Yugioh Card Summoner
CH.641 Preliminary Trouble

Finally, the first preliminary day for the Turbo Duel Tournament began. 

Yeah. First day. There will be multiple. I have too many competitors. But more about that later.

I’ll go over the basic tournament rules real quick. They are riding duels, which I hope you know what those are. Watch Yugioh 5D's if you don’t, it is a good series.

Both players are riding D-wheels, and the rules for those are simple. No intentional contact, and if you fall over or drive too slowly and your opponent speeds away from you, you lose the duel. So you can win by just riding extremely fast and not letting your opponent keep up. There is also an action time limit, so you must perform an action every 30 seconds during your turn, or you get penalized. At first you lose Speed Counters, but if you do it too many times, you lose the duel. [Note: This rule is not relevant, it won’t come into play in duels shown. I just added it because it needs to be here because of how the tournament works.]

Intentional contact situations mean immediate disqualification and potentially a permanent ban to the Factory. For the aggressor. The victim will automatically win the duel, and the match if it happens in a match. And you might think it is impossible to prove intent, but I have enough mind reading and mind controlling monsters that I’ll know if someone did it intentionally. Because of that, it is also in the rules that if you intentionally drive your opponent into a situation where they have no choice but to make contact, you will still be penalized. Not as heavily, the automatic ban is just if you make contact in an attempt to make your opponent fall.

The tournament won’t be using the Speed World Field Spell card. Instead, the Field Spell will be the Speed Factory, my custom version of the card.

It works by giving both duelists the change to pick 5 Field Spells from all of the available ones. Then both of them can ban up to 2 of their opponent’s choices, and the leftover Field Spells are what will make the track. Their order will be randomized, naturally. And yes, this is done for every duel in the case of a match. That way, if your opponent really needs one specific Field Spell for their strategy, you can ban that for duels 2 and 3.

From there, Speed Factory starts building up counters like it does in the anime, with each player getting a Speed Counter during each standby phase except the standby phase of the first turn, and you can have 12 of them in total. 

You can also get Speed Counters in one other way. By being the one in the lead when the Field Spells change. And by ‘in lead’, I mean you are driving in front of your opponent. I found that this led to an interesting first turn interaction. Since the track starts with a ‘no Field Spell’ grid area, and the duel technically only starts after they enter the first Field Spell, and the one who enters it first is the one who goes first. Well, I hope you see how this is interesting. If you take the first turn, you also get an extra Speed Counter, but because of the rules, you don't get a draw on the first turn, and so on.

But as to what you can do with those Speed Counters. That is very different from the anime version. ... well, few parts are copies over.

First of all, we don’t use Speed Spells. I just didn’t want to. Second of all, you don’t lose any when you take more than 1000 damage in a single attack. The only way to lose them is due to penalties or using them.

The first use for the Speed Counters is that by using 2 of them, you can either extend the current Field Spell for another lap, or you can instantly skip to the next Field Spell in the rotation. I wanted to have this be something cheap you can do, as I wanted the changing Field Spells to be an important part of the tournament. And you can only do this during your turn, once per turn.

Second. For four Speed Counters, you can draw a card. I think this effect was seven in the anime, but I made it a lot cheaper. 

For six, you can target and destroy a card. This was also in the anime for I think 10, but I wanted the more expensive effects to be even better than this.

For eight, you can search your deck for any Monster or Trap card, and add it to your hand. No Spells though, as there are some kind of good Spells in the tournament, and I don’t want that to be abusable.

For ten, you can search any Spell. Yes it is still good, even if it is a bit more, but at 10, I can keep things balanced. … somewhat.

And if you somehow can remove 12 Speed Counters from your own pile, you can special summon any monster from your hand, deck or GY ignoring summoning conditions. Yeah. That is kind of broken, but at least I didn’t allow the extra deck. And honestly, this will not come up all that often, so why not have something crazy?

Other than that, it is pretty standard Yugioh.

Now back to the competitors.

As you might remember, the first tournament had 15 competitors, and Alice jumped in to be the sixteenth so we had a full tournament bracket.

The second one had 106. Way too many for just a bracket tournament, so I held preliminaries and all of that. 

Well, this one is way larger. Over 1000 people signed up. And even with all the Factory VR stations across the world, and those who’ve signed up being people that live in a city or town with one of them, there were still situations where multiple people from a town with just one Factory VR machine signed up.

So I … okay Tahlia actually did it. But she divided the competitors so that everyone could take part in the preliminaries, and there was minimal overlap in the use of the Factory VR stations. Then I just sent requests for the guild masters to make sure that the Factory VR machines would be free for that specific person when their preliminaries are held. 

But as I said, we could only minimize the problem, not completely remove it. So for those few problem cases, we instead flew people to HomeBase so that they could use HomeBase VR stations instead. It wasn’t that bad now that all of the Card Venturers have Card Summoner. I just gave them each a B.E.S. ship, and they acted as taxis while also learning how to fly the ships.

They do all also have a ship from the Gradius series, in case you were wondering. And a bunch of other cards I might go over at some point.

Thanks to all the help from them, and the organizational help from my monsters in the Factory, the first few days of preliminaries went just fine. … sadly just the first few days, as eventually the trouble began.

When the afternoon preliminaries of the third day, yes we had them both in the morning and the afternoon, were about to begin, we noticed that a competitor was missing. 

There had been three others that couldn’t make it, but in those cases, a member of the guild where they were supposed to use a Factory VR station had called and told us that the competitor likely couldn’t make it. Mainly because they had left the town for an adventuring job.

This time I hadn’t heard anything. Still, I couldn’t hold everyone else up and just let my monsters start this set of preliminaries. We’ll just slot the missing competitor into another preliminary, as there are still plenty to come. And the ones for the last day aren’t fully booked, as we knew, well assumed, that some wouldn’t make their dedicated preliminaries, and we could move them to those slots.

