Chapter 10

When You Yu came to his senses, he had already been staring at the new batch of card packs in the store for ten minutes.

The reason he came to his senses was because a line of text, "Affinity +1," quietly appeared in the corner of his vision...

You Yu looked in that direction with a speechless expression and, as expected, saw the expressionless Chinen. When she noticed him turning his head, she quickly turned away and busied herself with something.

When You Yu approached, he found that she was concentrating on a study guide.

After all, she was a high school student, and even during the holidays, she couldn't completely slack off and had to find time to study.

Hmm, wait a moment, wasn't her book upside down...

But as the saying goes, "Don't point out someone's difficulties," so You Yu pretended not to notice.

Chinen suddenly looked up: "Do you want to buy some cards?"

You Yu was taken aback.

"Because you've been staring at those card packs for a long time." She pointed at the batch of card packs You Yu had been staring at with a pen.

You Yu followed the direction of her pen. Chinen took advantage of this brief moment to quickly turn the book in front of her.

"......Yeah, I do want them." You Yu turned his head and shrugged helplessly.

He seemed not to have noticed Chinen's little action—Chinen thought he probably hadn't.

Of course, You Yu wanted them. Because in the description of the card packs, he saw a god card called "Pot of Greed."

Pot of Greed allows the player to draw two cards when activated.

A simple and brutal effect, but it was so powerful that it was almost unreasonable, with the ability to easily draw two cards without any cost, making it a top-tier artifact in the world of Duel Monsters.

......Of course, the duelists in the DM world were clearly unaware of this.

From the rarity markings on the card packs, the "N" (Normal) rarity of Pot of Greed showed that no one took this card seriously.

However, even so, in the connected world, Pot of Greed was an NPC-exclusive card, and players had no way to obtain it, whether through the system card pool or special missions. So players could only drool over the Pot of Greed used by NPCs during battles.

Once upon a time, You Yu was one of those players who would get furious and envious every time an NPC shamelessly used Pot of Greed.

But now, things were different!

Now he was a native resident protected by the world's rules! He felt he deserved the right to have three Pot of Greed cards in his deck and enjoy the thrill!

But...

"I'll wait until I get paid." You Yu said helplessly.

Yes, this was a very practical issue: he had no money...

"Is that so?" Chinen tilted her head and thought for a moment, then said, "Then... I'll lend you some money, and you can pay me back when you get paid."

"Huh?" You Yu was taken aback and quickly waved his hand, "Thank you very much, but that's not necessary."

After all, they had only known each other for a short time, and it didn't seem right to borrow money from a girl so casually.

"It's fine." Chinen said expressionlessly, "Compared to that, it would be a shame if the cards you want are taken by other customers before you get paid, right?"

...That made sense.

Although Pot of Greed was just an N card, and there should be quite a few in the new batch of card packs... who could say for sure?

"Then... okay, I'll borrow some."

After all, it was just an N card.

It shouldn't cost too much...

...right?

So, You Yu finally got his first pack of cards since he came to this world.

"I'll open it now."

Chinen crossed her arms on the counter, resting her chin on her pale arms, and stretched her neck to watch.

You Yu opened the first pack and took out five cards.

"Ah." Chinen immediately noticed the "Guardian Dragon" in his hand and exclaimed, "Impressive, you got a rare card in your first pack."

You Yu: "..."

Are you kidding me?

A low-attack, ordinary card is a rare card?

(Guardian Dragon, Level 4, Attack 1400, Defense 1200, no effect.)

He doubted he would ever use this "rare card."

He continued opening packs.

After three more packs with nothing useful, when he opened the fifth pack, Chinen was surprised again: "Huh? Sword of Light? Another rare card... you have good luck."

"......I guess." You Yu's face was pained.

(Sword of Light, Trap Card, randomly selects one card from the opponent's hand and removes it from the game. After activation, the card returns to the opponent's hand during the opponent's Standby Phase on the fourth turn.)

By the tenth pack, Chinen's look at him had changed.

"Minotaur! Another rare card!"

(Minotaur, Level 4, Attack 1800, Defense 1300, no effect.)

You Yu knew that in Chinen's eyes, he was probably the ultimate "lucky player" who got three URs in a single pull, with a face so white it glowed.

But the problem was... who the hell wanted these useless rare cards? What use was a Minotaur?

All I want is a common Pot of Greed, is that so hard?

Chinen asked, "Do you want to keep drawing?"

"Sure, I'll keep going."

Worst case, he could sell these so-called "rare cards" to recoup his costs.

After twenty packs, there was still no sign of the N card "Pot of Greed."

However, at least he got a Fusion Spell card, which was useful to him.

After thirty packs, still no Pot of Greed.

You Yu started to feel a bit stubborn about this new batch of cards, determined to see how many packs he would have to open to get that damn Pot of Greed.

But each pack was costing the girl's money, and he felt a bit guilty...

However, Chinen herself seemed to have no objections, just quietly watching him open pack after pack, like an unrelenting card-opening machine.

Finally, on the fiftieth pack, the card he had been longing for, "Pot of Greed," finally appeared.

Looking at the green magic card with the leering, yellow-toothed, green pot, You Yu suddenly felt an urge to cry.

This might be the first time in his life that he was happier to get an N card than all those rare cards...

Chinen leaned in curiously to take a look.

"You opened this for this?"

"Yes."

Chinen was puzzled: "But you've already drawn so many rare cards, why do you need... something so useless?"

Something so useless?

Ha, the girl was still young, clearly not having experienced the pain of losing and not knowing the power of the pot.

But he also knew that the understanding of Duel Monsters cards by the native residents of this world was completely different from that of players, and it wasn't practical to try to explain concepts like "card advantage" and "drawing cards" in this environment.

Just as You Yu was thinking about how to explain to the girl, a customer walked in.

"Hello, is anyone here?" It was a young man with blond hair, wearing a white T-shirt with blue stripes and a blue long-sleeved jacket.

"I was wondering... do you have the latest Duel Disk released by Kaiba Corporation?"

Both people in the store looked over.

You Yu raised an eyebrow.

Katsuya Jonouchi?