Here we go, another chapter finished.


"Master, Master!" the phantom sensation of fingers poking against his cheek and a familiar, perky cheerful voice calling him roused Yarden from his sleep.

His eyes blinked open groggily, and a massive yawn split his mouth as he stretched, "Yeah? M'up, wassit?" he slurred his speech a bit as he awoke, eyes clearing up to reveal the slightly blurry form of a scantly clad magical girl floating in the air above him, her finger touching against his cheek.

"Mou Master, you sure are lazy," Dark Magician Girl pouted, "I've been trying to wake you up for like twenty minutes now, you just kept going back to sleep."

"Pics or it didn't happen," he retorted sarcastically on instinct, rubbing his eyes, "Anyway, what's so important that you need to wake me up at..." his head tilted and Yarden looked at the table beside his bed with his laptop on it, and the digital clock facing him.

09:22 AM

"Not even half nine in the morning, on a weekend." he gave the beautiful blonde a deadpan stare.

Duel Academy class times were horrible compared to what he was used to. Back home, classes started at nine and then let out at half three. Here at Duel Academy? Classes started at eight in the morning and let out at five in the afternoon.

Sure, with his spiritually enhanced body, the needed energy to be awake for that long was childs play. But it was still nine hours of classes, it was mentally exhausting as all hell. He just wasn't used to it, he'd only been here for just over three weeks now.

Not to mention, he loved to sleep. Honestly, it was probably no wonder he had taken a liking to dragons from a young age. He loved to sleep, he hated giving up things and tended to hoard it, he was absurdly prideful, he could admit it and had a terrible temper.

So when it came to the weekends with no classes? He liked to sleep in and laze around as much as possible.

"You've been getting a bunch of messages on your thingy Master," she shrugged, "And not only that, I wanted to tell you that during the night I felt the presence of a very strong, very malevolent spirit appearing on the island."

Yarden blinked slowly. A malevolent spirit? It took a few seconds before it clicked and he remembered. 'Jinzo!' his eyes widened. Wasn't Jinzo supposed to appear not long after the Paradox Brothers and Titan thing?

Yeah, if he remembered right, some Obelisk Blue's summoned it through a freaking ouija board or something like that.

"How strong are we talking here?" he asked, sitting up and stretching a bit more.

"Mmm, stronger than me by a decent bit," she hummed and tapped her chin, "About as strong as Serpent Night Dragon I think."

So fairly damn strong then. According to Dark Magician Girl, Serpent Night Dragon was a very old and very strong spirit, one that had power not far off from the legendary Dark Magician she once worked with.

As far as spirit strength went, Serpent Night Dragon was his strongest spirit, followed by Hyozanryu and Dark Magician Girl lobbying for second.

"Think I could get it to join?" Yarden asked. Jinzo itself was a very powerful card and he'd make a deck at some point that could use it. He already had two more decks prepared beyond his main dragon one. The Magician Girl deck he'd gotten from the female spirit he was talking to right now, and an archfiend deck made up of mostly cards he'd stolen from Titan, but with a focus on King Of The Skull Servants and getting the other two copies of it and the three copies of Skull Servant he had into the graveyard. And cards like Painful Choice made that so very easy.

It was kind of amusing he had an entire deck prepared, just for the one low level monster spirit he had. But his spirits deserved it! And the Magician Girl deck was great for Unhappy Maiden to play a part as well.

Larvae Moth was pretty useless in any deck not an insect one. So, one day he'd make a Great Moth deck for it. And he'd do so for all his spirits at some point in the future. He wasn't stressing on it anymore after the advice he got from Dreamspite and Spirit Of The Breeze, but he still wanted to get it done at some point in the future.

"One that feels like that? I doubt it Master," she shrugged, "Odds are if you try and get it to join you it will demand a shadow game or something along those lines. It would be simpler just for us spirits to attack it in force and destroy it and use its power to make us stronger."

Yarden winced, "That's kind of brutal." he replied, and totally not something he ever expected to come out of the kind and cheerful Dark Magician Girl's mouth.

The thought actually made him squirm. Mostly at the thought of that ever happening to any of his own spirits.

"It's either seal or destroy them Master," Dark Magician Girl gave him a sad smile, "There really isn't any in-between with them. I'm not saying it's impossible to tame them, just that it's incredibly dangerous and there's no guarantee things will go well."

