Justice Katou nodded his head vigorously! “Yeah!!” he shouted!!
“Monster Duels is a super lit card game where players do battle using decks of forty cards each! I’m so good at it, they call me the ‘Monster Duel King’!!”
“W-Wow...!”
“So, what’s it gonna be? Are we gonna have ourselves a match to see who walks outta here with the orb!?”
“I don’t really understand what’s going on, but of course I’m going to take you up on that offer!!” Wataru was in the highest of spirits!
“Sweet, I’ll even lend you one of my decks!!”
Justice Katou flipped open his coat! The interior of his leather coat was lined with pockets and pockets full to bursting with decks of cards!!
“Right, then for you, since you’re a beginner, I’ll lend you this deck that has a bunch of monsters in it!”
“Whoa! That’s perfect for me! Thanks, dude!!!” Wataru thanked Justice Katou as he took the deck from him! “...But, where do we battle!?”
Wataru looked around the store for a likely spot, but a sneaky smile crept onto Justice Katou’s face!
“Well, we’re gonna have the battle... here, obviously!” He threw one fist up into the air and re-assumed his victory pose, then shouted loud enough to be heard in every aisle of the store!
“Duel Stadium! Let’s goooooo!!!”
Suddenly...!
Grrr-Rrrrr-Rrrr-Rrrrrrr...!!
The floor between Wataru and Justice Katou vibrated, then began to move! A line appeared in the floor, which widened into a gap, then further widened into a massive, ten-meter-square hole!! From its depths emerged a “stadium” that looked like a boxing ring! Metal poles stood in all four corners, with red ropes stretching between them!! Two wooden tables were placed at opposite sides of the area, leaving a large space in the center of the ring!
“Is this... a duel stadium!?!?”
“You better believe it! This will be the battleground for our Monster Duel!”
It’s worth mentioning, Dear Readers, that within any given Toys ‘B’ We store you could expect to find plenty of specialty arenas for all the latest toys and games, any of which can be summoned at a moment’s notice! No wonder the toy chain is famous all over the Wind Continent! They really go all out for their customers! Some of you may have no idea what I’m talking about here, but that is quite all right and completely normal for this light novel series!!
“Come on, Wataru! Into the ring! Duel me!”
“You’re on!!”
The two of them stepped under the ropes and right on into the ring! Each one took a position behind one of the wooden tables, the two of them facing each other with their best Nio impressions!!
“All right, all right, all right! I’m gonna explain the rules now! They’re very simple! First, you got your deck of forty cards! Shuffle that bad boy up and draw five cards!”
“Okay!!” Wataru nodded and began shuffling his cards in a barely contained explosion of paper!
“Whoooooooooooooooooooaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!”
“That’s enough! Keep that up and the deck is going to catch fire from the friction!!”
“I guess you’re right!” Wataru stopped shuffling, laid his deck on the table, and drew five cards from the top!
“Sweet, now the duel really begins! Pick one of your five to ‘summon’!!”
“S-Summon!?”
“Now take that card and toss it up over your head!”
Wataru selected a card with an orc drawn on it, then, as he’d been told, threw it up into the air!
Flash!!!
What an astonishing turn of events! The card suddenly began to glow! The light began to grow larger, and larger—when suddenly, in the middle of the ring, an orc appeared!!
“Wh-Whaaaaaaaat!?”
“Yeah, my dude! That’s a summon! These cards have magic spells on ’em, so if you pitch ’em into the air, they summon mindless beasts!”
“That’s... That’s amazing, dude!” This is an isekai, so all you have to do is explain that something happens using magic and you can make anything sound like it makes sense! What an extraordinarily convenient plot device!
“Here’s how the battle’s gonna go: Im’a summon my monster next, then we’ll have our monsters fight each other and we’ll see who’s stronger! The player whose monster wins the battle wins the duel!”
“I think I understand, bro! ...But when do I use these other four cards?????”
“You can just toss them around and play with them like they’re throwing stars!!”
