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Chapter 687: Let's Play a Round of... Duel Monsters!
At this moment, Hayato and the others faced two needs: first, finding a Shelter, and second, confirming the true nature of that mysterious power. One represented the immediate safety issue, while the other represented an inevitable hidden danger they would face in the future. Neither could be abandoned.
However, compared to the source of that mysterious power, which they didn't even know the location of, finding a Shelter to rest and recuperate was everyone's current first choice. It was already afternoon, and Hayato and the others hadn't eaten anything since breakfast before gathering at Yugi's Kame Game Shop that morning. Someone with a particularly large appetite like Joey Wheeler was already so hungry his stomach was touching his back.
And in the Wilderness, for ordinary people like Hayato and the others who didn't have much wilderness survival experience, building things like treehouses was too difficult. It was far less practical than finding a Cave of suitable height to make do for a few days. And so, Tristan and Marik walked at the very front, clearing the way, as Hayato and their group traveled through the dense Primeval Jungle, advancing towards the High Mountain in the Center of the Island they had seen before.
Although it was uncertain whether a suitable Cave or similar place could be found near that High Mountain, which was smoking and seemed like a Volcano, to serve as a Shelter, at least it could serve as a vantage point for Hayato and the others to observe the entire Island's environment.
However, this worry seemed unnecessary. Not long after entering the Jungle, in less than half an hour, due to an unexpected development, Hayato and the others changed their plan to first search for a Shelter.
"Euaaaaaaah---!!!"
A sharp female voice rang out in the distance, causing Tristan, who was walking at the very front, to involuntarily stop. The entrenching tool in his hand, which he was about to swing to cut away the troublesome tree branch—regardless of what Rishid thought, Marik had indeed pulled out an entrenching tool from his backpack, and honestly, an entrenching tool sharpened on one side was quite efficient at cutting tree branches—also hung in the air without falling.
"That voice, is it those people from before?"
Marik, standing beside Tristan, also stopped his hand, wiped the slightly seeping sweat from his forehead, recalled for a moment, pointed in a direction and said, "It seemed like it. I didn't pay much attention to their voices, but on This Island, it seemed there were only our two groups of humans. The voice seemed to come from that direction?"
"Screaming so miserably, they probably encountered beasts on the Island, right?" Joey Wheeler made a fierce expression with dark humor, making a scary face at Tristan and said, "Uwah, I am the King of Beasts on this Deserted Island, let me get you!"
"Get lost, if you have that much energy, it's your turn to clear the way." Tristan gave Joey Wheeler a glare, completely ignoring his face art that wouldn't scare anyone but would only make people laugh, and extended his hand and handed him the entrenching tool. Clearing the way for this long, even Tristan was a bit tired.
The Forest on the Island was a bit excessively lush. Generally speaking, even in remote deep mountains and old forests where few people go, there should be some "animal trails" left by the accumulated activity of beasts. However, as the group walked this path, they could only see the excessively lush Jungle and didn't even find a single small path.
Furthermore, up until now, the sole animal they had seen was a flying bird they saw flying over the Forest from the Seaside Grassland where they landed.
Hayato also took the entrenching tool from Marik's hand and told him to rest at the back of the group. However, he wasn't in a hurry to continue clearing the way towards the Mountain Range, but like Joey Wheeler, who had taken over from Tristan, he temporarily stopped, turned back to look at Yugi and said, "Should we keep going, Yugi?"
Hearing this, Yugi did not answer Hayato immediately, but pondered for a moment before firmly saying, "Although they gave up on us, I think we still can't just leave them be. Knowing that they seemed to be in danger but acting as if we didn't know and leaving directly, I think that's wrong."
"Sorry, Hayato, I want to go over there first."
Hayato, with the entrenching tool on his shoulder, smiled and said, "There's nothing to be sorry about, Yugi. You weren't thinking of going there by yourself, were you? That won't do. We're a team, we have to act together."
While speaking, Hayato walked a few steps towards the direction the voice came from before, with one hand pulling aside the branches and leaves that grew as if overly nourished, and the entrenching tool in his other hand swung out, cutting off the tree branch. "Even if we go find a suitable Shelter now, if we haven't eliminated the surrounding danger, our situation won't be considered safe. Before something happens to those people, let's hurry and go over there to see what kind of danger is on the Island!"
