Academy Island.
Deep in the woods. A dark, windy night—perfect time to get things done.
The Dark Scorpion gang was huddled together, moving through the bushes and tall grass.
"Seriously, why did they have to build this school on some random island?"
As he walked, Chick kept glancing left and right, muttering under his breath.
"This creepy vibe is way too scary…"
Meanae shot him a contemptuous look. "You're a member of our Dark Scorpion Burglars, and you're this much of a wimp? You're disgracing the whole gang."
Cliff pushed his glasses up and squinted at Meanae. "Meanae, there's a snake at your feet."
Meanae's pretty face went pale. She practically jumped away on reflex. "Aaaah!"
Chick looked annoyed. "You're a spirit and you're still scared of snakes? You're not any better than me."
Meanae: "Shut up!"
The big guy, Gorg, rubbed his stomach, eyes looking like his soul had already left his body. "I'm hungry…"
In the end, it was their big bro, Zaloog, who stepped up. He turned around impatiently.
"Hey. We're professionals, remember? Can you guys at least act a little professional?
The boss has more and more powerful people under him now. If we keep messing around like this, we're gonna lose our spot real soon!"
The noisy burglars went dead quiet in an instant.
Yeah… that did sound like a real problem.
In fact, they'd already started to feel the pressure. The spirits under Kira kept getting stronger, and there were more and more heavy hitters. The few of them squeezed in the middle always felt like tiny shrimps…
"Hold up."
Cliff suddenly spoke.
Zaloog snapped, "What now? I just said—"
"No, boss. I think I've found something."
A cold glint flashed off Cliff's lenses. "There's someone else's presence."
The burglars instantly tensed up.
"I don't feel anything."
Meanae lowered her voice. Then again, her senses had never been as sharp as Cliff's.
"Is it the spirit we're supposed to be looking for? Should we… let the master know?"
"No, I'm afraid not." Cliff's voice sank. "It's the presence of a living human. Not a spirit."
At that, the burglars all showed strange expressions.
They were searching in the academy's restricted area, not far from the abandoned dorms. Under normal circumstances, there shouldn't be anyone here.
Another intruder?
There really had been a lot of intruders at the academy lately…
But since they were already here, they didn't mind taking care of the intruder for their master while they were at it.
They'd hardly taken a few steps in that direction when someone in their formation suddenly yelled, "Ah!"
Everyone jumped and spun around. The scream came from Chick.
Chick had stepped on something. His ankle was suddenly snared by some kind of energy line and yanked upward. He was jerked into the air and left hanging upside down. A capsule-like device then popped open with a bang and snapped shut around him, trapping him inside.
Everyone was shocked.
"A trap!?"
"This is human tech!" Cliff said in a low, serious voice.
Inside the capsule, Chick struggled with all his might. "Human tech? But that's impossible, this—ugh aaagh!"
Electricity suddenly crackled inside the capsule, shocking him into a string of miserable screams.
"Chick!"
Their hearts all lurched—and at the same time, a question rose in their minds. technology… could actually hurt spirits?
As they were still frozen in shock, footsteps sounded from ahead in the woods.
A dark silhouette stepped out slowly.
…
…
Within a single day, the rumor had already spread.
They said that Professor Viper, who'd come from another school, and the academy's own Duel King had clashed over differing educational philosophies, and that a disagreement had escalated straight into a card fight. In the end, after one duel, the Lord of Yellow had sent that clueless out-of-town professor straight into the ICU, and he still hadn't woken up.
"People really love making stuff up these days."
In his lab, Kira shook his head over and over, expressing his indignation at the moral decline of modern society.
"Always spreading untrue stories and smearing people's reputations."
As if he were some unforgivable fiend, the academy's tyrant dictator who used duels to silence all opposition to his rule…
On the side, Misawa and Alexis watched Kira complain while he fiddled with the deck that looked very much like it had been ripped straight out of Professor Viper's Duel Disk.
They exchanged glances.
They were both thinking the same thing: You really don't have any right to say that while you're literally playing with the spoils of war…
The fact that Professor Viper had ended up in the ICU was also true. But heaven and earth could testify—Kira insisted that this time, he'd really done nothing.
Yes, they'd fought a Shadow Duel, but Viper was the one who started it. Kira had never used his own power to inflict real damage, and in the end, he wasn't the one who dealt the fatal blow—it was Yubel.
From the moment Professor Viper discovered Yubel, who had fallen back to Earth from the stars, he was basically already her slave. Once he'd lost his value, he went from puppet to Yubel's food.
Yubel had the ability to draw out the darkness in people's hearts. She liked to foster that darkness, grow it until it became enormous, and then devour it, which allowed her to restore her own power.
In the original story, when she nurtured Adrian and guided him to seek his king's road in another dimension, it was for the same purpose. She just played it a bit too big that time and almost overreached—she nearly got reverse swept by Adrian's completed Exodia.
Right now, Kira was indeed going through Viper's deck.
To be fair, in terms of raw deck quality, Professor Viper's Venom deck was kind of trashy. …Well, okay, maybe blaming it all on the Venom deck wasn't entirely fair.
More accurately, it was a problem with the entire Reptile-Type as a whole.
The fact that Reptiles had a busted support card like "Snake Rain" and were still half-dead as an archetype really spoke for itself.
But while the deck wasn't great, Viper's boss monster was absolutely no joke.
Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes.
"No matter how you slice it, we still picked up a pretty incredible card this time," Vampire Fraulein said with a smile, holding her parasol.
"Looks like our team is getting yet another heavyweight on board."
"Yeah. Full immunities, high ATK, alternate win condition," Kira nodded. "If not for that ridiculously strict summoning requirement, it'd basically be invincible."
At that moment, the deck let out a muffled sort of sound. A transparent burst of fire flickered for a second, as if expressing displeasure.
That was the Lava Golem, who spent most of his time lurking and silently watching the screen.
Kira chuckled. "Of course, it still can't compare to my Ace Lava Golem. Having full immunities isn't that big a deal."
The flame flickered out, seemingly satisfied now that it had been reaffirmed.
While it was indeed very difficult to handle Vennominaga, Kira had already thought up one or two deck builds that might actually work in practice. Setting aside the possibility of her getting eaten by Lava Golem, once she hit the field, her ability to lock down the game was absolutely top-tier…
"Hm?"
He sensed something. He took a deck from the card case at his waist and pulled out the cards of the Dark Scorpion Burglars.
Those guys had gone out on a mission, but he'd kept their cards with him. Just in case anything happened to them, and so he could communicate with them remotely through the cards.
"So? You found something?" Kira asked.
"Boss!"
Chick's card was the first to start shaking, his voice tumbling out, incoherent.
"Help! Help! Heeelp!"