"So you think we should destroy it instead?" he asked for confirmation.

"Mmm," she nodded, her blue cone shaped hat wiggling on her head, "You're looking to get as strong as possible Master for personal reasons and for the approaching evils. Using the power of this evil spirit, we can enhance the power of some of your weaker spirits with it and skip a lot of steps in their own evolution."

Well, as much as he wanted Jinzo, "Alright, if you think it's best." Yarden nodded back in agreement. Dark Magician Girl was his go to for knowledge on this kind of thing. She had all the knowledge Mana learned in Ancient Egypt and what she had learned herself over those years.

Like for instance, despite his ever growing power, he couldn't actually do much with it at all beyond summoning his Ba in physical form and initiating a shadow game. Until he got a focus of some kind, that would be really all he would be able to do beyond learning to toss it out wastefully in raw energy.

"Ah, Master trusts me so much!" she giggled and floated around to land behind him. Her arms wrapped around his neck and he felt a phantom softness press against his back.

He wouldn't be able to fully feel her physically until she became his Ba and he summoned her in physical form.

"You're the expert here." Yarden shrugged before leaning over to his table and grabbing his PDA. He apparently had messages as well.

He already had a feeling he knew what they were about.

Chazz was supposed to be dueling Bastion this morning after all. Crowler had brought it up in class yesterday.

It had been three days now since the duel with the Paradox Brothers, and while he had cashed out most of his DP and bought Dark Paladin for his deck - which apparently could be used with Dark Magician Girl according to her - he still had one hundred and forty seven thousand DP resting in his account.

A nice and large sum.

A large sum that he'd went to Professor Wade with last night and put on Bastion winning the duel against Chazz at five to one odds.

He held his breath on instinct as he turned the PDA on and checked his balance, and a sigh of relief left him a moment later. There had always been the chance that Chazz would win.

But, it seemed fate was still chugging along at least a bit. Because, if his new balance of DP was anything to go by, Bastion had won.

DP: 738,150

A wide grin split Yarden's face. Lovely, what nice thing to wake up to. Quickly, he transferred five hundred thousand of the DP out as pure true currency and into his savings account, before bringing up his balance through the internet banking.

Balance: £360,350

God was that amazing to look at.

He took the number and went to the calculator app on the PDA and typed it in and the percentage he got monthly from interest coming from his account, plus the three fifty extra he got as benefits.

£2,151.75

How amazing. His passive monthly gain was up by another two hundred pounds since three days ago. Over two grand extra a month. He totally had it made.

'Hmm?' Yarden hummed in interest when he came out of the calculator and checked his messages.

There were messages from Professor Wade letting him know of his winnings, which was expected. And one from Jaden letting him know the duel between Bastion and Chazz was starting. But beyond that, there was also an unexpected message from Chancellor Sheppard.

It seemed he wanted him to stop by his office during the day at some point when he had the time.

Odd, very odd. He wondered what the man wanted from him. But, this was definitely a good opportunity to bring some things up with the man. So he sent a message back affirming that he'd head over in a little while.


"Man Bastion that Water Dragon of yours is sweet!" Jaden grinned as the group left the academy behind.

"Well it is the headliner of this deck," Bastion chuckled from beside him, preening slightly, "Alongside its fiery counterpart that is."

"There's a fire one to?" Syrus stuck his head between the two boys to ask curiously.

"Oh yes," The ace of Ra Yellow nodded proudly, "You did not think countering Pyro type monsters was the only thing this deck was good for did you? Indeed not. By using two Oxygeddon alongside one of my Combusteggon, I can special summon the ever powerful Flame Dragon."

"Liscious," Chumley nodded in awe, "What's it do?"

Bastion laughed lightly, "Why, you'll just have to wait and see until I play it my dear Chumley," he replied, "I can't go giving out the abilities of my monsters willy nilly when two of the three people I am aiming to defeat to become the best duelist in the first year class are right here in this very group."

Alexis who was at the back of the group alongside Zane perked up, "Since Yarden isn't here, do you mean me?" the blonde wondered. After all, Bastion had already declined his promotion to Obelisk Blue after defeating Chazz, in favor of not ranking up until he had become the best first year and claimed Jaden was one he would specifically have to overcome to make that a reality.