This all sounded absolutely nothing like a typical card game!!
“Whoa! That’s baller!!”
Wataru picked one of his extra cards, held it between two fingers, and tossed it just like a throwing star! Zooom! Off it went!
“These cards fly really far!!”
The card made a beautiful arc back towards Wataru like a boomerang as it flew around the store! How immensely irritating to all the other customers! At six hundred kilometers per hour, the card came zooming back through the ring—only to embed itself right into Aria’s forehead with unthinkable force!!
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!” Aria screamed for her life as blood spewed out from her mouth! How horrible for our heroine! There’s no way we can have this be one of the illustrations here in this light novel; it was just too gruesome! You’ll have to use your imaginations!
“Aria, are you okay!?!?” Wataru was panicked!
But not to fear! Aria had excellent healing magic skills, so there was no trouble at all!
“...Uh, I think I got the hang of this whole battle system!”
Justice Katou, having finished explaining the rules of a Monster Duel, had yet one more thing to say as he looked at Wataru!!
“There’s one last thing I need you to know, Wataru! I... AM... STRONG!!! If you’re gonna tuck your tail between your legs and run off like a li’l baby, now’s the time!”
Justice Katou cocked his head to show off his excessively flashy red mohawk! The sheer amount of confidence pouring out of him was practically a physical presence! Wataru, on the other hand, flexed every muscle in his body and spake thusly:
“Don’t you go underestimating me now! I never run from a fight!!”
Wataru and Justice Katou glared at each other again!! Lightning bolts flew from their eyes, clashing in a shower of fireworks in the center of the ring... metaphorically, that is! If this was a manga, that’s definitely how this scene would be depicted!
For a mere card game, this was an explosively charged situation!
But then! At that very moment—!
Aria, having just healed her forehead using magic, launched herself into the ring!
“Stop it right there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“—!? Whoa, Aria!”
Even Wataru was stunned speechless by this surprising turn of events! No one knew where she had gotten them from, but there were fashionable battle accessories all over her body! Silver bangles on her arms! Silver chains around her neck! A silver belt around her waist!
“Aria, wh-what’s going on...!?”
Aria turned to Wataru and shouted—
“Wataru! Let me fight this battle!”
“Wh-Why!? Have you even played Monster Duels before!?”
Aria shook her head “no”! Shock of all shocks! “Not once! I’ve only seen some brats in the neighborhood playing it before! But I have a deck! Those little kids told me that they ‘didn’t need these cards anymore’ and gave me forty cards, enough for a full deck!”
She whipped a deck of cards out from her bosom! She held her deck, consisting of cards abandoned by a bunch of children, high in the air!
✦ ✦ ✦
“You... Are you really sure you wanna do this!?” Wataru looked sincerely worried as he watched Aria flash her cards about! In fact, everything she did made him feel worried!
“I know the rules better than you, Wataru! I am an expert in any battle involving boys’ toys! I want to fight! Monster Duel!!”
Aria looked steadfast in her determination! Could this newfound intensity have been due more to her desire to play card games instead of their true goal of obtaining an orb...? Who cares at this point!
Taken by Aria’s passion for the game, Wataru entrusted her with the battle!
“Okay... It’s all yours, Aria!! By the way, what’s with all those extra doodads you’re wearing!?”
“I don’t really know why, but there’s a rule when it comes to clothes and card games! You have to wear the flashiest outfit possible when you have a battle!!”
“O-Oh, really!?” Wataru was amazed by this newfound knowledge! Justice Katou smiled wide and gave Aria a wink!
“Girl, you really know your stuff! You got a pretty good sense of style, too! I’m digging that sweet silver necklace on you!”
“Flashy!” That was precisely the word Wataru had used to describe Justice Katou earlier, and he truly was the literal incarnation of the term! From his bright red mohawk, to his black leather coat, even his dangerously distressed jeans—all of it was flashy to the max!
Wataru tilted his head to one side in confusion!! “This world’s got a lot of strange customs...!”