Before the Moonlight Cup began, the Duel Dojo had already allocated him part of a subsidy, saying it was for strengthening his deck and upgrading his setup.
Yugen accepted it without hesitation. With this budget, he could further adjust his original strategy, and over the past few days he went on a shopping spree, trying to piece together a few more decks.
Card Destruction might have been a world champion card back in the day, but in the anime world it was clearly unrealistic to rely on just one trick forever.
Once others figured out that this was his main weapon, it would be easy to counter him, and that was not something he wanted to see. So before the tournament, he bought cards on the market and, based on what he could obtain, assembled two or three decks that felt both competitive and fun to play.
He constantly switched decks and adjusted builds based on the opponent's deck type and tactics, making his own strategy flexible and hard to read. This let him keep favorable matchups while also making it harder for others to target him directly. Flexibility became his biggest shield.
Kageru Takeuchi brewed a cup of coffee and sat comfortably on a soft sofa under the afternoon sunlight, casually flipping through the latest issue of Duelist Times.
Duelist Times was a newspaper under Kaiba Corporation, and it reported all kinds of strange stories from the dueling world. He had been busy with family matters these past two days and did not have time to watch his students' matches.
Even so, he had already heard that both trainees from the Duel Dojo had passed the first day of preliminaries smoothly, which made him feel quite relieved. As he opened the paper, he saw coverage related to the Moonlight Cup preliminaries. One headline immediately caught his attention.
"On the Moonlight Cup Preliminary Round stage, an incident nearly escalated into a malicious physical attack on the opposing duelist."
"During a duel, a certain participant lost emotional control and attempted to directly harm the opposing duelist, but failed. The participant was disqualified."
"Hmm?" Kageru Takeuchi leaned in with curiosity and read the report more carefully. Something like this actually happened?
The quality of duelists these days was really getting worse. Losing a match and then lashing out physically showed no basic dignity as a duelist at all. He skimmed the details and noticed that no real names were used, only aliases, apparently to protect the participants' privacy.
One alias was called Kento, and the other was Tomoki. He continued reading further down the page. Another report followed right after.
"On the third day of the Moonlight Cup event, participant Shota, an alias, suffered a sudden hemorrhagic stroke during a duel with participant Kento, also an alias. Thanks to timely medical treatment, Shota is now out of life-threatening danger."
Getting a brain hemorrhage from playing cards? The master was shocked. Was this year's Moonlight Cup really that dangerous? Then he suddenly noticed something important.
In both incidents, the opposing duelist's alias was Kento. It could not possibly be the same person, right? If it really was, one incident might be an accident, but two in a row felt strange.
Could it actually be a problem with that guy?
Kageru Takeuchi immediately thought of the duel he had with that trainee named Yugen from the Duel Dojo a few days ago, when his blood pressure had mysteriously risen as the duel went on. A bad feeling crept into his mind.
It could not be that much of a coincidence, could it?
Three days later.
"So I'm already in the top eight?" Yugen said.
The ticket to the quarterfinals came so easily that he even felt a bit unsatisfied.
As expected, the overall level of this kind of tournament was just so so, and most opponents were only so-called grassroots experts. He wondered if the intensity would finally increase once the top eight began.
Watching Yugen advance so smoothly while still wearing a regretful expression, Koji Sato felt the urge to punch someone again.
Unlike Yugen, who steamrolled his way into the top eight like he had cheats enabled, Koji Sato had been eliminated on the second day of the preliminaries. With no matches left to play and nothing to prepare for, he could only come over to his junior who had advanced from the Duel Dojo and nurse his jealousy.
The good news was that he had not run into Yugen before getting eliminated, so he did not have to suffer another public beating. At least now he could watch from the front row and enjoy seeing other players get crushed.
Strangely enough, when he himself was tortured by his junior's tactics, his blood pressure would skyrocket, but watching others suffer the same fate made him feel very happy.
Humans really were contradictory creatures.
"By the way, junior, have you seen your matchup list?" he asked. "Who's your opponent in the top eight?"
He was eager to call for the first victim to step forward.
"Oh, it's a student from the middle division of Duel Academy," Yugen replied. "His name is Manjoume Jun."
"Manjoume is insanely strong!"
At that moment, Manjoume Jun from the affiliated middle division of Duel Academy was sitting on a sofa with his legs crossed, enjoying the sweet talk of two lackeys with a relaxed expression.
Manjoume Jun was the third young master of the famous Manjoume Group and currently ranked first in the elite class of the middle division.
This year, he had been specially approved to skip exams and was set to advance directly to the high division of Duel Academy.
Manjoume had been trained as an elite duelist by his family since childhood.
According to the family's plan, one of his two older brothers was placed in the business world, the other in high-level politics, while the expectation for him was to one day reign over the dueling world as a Duel King. He was meant to become the future pillar of the Manjoume Group.
At first glance, being "the man who wants to become the King of Games" sounded a bit funny compared to his brothers' paths. However, just looking at President Seto Kaiba made it clear that in this world, being good at cards was far more promising than business or politics.
Because of this, Manjoume had been sent to all kinds of tournaments since he was young, collecting championships and medals from competitions of every size.
His participation in the Moonlight Cup was also a family decision, serving as his final trial before advancing to the high division of Duel Academy. Just like many previous tournaments, the instructions from his brothers were clear. He entered to win the championship.
To the family, second place was the same as defeat. Any competition without first place was meaningless. Even so, Manjoume felt some pressure this time.
That was because Rex Raptor was among the participants. The legendary duelist who had once been a national runner-up and had even faced the famous Katsuya Jonouchi. Could he really defeat such a legend?
Manjoume rubbed his fingers together and stared at the floor in a daze.
"But Manjoume, I've never heard of your top eight opponent," one lackey said. "What's his name? Yugen Fujiki. Is he a rookie?"
"Huh?" Manjoume came back to his senses and checked the opponent's information. Duelist rank, one star.