether they were actually shuffling their decks at the start of the game, given that they could draw these cards every time.
In fact, training drawing cards could help him draw what he wanted better, no matter how weird it sounded.
If Yutaka didn't remember it wrong, there was a setting of duelling dojos in the GX anime where Zane Trusdale trained from dawn to night to draw cyber cards better, which was eventually recognised by his master, who gifted him the Cyber Dragon deck and declared him the successor of the dojo.
Zane was also another member of the 502 club, as at the start of every duel he would draw 3X Cyber Dragon and Polymerization, immediately summoning a Cyber End Dragon to the field. Yutaka was sure that if someone called Zane a cheater for that, CEO Kaiba would be the first one to jump out and deny the accusations since it was a carbon copy of his draw, and he would be implicated by this as well.
When Yutaka finished sorting out his deck, separating the cards he would definitely use in it, he grabbed his binder and left for the common area on the ship. His plan was to trade for cards, and he already had some idea about what kind of deck he would build. Though his main target was the man himself Joey Wheeler as his deck contained many cards that would later on be incorporated into the Red-Eyes archetype, so he had to trade whatever he could from him, including cards like Baby Dragon, Gearfried and Kunai with Chain, etc.