There was a massive smirk on Yarden's face as he left the thief Yugi impersonator behind, leaving Syrus and the watchers above to take care of returning the stolen deck.
There were multiple reasons why he didn't stick around for his girlfriend and friends to make their way down. Number one being, he was excited.
After all, he had footage of himself absolutely crushing the deck of the King of Games in a single turn. Sure, it wasn't Yugi himself that was duelling, but it was still his deck and Dimitri had at least had a memorable and strong first turn.
'…I can't believe he did that…' Dark Magician Girl, floating along through the air beside him, was pouting, 'That's not how you use that deck at all. He duelled nothing like Yugi, it was like he was trying to be Kaiba, or you!'
Well, she wasn't wrong at least. That was nothing like any duel he'd seen Yugi in. Field swarming with powerful beat sticks, was not at all his style. He could totally do it, but that wasn't what his deck, the reflection of his soul and heart in his cards was about.
It was very much a situation that Zane's whole knowing the difference between 'using and playing' a card applied.
Not that it mattered in the end, because the masses would only see a massive powerful line up of the King of Games monsters and him obliterating them as if he was big daddy Exodia.
Which was why he was quickly heading back to his dorm room. After the televised duel against the Paradox Brothers, his academy duellist profile page had seen a lot of traffic from outside parties.
Once he posted the video of this duel on it personally, no doubt it was going to go viral.
"So much for the spirits in Yugi's deck refusing to give a bad show and make it tough for me, huh?" Yarden laughed in amusement at the spirit floating alongside him.
'They didn't, that field of monsters was amazing!' she protested cutely, 'That Dimitri guy is just an idiot master! The deck gave him exactly what he wanted, it's not their fault he didn't have any proper plans beyond delusions of grandeur and attempting to one turn kill.'
Well again, she wasn't wrong. It didn't make it any less funny though, or profitable for him.
'I blame you for this,' Dark Magician Girl's pout deepened and she pointed her sceptre at him, 'It's probably because of you swaggering around like a peacock, blowing everyone up and managing to snag the most popular girl in the school as your girlfriend that he thought that was the way to go and tried to imitate you.'
Maybe.
Maybe not. Who could say? It wasn't like Yarden had any interest at all in Dimitri to be honest.
Still, he had to thank him. That duel against Yugi's deck, had shown him two overpowered cards that he for sure wanted to get his hands on. Card of Last Will and Sleight of Hand.
Sleight of Hand especially was an absolute bullshit card.
"Where did Yugi get that by the way?" he asked aloud.
'It was a gift from Pegasus, it's the only one of its kind I'm afraid master,' she replied with a shrug before sticking her tongue out, 'Tough luck!'
Ah…well that sucked.
Well, there was always Card of Last Will at least. And, now that he thought about it, the version of Card of Demise in this world should be broken as well if it was the anime version.
Definitely something to look into.
_________________________________________________
Once he was back in his dorm room, Yarden wasted no time in making his way over to the laptop on the desk beside his bed, and plugging the video recorder into the usb port and transferring the video file he took over.
Thankfully, since the duel was so short, it wasn't all that long or big of a clip so it wouldn't take long before it was done and he could upload the footage straight to his duellist profile.
In less than an hour, he'd have it uploaded and his stonks, would rise.
Sitting back in his chair while the video file transferred over, Yarden crossed his right leg over his left knee and clasped his fingers together, his head resting against the headrest and his eyes locking upon the ceiling, "Maybe it's time I start looking into things outside the academy?" he mused.
He had a good nest egg of cash that he was sitting on right now. And some of the morals of this world, were quite wonky. A lot of that mostly due to Seto Kaiba mind you, but he could make use of them.
Like the fact that he could own property despite his age. 'With the money I have now, I could buy some cheap properties and get mortgages on them.' he thought.
Probably not something he'd have usually looked into, but most of his family before he ended up here in this world, were amongst the trade of doing up houses, from builders, to tilers to joiners. He was actually expected to take up a similar trade upon graduating high school.
As it was, he at the very least knew the basics of buying and selling property. And the fact of the matter was, in this world, it was the year 2004.
When the pound was still a super power and worth more than double that of the dollar. And properties back home, were way, way cheaper than anything in the likes of say America.
Sitting forward in his chair, Yarden brought up the internet browser on the laptop, before bringing up a website detailing property for sale in his old home town.
And there, one of the first in the listings was a small two bedroom home with a small front garden and backyard, going for £13,000.
Huh, it already had a tenant too who was paying £350 a month to stay there. Admittedly, looking at the photo's taken, the furniture and wallpaper were a little out of date, but it was still a nice place.
He could buy that, get it mortgaged for that estimated thirteen thousand pounds or around there, get the money he paid back and have that thirteen thousand or so mortgage debt be paid off by the tenant living there and own the property which he could sell at any time.
