29 – Regionals Part 5: The Round of 32

POV ???

Soft, classical music filled the air of the luxury suite for regional competitors. 

A boy, only 13 or 14 in age, sat at a large oak desk in the room writing in a thick workbook. Several more workbooks were scattered around the table, and all of them were at a high school or even college level. 

The boy was Daichi Kato, an ordinary-looking middle schooler with great aptitude and smarts. He stood at 162 cm (5'4") tall, being slightly shorter than average for his age, and had short black hair that was laid down and slicked back neatly. His eyes were also an ordinary black color consistent with his Japanese heritage, but they shone with hidden intelligence and wit. 

As Daichi finishes the last problem on the workbook's page, he sighs and looks over to the closet in his room. 

He...really wasn't sure how he had gotten here. His deck was hot garbage and the fact that he won so many duels only further baffled him.

Daichi literally chose one of the weakest archetypes on purpose just to see how far he could take it with his smarts and decent staple cards alone...He could have never dreamed he would make it all the way to Regionals. This was beyond all of his expectations. 

Still, he needed the money for his future plans later in life. His parents or his scholarships would pay for his college, but he had no nest egg or trust fund. The Kato family was self-made in their wealth, and they expected Daichi to make his own wealth as well.

His parents were both corporate executives that had little time to spend with him. This didn't mean they did not love him, however, they were just always busy. Daichi had accepted that part of his family dynamic and forgave them for their absence. His life was never hard growing up and he knew he should be grateful.

His dream was to open up a massive international card-selling business. Maybe one that held auctions like some other popular sites, but he wanted his to be the best. For that, he needed money to put towards the start-up. 

He was given a monthly allowance, and that had been what he had bought his first Duel Monster Packs with in elementary school. That support, however, would be finished as soon as he graduated from high school, and so the Duel Points he had received from winning tournaments and the amount on the line at Regionals wasn't something he could ignore. 

He often questioned himself as to why he chose this particular persona. 

Maybe because it was the opposite of his normal attitude and personality? Maybe he just wanted to let loose and do things without a care for once in his life? Maybe he was just sick in the head?

Either way, the break from constant studying had actually improved his performance on tests and had earned him the 1st place spot in his school. His future was looking bright, and, most importantly, he was having fun. 

His parents wouldn't be present to watch him perform, nor did they even know about this persona of his at all, but that was fine. He was doing this for himself and not for them. 

He needed this, otherwise, he felt like he would explode. 

So what if he was good at studying? It was boring! He just wanted to relax and have some fun!

Dueling was fun, pretending to be a complete wackjob was fun, and the fact that he knew he was defying his parent's expectations of him was fun. 

For the first time in his life, Daichi was actually enjoying himself, and he had no plans of stopping. 

"Mr. Underwood, yours is the next scheduled duel. Please make sure you are prepared in roughly 30 minutes." A knock and a voice from one of the staff came from outside his door. 

"Kwehehehehe! Weevil Underwood is always prepared! My insects will devour my competition until they are not but husks of their former selves!" Daichi yells, getting into character and feeling a growing smile blooming on his face.

"Uh...yeah. Great. 30 minutes!" The guy responds and then leaves. 

Daichi chuckles to himself as he throws open his closest doors revealing his green overcoat, white shirt, black pants, red bowtie, green-colored contacts in their case, and golden insect glasses. All thoughts of studying and his parent's wishes were gone as he dons his chosen armor. 

Now it was time for Weevil Underwood to take the stage, humiliate his opponent, and proceed to the Round of 16!

* | * | *

POV Anubis

My next duel was, surprisingly, a breeze. 

I had been expecting to have a hard-fought battle to get to the Round of 16, but it was actually a bit of a letdown. 

I started with Pot of Greed in my hand, asked him a moment to read what the card did, and it helped me open with Wall of Illusion into Summoned Skull. 

