Chapter 58: (49) Bad Decisions (Duel)

 “I’ll go first!” Aya repeats.“First, I’ll normal summon ‘Evilswarm Castor!’”

 An armored monster materializes on the dueling arena, the first of many I hope.

 “Next, using the effect of Castor, I normal summon again! Come out ‘Evilswarm Heliotrope.’”

 Another smaller monster clad in green and black armour joins the first.

 “Here it comes, ladies and gentlemen!” Haruna announces over the mic. “Aya has two level 4 monsters on the field! Do you all know what that means?” She asks the audience.

 ““XYZ! XYZ! XYZ!”” They chant from the stands, the sound reverberating around the arena, shaking me to my core.

 ‘Holy crap, this is intense!’

 Aya, down on the field, probably also feeling this pressure, raises her arm in the air and delivers. “Using my level four ‘Evilswarm Castor’ and level four ‘Evilswarm Heliotrope’, I build the overlay network!”

 A familiar whirlpool of darkness opens up above the field of the arena, worryingly close to where me and the other three cheerleaders are, but other than looking menacing by swallowing the two monsters down in the arena, it was harmless.

 “Come out! Rank - 4 ‘Evilswarm Ophion!’” Aya finishes, making the whirlpool explode in a bright, purple light.

 

 The light dies down and all that remains on the arena is a menacing dragon clad in dark armour with red and blue wings trailing on its back.

 “Here it is!” Haruna breaks the eery silence that the dark XYZ summon had caused. “Aya’s signature monster! ‘Evilswarm Ophion’! Let its darkness fill the hearts of its enemies with fear!”

 Thundering cheers quickly fill the silence. To add to the effect, the dragoon rises and does a lap around the spectator stands, showcasing its majestic form to the audience.

 Aya doesn’t miss this and yells. “I activate the effect of Ophion! Detaching an overlay unit to add ‘Infestation Pandemic’ to my hand!”

 Ophion heeds her order, gripping one of the two spheres of yellowish light orbiting it. It closes its claws, smashing the light orb into nothing before returning down to the field between Aya and the ADA duelist.

 “I set two cards face down and end my turn.”

 We on the cheerleading platform do some acrobatics and our seriously corny chant, which ends with Haruna grasping the mic and announcing. “And that’s the end of an incredible first turn! What could those two cards be? Can the ADA defeat that 2550ATK monstrosity? I don’t think so! But let’s see them try!”

 Of course, Haruna’s commentary about this turn couldn’t be farther from my option.

 ‘Hmmm, that’s a little underwhelming for a first turn… Even with two traps, but I’m guessing one of them is pandemic… Still, short of drawing a nutty hand, there’s very little a Lswarm deck can do on the first turn that’s not passing with Ophion and a few negates. I just hope the other duelist isn’t like Ana.’

 There’s a nasty secret in these tournaments that most academies wouldn’t like the public to know. Some of them send out duelists which they know are WAY over the max Elo rating in terms of skill, but with an official rating that’s still within limits. Some academies do it purposely, by training specific groups of duelists against each other in practice duels which don’t affect rating. Others just send out particularly skilled duelists for their ranking.

 This is an effect of how elo rating is managed by the WDF or world duelist foundation, which formalizes many aspects of recreational dueling. A duelist can train for whoever long they want without messing with their rating, which leads to disparities. Normally the algorithm for elo rating quickly corrects those disparities. For example, I started out with 603 elo, but after beating the bot, it skyrocketed to 720 and then to over 800 after my first duel with Aya but after dueling some yellow ranks that were close to my elo rating I only gained tens of elo, not hundreds.

 But this remains a problem. For example, I asked the Director at what rating he would guess Ana was after seeing the duel, and he didn’t say blue, he didn’t even say pink, but green! Aka 1400-1600 Elo, just a reminder the advanced bracket is for 1100-1300 elo duelists! It seems that the CSG is playing dirty.

 Fortunately for Aya, the CSG will have to wait.

 The ADA duelist down on the arena places a hand on her disk and yells. “Draw!”

 The ADA cheer squad moves in. “At that’s it for the NWDA! What a pitiful first turn! Only a single monster standing between the ADA and the next round! Fell the wrath of our dueling!”

 ‘Wow, okay, calm down there. I can see the apprehension on your duelist’s face.’