Joey Wheeler had no objection to Hayato and Yugi's decision. Hearing that both intended to check the situation in the direction the voice came from, he immediately acted, following behind Hayato, carrying the entrenching tool and joining the ranks of those clearing the way.
Because they were pressed for time, Hayato and Joey Wheeler did not conserve stamina but chose the fastest way to clear the way and advance, even though it was less efficient. Yugi and the others followed closely behind. The group of six rapidly advanced towards the direction the shouting came from. In less than ten minutes, they had surprisingly successfully passed through the dense Jungle, arriving at a Forest Clearing.
Stepping out from the overwhelming green plants and seeing the yellow Muddy Ground not covered by green plants, Joey Wheeler relaxed his eyes, which were starting to see everything as green, and looked around.
Although the plants in the Forest grew so lushly, leaving no gap, upon reaching this Open Space, the plants seemed to recoil, as if wary, not daring to approach another step, thus leaving this Open Space.
However, while called an Open Space, it wasn't truly empty. The sharp-eyed Hayato, as soon as he walked out of the Forest, saw several unused parachute packs scattered in the central area of the Open Space.
Hayato and the others did not land at this spot, so naturally, these were the parachute packs left by the five flight attendants who had acted separately from Hayato's group, and the quantity of parachute packs was indeed five.
However, Hayato didn't know what those flight attendants were thinking. Although in movies and TV shows, there's often the depiction of opening the backpack and discarding the parachute immediately after use, but now they were in wilderness survival. How could those people not think of packing up such a good thing as a parachute and just leave it here?
Parachute cloth is not only waterproof but also has high strength; it can be used to make tents, waterproof cloth, or even raincoats. Parachute rope also has many uses.
"Huh? They're not here?" Joey Wheeler looked left and right, couldn't find even a single human figure besides themselves, guessing perhaps because of the time it took them to walk over, the five people who were suspected of being attacked had already left here.
Téa casually removed the broken tree branch stuck in her hair from walking too fast, tightened her backpack, and said, "We came up empty, sigh, that was a wasted trip."
In order to get here as quickly as possible, they had been advancing at full speed the entire way. Their already limited stamina was heavily consumed again, causing everyone to feel a bit discouraged upon seeing the Open Space with no human figures. And as soon as they felt discouraged, fatigue and hunger surged up.
It was already around two or three in the afternoon, and they hadn't eaten lunch until now. They also lost the idea of continuing to advance and search for a Shelter and simply chose to camp on the spot and spend the night first. Although a safe Shelter is very important, maintaining a good mental state and sufficient stamina is also crucial in the Wilderness.
Although there was only one tent, but because they had parachutes and a large quantity of tree branches in the surrounding Forest that could be used as material for processing, the group planned to build a slightly larger tent on the spot for the boys to rest, while the original tent would be used by Téa.
The tent didn't need to be too big; it only needed to accommodate three people, because not everyone could sleep at night, one or two people had to stay awake to keep watch.
After simply eating some bread and biscuits to fill their stomachs, while everyone was discussing their respective divisions of labor, uninvited guests intruded into the Open Space.
"Boom!"
Accompanied by the ground's sudden violent tremble, a loud sound entered everyone's ears, scaring Joey Wheeler, who had his back to the sound source, so much that he directly jumped up from a large rock. The others weren't much better off, all looking towards the direction the loud sound came from.
Only to see in the smoke, a hunched Black-Robed Figure completely covered by a black robe slowly walked out. Beneath the cloak, roughly where the eyes would be, red radiance emitted, seeming like they were sizing up Hayato and his group.
And behind the Black-Robed Figure, another giant humanoid monster revealed its figure. Muscles bulged beneath its eerie blue skin, and its entire body was covered in wildly growing pitch-black hair. In the giant's hand, it dragged a thick tree; the trunk was twisted by brute force, and one end was broken as if hit by immense force. It was very clear it was the culprit behind the large commotion just now.