Because my opponent was playing an aggro deck, his Dark Zebra attacked and was bounced back to his hand due to the effect of my Wall of Illusion while he took 50 points of damage because of its higher defense. 

For my next turn, I attacked with the Summoned Skull that I had tribute summoned to the field, and set my single copy of  Trap Hole as a reactionary trap card. My opponent - Greg something? I don't really remember, but he was an American Pro - tried to set a wall monster (One with 2000 Def) to stall me a turn, and it did its job well. 

The following turn, I spent my battle phase destroying his monster with my Summoned Skull and then set a Man-Eater Bug on the field. The idiot walked right into my bug on his turn, and I destroyed his newly summoned Battle Ox with my bug's effect. 

Then, the duel was over. I summoned a copy of 7 Colored Fish, Monster Reborn'ed his Battle Ox, and attacked for game. 

That was it.

The whole duel took all of 3 minutes and 5 turns, but, hey, I wasn't really complaining all that much. They can't all be amazing duels, and I am sure he just had a bad draw. I didn't see him play a single spell or trap, so he must have bricked with all monsters or something. It happens to all of us, from time to time. 

We shook hands, him more than a little dejected, and I left the arena to loud applause from the audience. 

I didn't take off my mask this time, and I could tell that some were disappointed by that, but, again, it was something I was going to use strategically, not for vanity. I really didn't care if the women in the audience were sad. 

With the win, came another black box with golden Egyptian hieroglyphs on the borders and off-white text. 

I shook my head in disbelief at the passive-aggressive text and title reward. 

'How the hell is that my fault?' I grumble internally as I wondered what the title did or was. Like everything else, that was all it took for something to click into place inside my mind. I suddenly knew I could have the system show me my acquired titles at will.

I quickly did so. 

'What the fuck!?! Screw off, System! Unequip!' I think with an internal shout. The title was unequipped easily enough, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. 

I had always known there was someone or something behind my system/shop notifications, but they were really starting to get bold and I wasn't sure I liked that. Sure, they helped me at every turn, but...that title was just mean and unnecessary. 

'Ignore it, Toshi. Just let it go...' I think as a vein throbbed at the side of my head. 

Moving on. 

Winning the match assured me a spot in the round of 16 and an auto-invitation to the World Championships in December.

'For such a simple game, I sure made out like a bandit!' I think with a giddy laugh. 

This new reward put me at 43,876 DP and 20 Free Packs work 20k DP. I was feeling good and no stupid, mean-spirited system was going to get me down. 

I made my way to my room and, luckily, I did not run into any rich megalomaniacs this time.

A short while later, I had another "Surprise" visit from my favorite museum employee and we talked late into the night about strategies for the next round as well as starting to plan out what I would spend my DP on. We did more than talk, but that was the productive side of things, anyway. 

She also informed me about what happened with Pegasus. There were no major news networks reporting on it today, so it looks like Industrial Illusion had covered the whole thing up. Despite that, Ishizu used some of her connections to see what really happened, and, honestly, the answer was nothing. 

Pegasus was perfectly healthy after a checkup at the hospital and woke up without complications. He didn't name anyone as his attacker, or so Ishizu was told, and simply said he hadn't eaten much that day and must have fainted. 

We didn't know why he was protecting me, but we both assumed it was because of his tournament. Either way, it was nice to not be a criminal wanted for attacking one of the most important people in this world!

All too soon, Ishizu had to say her goodbyes and wished me luck on tomorrow's game. This left me alone with my thoughts once again. 

The end of the month was in 2 days and my next match in the round of 16 was tomorrow. I had some serious decisions to make on what to spend all my DP on.

I took out a notepad from my overnight bag and reviewed a few things on the sheet of paper. It contained all of the prices for the unlockable items and card packs that I had copied from my first use of the store. 

