A/N: Thank you for your support!
Seto Kaiba now set his eyes on the people around him. His eyes went to one woman and he couldn't stop staring at her.
Not because he was a pervert- but because she was painfully thin.
He had wondered why the boss had called him 'fat' (Seto Kaiba was not fat by Japanese standards, and definitely not by American/European standards) but this woman didn't seem to have a single ounce of fat on her.
He had seen pictures of starving kids in Africa, mainly from people asking for charity, but somehow those kids looked almost better fed that this woman did. Somehow though, she still had a protruding stomach.
Kaiba had read that sometimes some forms of malnutrition could cause swelling of the stomach, so he just thought it was that.
He went over and removed her mouth gag, and untied her. Her bonds were rather easy to break- she could've probably done it herself if she wasn't so weak.
At this point, Kaiba expected to get the usual 'thank you brave hero' routine from her like one would normally get from an NPC.
Instead, she moved her hand to slap him.
It would've hit him too, but while she had the element of surprise, she had failed to account for three things.
One, that she was rather weak and slow.
Two, that Seto Kaiba was no stranger to fighting at close range.
And that three, Seto Kaiba was not your typical white knight isekai protagonist. Much like Satou Kazuma from Konosuba, he was a believer in true gender equality.
He deflected the slap and then slapped the woman across the face.
The slap was a reflexive defensive move and not one that he had intended to give- and so he had managed softened the blow as it moved towards her face, but it seemed to be almost enough to knock her over.
Her eyes were brimming with tears and she glared at him defiantly. "Why did you let them go!? Do you know what they did to us? How could you let them live? Why didn't you kill them? Why didn't you get here sooner?"
Kaiba backed away a few paces before he felt himself step into something. He turned and looked down.
'Please tell me that isn't urine,' Kaiba prayed to himself. But he knew he prayed in vain.
Even though this was just a video game, he still found this to be utterly gross. There was a limit to how much realism he wanted from a virtual world.
"Why is there urine everywhere!" he screamed as he glanced around the room.
It smelt horrible. He could even understand why there might be human waste littered in the streets of a medieval city- it would make sense given the time. But why was it everywhere here in what was a castle? As far as he knew, people did not go to the toilet in the open in the royal castle!
He untied more humans, but most of them weren't able to string more than a few sobs and gasps together.
As such, there didn't seem to be anything useful he could gleam out of them.
This was really annoying to Seto- what kind of flawed game design was this?
True, real humans would probably be too traumatized to speak after an event like this, but these were NPCs. Why weren't they spitting out facts and useful exposition the moment he talked to them?
Soon enough though, humans (who were actually wearing clothes, thank Obelisk for that) walked in. These humans were all disheveled, dirty, and looked like they were starving, but they didn't seem injured.
All of them automatically looked towards Seto Kaiba.
"Thank the gods," one of them said and they all bowed down before him. "Thank you for saving us."
'Finally,' Kaiba thought. 'This is how things were supposed to go.'
The old man who seemed to be the head of them glanced at him and looked around. "Where are the others with you, Lord?"
"There are no others," Kaiba said. "Just me."
They all had confused looks on their faces. 'Ah, I see. Why did the beastmen leave?"
"Oh that," Kaiba said. "I defeated them in a duel and told them to scram!"
"B-but why did you not kill them?" the man asked in bewilderment. "You have let them flee- surely they will return again!"
'Oh, was I supposed to do something else?' Kaiba thought. No option had appeared for killing the beastmen, so he didn't know he could do that.
Well, nothing could be done about that now.
"Yeah, so, I don't see how that's my problem," Kaiba snapped. "First of all, I want to know who's in charge here?" He resisted the urge to say, 'Take me to your leader.'
The old man was shocked at Kaiba's tone and words, but he said, "Lord, our king is over there."
He pointed to a skull left on a table. "All the other duelists in our city perished at the hands of the beastmen."
"So, who's in charge now?" Kaiba asked.
"The royal family is dead," the man replied. "As such, given the circumstances, Lord, it would be better for you and your men to take temporary control of the city so it does not fall into anarchy."
"I don't have any men with me right now," Kaiba said. "Did you not hear me? I came here alone!"
The old man didn't seem to believe him, and simultaneously seemed to lack the courage to say that Kaiba was lying.
