The opening banquet for Duel Academy's new term was held smoothly. The Academy really went all-out this year, preparing a lavish feast for its own teachers and students as well as the guests who had come from afar; the generosity was enough to make those visitors from other schools click their tongues in amazement.
The owner of the Jades, John Anderson, was eating a big shrimp while curiously asking the new companions he'd just met beside him, "So, is your main campus normally this loaded? A banquet on this scale, over at our branch campus you could basically say it's unimaginable..."
Mitsuzawa, standing together with Judai, lowered his voice and said, "You definitely can't imagine how much income the main campus pulled in over the last year..."
The teachers and students of the main campus could all feel a clear change over the past year. From top to bottom, the Academy felt increasingly rich: staff benefits, every new shipment into the Card Warehouse, the size of the discounts, and the Academy's facilities...
You could feel the improvement in almost every respect; the Academy was getting better by the day.
And everyone in the whole school knew that these changes had all occurred after the arrival of a certain existence who inspired both reverence and fear, both love and hate.
At the same time, it brought another change: possibly for the first time since Duel Academy was founded, Ra's Dorm had actually begun to show a trend of overshadowing Obelisk-Blue.
In the past, at this school, elite education was highly valued, and there was also a strict hierarchy among students. When students from Yellow Dorm ran into the elites from Blue Dormitory on the road, they were supposed to lower their heads and yield the way; everyone had a clear understanding of the Level they were in.
But now, the rules that had been maintained since the school's founding had begun to be shaken. Now the students of Yellow Dorm held their heads high wherever they went, and the elites in blue uniforms no longer dared act all high and mighty in front of them.
The best seats in class, originally reserved exclusively for Blue Dormitory students, were no longer exclusive either; no elite dared to arrogantly hog a seat just because of the color of their uniform.
There were even new students this year—Middle School Department elites who had originally been guaranteed promotion into Blue Dormitory—of whom nearly half were willing to give up that chance and actively requested placement in Yellow Dormitory.
This was also the first time since Obelisk Blue Dormitory existed that it faced such a massive loss of elites, yet the elite faculty of Blue Dormitory were at a complete loss as to what to do.
Correspondingly, with the addition of the top students—and the blessing of a certain unmentionable Master of the Yellow Robe—the facilities and benefits of Yellow Dormitory were continuously upgrading, and their facilities had now vaguely reached a level equal to that of Obelisk Blue.
On campus, more than once someone had even brought up that, as everyone knew, the three dorms' colors and names were taken from the Three Phantom Gods, and even grade-school amateur Duelists knew that among the Three Phantom Gods, the Supreme God was the Winged Divine Dragon of Ra.
So why should the status of Blue Dormitory be above that of Yellow Dormitory, which represents the Winged Divine Dragon? That makes absolutely no sense, right?
Well, no one had ever mentioned this in the past, but it was tacitly understood that this was Seto Kaiba, the president's, unspoken rule when the Academy was founded.
What? You're not convinced that Obelisk is above Yellow Dormitory?
Fine, the president says, if you can beat the cards in my hand, then I'll admit you're right.
And so Blue Dormitory became the Academy's top dorm.
But now, Ra's Dorm produced a Master of the Yellow Robe. This person had no intention of leaving Yellow Dormitory to move up to Blue Dormitory, and had practically become the dorm's spokesperson. More importantly, he actually beat Seto Kaiba.
Thus, this unreasonable point that no one had raised for so many years was finally brought to the table as a reason to attack Blue Dormitory.
Although the Master of the Yellow Robe himself had zero interest in any dormitory struggle, and had absolutely no intention of stepping out to vie for anything—his refusal to speak up was, in fact, the fundamental reason Blue Dormitory had not yet been completely trampled—but even if he said nothing at all, just hanging that name in the Academy, shining like the sun, was already enough to let the entire Yellow Dormitory press down on everyone else.
As things stood, it seemed only a matter of time before Ra's Dorm's status surpassed that of Blue Dormitory. The general consensus in the Academy was that the replacement of the supreme dorm's status should happen within this term.
However, the exhibition Duel originally scheduled for this banquet—an exhibition match between the outside-school representative Professor Kobra and the Academy's own student Yugen—was suddenly canceled right when it was already banquet time.
It wasn't that Yugen backed out; it was Professor Kobra who flaked.
This left many students, who had really been looking forward to seeing the King show his skills, quite disappointed. That burly, broad-shouldered professor was quite famous back at his branch campus too, and was said to be a top-class Duelist, in possession of some very terrifying cards.
The students had thought they would see a clash of titans tonight, but it seemed they didn't have that kind of luck.
And so the rumor that Kobra, because of a clash over his harsh teaching philosophy, had been beaten into the ICU by the Master of the Yellow Robe spread even further overnight. Everyone couldn't help but draw in a cold breath, and they recognized more deeply just how this guy, while only a student, could actually cast such a long shadow over the entire Academy...
In reality, Yugen had already contacted the Kaiba Group's recon team to secretly come to the island and assist with the investigation. They had now gathered evidence that Kobra intended to hold Death Duels to steal the students' Life Energy in a nefarious scheme, and were currently assisting in the search for the missing Elf Yubel.
Once the evidence was made public in a couple of days, all the teachers and students in the school would come to know this visiting professor's true nature, and they would realize that it was Yugen who uncovered his plot in time and saved all their lives.
Of course, the fact that a visiting professor, who had only just arrived on the island for one day and whose Evil plan hadn't even had time to get started, was preemptively knocked into a vegetative state by the Master of the Yellow Robe would also further deepen the image of the Master's absolute control over this Academy.
Yugen didn't mind this. If his reputation alone could scare away some petty crooks, and make anyone harboring designs on this school weigh their own strength, that would be a good thing for both him and the Academy.
And if, under such widely spread infamy, there was still someone confident enough to come knocking and challenge the authority of the Master of the Yellow Robe, that would also be a good thing.
Because if someone was that confident, it would almost certainly mean that person was no slouch, and must have something good in their hands to justify that confidence. For Yugen, that basically meant a walking big gift pack coming right to his door for him to sign for.
For example, the generous Mr. Keith he'd just met, who'd gifted Yugen an army's worth of Elves. Although Yugen had promised many of them to help find their original masters, even the ones that remained already made up a sizable force.
Or take the even more generous Professor Kobra, who came from far away to gift him a heavyweight big brother like the Poisonous Snake God.
The Poisonous Snake God might be hard to handle, but Yugen had already thought of a certain Rare Card Deck he possessed, a friendship gift from a Doma Swordsman back in the day, whose system had perfect synergy with this snake-poison gift pack Kobra had just delivered.
Alien Insect.