The booster packs and starter decks were a given. The Starter Deck Yugi and Starter Deck Kaiba would cost me 12K and I needed to buy 10 booster packs for 10k and use my 20 free ones...That is if the free packs worked that way. I still wasn't sure if that was the case or if they were literally free and left another 20 booster packs available for me to buy. 

For now, I will separate them into two categories. Situation A and Situation B.

In Situation A I would spend 22K to buy the booster packs and starter decks, using the free packs to supplement 20 booster packs left over. That left me with 21,876 DP. I knew I would need to spend 1750 DP on a mask and cloak for Ishizu, and I also wanted to buy the Permanent Waypoint Obelisk along with 5 of the single-use Waypoint Obelisks, so that would be 10k DP as well.

This left me with a little over 11K to play with. Assuming I lost in the Round of 16, that number increased to 22k DP. 

In situation B, everything happens the same, but I have a choice to make. Since the booster packs would be free and leave all 30 booster packs open to purchase, I could, buy those with the remaining 22k DP leaving me with only 2k left over, buy just a few of the ones I really wanted, or I could skip them since I was already getting 20 packs of my choice and could just choose 10 of each of those sets if I wanted.

If I had 22,000 Duel Points left, I wanted to buy a new item and follow Ishizu's recommendation to invest in my future success, but that still left a ton of DP to spend...

Here are the options I am aware of:

• Items
  • Waypoint Obelisk (Permanent) - 5,000 DP
  • Waypoint Obelisks - 1,000 DP
  • Mask Of Many Faces - 750 DP
  • Cloak Of Illusions - 1000 DP
  • ???
• One Time Unlocks
  • Shop Unlocks:
    • Unlock Complete Card Catalog For Viewing - 500 Duel Points
    • Unlock Deck Builder & Collections Manager - 1000 Duel Points
    • Unlock Yu-Gi-Oh! Main Plot Point Cheat Sheet - 10,000 Duel Points
    • Unlock Complete Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime & Manga Viewer - 100,000 Duel Points
    • Unlock Top 8 World Championship Tournament Deck Compositions - 2000 Duel Points Per Tournament
  • Deck, Booster Pack, & Card Unlocks:
    • Unlock Tournament Packs - 2000 Duel Points
    • Unlock Collector Packs - 5000 Duel points (Unreleased As Of Yet)
    • Unlock Promotional Cards & Packs - 5000 Duel Points (Unreleased As Of Yet)
    • Unlock Reprint Packs - 10,000 Duel Points (Unreleased As Of Yet)

There were several great options here. 

I wasn't sure 5 Waypoint Obelisks would be enough. I was going to need to teleport back every day during the Duelist Kingdom Tournament - No way was I leaving my Zushi all alone and sad - and I wasn't sure if the permanent one required the temporary ones to work or if I was able to use it freely as I wished. I was also worried about how I was going to get back after using the permanent one. 

I would need to use both the permanent one and the temporary ones to successfully travel back and forth during the tournament unless I wanted to buy 2 permanent ones...and that just seemed like a waste. Luckily, it was only 48 hours long, but there were several places I might want to set up an instant teleport to while I was there...

Maybe even having one to use at a future point after the tournament would be useful...? Who knows if I will need to talk to Pegasus again, he is one of the main side characters of the story after all...

Then there were the unlocks.

To be frank, I wanted them all. Logically, that was not going to happen, however. I needed to balance what was immediately useful and helpful against what would be a passive benefit over time. I also expected that if I unlocked a type of card pack, I would still need to purchase them. This made them a double investment...

Was that putting too many eggs in one basket? This world is ruled by Duel Monsters, so is investing in a better deck ever the wrong choice?

'Man...This is a tough one.' I ponder as I roll over in my bed.

Ah, well. I have 2 days to think about it and I wasn't going to decide anything right now anyway. 

Better to focus on the tournament and the next round I would ace. I expected tomorrow's duel to be a tough one, and I would need a good night of beauty sleep for that. 

I wasn't procrastinating. Absolutely not...