Kira logged into both the Kaiba Corporation and International Illusion Society's card search websites to browse the card pools currently available for direct purchase on the market.
First and foremost, there was the card that any duelist who transmigrated here, as long as they were remotely smart, would undoubtedly search for—
—Pot of Greed.
Or rather, the early anime-exclusive, overpowered draw engines represented by Pot of Greed.
Pot of Greed allows you to draw two cards from your deck unconditionally. This simple and crude effect is exactly why it has been a forever banned card in the real-world card game, with virtually no hope of ever being unbanned in anyone's lifetime.
Its partner in crime is Graceful Charity, which not only lets you draw three cards but also lets you discard two cards from your hand to the graveyard. As Yu-Gi-Oh! evolved into an era where graveyard and hand resources are nearly interchangeable, this draw-three and self-mill combo became even scarier than Pot of Greed.
However, in the DM anime, duelists didn't pay much attention to these cards; by the GX era, duelists in the anime world had started to realize their power. After all, in the GX anime, you'd see every main character with at least one Pot of Greed and one Graceful Charity. In heroine Asuka's duels, you'd even witness Pot of Greed drawing into another Pot of Greed—a truly savage sight.
When it came to monster cards, Kira started suffering from some choice paralysis.
That's because, after looking through the entire card pool, he couldn't find a single card he liked. As a transmigrated card game veteran, he really couldn't bring himself to use those monsters that required honest tribute summoning, only to end up with a vanilla monster with just over 2000 ATK.
There were some relatively good monsters, but many were simply unavailable for purchase, no matter the price.
For example, the first card that came to mind was Jinzo—one of the signature monsters of Jounouchi Katsuya from the previous protagonist group. It's a Level 6 monster, only requires one tribute, has a respectable 2400 ATK, and features the early-game overpowered trap lock ability—no trap cards can be activated while he's on the field.
Kira remembered that in the real card game environment of this era, Jinzo was also a very strong single card, a staple in top-tier decks.
But upon searching, he found it was out of stock.
Jinzo is an extremely rare card and has been out of stock for a long time—simply unavailable.
This left Kira a bit frustrated. He quickly realized that another major difference between the anime world and the real card game was the difficulty of obtaining cards.
In the real world, you could always check the current card pool and use almost any card to build any deck you wanted. But duelists in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world doesn't have that luxury.
There were also some cards he wanted, but after glancing at their prices, he couldn't help but gasp.
Forget it.
Kira knew perfectly well that in this world, cards equaled weapons and strength, so he was already prepared to go broke to get the necessary cards no matter the cost.
But even with that determination, looking at the sky-high prices of some rare cards, he figured even selling himself wouldn't be enough to afford them.
He wasn't exaggerating—he meant it literally.
Sure enough, the price gap between normal cards and rare cards was ridiculous in this world. Regular cards and booster packs were about the same price as in his previous life—affordable for everyone. But some rare cards were worth as much as a house for a single card.
And those were just the rare cards you could buy. The Blue-Eyes White Dragon—with only three copies worldwide, all owned by Seto Kaiba—was simply out of the question.
Further research revealed that, besides car and home loans, this world even had something called a card loan. As the name suggests, you could take out a loan to buy cards.
"So this is how painful it feels to be cardless," Kira muttered.
Fortunately, even with these restrictions, he was able to barely come up with a deck-building concept using cards he could get.
The prototype for this deck was none other than a milestone in the history of competitive Yu-Gi-Oh!—the world's very first World Championship-winning deck.
Hand Destruction.
Perhaps every new duelist who got into the game through the anime had unrealistic fantasies about dueling, like epic battles between high-ATK bosses, intense attack and defense exchanges, and a climactic GG in a thrilling fight.
But that's the fake Yu-Gi-Oh!
The real Yu-Gi-Oh! is: at this table, only one person is getting to play.
The most reliable way to win is always to kill all your opponent's tactical possibilities—to leave them unable to make a single move. This principle stands even today, and it was the same in the early days.
[Hand Destruction] was a deck built exactly with this concept in mind. As the name suggests, its strategy was to destroy the opponent's hand so they had nothing to play, leaving them to just stare blankly in AFK mode from the start—a true ancestor of toxic play.
Facing this deck, the opponent's understanding of dueling would be completely shattered. In just a few minutes, they'd go from "blood pressure rising," to "Are you kidding me," to "I summon my fist in attack mode"—the classic trilogy of salt.
So, if there's a biggest flaw to this kind of deck, it's that the player's personal safety can be hard to guarantee.
Of course, Kira couldn't remember the entire ancient championship deck and some rare cards were simply unavailable to him. So he just borrowed the core idea and built a new deck himself.
As for the remaining card slots, he just stuffed in as many decent traps as possible.
Honestly, from a card veteran's perspective, some of these traps weren't even that great—not necessarily effective. But the main thing was, that having too many traps could break the opponent's spirit.
He wasn't some kind of sadist—he didn't do it just to mess with people. Mind games are also part of dueling, and sometimes breaking your opponent's spirit before their LP hits zero is a very effective tactic.
Yeah, that's it.
He kept browsing the site, and as his eyes scanned a certain page, something suddenly caught his attention.
Jinzo—Quantity in stock: 1.
Kira immediately scrolled back and clicked to check. But he was instantly denied by the website.
["Access Denied."]
["Academy Department Exclusive Card."]
Kira was stunned.
Academy Department? What's that?
After some more searching online, he finally understood.
The so-called Academy Department referred to Duel Academy. Personally established and managed by Seto Kaiba, it was the world's largest dueling academy. He bought an entire island for the school and poured in huge resources.
Students on the island had the chance to get the newest booster packs ahead of others and could buy rare cards that were impossible to get elsewhere—at massive discounts, too.
Even ignoring the school's facilities and teaching staff, just the rare card access and discounts were enough to make anyone jealous.
For top-performing students, grades and credits could even be exchanged for cards. In a world where a single card could cost a fortune, this saved students a massive amount on deck-building.
Not to mention, graduating from Duel Academy meant having the most prestigious diploma in the dueling world. Whether you wanted to go pro, join Kaiba Corporation, or work at the International Illusion Society, you'd get a priority referral.
Scrolling down further, Kira even caught sight of Chaos Sorcerer!
[Chaos Sorcerer: Level 6, 2300 ATK. You can Special Summon it by banishing a LIGHT and DARK monster from your graveyard, and once per turn, it can banish an opponent's monster from the field.]
Because it shares similar summoning conditions and effects with the even more famous "Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning," after BLS was banned, Chaos Sorcerer became its lower-tier substitute, affectionately nicknamed "Mini BLS" by duelists, and is a top-tier card in the current meta.
In this world, BLS is an ultra-rare card—only one known copy belongs to Duel King Yugi Mutou in the anime, and another is a display card in Yugi's replica deck in GX; besides these, it's never been seen.
So getting BLS is almost impossible. But if he could get Chaos Sorcerer, that would still be amazing.
There were some other decent rare cards as well, all just as hard to find on the open market, and sold at truly huge discounts compared to market price.
At this point, Kira took a deep breath.
He made up his mind.
He'd apply for Duel Academy.
And if he failed, he'd try again next year.