I look up at the projected screen.

"Welcome to the New Dimensions Dueling Academy! I know all of you are very excited. But first introductions are in order."

The NWDA logo fades to a man with spiky white hair sitting behind an office desk. Despite his white hair, he doesn't look that old, I don't notice any wrinkles on his face and his voice is what I would expect for a 40-year-old but I doubt they have cigarettes here so that could throw off my assumption.

"My name is Light Haswell. You can call me Director Light. I'm the director of this prestigious dueling institution and, if you make it in, for the next five years the one responsible for teaching you the ins and outs of dueling. So maybe, just maybe, one of you might come out of this a legendary duelist."

'So Light Haswell, if I remember right, that was the signature at the bottom of the E-Mail. I wonder if you have any knowledge of the goddess... Probably not, just another bystander in her scheme.'

The screen then switches to a timetable of today's events.

Director Light continues. "At 8 AM, the tryouts for 600-800 Elo duelists start. If you haven't already set up your duel disk, do it now! When your turn is up, a number will be shown on their screens. If you have not noticed already, there are tents around this plaza; each tent is numbered. Make your way to the tent you are called to in an orderly fashion. Make sure to bring your A-game, this duel will determine if you enter the academy." He finishes and then moves on to the tryouts for more advanced duelists, praising them and reminding them they are "The future of the academy" at every opportunity.

Really he just keeps feeding their egos more and more. I'm not interested, so, like some other duelists near me, I go to a bench and sit down, making sure to fold my skirt so I'm not showing off anything perverse.

I use this time to look at my Deck, and then I realize something. 'How good are these people at the game? They must be really good... And I brought a rouge deck... If I knew my life would have become dependent on my skill at YGO, I would have watched more TeamSAM or MBT...' I dread.

'Whatever, I'll just do my best. If that's not enough then... Well I don't know what I'll do, I'm a broke orphan...' Of course in the back of my mind, I knew exactly what would happen... I just didn't want to think about it.

After composing myself, I open the Deck Manager program to look for banned cards. To my surprise, there's a checkmark next to the Deck's name that I hadn't noticed before, so I touch it.

[Deck is compliant with: Regular Banlist, NWDA Banlist.]

That brightened my mood. No matter how rouge my Deck is, three Astrographs and two Electromites ease my worry of bricking during this critical duel.

[Tent Number 23, please proceed.]

Half an hour later, I'm finally called.

I used this time to go over how dueling worked using a duel disk, I discovered there are two ways to interact in a duel. First, you can use the touchscreen and duel like in any YGO Engine. Now more interestingly, the way most people interact with a duel is by making use of verbal commands. The help program gives this example: "If it is desired to activate an effect from the graveyard, the user may use the touchscreen by selecting the graveyard, selecting the card, and then picking "Activate." Or the user may say it aloud. "I activate X from my graveyard, targeting X." Whatever option is most convenient.""

I walk over to the tent, and I'm greeted by a middle-aged woman.

"Yuumi Matsunaga?" She asks, looking up from a tablet.

"That would be me," I respond nervously.

"Please go up to that terminal and present your duel disk. Good luck." She denotes, pointing to a standing touch terminal like the ones in the hotel lobby.

I step through the ample space and hold my duel disk up to the terminal.

It roars to life and then shows. [Dueling system initiated. Challenger Yuumi Matsunaga, please proceed to the designated area]

A circle of light is projected on the floor, and I go into it.

["Position verified. Issue challenge."] Conveys the bot.

I hold my duel disk out in front of me and state. "Dueling bot, I challenge you to a duel."

After a few seconds, it responds.

["Challenge accepted."]

The tent's lights darken, and the pointed ends of my duel disk begin to glow blue. On the screen is displayed "Duel Start."

["Yuumi, this will be a 1v1 duel. As the challenger, you take the first turn."] the bot explains.

My duel disk spits out 5 cards, my starting hand.

'Lady luck, please don't fail me now...'

I look at my starting hand with relief. 'Not bad,' - I think. - 'As I'm playing the first turn, the bot is probably trying to judge how many monster negates and disruption I can put on board.'

With that in mind, I start. My turn.

[Draw phase, Standby phase, Main phase 1] the duel disk indicates.

"To start, I activate Oafdragon Magician to my left pendulum zone." I put the card down on the dueling blade, and a pillar of light rises on my left with Oafdragon floating in it. Below him, there's there is a number 2.

