Chapter 1231: The New Angel

Lina: "Normal Summon ’Krebons’!"

Lina slapped the monster card onto her Duel Runner. A swirling vortex of starlight immediately appeared beside her Duel Runner. A pale-faced clown materialized on her field, its bright red mouth curved in a smile. It wore a comical purple uniform and hat, its grin seemingly mocking everything.

[Krebons, ATK 800]

"Krebons, huh." Kira narrowed his eyes.

He still remembered that back then, Sayer had also used this monster—though the grass on that old acquaintance’s grave was now quite tall.

"I see. So ’Psychic’ team," Kira said, seeming to finally understand the origin of the team name. "Does that mean all of you use Psychic-Type monsters, or rather, telekinetic tribe monsters?"

Lina’s expression shifted slightly. She said in a deep voice, "You... didn’t even look up any information on your opponent before the match?"

Unlike others, although this was Team Psychic’s first match in the WRGP preliminaries as well, they were already a well-known team. They had even won a major team duel championship in North America the previous year.

They had prepared themselves for the disadvantage of information asymmetry that famous teams inevitably faced. Anyone could research their decks and tactics through past records, while they knew very little about teams that had never competed before.

Yet despite being mentally prepared for that, their very first opponent was telling them he hadn’t done any homework at all.

"Oh, I’ve been really busy lately, you know—being a director and all." Kira sighed. "When you have an entire city’s livelihood to manage, you’ll find it’s really hard to make time for unimportant matters."

Lina immediately felt a surge of anger.

Unimportant matters? So in his eyes, they were all just insignificant nobodies?

This guy comes alone to a team duel and doesn’t even bother to learn anything about his opponents... Just how much does he look down on them?

Lina snorted coldly. "Is that so? Then let this duel confirm for the Director whether Team Psychic is truly ’unimportant’!"

With that, she waved her hand and set a card.

"I Set one card. My turn ends!"

"My turn. Draw."

Kira drew his card right after and smiled to himself. "The light and righteous power of angels—perfect, let’s try it out today."

Lina: "?"

Kira: "Normal Summon ’Bountiful Artemis’!"

Holy light descended onto Kira’s field.

The radiance condensed into the form of a snow-white angel. Pure white wings unfurled within the glow, and beneath the shining holy light appeared the angel of abundance, slowly descending from the heavens.

[Bountiful Artemis, ATK 1600]

The audience in the stands showed no reaction. However, any seasoned card player with real experience would probably have cursed "Fuck!" out loud at this sight.

Counter Fairy!

Yes, this was another harvest from Kira’s trip back to the GX dimension. It was a new competitive deck he had completed using stock from his research institute and Kaiba Corp—a deck that was quite famous in duel history: the Counter Fairy deck.

As the name suggested, Counter Fairies combined "Counter Traps" with the "Fairy" race. It was well known that Counter Traps were among the noblest three-speed effects in Yu-Gi-Oh!, meaning "Counter Traps cannot be chained by anything other than Counter Traps." This powerful rule property made Counter Traps natural strong resistances.

The Counter Fairy deck pushed this characteristic to the extreme. Most of the Fairy monsters in the deck had effects related to Counter Traps.

The deck construction was built around a large number of Counter Traps. If you spread the deck out, the striking sea of red cards would make anyone instinctively suck in a breath and hesitate.

Kira: "Bountiful Artemis attacks ’Krebons’."

The angel leaped forward, flying toward the clown psychic on the opponent’s field.

Lina responded immediately: "At this moment, I activate the effect of ’Krebons’! When this card is targeted for an attack, pay 800 Life Points to negate that monster’s attack!"

[Lina, LP 4000 → LP 3200]

Krebons clapped its palms together.

The telekinetic energy in its hands formed a ring, creating a transparent green barrier in front of it. The angel’s attack slammed into the barrier, sending ripples across it before returning without effect.

The airplane-haired commentator: "Oh! Lina chose to pay Life Points to block the attack. Is this a setup for further plays next turn? Or is it because, compared to Director Kira who is dueling alone, her Life Point resources are so abundant that she can spend them freely!?"

Lina, having defended against the attack, chuckled lightly: "I thought a Director confident enough to duel alone would show us something amazing, but it seems pretty ordinary."

"Well, this is the first time I’m using this deck, so I’m still getting the feel for it." Kira smiled. "Please bear with me."

Lina nearly spat out a mouthful of blood onto the track.

You mean not only are you dueling alone and not caring about opponent information, but you don’t even care about the deck you’re using in the match?

You’re entering with a brand-new deck you haven’t even tested? And you still want to 1v3 us?

There has to be a limit to joking around, right?

"I know you’re in a hurry, but don’t rush yet." Kira smiled as he took out three cards from his hand. "Although I’m not fully proficient with it yet, I think this deck should still be quite powerful.

I Set three cards. My turn ends."

Well, of course it was powerful—more than half the deck consisted of Counter Traps.

Lina took a deep breath to calm herself.

Fine. Let’s finish this quickly and properly teach this arrogant guy a lesson.

"My turn, draw!" Lina declared. "Activate Spell Card ’Card Destruction’! Both players discard all cards in their hands, then draw the same number of cards!"

As mentioned earlier, after Kira, now the new Boss of Iliaster, modified the rules, the originally planned Speed World 2 rules for the WRGP were scrapped. Therefore, the current Turbo Duels followed the same style as the manga—emphasizing speed and impact sensation—while the duel rules themselves no longer differed much from traditional duels.

Thus, regular Spell Cards could also be used.

Lina: "Then I Normal Summon ’Hushed Psychic Cleric’!"

[Hushed Psychic Cleric, DEF 2100]

"Effect of Hushed Psychic Cleric!" Lina said. "Once per turn, by sending one card from your hand to the Graveyard, you can banish one Psychic-Type monster from your Graveyard."

Lina sent one card from her hand to the Graveyard, then revealed a card from her Graveyard and banished it.

"I banish ’Esper Girl’ from my Graveyard."

A cute, soft-looking psychic girl monster briefly appeared on her field before vanishing in a fleeting golden light.

Lina took a deep breath.

Now it was time to get serious!

...