Yugi and the others were vigilant towards the suddenly appearing Black-Robed Figure with a quite dangerous aura, and the beast-like giant. They did not act rashly. Meanwhile, the Black-Robed Figure, after sizing up Hayato and the others for a long time, let out a cold laugh: "Hehehe, six more good experiment subjects, and judging by their appearance, it seemed there were some high-quality ones among them."
"At this key point where I've hit a bottleneck, to collect two waves of experiment subjects consecutively, I'm truly too lucky." While speaking, the hunched Black-Robed Figure raised their hand and pointed in the direction of Hayato and the others. "For my dream, embrace glorious evolution, my experiment subjects!"
"Grab them for me!"
As the Black-Robed Figure gave the order, the giant savage behind "him" let out a low roar, casually threw the section of tree trunk in its hand aside, opened its now empty hand, and grabbed towards Hayato and the others like an opened fishing net!
"You idiot, be careful for me, don't just crush the experiment subjects like the previous ones, they are much more important than you!" Behind the giant savage, the Black-Robed Figure was still expressing "his" "concern" for the safety of Hayato and the others.
However, clearly, "his" worry seemed a bit unnecessary. The next instant the giant savage reached out its hand towards Hayato and the others, a spiral lance and an emerald green wand filled with mystical power were pressed against its palm. In pain, the giant savage let out a cry of "Ow!" and withdrew its palm, only to find a stream of pitch-black flames spat out from a flying dragon's mouth, hitting its undefended face.
"Whoosh!"
The scene of the giant savage being knocked down, which Hayato and the others had anticipated, did not appear. After being hit by the black flame bullet spat out by Joey Wheeler's materialized **Red-Eyes Black Dragon**, the giant savage's seemingly sturdy muscles had no DEF, as if made of paper mache. In an instant, the giant savage was taken down, but its body did not remain; instead, it shattered and disappeared.
That kind of special effect, the few people present could be said to be extremely familiar with it. That was clearly the special effect that appears when Duel Monsters, after being turned into three-dimensional footage via the virtual projection system, are destroyed.
"Saying unaccountably strange things like 'experiment subject', who are you and why did you suddenly attack us!" After jointly defeating the giant savage, which seemed to be the Black-Robed Figure's subordinate, Joey Wheeler stepped forward angry, questioning the opponent.
"As expected, was that a card spirit?" The key point he cared about was different from Joey Wheeler's. Dark Yugi, who had emerged from the **Millennium Puzzle** at some unknown time to substitute for Yugi Mutou, raised an eyebrow because of the phenomenon he observed; the confusion between his brows did not fade. "But if it was a card spirit, even if temporarily repelled, why would it show characteristics only seen in Duel Monsters?"
The Black-Robed Figure seemed a bit surprised by the power displayed by Hayato, Yugi, and Joey Wheeler, but quickly recovered, looked at the few people and said, "What an accident, to think they are high-grade experiment subjects capable of using spirit power."
"I'm truly too lucky, the data about duel spirit users in my experiment log is very lacking!"
While speaking, Hayato and the others saw behind the Black-Robed Figure, the mist they had seen before when overlooking the Island from high altitude emerged. And within the mist, one strange figure after another appeared, as if they were about to leap out from the dense mist the next instant!
Originally, upon seeing that huge savage, Hayato felt its appearance was quite familiar to him, but because of the gap between anime/manga card art and three-dimensional monsters, he wasn't entirely sure. But upon seeing the several phantoms behind the Black-Robed Figure, he confirmed his conjecture.
Before the Black-Robed Figure could perform the next round of attack, Hayato quickly finished adjusting his Deck, inserted it into the card slot of his Duel Disk and performed a field setup, stepped forward, and shouted loudly at the Black-Robed Figure, "Hey, you over there, duel me!"
Hayato's words, even if it were in any other world, others would probably only answer with a gaze like looking at an idiot, and their hand movements wouldn't pause for even a bit. However, only in a certain "sorceress pile driver" world and This World, would the situation be different---
Hearing Hayato's words, the Black-Robed Figure was stunned for a moment, then put down the hand they had raised, and said with confidence, "Hehehe, you dare challenge me? Overestimating yourself, no one is my opponent!"
While speaking, the mist behind the Black-Robed Figure wrapped around the thin arm extending from his robe, transforming into a Duel Disk that was already loaded with a Deck.