"Why yes I do," Bastion spread his arms wide and turned to beam at the girl, "The duel you and Yarden had against the Paradox Brothers was humbling. The way you locked them off initially with your Marauding Captains, and yet at the same time summon so many powerful monsters. Why, if it weren't for their legendary beast the Gate Guardian and its support, you quite possibly would have ended that duel then and there."

"That was the plan," Alexis sighed, "I had my Cyber Gymnast in my hand and it has an effect like Dark Magician Girl The Dragon Knight's. I'd planned on using them both to get rid of the Gate Guardian and Wall Shadow and then taking down all their life points in that single turn by bringing back White Night Dragon with Call Of The Haunted, I really wasn't expecting that spell card of theirs to have an absurd graveyard effect."

"And considering they would have been brought down to two monsters again and your Cyber Blader would have had its attack points doubled for an attack then and there on one of those monsters, I have to say, it was quite the set up," Zane mused coolly, "I would have been hard pressed to defend against an assault like that."

"Indeed, you should be proud," Bastion added, "If it weren't for those rare and legendary cards of theirs, you would have soundly crushed those pro's and former champions easily."

"I still didn't though," Alexis pointed out, "I've still got a long way to go. And I never got a chance to make up for that turn around they made. Since they pissed off Yarden by insulting his monster and he went full overkill on them." she actually felt sorry for them after the absurdity Yarden pulled.

Syrus shivered, "Yeah, count me out from ever having to duel Yarden, especially when he gets pissed off like that," the small blue haired boy said, "I mean how crazy was that? He literally summoned a crazy powerful monster with five thousand attack points, one of the strongest monsters in pure attack points in the game and then he just sacrificed it to make one of his weaker monsters stronger."

"Indeed, I suspect making a deck to counter Yarden will take quite some time," Bastion pursed his lips, "And even if I do, something as simple as a dragon counter deck will clearly not be enough, not when he changes his play style so frequently on the fly."

"Yeah that's gonna be even harder now," Alexis shook her head and pointed out with a chagrined smile, "He put together another deck just the other night with the cards he got from that guy that attacked me. I dunno what kinda deck it is, but he's got that dragon deck of his, that one he used originally with the mish mash of cards that looks random but works incredibly well, this new one and one I think that's centered around the Dark Magician Girl, if you make a counter to any one of them and try and use it and he decides to use another one, you're gonna be in big trouble."

"He'll punish you hard if you do," Zane chuckled lightly, "He's a big fan of overkill, so if you have no way of countering his first few turns, he'll just blow you away."

"Speaking of Yarden, where is he actually?" Chumley wondered, "He's usually hanging out with you Alexis, or Jaden."

Alexis snorted, "It's the weekend Chumley, he's in his bed," the voluptuous blonde responded, "I gave up trying to get him up early in the weekend the first weekend he moved in to the Obelisk boys dorm, you'd need a bomb to wake him up."

"And he doesn't take kindly to it either," Zane's chuckles grew, "Some of the guys at my dorm woke him up demanding duels last weekend, the mouthful of abuse he slung at them had one of them running away in tears, or so I hear."

"My word, how barbaric." Bastion wrinkled his nose, "I thought he was just playing the rudeness up for the cameras the other day against the Paradox Brothers."

"Ah he's not that bad," Jaden laughed, "If you're not an asshole to him, Yarden's chill and and always willing to lend a hand, of the dueling field at least. He doesn't show any mercy in a duel and trash talks more than even Chazz."

"Hmm, I see," Bastion hummed, "I will need to be on guard for his type of vitriol when I dethrone him as the strongest first year and not allow it to trip me up."

"Good luck with that." Zane told him dryly.


"Ah Yarden, come in, come in," Chancellor Sheppard smiled at him as he entered the wide open office, "Thank you for coming in so quickly, especially on the weekend."

"No problem sir." Yarden dipped his head as he entered the office. His head turned from side to side as he took in the huge rectangular room. Almost barren besides some potted plants on one side, while on the other, there were huge, comfortable leather couches and a glass table arranged before a huge television screen mounted within the wall.

"I'll get right down to business son," Sheppard said as he approached the desk, "It's about your conduct during the duel with the Paradox Brothers."

"Am I in trouble?" Yarden asked, raising an eyebrow. Didn't he say right then and there after he brought this up before that he wasn't in trouble?

"Not as such," Sheppard shook his head, "Rather, two things about it. First,I would like to give you some advice."

His second eyebrow joined the first, "Okay?"

