Scanning the list, most names were unfamiliar aside from Rex Raptor. Then his gaze stopped on a name that felt oddly familiar. Manjoume Jun?
The GX era eternal runner up who managed to drop from elite to comic relief in a single year? He checked the personal details. An elite school affiliated with the Duel Academy middle division, expected to be recommended directly into the Duel Academy high division this year.
By age, that meant the GX main cast should be around the same generation as him. No problem.
He then checked his first round pairing in the Preliminary Round. Nakamura Tsubasa, duelist level four. It looked like there would be little pressure.
In fact, when Nakamura Tsubasa stepped onto the preliminary duel stage and stood opposite Yugen, he thought the same. Yugen Fujiki, level one, no major event experience, no honors, an entirely blank record. After reading the short profile over and over, Nakamura saw only two words.
Free win.
Sometimes you matched with this kind of opponent when luck was good. In the scene, they were called charity duelists, weak but obsessed with playing, just there to hand out points. This one was settled.
What Nakamura did not know was that when Yugen stood across from him and drew his opening five cards, he immediately apologized in his heart. Sorry, brother, but I opened godly. It looks like only one of us is going to play Yu-Gi-Oh! this duel.
Yugen took the first turn. He activated the spell card "Confiscation," paying 1000 life points to look at his opponent's hand and discard one card. Then he played "The Forceful Sentry," looked again, and returned one card to the deck.
After that came "Delinquent Duo," paying another 1000 life points for a third strike. One random discard and one chosen discard followed, sending two more cards away. The legendary hand destruction trio came out in a clean three hit combo.
Before Nakamura even had a turn, he was already down to a single card. Because he had seen the hand, Yugen knew that last card was the spell "Double Spell," which let you discard a card to use a spell from the opponent's graveyard. It was not very useful.
After the combo, Yugen did not summon any monsters. He set one card and ended his turn, looking very calm. Finally, he raised a hand politely. "I am done. Please."
Nakamura Tsubasa felt awful. Before his turn even started, he only had one card left. How was he supposed to play?
Still, as a duelist, he did not give up. Nakamura steadied himself and drew a card from his deck. Immediately, the opponent flipped a trap card, "Drop Off."
The card he had just drawn went straight to the graveyard before it even warmed in his hand. Nakamura froze in place. Was this guy determined not to let him play at all?
With no choice, he stared at the useless "Double Spell" in his hand. He had no other card to discard as a cost, so he could only end his turn in frustration. It felt like his turn had ended before it even began.
Now it was Yugen's turn again. He activated the spell "Reinforcement of the Army," searching his deck for a Warrior type monster. He took "Don Zaloog," then normal summoned Don Zaloog and attacked.
After dealing battle damage, Don Zaloog's effect triggered, forcing the opponent to discard one card from their hand. Nakamura Tsubasa stared blankly.
Now he had zero cards left. What kind of sin had he committed in a past life to get matched with something like this?
Tsubasa Nakamura left the field howling in the end.
Winning the first match of the Preliminary Round was a perfect start, and Yugen was very satisfied with his performance in that round. He had once again shown someone, through both words and actions, what the real essence of Yu-Gi-Oh! was. He believed that once this opponent went back to review the duel, they would gain a lot from it and would probably end up feeling grateful to him.
On the first day, Yugen played several matches in a row, and the match density was far from low. However, the Moonlight Cup was not a tournament with a high entry barrier, so the number of participants from all walks of life was huge. The preliminary matches were held simultaneously at many venues, which greatly reduced the overall schedule time.
None of this was outside his expectations. The opponents he drew in the preliminaries were not any big names, and judging from what he knew of the anime, most ordinary duelists outside the main cast's perspective were fairly average in strength. For now, he had not seen any deck builds that really caught his eye.
Even so, Yugen did not underestimate his opponents. After finishing the day's matches, he still took some time to watch other duels and get a rough understanding of the players who advanced. Although the chance of losing to most of them was low, he felt it was better to stay cautious.
As the saying goes, know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never lose, and this was even more true in Yu-Gi-Oh!. If he could understand his opponents' deck setups and tactical styles in advance and make targeted adjustments before the match, it would effectively raise his win rate. Preparation mattered as much as execution.
Before the Moonlight Cup began, the Duel Dojo had already allocated him part of a subsidy, saying it was for strengthening his deck and upgrading his setup. Yugen accepted it without hesitation. With this budget, he could further adjust his original strategy, and over the past few days he went on a shopping spree, trying to piece together a few more decks.
Card Destruction might have been a world champion card back in the day, but in the anime world it was clearly unrealistic to rely on just one trick forever. Once others figured out that this was his main weapon, it would be easy to counter him, and that was not something he wanted to see. So before the tournament, he bought cards on the market and, based on what he could obtain, assembled two or three decks that felt both competitive and fun to play.
He constantly switched decks and adjusted builds based on the opponent's deck type and tactics, making his own strategy flexible and hard to read. This let him keep favorable matchups while also making it harder for others to target him directly. Flexibility became his biggest shield.
Kageru Takeuchi brewed a cup of coffee and sat comfortably on a soft sofa under the afternoon sunlight, casually flipping through the latest issue of Duelist Times. Duelist Times was a newspaper under Kaiba Corporation, and it reported all kinds of strange stories from the dueling world. He had been busy with family matters these past two days and did not have time to watch his students' matches.
Even so, he had already heard that both trainees from the Duel Dojo had passed the first day of preliminaries smoothly, which made him feel quite relieved. As he opened the paper, he saw coverage related to the Moonlight Cup preliminaries. One headline immediately caught his attention.
"On the Moonlight Cup Preliminary Round stage, an incident nearly escalated into a malicious physical attack on the opposing duelist."
"During a duel, a certain participant lost emotional control and attempted to directly harm the opposing duelist, but failed. The participant was disqualified."
"Hmm?" Kageru Takeuchi leaned in with curiosity and read the report more carefully. Something like this actually happened?