Chapter Three: Can an Ordinary Bone Deck Dream of the Hypnotic Sheep (Normal Monster)?

With no one around, Hayato casually pulled out the square piece of metal he had felt in his pocket.

It was an iron box, and it wasn’t locked, so it could be opened directly.

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

Opening the iron box, he found a neatly stacked set of cards inside. According to the voice of the “SaiQ Duelist System” before him, this deck was Hayato’s beginner’s starter pack.

Earlier that morning, when he had just arrived at the classroom and met Yugi Muto, the starfish-haired boy, a translucent, virtual screen suddenly appeared before Hayato’s eyes. It displayed the message: “Welcome to the SaiQ Duelist System. Please claim your initial card pack,” along with a button labeled “Confirm Claim.”

After trying, Hayato discovered that no one else could see or touch this transparent screen—only he could. He could even adjust its visibility through pure thought, making it appear instantly when needed and vanish without obstructing his view.

Considering the classroom was crowded and unfamiliar with the system’s method of distributing the starter deck, and since the “Claim” button had no time limit, Hayato had resisted claiming it all morning. Now, with no one around, he finally reached out to touch the button.

The backs of the cards bore the familiar swirl pattern, a comforting combination of brown and gold that made Hayato feel at home despite being alone in this otherworldly place. Drawing out the deck, he began to inspect its composition card by card...

A 3-star normal monster, Warrior-type, Earth attribute: “Earth Star Swordsman.”

A 3-star normal monster, Warrior-type, Earth attribute: “Cannibal Doll.”

A 4-star normal monster, Warrior-type, Earth attribute: “Underworld Sentinel.”

A 3-star normal monster, Warrior-type, Earth attribute: “Judgment Hand.”

...

As he flipped through the cards, Hayato’s pace quickened. After a long while, with half-closed eyes and a calm expression, he muttered, “I expected this—there’s no way the DM era would hand me a deck like Iron Beast Line or Wind Traveler. But I thought at least I’d get a deck like Elemental Hero Overwork Death.”

“These are all just trash fodder!”

He glanced over the sixty cards in the iron box. The deck contained an astonishing fifty monster cards and only ten spell cards, all obscure and meaningless. If the monsters had been strong, that would have been one thing, but every single one of these fifty monster cards was a normal monster, commonly called “fodder.” Most were low-level weaklings barely qualified to be wall monsters, utterly disappointing in stature.

From this “deck” — a term Hayato was reluctant to use for such a salty collection — he pulled out three cards and placed them at the front. Only these three cards barely caught his eye:

A 7-star normal monster, Warrior-type, Earth attribute: “Dark Knight Gaia.”

A 4-star normal monster, Warrior-type, Light attribute: “Paladin Atolis.”

And a future Equip Spell card, not yet a separate category from spell cards: “Dragon Slayer Sword.”

No need to elaborate on “Dark Knight Gaia.” As a staple card of the protagonist Yugi Muto in his early days, it had been featured multiple times. Later, it spawned the “Gaia” series of cards, with more alternate versions than even the famous “Gem-Knight White Crystal” known as the King of Aliases. With 2300 ATK and 2100 DEF, it was top-tier among Hayato’s fodder cards. Under the early DM rules, it could be summoned without tributes, making it a perfect ace for Hayato.

The second card, “Paladin Atolis,” had decent stats at 1800 ATK and DEF, but Hayato valued it for the “Paladin” archetype’s future potential. Though the era’s limitations prevented many Xyz monsters from appearing, a Paladin deck specialized in Xyz summoning and equip spells deserved Hayato’s early hope for efficient searching and recycling.

As for the Dragon Slayer Sword...

A single card that boosts attack by 700 was already rare in the DM era. Its downside—“Destroy the monster if it battles a Dragon-type monster at the end of the battle phase”—made the word “targeted” flash across the public screen. Especially for a certain dragon-obsessed player whose 3000-attack ace was practically made for the combo of “Dark Knight Gaia” plus “Dragon Slayer Sword.”

In short, this system-given starter deck felt to Hayato like “playable, but not quite fully playable,” “unusable, but not completely unusable.”

After returning the deck to the iron box, Hayato was about to head back to the classroom when he heard voices from below.

“Hey, is he really coming?”

“Y-yes...”

“So slow~”

Peering over the hallway railing, Hayato saw several people crouched together whispering in the bushes beside the school building. Their clothing didn’t look like typical students. One of them even carried a camera rig on his shoulder.

As the conversation ended, one of them picked up a school uniform from the ground and put it on, stepping out of the bushes while muttering, “Why hasn’t that kid Yugi shown up yet? This affects my paycheck...”

Hayato frowned in confusion, looking down suspiciously. Although he had no memories of the original body’s past after crossing over, the man putting on the school uniform below didn’t look like a student at all.

It wasn’t about his physique—after all, at this high school, Hayato had seen Yugi Muto, who was short like an elementary schooler, and also Tetsu Ushio, nearly two meters tall and built like a professional basketball player. The main issue was the man’s aura; he didn’t resemble any student, not even one mixed up with the local gangs. Instead, he seemed more like a white-collar worker who had slogged through the corporate world.

Just then, Hayato spotted a short figure with golden, black, and red starfish-like hair emerge from a nearby classroom, walking briskly toward the stairs with an expectant expression.

Who else could it be but Yugi Muto?

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

He had seen such a scene before in the “Yu-Gi-Oh!” manga—a morning entertainment show called “Survival Morning.” The latest episode’s theme was “Bullying the Weak,” focusing on “school bullying.” It should have been an excellent plan.

But the director had no intention of finding a genuine bullying victim. Instead, he simply chose Yugi Muto, who appeared very easy to bully, as the show’s “protagonist.” Then he hired people to pretend to be students and “bully” him, filming the whole thing himself.