"I see," the old man answered. "Was it also you who defeated their king?"
"Yeah," Kaiba answered.
The people began whispering amongst themselves, and there seemed to be a great deal of confusion among them. From what he could glean out of their conversation, he thought they were skeptical about his claim.
"It's true," a voice said. It was the woman who had tried to slap Seto earlier. "He defeated their king with a monster that defies imagination- an eight star Dragon monster with 3,000 attack. He then let those monsters flee the city unharmed after they begged for their lives." The last sentence was spoken with intense venom.
Gasps and exclamations erupted from the people who had just arrived.
"Three thousand!"
"She must mean thirteen thousand!"
"But that couldn't defeat that Berserk Gorilla!"
"Eight stars? I never thought I'd see the day!"
"Do cards like that even exist?"
"Why'd he let the beastmen go?"
The old man irritably turned to the other members of the crowd and waved his hand.
"Ah, pardon me, Lord," he said. "But I still do not know your name."
"It's consider appropriate manners to introduce onself before asking for someone else's name," Kaiba sneered back.
One of the people behind the old man, a young lad spoke up, "He can't speak to Lord Henry like that!"
"Silence child," the old guy whom Kaiba guessed was Lord Henry answered. "Lord, I am a Baron in these lands, my name is Lord Henry."
"I'm Seto Kaiba," Kaiba answered.
Lord Henry frowned deeply as if what Kaiba had said had made no sense to him. "Ah, pardon me for asking, but what is your title?"
"Eh? Title?" Seto Kaiba asked. "Oh that, I don't have one."
"I see. Pardon me, but I have never heard of a duelist by the name before," Lord Henry said. "Where are you from?"
"Domino City," Seto Kaiba said.
The members of the congregation standing before him looked completely lost. "I have never heard the name of that city." Lord Henry looked at the others and they all shook their heads.
"But of course, we must thank the people of the Kingdom of Domino," Lord Henry added. "For sending us such aid in our time of need."
The man then paused. "If you do not mind, I have a request for you- can you show me the monster that has 3,000 attack?"
"Oh? Do you want to duel?" Seto asked.
"No no," he answered. "I am not a duelist! Please summon your monster as it is."
Seto didn't understand what this guy was talking about, and he was thoroughly annoyed at this conversation, but then it clicked with him.
Was it possible to summon duel monsters outside of an actual duel? There were situations where that had been possible before.
He flipped through his deck mentally and found the Blue Eyes White Dragon.
Great- now what did he have to do?
He thought about summoning the Blue Eyes White Dragon, and suddenly he knew how to summon it.
He could only summon the Blue Eyes once per week, and it would only last outside of a duel for half an hour.
Funnily enough, no tribute seemed to be required for this action.
But that didn't matter to him any more. The chance of having an actual Blue Eyes outside of a duel excited him so much he decided to try it immediately.
"Summon! Blue Eyes White Dragon!"
With a flash of light, his Blue Eyes White Dragon appeared. Once again, its head nearly scraped the ceiling.
"By the gods!" Lord Henry exclaimed. Several of the people there shielded their eyes from the monster.
Seto took a moment to admire the dragon- he had seen it many times before, but he couldn't deny that the aesthetics in this video game were great.
He felt a strange warmth flow down his arm. He had a weird mental link with this monster- could he command it just by thinking it?
He commanded it to roar and it complied.
The earth-shattering noise echoed throughout the castle.
The other humans cowered in fear.
"Terrific!"
"Amazing!"
"unbelievable!"
On the other hand, Seto had a big smile plastered across his face from ear to ear.
Seto was still annoyed at the rest of them, but he could never pass up a chance to brag about his Blue Eyes.
He would love to ride this beast.
And just to be clear, he meant that like riding a plane. In a total non-sexual way of course.
But, it wouldn't be possible to take a creature this big outside through the door.
But, as he glanced up at the roof he got an idea. There was a way to make a route.
He commanded his Blue Eyes to blast open a hole in the roof- and to try to spare the humans. He had a feeling that hurting one of them would have negative consequences.
A stream of blinding light left the dragon's maw and ripped open a hole in the ceiling. Bricks fell down, but the dragon's wings immediately opened in response to deflect the debris from the onlookers.
There was no visible timer, but Kaiba knew that this monster would only remain like this for twenty five minutes and thirty two seconds longer.