But still, something about this one was bothering me, so after making sure the preliminaries were running fine, I excited the Factory and made a phone call to the guild where the competitor was supposed to be using the Factory VR station. 

From that, I learned that the Factory VR station had been taken by a VIP, and that the competitor wouldn’t be able to use it because of that. I asked who this ‘VIP’ was, and found out it was just a local B-rank adventurer who wanted to experience the device for the first time. 

Hearing that I was honestly quite pissed off. Some random B-rank thinks they are important. And this guild lets them. I’m S-rank and I’m the one who made the reservation. So with my frustration building, I teleported to the guild to give them a piece of my mind.

I walked into the guild hall, releasing just a bit of Overpowering Aura.

I almost never use the skill, except for when trying to do things like Taming. It is actually fantastic for that, as a weak monster feeling it will almost always agree to it. And even against stronger monsters, they might flinch or even retreat when feeling it. 

And no, I wasn’t releasing it at full blast. At my max, Overpowering Aura can actually kill someone. Mainly those under level 10. But even someone upwards of 30 could die if I focus the aura solely on them, as I’m essentially crushing their will to live with my power.

But at the moment my power was very limited, and not targeted, so no one should get much more than shivers and maybe a slight feel of pressure on them.

I walked up to the receptionist, quickly recognizing the one that answered my call. I had been introduced to them when I delivered the phone, and with Tahlia helping my memory, I could link the voice on the phone to the person.

I simply asked her under whose authority did they go against the schedule I requested. She tried to stammer out some excuses, but from observing her soul, it was clear that she wasn’t the one at fault. 

So I sent her to get the guild master while I headed for the VR station, still enjoying the space everyone was giving me thanks to the aura. Once at the station, I used Soul Magic to track the soul of the guy inside the station. He was inside the Factory as expected, and while I was tempted to just grab his soul and pull it out, I knew that would cause problems. So instead I just had my enforcer squad take the guy and drag him to the Factory exit, before tossing him out. They also put a ban on his soul, so he wouldn’t be able to enter the Factory again until that ban was lifted, no matter what Factory VR station he’d attempt to use.

After his soul was in his body, the VR pod was opening, I opened the pod and pulled the guy out of it. I quickly questioned him, asking him things like who does he think he is to go against the literal owner of the device he is using, and who does he think he is having authority over an S-rank adventurer. He didn’t answer, probably because he was scared as I just lightly focused my Overpowering Aura onto him. 

I then tossed him onto the ground before informing him that he is never getting into the Factory ever again, unless he begs like the worthless worm that he is.

I then turned my face to the guild master who had arrived towards the later stages of me scolding the adventurer. I focused my aura onto him and saw him visibly flinch, before he almost began to shrink as he tried to make himself seem like not a threat.

“And you. Was it really that much of me to ask for you to ensure the VR station was free today?” I asked the guild master.

“S-Surely you understand that …”

“That you can’t have someone wait for two hours?!” I yelled. “Two hours! Is that too long!” I then turned to the adventurer trying to worm his way out of the room. I generated a few Magical Arms and turned him to wait for me. “Is two hours too long for you!?”

Yeah. Did I ever mention that the preliminaries are only two hours of outside of Factory time? Sure because of the time dilation, for the competitors it will feel like 10 hours, but outside only 2 will pass.

The adventurer that I held in the Magical Arms shook his head. It seemed to be the only thing he could do, as even when I got the message, he kept doing it.

I turned back to the guild master as I released the Magical Arms and the adventurer hit the ground.

“So. Why?” I asked.

“I … I … “ The guild master just stammered out, not able to respond.

“... sir… sir.” I heard a meek voice coming by the door. One of the guild’s receptionists had come into the room. “I … I think I know why.” She said.

I quickly released my overpowering aura and let her continue without the additional pressure.

“... He has … he has been saying how … How his son will win your tournament!” She eventually yelled. “He then forced us to make him use the VR station so there would be less competition! If we didn’t agree, he would have fired us!”

“… really?” I asked as I turned back to the guild master. “You worthless, useless, self serving moron.” I sighed. “Consider your son banned from my tournament, and both you and him are banned from the Factory.” I said, as I got a feel for his soul and made sure the Factory would know to ban him. I also informed them to lift the ban on the adventurer, since it seems like he was forced to play along by the guild master. “Also, I’ll be informing the central guild and Lady Hero of this. You better hope you get to keep your job.” I added. “Now, where is today’s competitor? I want to go see them and inform them of their second chance at the qualifiers.” 

With my mood back to my regular, relatively calm self, and my aura no longer pressuring people, they went back to what they had been doing. Except for the one receptionist who revealed the truth. She showed me to inn of the competitor whose spot had been taken.

Myla was a young adventurer, sixteen in age. By the way, the minimum age for my tournament is 15, as that is the point where you are considered an adult in this world.

She had been crying since her opportunity was taken from her, but I told her when her chance would be, and this time I would make sure she would get her chance.

And as I promised, a few days later, five members of the Card Venturers were in the town making sure she got to compete.

I also later learned that the guild master, while not technically stripped of his position, was given an assistant GM who was more like a babysitter for the man. At least he didn’t cause any permanent damage, and what he did wasn’t related to the guild, so his punishment was technically for me to decide. And only as far as my authority went.

I simply gave him and his child a three year ban from the Factory, and they also would never enter HomeBase. The adventurer didn’t get too bad of a punishment from me, only having a three month ban as he was kind of talked into it by the guild master. I also asked that the guild workers make sure he is busy with work when the tournament is hosted, so that he cannot watch it, but I’m not sure if that will actually end up being the case.