"This allows me to activate Duelist Alliance from my hand, searching the card Pendulum Call from my Deck. Now by discarding the other Duelist Alliance in my hand, I activate Pendulum Call" I continue my play before my duel disk has time to give me the card I searched for. Surprisingly this doesn't pause the duel. After I discard Duelist Alliance for cost, the duel disk just activates Pendulum Call without it ever going to my hand, so I continued.

"With the effect of Pendulum Call, I add "Wisdom-Eye Magician" and "Harmonizing Magician" from the Deck to my hand..."

The bot didn't respond to pendulum call like I was expecting, which I found weird. Generally, if you had a hand trap, that would be one of the cards to negate. 'Maybe he was waiting to negate Halq?' I speculate.

"No response? Very well. I activate Wisdom-Eye Magician to my right pendulum scale." I look to my right and see Wisdom-Eye floating up to the same height as Oafdragon. A pendulum materializes and starts swinging between the two scales. I feel inclined to Pendulum summon right now just because of the visuals, but first, I have to try to bait out any hand traps.

"I activate the effect of Magician's Soul in my hand by sending "Performapal Odd-Eyes Dissolver" to the graveyard. This allows me to special summon it to the field! So I special summon it in defense position." I place the card down on the dueling blade horizontally, and my monster materializes in front of me.

The Dueling Bot doesn't respond, making me believe that he doesn't have any hand traps. So I go for it.

"Now I pendulum summon!" - I announce, holding my right hand up like in the anime. To be honest, I always wanted to do this. - "Come out, my monsters! Harmonizing Magician in defense position! And Performapal Pendulum Sorcerer in attack position!" As I announce my Pendulum Summon, the Pendulum above me starts speeding up, swinging back and forth between the two scales. Then when I pick up the two monsters I'm going to summon, it starts going around in a circle, opening a portal in the middle. Finally, after setting the cards down on the dueling blade, the portal spits out two spheres of light. These spheres settle in front of me and morph into the monsters I summoned.

"I activate the On-Summon effect of Harmonizing!" - I declare, omitting the other half of its name. - "After being successfully Pendulum Summoned, it allows me to Special Summon a monster from the deck." - I announce - "I Special Summon Double Iris Magician from the Deck!" The card is ejected from the bottom card slot, and I place it on the dueling blade. On the field, Harmonizing Magician elevates his staff conjuring a blue portal. Double Iris comes out from it.

"Now! I set "Magician's Soul" and "Harmonizing Magician" as link arrows!" I declare. A square overlapped with an octagon emerges, and the two monsters turn into blue spheres of light. "COME OUT! LINK - 2 CRYSTRON HALQUIFIBRAX!" The spheres of light get sucked into the bottom right and bottom left arrows of the Link Circuit while I pick up the two cards from the dueling blade and insert them into the slot.

 Then the duel disk ejects Crystrons' card. Two Extra Monster Zones grow from the blade as I grab the card. Setting the Link Monster down on the left zone makes the other shrink. On the field, this action is represented by a beam of light shining from the Link Circuit.

"Urg," I flinch. Covering my eyes from the light.

As the light dies down, what remains is a mech with crystals growing from his back.

'Huh, so that's what you look like? Not as tall as I expected,' I observe.

"I activate Haqls On-Summon effect! With it, I special summon Tuning Magician from the Deck!" - I declare, placing the monster card down - "Next, I'll use "Tuning Magician" and Link - 2 "Crystron Halquifibrax" as Link Arrows! Link Summon! Come out, "Selene, Queen of the Master Magicians!" - The summon proceeds like before, but this time Halq turns into two spheres. I was already protecting my eyes from the light beam.

The light dies down, and a woman with flowing blonde hair wearing the same type of dress as Ness remains. She is holding a golden bow/staff imbued with three silver spheres. She also has a disk carrying five more silver orbs floating behind her.

"Selenes effect activates." - I declare - "She gains a spell counter for every spell card on the field and the graveyard. Currently, two activated Pendulum Monsters are on the field, and three spell cards are in the graveyard, totaling five counters." - This makes the three silver spheres on her bow and two more on the disk turn yellow. - "By using three of these counters, I can activate the other effect of Selene. Summoning a spellcaster from the hand or graveyard. I Special Summon "Performapal Odd-Eyes Dissolver" from the graveyard!" Selene draws her bow and shoots an arrow of light that turns into Dissolver.

