Light gathered around the staff, and electricity crackled between Jinzo's hands.
"Not so fast!" Onizuka Genichiro shouted. "I activate Quick-Play Spell Half Shut. One monster's attack is halved and it cannot be destroyed by battle this turn. I choose Jinzo!"
Even with traps sealed, he could still use spells. Reducing the damage would at least keep him alive.
"No," Yugen said quietly.
He snapped his fingers.
"Silent Magician's effect. Once per turn, when a Spell Card is activated, I can negate its activation."
Onizuka Genichiro froze.
Spells negated, traps sealed by Jinzo. Both were locked down completely.
Half Shut shattered into fragments under the magic seal.
Desperate, Onizuka Genichiro flipped his last set card.
"Activate! Activate already! Mirror Force, blow them away!"
Jinzo crossed its arms, red light flashing in its eyes. A wave of psychic force swept the field, pressing the trap back into silence.
Onizuka Genichiro was left in despair.
This did nothing, that did nothing. He could not play at all anymore.
Silent Magician and Jinzo unleashed their final attacks. The surge of light swallowed Onizuka Genichiro and his entire field.
Onizuka Genichiro's Life Points dropped from 4000 to 0.
The final attack came down and took away all of his remaining Life Points, and in the Shadow Duel he himself had triggered, it also marked the end of a Duelist's true life. At that moment, he could not even feel the pain brought by the backlash of the Shadow Duel. His senses were already slipping away from his body.
Just moments ago in the duel, he had boasted loudly that being caught by him would be the other side's lifelong misfortune. Looking at it now, whose misfortune was it really. This young man was strong, but the feeling he gave was completely different from any powerhouse he had met before.
It was hard to explain, but it was as if the way this boy saw duels was entirely different from how everyone else understood them. This was also the first time in Onizuka Genichiro's life that such a thought appeared after finishing a card game with someone. Duels were really hard.
After his defeat, Onizuka Genichiro collapsed to the ground, and his body was soon covered in a layer of golden light. The light scattered into countless particles and vanished, just like the people who lost and died in the GX Different Dimension Arc.
Yugen sucked in a sharp breath. So this was why Shadow Duel was said to be dangerous, losing meant being erased completely, which was downright terrifying. Luckily, he had been a step better.
Still, from his perspective, this guy's understanding of K language was not even at an entry level, yet he could still be a Shadow Duel user. Betting his life on cards and surviving until now really was a miracle. Then again, Yugen quickly realized he was still thinking with habits from his previous life.
He could not judge it that way, because in this world a Duelist's strength depended more on miraculous draws. Interpreting card text and K language might only be decoration here. It really was a dangerous world, and there was no room to relax.
Getting stronger and collecting more powerful cards was the only reliable path forward. Starting with what was right in front of him. Yugen stepped forward, bent down, and picked up the Duel Disk that had fallen from the now-gone Onizuka Genichiro.
Since the person was gone, the Deck naturally became ownerless. Yugen spoke solemnly, "It was a good duel. Rest easy, brother. Your Deck and your will, I will inherit them." As he spoke, he tucked the Deck into his pocket.
As he left, he felt a chill on his back, as if a cold gust of wind had brushed past him. He frowned slightly but kept walking. The feeling quickly faded.
The next morning, sunlight slipped through the gap in the curtains and scattered across the floor. Yugen opened his heavy eyes in a daze and struggled to focus his blurred vision. It felt like he was seeing a girl.
Silver hair floated gently, one hand holding a staff and the other covering her mouth. In a spirit form, half of her body passed straight into his own as he lay on the bed, bright eyes peeking around as if quietly observing him. The instant he opened his eyes, it was as if an exclamation mark popped over her head, and she turned and dove back into the Deck inside the Duel Disk leaning against the desk, leaving no movement behind.
Yugen said nothing for a long moment. After the chaos of last night and their first real cooperation, he had learned that the quiet girl was not rejecting him as her master. She was simply silent.
In other words, she was withdrawn. Thinking about it that way, a withdrawn Spirit matching a withdrawn player actually made a lot of sense. No matter what, she had truly helped during the ambush last night.
In the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, going out without powerful cards or a Spirit at your side was far too dangerous. He was not sure if it was just in his head, but during the life-or-death duel yesterday, with Silent Magician inside the Deck, something had indeed felt different from his previous duels.
It was a sensation hard to describe clearly. Every time he touched his Deck and drew a card with Card Draw, he could vaguely feel a kind of rhythm. Before that duel, his Deck had felt no different from the Duel Disk, just a tool for dueling.
But in that match, he had the first illusion that the Deck had come alive. Of course, that feeling was vague, and it could very well have been his imagination.
"No matter what, I still need to get stronger." The sudden life-or-death duel made Yugen realize again how important it was to play cards well in this world. Compared to that, even carrying an arsenal around was less reliable.
As he reviewed his recent consecutive battles, new understanding gradually formed. From a player's perspective, many anime characters' Deck looked shocking, and you could not help but wonder how such bricky systems even functioned. But if you assumed the existence of players who never bricked no matter what they played, those decks shared a common trait.
They were filled with things whose purpose seemed unclear at first glance. In reality, it meant that their Deck contained answers to almost any situation. Real-world Deck usually chased stability and efficiency, but even top-tier decks could still encounter boards they simply could not break.
In this world, that was unacceptable. A Shadow Duel only gave you one game, winning meant survival and losing meant death, with no chance to surrender and try again. That was why decks that looked full of strange cards actually aimed for a state where almost no board was impossible to deal with.
The same logic applied to deck size. In reality, players tried to keep decks at forty cards to reduce bricking and improve efficiency. Here, sixty-card decks were common, and the upper limit might not even stop there.
More cards meant more possibilities, all built on the foundation of never bricking. Only top Duelists could handle such systems, even mixing four or five completely different cores into a single Deck like Seto Kaiba did, while still drawing smoothly as if wielding several decks at once.