---Well, the World of Duelists is like this~
(End of Chapter)
At this moment, Hayato and the others faced two needs: first, finding a Shelter, and second, confirming the true nature of that mysterious power. One represented the immediate safety issue, while the other represented an inevitable hidden danger they would face in the future. Neither could be abandoned.
However, compared to the source of that mysterious power, which they didn't even know the location of, finding a Shelter to rest and recuperate was everyone's current first choice. It was already afternoon, and Hayato and the others hadn't eaten anything since breakfast before gathering at Yugi's Kame Game Shop that morning. Someone with a particularly large appetite like Joey Wheeler was already so hungry his stomach was touching his back.
And in the Wilderness, for ordinary people like Hayato and the others who didn't have much wilderness survival experience, building things like treehouses was too difficult. It was far less practical than finding a Cave of suitable height to make do for a few days. And so, Tristan and Marik walked at the very front, clearing the way, as Hayato and their group traveled through the dense Primeval Jungle, advancing towards the High Mountain in the Center of the Island they had seen before.
Although it was uncertain whether a suitable Cave or similar place could be found near that High Mountain, which was smoking and seemed like a Volcano, to serve as a Shelter, at least it could serve as a vantage point for Hayato and the others to observe the entire Island's environment.
However, this worry seemed unnecessary. Not long after entering the Jungle, in less than half an hour, due to an unexpected development, Hayato and the others changed their plan to first search for a Shelter.
"Euaaaaaaah---!!!"
A sharp female voice rang out in the distance, causing Tristan, who was walking at the very front, to involuntarily stop. The entrenching tool in his hand, which he was about to swing to cut away the troublesome tree branch—regardless of what Rishid thought, Marik had indeed pulled out an entrenching tool from his backpack, and honestly, an entrenching tool sharpened on one side was quite efficient at cutting tree branches—also hung in the air without falling.
"That voice, is it those people from before?"
Marik, standing beside Tristan, also stopped his hand, wiped the slightly seeping sweat from his forehead, recalled for a moment, pointed in a direction and said, "It seemed like it. I didn't pay much attention to their voices, but on This Island, it seemed there were only our two groups of humans. The voice seemed to come from that direction?"
"Screaming so miserably, they probably encountered beasts on the Island, right?" Joey Wheeler made a fierce expression with dark humor, making a scary face at Tristan and said, "Uwah, I am the King of Beasts on this Deserted Island, let me get you!"
"Get lost, if you have that much energy, it's your turn to clear the way." Tristan gave Joey Wheeler a glare, completely ignoring his face art that wouldn't scare anyone but would only make people laugh, and extended his hand and handed him the entrenching tool. Clearing the way for this long, even Tristan was a bit tired.
The Forest on the Island was a bit excessively lush. Generally speaking, even in remote deep mountains and old forests where few people go, there should be some "animal trails" left by the accumulated activity of beasts. However, as the group walked this path, they could only see the excessively lush Jungle and didn't even find a single small path.
Furthermore, up until now, the sole animal they had seen was a flying bird they saw flying over the Forest from the Seaside Grassland where they landed.
Hayato also took the entrenching tool from Marik's hand and told him to rest at the back of the group. However, he wasn't in a hurry to continue clearing the way towards the Mountain Range, but like Joey Wheeler, who had taken over from Tristan, he temporarily stopped, turned back to look at Yugi and said, "Should we keep going, Yugi?"
Hearing this, Yugi did not answer Hayato immediately, but pondered for a moment before firmly saying, "Although they gave up on us, I think we still can't just leave them be. Knowing that they seemed to be in danger but acting as if we didn't know and leaving directly, I think that's wrong."
"Sorry, Hayato, I want to go over there first."
Hayato, with the entrenching tool on his shoulder, smiled and said, "There's nothing to be sorry about, Yugi. You weren't thinking of going there by yourself, were you? That won't do. We're a team, we have to act together."
While speaking, Hayato walked a few steps towards the direction the voice came from before, with one hand pulling aside the branches and leaves that grew as if overly nourished, and the entrenching tool in his other hand swung out, cutting off the tree branch. "Even if we go find a suitable Shelter now, if we haven't eliminated the surrounding danger, our situation won't be considered safe. Before something happens to those people, let's hurry and go over there to see what kind of danger is on the Island!"
