Well, now that I have just settled that, I start making my way back home. Tomorrow starts my grind for Duel Points. Dueling equals money, and money equals power.
As I make my way home, I cannot help but feel my life is about to get flipped upside down. I got this golden eye fused with my right eye, which is a very unusual thing.
But that aside, it's not the only reason I'm feeling this way. They say the third time's the charm, and seeing I lost two Duels in a row. Well, I feel like the next one has to be different. Is this coping? Maybe.
The walk home is long, and I have a lot of time to think about what I'll do next, and how I'm going to go about this new power I got. Should I use?
I mean... Yeah, sure, it's morally questionable. Learning everything about my opponent's Deck before Dueling them makes me have an unfair advantage... And maybe it's not healthy either, since I get headaches every time I use it...
But come on! I'm fighting to change my life- No, our life. To give us a better place to live.
If I need to use the eye, I will. Rich people left us here to live in misery and made Duel Monsters the social and financial pillar. I enjoy dueling, but this has become more than just a hobby.
Whatever it takes, I am willing to use every chance I get.
I take a breath to calm down, and I check the terminal to see the hour. I'm still far from home. 11:38 am. Home is really far from the dump I work at. The slums are on the outskirts of the city. Thankfully, they had enough decency not to put the dump inside the slums.
The dump is in the outskirts of the slums, which essentially means I work in the outskirts of the outskirts. Am I proud of it? No. But it's the best thing I could work at.
So, until tomorrow, it works. I don't mind losing Employee of the Month because as soon as I gather 10k Duel Points, I'll be able to go through the Duel at the gate of District Z. That way, I'll be one step closer to Duel Academy.
And that starts tomorrow. Here in the slums, it's not easy to gain a Deck. However, the people who do get a Deck fight each other for points.
Of course, the points needed to fight at the Gate are not Shopping Duel Points, since people would be able to fight each other and transfer them.
No, you need Duel Points. The real ones, the ones that rank you in the city Duelist Leaderboard. If Lukas lived somewhere else, I bet he'd have a decent rank number.
However, we slum residents aren't even allowed to enter the ranks. It's a matter of precaution. Rich folks would be damned if a random guy from the slums had a higher rank than they did.
To prevent that, they just don't rank us. They're just a bunch of lucky cowards.
It doesn't matter, as soon as I win the Duel at District Z's Gate, I'll be ranked. That is the condition.
Once you win a Duel in a Gate, you're allowed to pass into that District. Even if you leave the District, you'll always be able to come back.
I need to go through two Gates to access Duel Academy. Once I do, I'll be able to get enough money to give Haru a better life.
No longer worry about food, not having enough cards... Nothing.
Eventually, I reach our place. I check the hour again, a very bad habit. 11:59 pm. Well, I guess I can say I got home before midnight. Right?
Our place is an old house with a single floor. It is not too big, but it does have a long corridor with rooms to the left. The first room is my brother's, the second room is my bedroom, and the third room actually opens right in front. That's the living room.
Inside the living room, there's a small door to a small pantry, and another room opens to a small kitchen. We have a bathroom behind a third door.
It is an old house, and it is small. Nonetheless, it works.
Our parents went missing when I was young, so I've been living alone with my little brother. That is why I couldn't allow myself to disappear in the Dark Duel just like my parents did.
I will never forgive them for doing that.
I open the door slowly, trying to prevent it from making a noise. However, it creaks as I push it. Making a noise loud enough to attract attention.
That attention is my little brother's, who I can see running at me from the end of the corridor. Wait, why was he in the living room?
"Yuta, you're back!"
He rushes to hug me, so I hug him back with one arm, closing the door with the other one.
"You should be sleeping, Haru."
"Nuh uh~"
I chuckle
"Yuh uh~"
"Okay, maybe I should be sleeping."
He chuckles and pulls away from the hug, getting something from his pocket. Did he stay awake to show that to me?
"But look! I found these three cards in the street... I just had to show them to you!"
He takes out three Duel Monsters cards. Maybe he got good cards? I get closer, and he flips them, showing them to me. Let's see... 'Floowandereeze & Empen', 'Floowandereeze & Eglen', and 'Floowandereeze & Robina. I've heard about this archetype, but I don't remember too well how they work.
