"My head's spinning…"
"Where the hell am I?"
Hikaru Amagi rubbed his temples, glancing around the unfamiliar room. The walls were plastered with Dark Magician Girl posters. Above the large doorway, a massive word was painted:
FUSION.
He looked down at his clothes—white and yellow, unmistakably a Duel Academy uniform from the Ra Yellow dorm. Not something he'd ever owned.
It clicked.
He'd transmigrated.
But he didn't know which world he was in yet. Had he landed in Yu-Gi-Oh! proper? Or in the body of some die-hard cosplayer? If it was the former—well, he was kind of into it. He'd always been a duelist at heart. And if he now lived in a world with solid holograms and real duels? Hell yeah, sign him up.
Honestly, this might be the best possible outcome for him. He was already a card game nerd in his old life—never played in official tourneys, sure, but he'd consistently hit Master Rank in Master Duel. In a world built around dueling, maybe he could actually get somewhere.
Just as he was getting excited, a chorus of rowdy voices erupted outside his dorm. He went to the window and looked down.
A group of students in purple uniforms were chanting in unison:
"Fusion is the noblest summoning method!"
"Defeat the invaders from other dimensions!"
"Make them acknowledge our power!"
Well then.
Guess that answers it—he really was in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world. Just… not quite the version he had in mind.
Wait. Was this Arc-V?
No. God, no. He didn't want to live in that hot mess of a setting. Was it too late to off himself and reincarnate again?
Shaking his head, he rushed to the dorm's computer, pulled up whatever info he could find. Notes, files, recordings—anything. After some frantic digging, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Yes, this was the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe.
But not strictly GX.
More like a weird hybrid. Yu-Gi-Oh! GX-esque, but with some Arc-V elements spliced in.
Characters like Yugi Mutou, Seto Kaiba, and Joey Wheeler existed. So did Aster Phoenix and Dr. Crowler. And of course, Jaden Yuki—his classmate, apparently.
The difference was the Academy itself. It had some structural changes borrowed from the Arc-V dimension school system.
The good news? The radical Fusion supremacists were just one faction—most of the faculty weren't lunatics.
So it was a fusion world… but not a dystopia.
He'd even found a duel recording from the first episode of GX—Jaden beating Crowler with Flame Wingman.
That was comforting.
Maybe it was the shock wearing off, or maybe the familiar sights had triggered something, but Hikaru started to feel fragments of unfamiliar memories slip into his consciousness. Memories that weren't his—but belonged to this body.
The original Hikaru Amagi was a first-year student at Duel Academy, same year as Jaden. Not in Slifer Red, though. He was Ra Yellow—a middling student.
In this world, Duel Monsters weren't just a performance game. The monsters had real power. Dueling was more than play—it was a clash of intellect and force.
In fact, in this version of reality, dueling was the ultimate conflict resolution tool. There was nothing you couldn't settle with a duel—from who gets the last loaf of bread to the fate of the entire universe.
Even presidential elections were decided via duels. That's how Old Trump wiped the floor with Old Biden and got reelected in Duelist America.
In this world, Duel Monsters were deeply entwined with science, energy, even space exploration. Hikaru remembered hearing about a city experimenting with using duel monsters as perpetual motion generators—literal impossible tech made feasible with card magic.
Even KaibaCorp's Seto Kaiba was funding research into the afterlife using VR tech, trying to break through to the Underworld.
And like how ancient kings with weird kinks starved their concubines, Kaiba's obsession set the trend. With Yugi retired, Kaiba was the most powerful duelist alive. If he chased the supernatural, everyone followed.
This led Duel Academy to discover alternate dimensions, and birthed extremist groups under figures like Leo Akaba—radical Fusion summoners.
As for this body's original owner, he wasn't an extremist, but he had enrolled in Duel Academy with the intent of mastering Fusion Summons and becoming a Pro Duelist someday.
It made sense.
In this world, being a great duelist was like passing the civil service exam—your golden ticket.
One problem though…
The kid sucked.
Technically, sure, he should've been a top-tier student—everyone in Duel Academy was chosen from elite talent pools worldwide.
And it's not like he was some scrub who threw a bunch of rare vanilla monsters together and called it a deck.
But... his deckbuilding?
Trash.
He had filled his deck with a hodgepodge of low-level monsters that only worked if drawn together—and even then, only to fuse into some laughably underwhelming beatsticks.
Like, one fusion required Castle Gate Dragon and Sprite Wyvern to summon a 2300 ATK vanilla fusion. That was one of the better ones.
Most required ultra-specific pairs of weak monsters, with barely any synergy. And with only three Polymerization-type cards in the whole deck? Good luck pulling that off consistently.
Hikaru shook his head in disbelief.
And this was the deck the guy had scraped together with all his savings and part-time job cash?
It was a scam deck. Like, "getting sold fake Blue-Eyes at a flea market" levels of scam.
These weren't even especially rare cards—just expensive due to being niche fusion materials. The original owner had spent his whole summer collecting them just to barely pass the entrance exam.
Even worse, from the memories Hikaru had, he could've built a deck twice as effective for half the cost.
Sighing, he reached into the drawer, pulled out the card box, and decided to tweak the build a little. But the moment he opened it, his eyes widened.
"These… aren't his cards."
The top card wasn't anything basic.
It was Gem-Knight Fusion.
Gem-Knights? Not bad in this environment.
He flipped to the next card—and froze.
"Red-Eyes Fusion?!"
What kind of deck was this?
He began rifling through the stack—every card more shocking than the last.
Fossil Fusion, Aroma Mix-Up, Melodious Concerto, Ground Xeno Point, D-Fusion, Fusion Destiny...
Deskbot Link Zone, Fusion Gate, Power Bond, Magicalized Fusion, Invocation, Branded Fusion...
One after another.
Every single card in the deck was a Fusion-related Spell or Trap. All of them.
Then he found it.
He audibly gasped.
No way.
The ultimate, god-tier, broken Fusion card…
Super Polymerization.