And if the property scene was anything like it would be in a few years, as it was back home, then going by what he he'd learned, then this property could easily increase five times in value, more if the place got did up.
And if things went tits up, he could always duel his way out of debt. Because that was also the kind of logic this world worked on. Thanks to Kaiba.
Thanks Kaiba.
'Problem is I don't have the time to deal with shit like this.' Yarden mused, stroking his chin. Not to mention, he was you know….halfway across the world from the property he would own, actually could he even purchase it while not being anywhere close?
Maybe he should look into getting an assistant of some kind? He would need it soon, it was actually beginning to get tedious to go through his emails. He already had people emailing him with sponsorship deals, offers to tour other duel schools around the world and even duel agencies trying to scout him.
Zane had told him it was the same for him, albeit he hadn't started getting the kind of attention Yarden did until he was well into his second year, but still.
As it was, a lot of the things he wanted, cost a shit load of money.
Like for example, a nice big mansion with an awesome pool and hopefully a jacuzzi. And of course, a big piece of private land around it.
He'd need such a place for his hot girlfriend to lounge in a tiny bikini, and her friends. And of course, the private property, with hopefully a lot of green around it would be ideal for a lot of his spirits to relax and spend their time.
But beyond that, there were stupid rare and powerful cards that cost an arm and a leg, and even that incredible new duel disk Kaiba came out with not long ago.
He didn't even understand how it worked fully, beyond that it was connected to something called the Crystal Cloud Network that eliminated the need for the physical deck to be present in a duel, albeit one needed to upload the data of cards they owned into the duel disk to use them.
And it allowed the user to project virtual cards onto the world. But even beyond the aspect of duelling with them, they came with a neural link…thing. That not only uploaded the information of their cards to their brain, but allowed them to project images from their mind on reality like an illusion and connect their brain to the fucking web and all manner of crazy shit.
Kaiba really was that guy, completely next level. While a lot of the technology in this world was still progressing at the same rate as the one he came from, Kaiba was literally centuries ahead with full on real virtual reality deep dive technology.
…Then again this was the man that flew around in a Blue-Eyes White Dragon Jet that was not at all aerodynamic and should have been impossible to fly. He even had a fucking card based on his jet.
Literally called the Blue-Eyes White Jet, with three thousand attack points and zero defence points. And from what he'd seen of its brief use in clips, it was absolutely fucking broken. While it was on the field, other cards Kaiba controlled couldn't be targeted by card effects. If another Blue-eyes card was on the field, it could be special summoned from the hand or graveyard, and during the battle phase, if it attacked, Kaiba could pick one card on his opponents field and return it to the hand.
Like seriously, what kind of absolute broken bullshit was that? And that was just a card based on his jet, not his actual Blue-Eyes, of which there were many, many more cards that he'd never heard of before coming to this world.
Fucking Kaiba.
What a crazy, amazing bastard.
Hell, from what he'd learned, apparently the guy had literally build a space elevator? For whatever Kaiba reason. Maybe he built it to host meetings to duel with aliens or something?
Just Kaiba doing Kaiba things.
…One day it would be Yarden doing Yarden things!
Well, either way that new duel disk of Kaiba's? Cost over a million pounds. He was quite a ways off of affording one.
A knock on his door drew him from his thoughts.
'Hm?' Yarden wondered who it was for a moment, before shrugging and getting up. It could be anyone really. Hell, people knocked on his door constantly all day every day, to challenge him to a duel and put him in his 'place'.
All they ended up doing was giving him more DP and cementing that his place was above them though.
Making his way towards the door, he pulled it open and was pleasantly surprised to find his girlfriend.
"Hey." Alexis greeted him, making her way inside after pausing to kiss him on the cheek.
Odd, it wasn't really like her to show up here at this time. Though mostly because of his annoying dormmates going into a frenzy whenever she did and were liable to start humping the air, the walls, the floor…whatever was in sight really after catching a glimpse of her.
People here were weird man.
Well, it was most likely to do with Dimitri.
"What's up?" he smiled at her after closing the door, "Here to congratulate me on completely owning Yugi's deck?"
"Yeah, I figured you knew we were watching," Alexis rolled her eyes with a smile, shaking her head, "Looks like karma didn't bite you in the ass today huh?"
Yarden shrugged and walked over to her, sliding his arms around her waist as he reached her and clasping his hands behind her back, before giving her a grin, "Considering I was stopping a thief from stealing someone else's deck, karma would actually be on my side in that situation y'know." he pointed out.
"Not the kind of karma we were thinking of back there, or well, Jasmine at least," Alexis snorted, lifting her arms and wrapping them around his neck before leaning forward to press her lips against his briefly, "So, Syrus said you had a video camera with you and had him record your duel with Dimitri, anything you wanna share?" she asked as she pulled back, arching an eyebrow.
All my stories are way farther ahead on my Pa---tr---eon if you guys wanna read ahead, the link to it is in any of my story summaries.