That is, until the effect from my eye activates. Knowing their information perfectly not only gives me a headache, but it also allows me to connect the dots by myself. How their combo works.
"Those are good, Haru! They make a strong combo, actually."
"Really?" He is certainly excited, so I extend my hand to ask him to give them to me. He does.
"Yup, look. By Normal Summoning Robina, you can add Eglen from your Deck to your Hand and then Normal Summon a Winged Beast monster."
I point at Eglen's type, Winged Beast.
"Ohh! So I can Normal Summon Eglen after searching for it?"
"Exactly! And then, by activating Eglen's effect, you can search and add Empen to your hand from your Deck, and Normal Summon it by tributing both Robina and Eglen."
"Wait, Yuta. We can only Normal Summon once per turn, can't we?"
I chuckle. Yes, that's true. But sometimes, there are exceptions. One of them is the 'Floowandereeze' archetype. Another one would be 'Time-Tearing Morganite', which I happened to face just an hour ago.
"Normally, yes. But the 'Floowandereeze' archetype focuses on allowing you to Normal Summon monsters even if you have already done so."
"Oooh! That's so cool!" He yanks the cards back. I guess he really is excited, huh?
"Waait, why does it say 'If this face-up card would leave the field, banish it instead'? Wouldn't that mean I can't use them after they're destroyed once!?"
"Heh, it would. But have you checked what it says at the bottom of the effect text?"
"Uh, no. Let's see..."
He starts reading the full card. Most 'Floowandareeze' monsters not only allow you to do multiple Normal Summons, but they also banish themselves when they leave the field. However, that is because of their last effect.
"Ooh, I see it! That's so cool, they can return from the banish zone!? I thought if you banish a monster, they're gone for good!"
"Not always, Haru. Not always"
'Floowandareeze' monsters return to your hand when you Normal Summon a Winged Beast monster.
Haru does have some Winged Beasts in his Deck, so he'll surely be able to use these 3 new cards. I don't know how his luck is, but if he has the same luck as I do, he'll actually need 3 copies of both Eglen and Robina. So I hope he can get more of them.
One thing's for sure. If Haru gets them, he'll surely be able to get a strong Deck
"Well, now that you've shown me your new cards. You gotta go to sleep, it's very late."
"Aww... Okay, fine!"
I pat his head and accompany him to his room, tidy his bed, and head towards my own room. As I lie on my bed, I start rethinking about Dueling in general.
If I could get a way to speed up my Deck or protect my Toon monsters while they're face-up on the field, I'd have a chance of actually winning. I guess I do have Number 41, but it is not such a consistent way of dealing with this issue.
Decks out here in the Slums are very different from the Decks in the other Districts. I'll need to get used to each environment to be able to advance if I manage to make it out of the Slums.
But for now, I'll need to be prepared to face more Decks like Lukas'. After all, in an environment with few ways to stop combos, Decks that explode into multiple powerful monsters are the way to go.
Traps are the only way to stop them, or the only way I've seen. And traps require you to place them down first, which makes it so you can have ways around them.
I heard there are monsters that you can discard from your hand to negate effects... But I don't need to worry about those cause they won't show up around here.
The thing is, I don't have any trap cards or negate monsters in my deck; all my traps are Toon-related trap cards. All of them, except 'Solemn Judgment'.
With the way my Deck is structured right now, I'm basically fighting Duels to see who can make their explosive combos work first, and it isn't me, because my Deck is not explosive.
Actually, that's the main reason I lost to Lukas, my Deck is not optimized for this environment. If I were to start dueling tomorrow, I'd need to either get better trap cards or aim for people with slow Decks.
I guess I could learn people's Decks through the power of the eye, but... I'll need multiple days of scouting before I can start fighting. Using the eye comes with a cost, and I'll need to be in perfect conditions in order to Duel.
Using the eye is risky, but I need to make sure I can win. If I take it slow and carefully, I should be fine... Right?
I sigh and close my eyes. Enough staring at the ceiling.
It's truly been a long day, and many things have happened. Most of them bad. However, I can't help but be excited for tomorrow. I'll be heading to the Slum's Official Duel Arena.
Now, I need to sleep so I can rest for tomorrow.
I'm gonna need all the energy I can get.