 With this bit of trash talk, the ADA duelist starts her turn. “I place a card face down and activate ‘Terraformin-’.”

 

 “I respond by activating face-down card Infestation pandemic, this makes my Evilswarm monster be uneffected by spells and traps this turn.” Aya interrupts right out of the get-go, a strange move in my opinion.

 

 “Look how scared the NWDA is! Can’t handle a few card effects, can we? How pitiful.” Their announcer spits into the mic.

 ‘Okay, this is seriously starting to tick me off.’ Of course I just take it, not really anything I care to do against trash talk.

 The blond duelist opposite to Aya furrows her brow and continues. “Sure, the chain resolves, and I add the field spell ‘wetlands’ to my hand. Next, I activate the field spell wetlands.”

 

 The environment down on the arena changes to a grassy field with grass that rises to about knee height of both duelists.

 “To finish, I will set a monster in face-down defense position and end my turn.”

 …

 …

 ‘Okay, forget everything I said about this duelist, maybe being above the 1300 Elo limit. With a turn like this, I would guess she barely reaches the 1100 Elo mark. Even if this was just a very shitty hand, there’s no way any decent duelist would play it like this.‘

 Their cheer team doesn’t even try to make out anything good from this and just moves on to another dance routine to get a minimal sense of excitement around the audience, which by this point is as close to dead quiet you can get in a 20000 spectator arena.

 I turn to Haruna with a cheeky smile.

 She returns one back and holds the mic up. “Well, looks like the ADA is all talk and no bite. But don’t worry everyone, the NWDA will show you what a REAL duelist can do!”

 Aya hears this and starts her turn. “DRAW!” She yells and looks at her hand with a smile before grabbing a card.

 “NOT SO FAST! In the Draw Phase I activate my trap card ‘gravity bind!’ Now monsters with levels 4 and up can’t attack!” The ADA duelist interrupts.

 Haruna takes this opportunity to teach the audience an valuable lesson in card interactions. “The ADA might have ‘academy’ in its name, but from the looks of it, its duel theory department might be lacking. You see viewers, XYZ monsters don’t have levels! And that doesn’t mean they are level 0, it just means that cards like ‘Gravity Bind’ are useless against them!”

 A cacophony of giggles and laughs emits from the audience, and I’m honestly feeling a little bad for Aya’s opponent.

 Aya waits for the noise to die down before continuing. “Very well, I normal summon another ‘Evilswarm Catastor’ to my field and, using its effect to normal summon another monster, come out ‘Evilswarm Mandragora.’”

 Another copy of the armored demon hits the field, followed quickly by a small sentient plant.

 She raises her hand in the air, announcing. “I overlay my level 4 ‘Evilswarm Castor’ with level 4 ‘Evilswarm Mandragora!’ XYZ Summon! Come out Rank 4 ‘Evilswarm Ophion!’”

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 A vortex of darkness opens up above the arena, consuming both monsters, and, after the typical blast of light, another copy of the dark dragon that’s already present on the field emerges above the arena. It circles the stands like the one before it, landing between Aya and her now anxious opponent.

 “Looks like another dragon is joining us today, valid viewers! What will our duelist do next, I wonder? But let’s make some noise for two beasts you see today!”

 A roaring cheer floods my ears and I struggle not to cover them. ‘I should’ve set my earbuds to noise reduction before this! Now I don’t have my phone.’

 Aya doesn’t wait for the crowd and continues the duel. “I activate the effect of my first Ophion, detaching a unit to add another copy of ‘Infestation pandemic’. I’ll follow that by activating the effect of the second Ophion, detaching a unit to add ‘Infestation Infection’ to my hand. Next I will set the four cards in my hand face down, battle!”

 A massive red sign that reads “Battle Phase” gets projected in the middle of the arena and our platform moves away from the field, stopping next to the spectator stands.

 “Ophion! Attack her face down monster!” Aya orders, and her dragon moves close to a face-down card which turns over to reveal a dog sized frog.

 “HAH! You ran into my ‘Flip Flop Frog’ Its effect allows me to send the attacking ‘Evilswarm Ophion’ back to your hand! And as Ophion is an extra deck monster, it means it returns to the extra deck! Take that!”

 The frog’s tongue hits the dragon that manages to spit out a dark cloud towards the frog before slowly vanishing into nothing. The frog, on the other hand, breaks into many shards with the sound of glass shattering.