He got on, and the dragon took flight.
No words could describe how he felt while soaring over the city. It was an incredible sense of freedom- one that he felt while riding his Blue Eyes themed jet, only magnified a hundredfold given that he could feel the rush of wind through his hair and his dragon breathing beneath him.
As he ascended higher and higher, the cold began to affect him so he ordered his monster to stop.
As he looked down, he was able to see the entire city sprawled out before him. Right over there in the distance he saw the forest where he had come from. Towards the opposite side he could see thousands of small farms and fields. He couldn't see any large settlements like this city in the distance.
Out towards the forest, he saw clouds of dust. The beastmen he had defeated. If he used his Blue Eyes, it would be possible to kill them.
He considered the idea. It would score him some points with this human city- plus, perhaps the reason that he hadn't gotten any gold or silver was because in most games, you needed to kill monsters before you got XP or whatever.
Maybe killing them would mean that they would drop some loot?
But, he dismissed the idea. He had twenty minutes of time left, and they were too far away. Of course, his Blue Eyes flying at full speed could catch up to them, but the thing was that it couldn't fly at even a fraction of that speed without throwing Seto off. And Seto could send the dragon ahead of himself, but he wanted to keep riding it, so he gave up on the idea of striking the beastmen and instead continued flying around. Plus, another thing occurred to him: the other duelists could probably summon monsters but hadn't- which meant that being a duelist probably meant you were also immune to attacks like this. Seto might have to fight them again now that he had let them go.
Time passed.
Urgh... only three minutes left. Time sure did fly when you were having fun. Where should he land though? He coudl go straight through the hole he had made back into the castle, but on second thought the courtyard was a far better idea.
However, he had taken up far too much time. By the time the dragon touched down he only had two seconds left. It disappeared while he was still three feet above the ground and landed with a grunt.
He was rather pissed now. Why was it that he only got half an hour with his Blue Eyes once a week? That was way too long!
He couldn't summon the dragon again, and when he tried he instead met with a timer. Yeah, a full week before he could summon it again. But, he could summon the other two copies of Blue Eyes White Dragon he had, but in total that still meant only an hour and a half of Blue Eyes time a week!
This was unacceptable!
When he found the maker of this game, he'd buy the company that made it, force whoever had limited his Blue Eyes time to only 90 minutes a week to fix it, and then fire those same people for doing something like that in the first place!
He was so infuriated at this that he started kicking up the dirt in the courtyard and he stopped only when he noticed the other humans were looking at him weird and he stopped
He had a reputation to maintain, and couldn't be seen throwing a tantrum like a five year old would when he couldn't get an extra ten minutes on the merry-go-round.
He now had an idea of what to do next though. First of all, he needed to find someone who could explain the rules of this world to him. Second of all, he needed to purchase some cards.
Sure, he didn't have any of this world's money, but given the fact that he had just saved them, he was sure that none of them would complain if he wanted a few cards as a reward.
That was how quests worked, after all.
But, it was only after he calmed down a little that he managed to notice one tiny detail- namely the fact that his life points had dropped from 8,000 to 7,200.
A/N: I'm a big fan of the way that sometimes in the manga people can use trading cards outside of duels- and that opens up a lot of possibilities You could use Giant Trunade to help out a drought-stricken region, or use a healing monster to cure wounds, or 'Poison of the Old Man' to cure a disease, or 'Hinotama' to start a fire and so on and so forth.
But, it also makes me realize that such an ability is super OP, and so I needed to place a few restrictions on them- namely the massive cool down and the fact that using a card takes up life points. I don't want it turning out to be super OP like with Reinhard from Re:Zero, or it becoming like 'The Eagles' from the Lord of the Rings where it could potentially solve any problem.
Speaking of life points, I'm not that sure how I want to handle them. I don't want them to reset after each battle, otherwise Seto has a zero percent chance of losing, but I don't want to make it so that they stay the same forever unless you heal up. I feel like this fits with a world like the one I have in mind- namely that a single duelist can't just go ahead an beat hundreds of weaker duelists at once no problem.
So yeah, if you've played Reshef of Destruction, I think you already know where I'm going with regarding life points- but thankfully no duelist levels!
As such I think using cards in real life is better this way- there are some massive potential benefits but also enough downsides that it can't be waved around willy-nilly.
Tell me what you think.