I was doing these summons to bait out Nibiru, but until now, the bot hasn't responded to a single one of my plays. It was making me worried that perhaps the bot was playing a combo deck. Still, if that's what it was playing, I was on the right track to disrupt it.

"I activate the effect of "Tuning Magician" from the graveyard, bringing it back to the field as long as there are two magicians in my pendulum scales." I perform another special summon to try and see if the bot has any response.

But as soon as I put down the card on the dueling blade, I felt a shock.

"Argh," I yelp, not expecting it.

["Carefull duelist, that card deals self-damage and heals me for 400 LP. My new LP count is 8400 and yours 7600."] Announces the bot.

"Obviously, I know that!" I quip back, annoyed at the back sitting.

After getting ahold of myself, I continue my turn.

"I activate the effect of Dissolver! Fusing it and "Oafdragon Magician" in my pendulum scale. Fusion Summon!" - The two monsters turn into a red and blue sphere of light and start mixing in front of me. - "Arise, Level Seven Odd-Eyes Vortex Dragon!"" A black dragon with red and blue eyes and multicolored armor emerges from the vortex of red and blue. Of course, this is followed by a flash of light that blinds me because I was looking at it directly.

"WHY!!!" I grumble, covering my eyes.

Now I have a choice to make. I already have an Omni-Negate in the form of Vortex, so I could go into a four-material Appolusa that would have four monster negates or into a two-material one with DPE.

'I have no idea what he's playing...'

I thought about it and eventually decided that DPE was a must-have against an unknown deck, even if it could bite me in the ass if it was playing a combo deck and had multiple play starters in hand.

"I use Link - 3 "Selene, Bow of the Goddess," and "Performapal Pendulum Sorcerer" as Link arrows! Come out, Link - 4 "Appolusa, Bow of the Goddess!"" From the Link Circuit exits, a girl with white, long hair and two fox ears on top. She rides a big bear covered in emerald-like green fur and wields an extensively decorated golden bow at least two meters tall. A quiver on her back holds three arrows appropriately sized for the giant bow.

"Next, I set "Double Iris Magician" and "Tuning Magician" as link arrows! Come out "Verte Predaplant Anaconda!"" Again from the Link Circuit comes out a snake made of leaves about two meters tall.

 I dread what I have to do next. Verte deals 2000LP of self-damage for its effect... Fuck it, I've gone too far to stop now.

"I activate the effect of Verte, copying the effect of "Fusion Destiny" from my Deck by sending it to the graveyard..." I say in a whispered tone, already bracing myself for what is coming next.

Unfortunately, my fears were valid.

"AHJAFHFGHAHFHFHA" I scream from the top of my lungs. The shock this time didn't stop at just my arm. No, the powerful shock ran through my entire body. My legs give out, and I slump to the floor bearly holding myself up by my arms.

This time the bot remained quiet.

Finally, the pain started to subside. I stood up again, legs still wobbly and arms still shaking.

'THAT WAS EXTREMELY PAINFUL. LIKE, WTF, YOU EXPECT KIDS TO DEAL WITH THAT!?' Mind you, this was not the first time I had taken a painful shock. Back in my old life, when I was running low-voltage cabling, I accidentally bumped into a mains outlet's live and neutral terminals. Thankfully this was with the back of my hand, and I quickly yanked it out of there, but it was still a helluva shock. This one was different. The electricity flowing through my entire body felt like being stabbed with multiple knives, but instead of stopping a few centimeters after breaking the skin, they kept going deeper and deeper.

'And this was just 2000LP of damage... What about 4000 or even 8000...' I shudder just thinking about it.

As much as I wish to stop here, I still have a duel to win.

Still trembling, I persist.

"I trigger the new effect of Verte! So by sending "Destiny Hero - Celestial" and "Destiny Hero - Dasher" From the Deck to the graveyard, I FUSION SUMMON!" I yell with an unsteady voice. "Come out "Destiny Hero - Phoenix Enforcer!" - A warrior equipped with dark red armor from head to toe emerges from the fusion vortex. I can't help but marvel at it... And then regret it immediately as I get blinded by the light of the fusion again.

'I need to stop doing that!'

"With this, I end my turn!" I announce, still annoyed at the special effects.

plays49

Halfway through rewriting this chapter I noticed it was getting too large for a single chapter, so I'm going to split it into two parts. Don't worry, part two will come out tomorrow at the normal release time (2:00 PM GMT) so you won't have to wait for the next release on Thursday.