"I won't tell you how to act, In fact, I dare say your attitude will gain you quite the fan base when you go pro, everyone loves a rebel after all," Sheppard laughed, "My advice though, is to tone down the crass language just a bit, less is more as they say, it will do wonders for keeping your image just in line enough for the younger audiences as well and adding a bit more eloquence to your words will make you a more attractive prospect as a rebel rather than a thug or punk styled duelist."

Yarden blinked. This, he was not expecting. He wasn't even sure how to take being given advice like that. "I'll think on it sir." he settled on saying. He wasn't used to authority figures at all not just coming down on him for crap like that.

Usually he'd just dig his feet in until he got suspended with them. Or even find ways to get them to back off, like his old tech teacher that had a hate boner for him when he caught Yarden with a girl out the back of the school after skipping class. He was the type that liked to put his face in real close with a sudden jerk to intimidate students into compliance. Yarden had instead of flinching back, moved his head forward just enough to make his teacher headbutt him when he moved his face in close. From there, he had the teacher by the balls because he could have gotten him done for assaulting a minor and he'd never bothered him since.

So yes, this was new. And it was very interesting that Chancellor Sheppard seemed to wholly believe Yarden could go pro.

"Good, good," Sheppard nodded, before frowning lightly, "As for the second reason. I've had multiple complaints coming in from Rex Raptor, one of the tops of the pro leagues, he hasn't taken you insulting him on live television well and is demanding a public apology from you and for the academy to punish you."

Yarden gave a slow blink, before snorting, "Tell him to get fucked," he replied and crossed his arms, "Like, haven't he and his homosexual life partner Underwood committed actual real crimes before?"

As if he was going to ever apologize to that literal midget dinosaur humping retard.

Sheppard sighed, "I expected a response along those lines, you really are quite belligerent," the bald man pinched his nose, "Is that your final answer? We won't be punishing you for something that truly has nothing to do with the school, but I will forward your response to him."

"Is that right?" Yarden grinned. The Obelisk in red leaned forward, uncrossing his arms and placing them on the desk, "Well you can tell him then, if he gets on his knees on live television and admits that he's a retard that doesn't know jack shit about being a proper duelist and takes back every bad thing he said about Serpent Night Dragon, I'll apologize."

As if he was ever gonna take back an insult to the guy who gave his dragon spirit such a bad reputation. He could eat shit as far as Yarden was concerned. Insult his buddy would he!?

Sheppard grimaced, "...I don't think he'll agree to that at all, but I'll pass the message along." he replied, voice dryer than the Sahara Desert.

"Then he can feel free to come duel me, or fight me, whatever makes him feel better," Yarden shrugged, "Not like he'll win either way."

"I'll be sure to let him know," the bald man rolled his eyes, "You're free to head out now Yarden, that's all I needed you for. Unless you have anything you'd like to speak to me about personally while you're here."

"Well, there is one thing actually," Yarden hummed, before turning serious, "When are you going to let Alexis know that shadow games were being researched at the Abandoned Dorm and that's the reason why her brother disappeared."

Sheppard's eyes flew wide open.


Duelist Profile: Yarden Odhar

Name: Yarden Odhar
Age:15
Country of Birth: Scotland
Occupation: Student of Duel Academy
Student Dormitory: Obelisk Blue
Current Funds: 238,150 DP
Bank Account: £360,350
Bonded Spirits: Petit Dragon, Decoy Dragon, Lesser Dragon, Spirit Of The Breeze, Fairy Dragon, Chaos Necromancer, Soul Tiger, Larvae Moth, Griggle, Outstanding Dog Marron, Catnipped Kitty, Unhappy Maiden, Skull Servant, Archfiend Marmot of Nefariousness, Goblin Calligrapher, Serpent Marauder, Blade Rabbit, Steel Scorpion, Dreamsprite
Abilities: Massively Enhanced Physical Parameters. Enhanced Senses. Increased Growth Rate, Draconic Aura. Enhanced Endurance. Enhanced Recovery Rate. Enhanced Dexterity. Enhanced Bone Durability. Enhanced Healing Factor. Enhanced Reflexes. Enhanced Agility. Enhanced Flexibility. Magic Resistance.
Deck(s): Dragon Spirit, Magician Girl, Skull Archfiend, Mish Mash,


And chapter 18 is done.

Not really much going on in this chapter. Just some chats and a little time skip.