With no one around, Hayato casually pulled out the square metal object he had touched in his pocket.

It was a tin box, and it wasn't locked, so it could be opened directly.

“What truly amazing technology, creating something out of nothing.”

Opening the tin box, a stack of cards was neatly placed inside. According to the “Sai Q Duelist System” that was speaking to Hayato, this deck was Hayato’s beginner gift package.

This morning, when Hayato Kobayashi had just arrived in the classroom and saw the starfish-headed Yugi Mutou, a semi-transparent, illusory screen suddenly appeared before his eyes, displaying “Welcome to the Sai Q Duelist System, please claim your initial card pack,” along with a “Confirm Claim” button.

After trying, Hayato found that it seemed no one else could see or touch this transparent screen except him. He could also adjust the screen’s visibility by simply thinking, making it appear instantly when needed and disappear instantly when not, so it wouldn't obstruct his view.

Considering the many eyes in the classroom and his lack of understanding about how the system distributed the initial card pack—since there was no time limit on the “Claim” button—Hayato stubbornly waited an entire morning, resisting the urge to claim it. Only now, with no one around, did he actively touch the claim button.

The back of the cards bore the vortex pattern that Hayato was extremely familiar with. The familiar brown and gold color scheme made Hayato, alone in this foreign world, feel a sense of closeness. Taking out the deck, Hayato began to confirm the deck’s construction card by card...

3-star Normal Monster, Warrior Earth attribute “Earth Star Swordsman,”

3-star Normal Monster, Warrior Earth attribute “Man-Eating Doll,”

4-star Normal Monster, Warrior Earth attribute “Guardian of the Underworld,”

3-star Normal Monster, Warrior Earth attribute “Hand of Judgment,”

...

As he looked, Hayato’s speed in flipping to the next card became faster and faster. After a long while, he finally half-opened his eyes and calmly complained, “Although I expected it, it’s impossible for me to get a deck like Tri-Brigade or Floowandereeze in the DM era. But I thought at the very least it would be the overworked Elemental HEROes.”

“These are all just weak Normal Monsters!”

He quickly browsed the sixty cards in the tin box. The number of Monster cards was an astonishing fifty, with only ten Magical Cylinder, and all of them were strange cards with unclear meaning. If the monsters were strong, it would be fine, but all fifty Monster cards were, without exception, Normal Monsters commonly known as “vanillas.” Most of them were low-star weaklings whose stats were too poor to even be used as walls.

From the “pile of cards” he had just flipped through—Hayato really didn’t want to call this a deck; it was so bland—he pulled out three cards and placed them at the very front of the deck. Among these sixty cards, only these three barely caught Hayato’s eye:

7-star Normal Monster, Warrior Earth attribute “Dark Knight Gaia,”

4-star Normal Monster, Warrior Light attribute “Sacred Knight Atoris,”

And, the future Equip Magical Cylinder, “Dragon Destroyer Sword,” which had not yet been separated from the Magical Cylinder category.

Dark Knight Gaia, needless to say, was a frequently used card by the male protagonist Yugi Mutou in the early days and was active multiple times. Later, it even spawned the “Gaia” series of cards, with so many alternate versions that it could rival the famous “Gem-Knight Aquamarine.” Moreover, its 2300/2100 ATK/DEF was top-tier among the Normal Monsters in Hayato’s hand, and under the early DM rules where it could be summoned without tributes, it was sufficient to serve as Hayato’s current ace.

The second card, “Sacred Knight Atoris,” had a respectable 1800 ATK/DEF, but Hayato valued the future potential of the “Sacred Knight” archetype more. Although the Sacred Knight deck, which focuses on Xyz and excels at using Equip Magical Cylinder, couldn't have its Xyz bosses appear due to era limitations, its efficient search and recovery methods made it worthy of Hayato’s early anticipation.

As for Dragon Destroyer Sword...

A single card increasing ATK by 700 was quite rare in the DM era, and its side Effect of “destroying the monster at the end of the Battle Phase if it battles a Dragon monster” clearly spelled out “targeting.” Especially for a certain Dragon-obsessed Duelist addicted to playing cards, the 3000 ATK of his ace monster seemed tailor-made for the Dark Knight Gaia + Dragon Destroyer Sword combo.

In summary, the initial deck given by this system made Hayato feel like “it’s playable, but not entirely playable” and “it’s unusable, but not entirely unusable.” Putting the deck back into the tin box and putting it away, Hayato was about to return to the classroom when he heard several people talking downstairs:

“Hey, is he really coming?”

“Yes, yes...”

“So slow~”

Peeking out from the corridor railing, Hayato saw several people squatting together in the bushes on the side of the teaching building, whispering about something. Their clothing didn’t look like school uniforms, and one of them had camera equipment on his shoulder.

As the words fell, one of the people gathered picked up a school uniform from the ground and put it on. As he walked out of the bushes, he muttered, “Why isn’t that kid Yugi here yet? This is about my livelihood...”

Hayato frowned, looking down with some surprise. Although he hadn't inherited the original body’s past memories after transmigrating, the man putting on the school uniform downstairs didn’t look much like a student.

It wasn’t for reasons like his build; after all, in this high school, Hayato had seen people as short as an elementary schooler like Yugi Mutou, and also someone almost two meters tall like Ushio Tetsu, who resembled a professional basketball player. The main issue was that the man in the school uniform didn’t have the aura of a student at all, not even a student involved with the mafia. Instead, he seemed more like an office worker who had been through the corporate grind?

At this moment, Hayato saw a short guy with golden, black, and red starfish hair walk out of a nearby classroom door and quickly head towards the stairs with an expectant look.

Who else could it be but Yugi Mutou?

Suddenly, Hayato recalled that he seemed to know what was about to happen downstairs.

Hayato had seen such a scene in the “Game King” manga in his previous life. It was about a morning entertainment program called “Survival Morning.” The latest episode’s theme was “bullying the weak,” and the director focused on “school bullying.” This should have been a rather excellent project.

However, that director had no intention of finding a genuine victim of “school bullying.” Instead, he directly chose Yugi Mutou, who looked very easy to bully, as the “protagonist” of the show, then found people to pretend to be students and “bully” him, while he filmed it.