A/N:
Just got my email hacked, and since everything that I use has the same password, it's damn inconvenient having to change every password for every website I frequently use.
Worse, my Epic Games and Steam account emails and passwords have been changed, so I'm kind of cooked if I can't retrieve my accounts back.
I think both accounts combined had over a thousand MYR worth of games and cosmetics; it hurts, but hey. At least they didn't take my League account; that one's rather... Yeah. No words needed.
Ahem, I've already requested help from their customer service, and now I'm just waiting for them to respond with good news, hopefully. I'm rather confident that Steam would help a homie out, but I have no idea how well Epic would help.
It's a bit ironic that a computer science degree student got hacked; it happens.
So here's a chapter for you to distract myself. [ ;) ]
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One Year Later...
"Battle. Elemental HERO Flame Wingman (2100) attacks your Super Conductor Tyranno (3300) directly."
"Reverse card, open! I activate the quick-play spell, Cosmic Cyclone! By paying 1000 LP, I can target and banish one spell card on the field, and I'm choosing that field spell, Skyscraper, of yours!"
"My trap activates. Infinite Impermanence: if this trap card was set before activation and is on the field at resolution, for the rest of this turn, all other spell and trap effects in this column are negated."
"What?! You set this card at the very start of the game!"
"I then activate my other face-down card. Quick-play spell, Battle Fusion, activates. When a Fusion Monster that I control attacks against your monster, it gains ATK equal to the ATK of your monster until the end of the Damage Step. My Flame Wingman ups its ATK by 3300 ATK points."
[ Elemental HERO Flame Wingman (2100 + 3300 = 5400*) ]
"Damn, the Skyscraper was bait for my Cosmic Cyclone! Noooo, my rank-up match!"
"Flame Wingman's effect activates upon your monster's destruction; you take damage equal to your monster's ATK."
BOOOOOM!
x=x=x=x=x=x=
Rex_D_Dino: 4000 -› 1900 -› 0 LP
x=x=x=x=x=x=
Watching Rex slam his fist onto the ground while lamenting over the duel, Ken simply tipped his hat for the game before exiting the match to avoid getting cussed out by the Dino-archetype user, a habit that he frequently exhibits when losing a game against him.
Looking back at clips of his old catchphrases when finishing Duels, they were... very cringe, so he decided to preserve some sense of dignity by instead just tipping his hat before disconnecting.
Materializing in the home base that he bought with the excessive BP that he had from streaming, a feature added into the Nexus after popular demand, he looked over at the chatroom floating in front of him and stifled a chuckle as he read the comments of the duel.
[RedHat_Fanboy: BRO COOKED THAT MAN ALIVE LMAO]
[LunarlightQueen: "Noooo, my rank-up match!"]
[Rex_Rage_Compilation: Timestamped. This is going in the next video as much as I love Rex]
[PsyFramelord: Infinite Impermanence turn 1 set was actually insane, not gonna lie]
[0110awd: I don't get why you used Skyscraper in that duel. Is it just me?]
[UberMania: New HERO support goes hard]
Honestly, part of streaming was just reading the comments; it cracks him up every time he glances at it. He's pretty sure that there are screenshots somewhere on the internet of his mouth twitching upwards from how the chat would have him laugh.
Resting on his sofa chair in the living room, he brought up the Virtual Nexus menu and entered the deck editing interface, where every Duel Monsters card in existence is shown for you to build a deck from, for a price.
Granted, you can't build a Blue-Eyes deck because you had no options to select any Blue-Eyes monster cards; Kaiba's a prick like that to exclude all monster cards but leave in support cards instead, but still, any card in existence.
Cards are categorized into rarities similar to Master Duel, from Common (C) to Secret Super Rare (SSR), with the rarer seen cards having a higher rarity compared to commonly seen cards like the Ojamas, for instance.
In the Virtual Nexus, there are only two options when it comes to owning a deck of your own. You can either use your physical deck to play the game or temporarily rent out cards using your earned BP to create a deck.