Joey Wheeler had no objection to Hayato and Yugi's decision. Hearing that both intended to check the situation in the direction the voice came from, he immediately acted, following behind Hayato, carrying the entrenching tool and joining the ranks of those clearing the way.
Because they were pressed for time, Hayato and Joey Wheeler did not conserve stamina but chose the fastest way to clear the way and advance, even though it was less efficient. Yugi and the others followed closely behind. The group of six rapidly advanced towards the direction the shouting came from. In less than ten minutes, they had surprisingly successfully passed through the dense Jungle, arriving at a Forest Clearing.
Stepping out from the overwhelming green plants and seeing the yellow Muddy Ground not covered by green plants, Joey Wheeler relaxed his eyes, which were starting to see everything as green, and looked around.
Although the plants in the Forest grew so lushly, leaving no gap, upon reaching this Open Space, the plants seemed to recoil, as if wary, not daring to approach another step, thus leaving this Open Space.
However, while called an Open Space, it wasn't truly empty. The sharp-eyed Hayato, as soon as he walked out of the Forest, saw several unused parachute packs scattered in the central area of the Open Space.
Hayato and the others did not land at this spot, so naturally, these were the parachute packs left by the five flight attendants who had acted separately from Hayato's group, and the quantity of parachute packs was indeed five.
However, Hayato didn't know what those flight attendants were thinking. Although in movies and TV shows, there's often the depiction of opening the backpack and discarding the parachute immediately after use, but now they were in wilderness survival. How could those people not think of packing up such a good thing as a parachute and just leave it here?
Parachute cloth is not only waterproof but also has high strength; it can be used to make tents, waterproof cloth, or even raincoats. Parachute rope also has many uses.
"Huh? They're not here?" Joey Wheeler looked left and right, couldn't find even a single human figure besides themselves, guessing perhaps because of the time it took them to walk over, the five people who were suspected of being attacked had already left here.
Téa casually removed the broken tree branch stuck in her hair from walking too fast, tightened her backpack, and said, "We came up empty, sigh, that was a wasted trip."
In order to get here as quickly as possible, they had been advancing at full speed the entire way. Their already limited stamina was heavily consumed again, causing everyone to feel a bit discouraged upon seeing the Open Space with no human figures. And as soon as they felt discouraged, fatigue and hunger surged up.
It was already around two or three in the afternoon, and they hadn't eaten lunch until now. They also lost the idea of continuing to advance and search for a Shelter and simply chose to camp on the spot and spend the night first. Although a safe Shelter is very important, maintaining a good mental state and sufficient stamina is also crucial in the Wilderness.
Although there was only one tent, but because they had parachutes and a large quantity of tree branches in the surrounding Forest that could be used as material for processing, the group planned to build a slightly larger tent on the spot for the boys to rest, while the original tent would be used by Téa.
The tent didn't need to be too big; it only needed to accommodate three people, because not everyone could sleep at night, one or two people had to stay awake to keep watch.
After simply eating some bread and biscuits to fill their stomachs, while everyone was discussing their respective divisions of labor, uninvited guests intruded into the Open Space.
"Boom!"
Accompanied by the ground's sudden violent tremble, a loud sound entered everyone's ears, scaring Joey Wheeler, who had his back to the sound source, so much that he directly jumped up from a large rock. The others weren't much better off, all looking towards the direction the loud sound came from.
Only to see in the smoke, a hunched Black-Robed Figure completely covered by a black robe slowly walked out. Beneath the cloak, roughly where the eyes would be, red radiance emitted, seeming like they were sizing up Hayato and his group.
And behind the Black-Robed Figure, another giant humanoid monster revealed its figure. Muscles bulged beneath its eerie blue skin, and its entire body was covered in wildly growing pitch-black hair. In the giant's hand, it dragged a thick tree; the trunk was twisted by brute force, and one end was broken as if hit by immense force. It was very clear it was the culprit behind the large commotion just now.
Yugi and the others were vigilant towards the suddenly appearing Black-Robed Figure with a quite dangerous aura, and the beast-like giant. They did not act rashly. Meanwhile, the Black-Robed Figure, after sizing up Hayato and the others for a long time, let out a cold laugh: "Hehehe, six more good experiment subjects, and judging by their appearance, it seemed there were some high-quality ones among them."