 It doesn’t take long for the field to clear, leaving only one of the two dragons.

 Aya holds her right hand forward, declaring. “You’ll pay for that! ‘Evilswarm Ophion!’ Attack her life points directly!”

 The remaining dragon shots a ball of dark energy out of its mouth, which flies over the arena and hits the ADA duelist right into the stomach, sending her a meter back and making her fall on her back.

 “With this, I finish my turn.” Aya announces.

 The “Battle Phase” warning shifts to display a new message.

 [

 END OF BATTLE

 NWDA: 8000LP

 ADA: 5450LP

 ]

 Our platform returns to its original position above the arena center with the spectator stands.

 The ADA duelist quickly stands up as to not to be disqualified because of knockout. And yes, of course, that’s a thing. Do you think these people have the attention span to wait 2 minutes for the move timer to run out?

 “D-Draw!” the duelist shouts in a shaky voice.

 Her cheer squad stays silent. Shame really, if they think this is over already, then they’re must not used to how these duels go.

 As if showcasing observation, she smiles upon seeing the card she drew. “I activate ‘Pot of duality!’, by excavating the top 3 cards on my deck, I can choose one of them.”

 A massive display materializes on top of the arena, showcasing the 3 excavated cards.

 

 She chooses ‘Swap Frog,’ out of the 3 cards. “Finally, I set a monster in face-down defense position and end my turn.” she says reluctantly.

 ‘Why am I always expecting her to pop off? This is the normal play style for blue ranks at the academy… I guess that I’m overestimating these people again…’

 Haruna doesn’t let up on the commentary. “Get ready for the soon to be a winner of the first round! Come on Aya! Show these people what you can do!”

 The audience mirrors Haruna’s excitement by shouting “NWDA!” repeatedly.

 The ADA’s cheer team almost looks depressed, and I’m not feeling bad about that. They seem to have completely given up on even trying to hype up their duelist, and, considering that’s their only job, that’s just a shitty thing to do.

 Aya draws for turn, and after looking at her cards for only a second, announces. “Battle Phase! Ophion attack her face-down card!”

 ‘Guess she doesn’t have another monster to summon… Well, at least this duel will last a few more turns. Maybe her opponent can mount a counterattack?… Wait, why am I wishing for her opponent to fight back? This is a tournament! Oh god! When did I turn into such a bleeding heart!?’

 Anyway, our platform moves out of the way again and the dragoon spits a ball of darkness at the face-down card, revealing it to be ‘Dupe Frog.’

 It gets vaporized by the attack, leaving an open field, which Aya, because of having no more monsters, can’t exploit.

 “End of battle, Main Phase 2!” Aya blares, making our platform return to its original positions.

 ‘What is she doing… in main-phase… 2…?’

 Aya has a single XYZ monster on the field, with four face-down cards.

 It doesn’t take long for the answer to reveal itself.

 She raises her arm and shouts. “I BUILD THE OVERLAY NETWORK USING EVILSWARM OPHION!”

 My heart sinks hearing this… I know her extra deck and there’s a single monster she can summon from this board state... it’s not a good move.

 Her monster turns into a single purple orb that raises to the familiar XYZ vortex.

 Aya’s next words unfortunately confirm my fears. “COME OUT! ‘Divine Arsenal AA-Zeus - Sky Thunder’ and destroy my enemies!”

 A blinding light, more intense that the previous two, floods the arena, making me turn my head downwards to avoid blinding myself, something that the spectators of this duel will surely be thrilled about.

 The monster that descends when the light finally dies down is truly impressive. It’s about as high as the platform we’re standing on and has a massive wingspan that almost doesn’t fit the arena.

 But at this point, I’m not thinking about the monster itself, but its effect.

 ‘Please don’t blow up the board! Please Aya, don’t be that stupid, you can summon it just for the show. I’m sure that frog deck can’t touch it, but please don’t do this!’

 Unfortunately, while this world was advanced enough to have a dueling arena in the middle of space, telepathy didn’t exist, so all my pleading remained in my head.

 Aya yells. “I activate the effect of AA-Zeus! By detaching 2 overlay units, I send every card on the field to the graveyard!”

 Lightning shots from the Machine’s wings, causing thundering explosions all around the arena. Meanwhile, the crowd cheers louder than ever before, and I try my best not to facepalm at this Trainwreck of a turn.

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