The higher the rarity of a card, the higher the BP it takes to rent for a single match, though the rate at which you earn BP is a bit higher than how much it takes to rent a single deck.
Example: A single deck on average costs about 100 BP. If you win a casual duel, then you might gain 150 BP or more depending on your performance, such as LP remaining, cards remaining in the deck, the number of chains used in a match, etc. However, if you lose, then you'd earn only 50% of your intended BP earnings.
Keep losing, and you will eventually lose your rental deck and eventually have to rely on your physical deck to earn back the BP to pay said rental deck back. It makes the game free-to-play in a sense, as long as you keep winning.
... The house in-game that he owned costs at least a million-plus BP, for reference, but he was swimming in it, so it was fine. Besides, casual duels gave out less BP; it was ranked duels that gave out three to four times more depending on rank and performance with the same loss rate of 50% if you lost.
He could go on about the more intricate details of the system, like the economic side of virtual Duel Monsters or that recent update that gave the surplus addition to the cosmetic side of things, but it was getting a little boring for the stream since he had been mindlessly scrolling through the Duel Monsters Encyclopedia.
Hmm... What to build next?
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His new home was smaller than the one his parents owned.
Instead of a two-story terrace with a copious amount of space, his father bought it in his early years due to how cheap property was during the time compared to now; he now lived in a condominium complex owned by... you guessed it, Pegasus.
And to be honest, he didn't mind the smaller space. Less dust to clean off, and all the benefits that come from living in a condominium.
The clear takeaway was this: having facilities on the central floor is neat; he could finally start training his feminine-looking body.
... Well, who was he kidding? He had already been training since he started middle school, albeit without any equipment, and yet his body was still lean with no muscle definition at the right spots. At least he had some form of abs, though they were faint.
Damn you, genetics. As if his parents could give him more stuff to work with.
Speaking about his parents, they were in jail for child abuse, child trafficking, and a slew of financial crimes that Pegasus' legal team had expertly uncovered. The trial had been quick, brutal, and decisive, leaving them with no hope of ever resurfacing in his life again.
He had to go for the court hearing as a witness. Watching his parents looking like nothing more than hollow shells of their former selves... A large part of him was satisfied, while a quiet voice at the back of his head was annoyed that they got off that easy.
His bank account was full, though. And his net worth was booming, adding to the fact that he was now the owner of 4 properties filled with tenants. Thanks for the investment, Dad, though you could have just sold off the properties instead of your son, but to each their own, Ken guessed.
Relaxing on his chair, he looked at the deck boxes that stood on his table before reaching out to grab the pink deck box with a red rose imprinted on the front. Girly, but it came with the set of deck boxes. I'm not going to buy a new one when a good-quality one is already in my hands.
Once the deck was out of its box, Ken laid it on the table before spreading it out.
"Where did you even come from?"
He mutters as he picks up the cards in question.
Witchcrafter Teleios and its support card, Witchcrafter Experimentation, stared back at him with no answers, causing him to sigh before playing them back onto the table gently. The cards were still a complete mystery to him after waking up in the hospital that day.
A year later, and he still had no clue where it even came from. The cards came from the deck that he meticulously checked every day during his time in the Arena, making sure that no one stole any of his cards to sabotage him, so he knew that these cards weren't in the deck prior to the duel.
So where...?
DING~ DING~
A notification rang on his phone, his focus shifting from the cards as he grabbed his phone to see what the notification was.
["Your Submission to the Entrance Examination has been approved."]
["Please arrive at Domino City Hall for a check-in at 12:00 p.m. for the practical test."]
["Good luck in the examination—Duel Academy"]
A smile dawned on his face as he screenshotted the email that he had just received before forwarding it to some people. He hummed in thought as he neatly grouped up the Witchcrafter cards on the table back into his deck box, thinking to himself that maybe...
Just maybe things were finally slowing down a little without all the bullshit.
...
Until it didn't a few months later, but that's for another chapter down the line.
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