"At this key point where I've hit a bottleneck, to collect two waves of experiment subjects consecutively, I'm truly too lucky." While speaking, the hunched Black-Robed Figure raised their hand and pointed in the direction of Hayato and the others. "For my dream, embrace glorious evolution, my experiment subjects!"
"Grab them for me!"
As the Black-Robed Figure gave the order, the giant savage behind "him" let out a low roar, casually threw the section of tree trunk in its hand aside, opened its now empty hand, and grabbed towards Hayato and the others like an opened fishing net!
"You idiot, be careful for me, don't just crush the experiment subjects like the previous ones, they are much more important than you!" Behind the giant savage, the Black-Robed Figure was still expressing "his" "concern" for the safety of Hayato and the others.
However, clearly, "his" worry seemed a bit unnecessary. The next instant the giant savage reached out its hand towards Hayato and the others, a spiral lance and an emerald green wand filled with mystical power were pressed against its palm. In pain, the giant savage let out a cry of "Ow!" and withdrew its palm, only to find a stream of pitch-black flames spat out from a flying dragon's mouth, hitting its undefended face.
"Whoosh!"
The scene of the giant savage being knocked down, which Hayato and the others had anticipated, did not appear. After being hit by the black flame bullet spat out by Joey Wheeler's materialized **Red-Eyes Black Dragon**, the giant savage's seemingly sturdy muscles had no DEF, as if made of paper mache. In an instant, the giant savage was taken down, but its body did not remain; instead, it shattered and disappeared.
That kind of special effect, the few people present could be said to be extremely familiar with it. That was clearly the special effect that appears when Duel Monsters, after being turned into three-dimensional footage via the virtual projection system, are destroyed.
"Saying unaccountably strange things like 'experiment subject', who are you and why did you suddenly attack us!" After jointly defeating the giant savage, which seemed to be the Black-Robed Figure's subordinate, Joey Wheeler stepped forward angry, questioning the opponent.
"As expected, was that a card spirit?" The key point he cared about was different from Joey Wheeler's. Dark Yugi, who had emerged from the **Millennium Puzzle** at some unknown time to substitute for Yugi Mutou, raised an eyebrow because of the phenomenon he observed; the confusion between his brows did not fade. "But if it was a card spirit, even if temporarily repelled, why would it show characteristics only seen in Duel Monsters?"
The Black-Robed Figure seemed a bit surprised by the power displayed by Hayato, Yugi, and Joey Wheeler, but quickly recovered, looked at the few people and said, "What an accident, to think they are high-grade experiment subjects capable of using spirit power."
"I'm truly too lucky, the data about duel spirit users in my experiment log is very lacking!"
While speaking, Hayato and the others saw behind the Black-Robed Figure, the mist they had seen before when overlooking the Island from high altitude emerged. And within the mist, one strange figure after another appeared, as if they were about to leap out from the dense mist the next instant!
Originally, upon seeing that huge savage, Hayato felt its appearance was quite familiar to him, but because of the gap between anime/manga card art and three-dimensional monsters, he wasn't entirely sure. But upon seeing the several phantoms behind the Black-Robed Figure, he confirmed his conjecture.
Before the Black-Robed Figure could perform the next round of attack, Hayato quickly finished adjusting his Deck, inserted it into the card slot of his Duel Disk and performed a field setup, stepped forward, and shouted loudly at the Black-Robed Figure, "Hey, you over there, duel me!"
Hayato's words, even if it were in any other world, others would probably only answer with a gaze like looking at an idiot, and their hand movements wouldn't pause for even a bit. However, only in a certain "sorceress pile driver" world and This World, would the situation be different---
Hearing Hayato's words, the Black-Robed Figure was stunned for a moment, then put down the hand they had raised, and said with confidence, "Hehehe, you dare challenge me? Overestimating yourself, no one is my opponent!"
While speaking, the mist behind the Black-Robed Figure wrapped around the thin arm extending from his robe, transforming into a Duel Disk that was already loaded with a Deck.
---Well, the World of Duelists is like this~
(End of Chapter)
