Chapter 1064: Cards for the New World
Chapter 1064: Cards for the New World
The gentle morning sunlight bathed the city's skyline, golden rays piercing through the gaps between towering skyscrapers and casting a thin golden veil over the bustling streets of the former Duel Capital.
At the Card Research Institute, a division of the Security Maintenance Bureau:
"Sir!"
"Sir Godevin!"
Two researchers standing in the corridor snapped to attention and saluted.
Youxuan, or rather, Godevin now, walked past them, waving his hand casually to signal that they should continue with their work.
The Security Maintenance Bureau was practically the highest authority in the city. The previous director, Godevin, had almost complete control over all significant resources, from politics and economy to research and public welfare.
However, this institution was not under the command of the upper political echelons. Instead, it was largely controlled by an organization known as Taichi. In the original storyline, Godevin, as an early boss, seemed to have free rein, but it was later revealed that his actions were always under Taichi's control, making him little more than a puppet. Taichi's influence permeated every aspect of the world, exerting control that was almost as strong as the Doma organization during the DM era.
The true identity of this organization was actually a group of future humans from a broken timeline, including Paradox. They had traveled back in time to change history and established this organization.
While Godevin was secretly controlled by Taichi, this very control led to the Security Maintenance Bureau becoming the pinnacle of power in the city.
One of the perks of being the director of this institution was the easy access to rare resources, such as a vast collection of rare cards.
Since the creation of the Perpetual Motion Moment, the development of Duel Monsters in this world had become intertwined with the Moment. Synchro Monsters and the Moment were complementary, and the Security Maintenance Bureau, which controlled the city's core Moment, naturally collaborated with Kaiba Corporation to establish a dedicated card research institute.
Yes, Kaiba Corporation still existed in this era, but due to Seto Kaiba's disappearance, its influence in New Domino City was not as significant as in the dimension Youxuan was familiar with. The 5DS anime only mentioned Kaiba Corporation in the early episodes and then barely referenced it again, making its presence quite minimal.
Spending the entire morning in the Security Maintenance Bureau's card storage, Youxuan reaped a bountiful harvest.
Without going into details, he made sure to secure every component of the protagonist's decks, such as Yusei's Synchro Tuner Deck and Crow Hogan's Black Feather. Most of these cards were not particularly rare, and with sufficient resources and finances, assembling a complete deck was not difficult.
In the real Synchro era, one of these decks was a top-tier mainstream, and the other was a world champion. Youxuan still couldn't fathom why Crab had found such a powerful deck in a dumpster.
But if Crab could even build a Perpetual Motion Moment from garbage, perhaps even trash was not to be underestimated in this era.
Another discovery that caught his eye was a collection of "Glacial World" cards.
The Glacial World series was highly active during the Synchro era, but it was even more famous for the Synchro Monsters that everyone in the meta loved to include in their decks.
For example, the Glacial World Light Gun Dragon.
A six-star Synchro Monster with no specific attribute or race requirements, it could be summoned with any combination of six stars. Its 2300 Attack Power was decent, but its true strength lay in its effect.
By discarding any number of cards from your hand, you could return the same number of cards on the field to their owners' hands.
Yes, there was no limit to the number of cards you could discard, allowing you to clear the field of any number of cards in one go. Even more terrifying was the fact that this effect had no once-per-turn restriction.
This is why the players of the Synchro era more or less all experienced the tyranny of the Light Gun at some point, which is also why this card was subsequently locked away.
Of course, by now, the card has served its time and, after being toned down, has been given the restriction that "the effect of this card name can only be used once per turn." The nerf, combined with the changing Yu-Gi-Oh! environment, means that the card has lost much of its former glory.
But the Light Gun is still a formidable card in this era.
Another powerful card from the Glacial World is the "Glacial World Dragon - Triforce Dragon."
A nine-star Synchro Monster, it requires a Synchro Tuner plus at least two other non-Tuner monsters for its Synchro Summon. When successfully Synchro Summoned, it can banish up to one card from the opponent's hand, field, and graveyard.
Anyone who has ever had their hand, field, and graveyard stripped of nine cards in a single turn by three Triforce Dragons will never forget the terror.
Unfortunately, after scouring for a long time, Youxuan only managed to find a single Light Gun. He spent half a day and still couldn’t locate any trace of the Triforce Dragon.
After consulting the supercomputer of the Security Maintenance Bureau, which had compiled all known card information, Youxuan finally confirmed that the Triforce Dragon seemed to not yet exist in this world.
Youxuan frowned.
Something wasn’t right. He remembered that, in the anime, though only for a brief moment, the Triforce Dragon appeared in the hands of a minor character and was referred to as a "top-tier rare card."
Could it be that the dimension he was in differed from the original anime, or perhaps the Glacial World development team hadn’t created it yet?
Youxuan then looked into the development team behind the Light Gun and the other Glacial World cards. To his surprise, he found that the team, instead of focusing on the promising Glacial World, had shifted their efforts to a bunch of obscure series from the early Synchro era.
Their latest creation was the "Labradorite Dragon", a level six Normal Tuner monster, which seemed completely insignificant compared to the Light Gun.
Youxuan was not pleased.
He immediately summoned the development team and gave them a stern lecture, accusing them of being paid to do nothing and just coasting along, with no visible progress to show for their efforts.
The experts were taken aback.
They looked at each other in confusion, seeing the same bewilderment in each other’s eyes—
—When did our boss start caring about card development?
Though they were part of the Security Maintenance Bureau, the boss, Godevin, had never been particularly involved in their work. While Godevin was an avid player, he had no expertise in card development and thus never interfered.
So, what was going on today?
To their surprise, after the scolding, the boss actually provided some innovative ideas, suggesting that the Glacial World had great potential and advising them to put their current projects on hold to focus on this.
Moreover, the boss described the direction and enhancements for the Glacial World in great detail, even specifying several cards by name.
At first, the experts were skeptical, but as they listened, they became increasingly amazed.
It was one thing to give a general direction, but how could the boss describe so many new cards in such precise detail, when no development ideas had even been proposed yet?
After giving his instructions and sending the team off to work, Youxuan sighed.
Indeed, card printing is the primary source of productivity. In this new world, he still had to take personal responsibility.
He began to consider expanding the card printing business to more dimensions.
(End of Chapter)
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