Rebirth! Link the world!
Yuyu stood on the bustling street, taking quite some time to accept his current situation.
The place he was in now was called Tongshi Wild, supposed to be located in a fictional island city on his original Earth, from the classic old anime "Yu-Gi-Oh!".
Interestingly, he had just created a new account in a game adaptation called "Yu-Gi-Oh! Link World Online" from a popular IP by a certain conglomerate, and had just finished creating a character to start a delightful journey of dueling.
And then there was nothing.
So, rather than saying he had crossed into an anime, it was more likely that he had crossed into the game world of Link World?
Before Yuyu crossed over, "Link World Online" was the hottest online card game globally. But saying it was just a card game would be inaccurate.
This was a game built on the most cutting-edge technology, a fully immersive online network game. Although it was a card game, the mode was somewhat like an MMORPG.
Players logged into areas within the game that were the famous Tongyo City from the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" anime, the birthplace of the original dueling king, Yugi Mutou.
This game had incredibly high freedom, allowing players to explore the map freely, duel with NPC duelists, strengthen their decks by completing various tasks, and collect cards to enhance their strength in this world.
It was widely known that in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, the strength of a deck and dueling skills were directly linked to one's power. This was somewhat like the fundamental rule of this world, a world where dueling was paramount.
Actually, before the crossover, Yuyu was basically immersed in this game every day, running around the map doing tasks, spending money to draw card packs, or just going to the player arena to duel with other players.
Link World was not just a game for him; it was more like a job.
It all started when he saw videos of the game made by a famous UP host in the game area. This inspired him to have the idea of making videos of exciting duels in the arena.
Riding on the popularity of Link World, he made some entertaining dueling videos, which had been fairly successful. Although he couldn't compare with the real top players, he could still make a decent living with Link World.
And then he crossed over like this.
At this moment, Yuyu felt utterly despondent.
He couldn't be considered a top player in dueling either. Although he had been into it for a while, compared to competitive players, he leaned more towards being a casual player.
With his limited skills, how could he survive in a world where dueling was everything?
But since he was already here, he had to figure out how to adapt quickly.
To his surprise, when he thought of summoning a menu like in the game, the familiar game interface actually appeared before him again.
Name: Yuyu
Category: NPC
Level: Level 1
Charm: 95
Luck: 20
Endurance: 35
Stamina: 3/3
Note: Mediocre, striving to become a professional duelist.
Yuyu was the ID he randomly chose when creating the account. After all, it was a game based on Yu-Gi-Oh!, so it was common knowledge that starting a name with "Yu" would bring good luck to dueling (mistakenly). As for "Yuyu," it was a homophone of his real name, Yu, without any other meaning.
But it seemed like this random ID would become his name from now on.
Thinking about it, Yuyu felt a bit relieved. Fortunately, he didn't come up with some ridiculous name like "Cool Dragon Guy" or something when he created his character; otherwise, he might as well have reincarnated on the spot.
However, this panel was a bit hard to explain.
The good news was, at least, the panel data didn't differ much from the player panel he was familiar with; he could understand most of the attribute data.
The bad news was, his panel seemed to be quite skewed.
It was obvious that all his initial attribute points seemed to have been skewed towards charm. In simpler terms, that was attractiveness.
100 charm points was full marks, anything over 80 was considered high charm, and 90 was in the range where heads would turn on the street. With his initial score of 95, he might already be close to a one-of-a-kind level.
You might ask, what's the use of being attractive in just a card game? Does being handsome help you draw the cards you want?
Hey, maybe you don't understand. NPCs in this game all have their own affinity systems. The higher the affinity of a key NPC towards you, the more chances you have to trigger a plot with him/her, and you might even get rare card rewards.
So, some players could rely on their high charm to do everything they could to please their favorite NPC ladies (or gentlemen), patiently waiting until their affinity was full, and then they could fulfill their wish to duel with the NPC lady (or gentleman).
Huh, what are you thinking? Link World is a legitimate card game, fully approved, absolutely no unhealthy game content.
Having a charm value of 95 was pretty good; after all, being handsome wasn't a bad thing. Besides, nowadays, the audience for readers and viewers of books and dramas generally had higher standards for attractiveness, and protagonists who weren't good-looking enough had no immersion, making it difficult to continue watching. So, not having a standard of beauty above average these days was embarrassing.
However, luck at 20 was a bit annoying.
It wasn't that having low luck meant you couldn't draw the cards you wanted during a duel—according to the world-setting here, whether you could miraculously draw a card depended on the "bond between the duelist and the card," and it had little to do with luck attributes.
What luck attributes affected was the probability of hitting when you activated effects like flipping a coin to guess heads or tails.
With a luck of 20, it basically meant that you would always lose when gambling, guessing heads would land tails and guessing tails would land heads.
In this regard, Yuyu estimated that Joey Wheeler, the senior duelist in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, probably had a luck value of over 90. This guy's deck consisted mostly of gambling effects, and his luck was so strong that it was almost supernatural. In the original anime, he, a mere mortal, managed to achieve impressive results such as being the runner-up in the Duelist Kingdom tournament and reaching the top four in the Battle City tournament solely because of his incredible luck.
We usually use two words to describe such people—gambling freaks.
Next were endurance and stamina; these two values were directly related.
You might ask again, what does dueling have to do with endurance?
Well, according to the world-setting of Yu-Gi-Oh!, dueling was indeed related to endurance. Even though the monsters summoned and cards activated by duelists were holographic images, they were still supposed to cause physical impact on the duelists.
Endurance directly corresponded to a player's stamina. The stamina of 3/3 in Yuyu's panel meant that in his current state of health, he could duel a total of three times. Beyond three times would exceed the stamina limit, and he couldn't duel anymore.
With an endurance value between 40 and 50, you could duel four times, between 50 and 60, five times, and above 60, six times, and so on.
So, dueling was actually a physical activity, requiring a certain level of endurance from the duelists.
With an endurance of 35, it was obviously below the passing line, which also made Yuyu feel a bit frustrated.
After all, as a man, if you didn't have endurance, no matter how good your technique was, it would be useless. (Referring to card skills)
Low stamina directly affected the speed of leveling up, but as the level increased, this attribute might also grow.
In Link World, if you wanted to level up, you had to gain experience points by dueling with others or completing tasks, and leveling up would come with rewards such as cards and gems.
Cards could be exchanged for a limited number of cards at the system, while gems could be used to draw card packs at the system.
Also, because of the system, players even had the chance to obtain cards that shouldn't exist in this background era of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
But that was all for later.
Now, Yuyu had to seriously think about how to proceed on the path of being an insignificant NPC passerby in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!