Yugioh Card Summoner
CH.643 Duel Runner Tournament, part 1

And so, with the finalists chosen, and them having designed their D-wheels, it was time for the finals of the Duel Runner Tournament.

Getting the over 1000 people down to just 16 was a massive pain, but with time and patience we managed to do it.

And now I can introduce you to our competitors.

First is Myla. You know who she is, right? She is the girl who was prevented from getting to her qualifier. Luckily we managed to fit her in and she even managed to win her qualifier. She is running a Naturia and Aroma deck, picking Field Spells like Aroma Garden, Naturia Forest, Spiritual Forest and Forest. … yeah. That is a lot of Forest to be riding through. And Myla wasn’t the most confident rider in the tournament. And yes, I know that Spiritual Forest isn't a Field Spell. But I have a Forest room in the Factory that was later turned into a Spiritual Forest area with the help of the Continuous Spell, so I just turned it into a Field Spell for the tournament.

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Second, Hiro. … is what he wants me to say, but he was actually not allowed to enter because of his age. I didn’t mean to have an age limit in my ‘children’s card game’, but riding a D-wheel is difficult enough if your body is large enough for it. Having to use an altered Factory avatar while driving one makes it even more difficult.

But Saffee, his big sister, was just old enough to enter, and she qualified. 

Back when the two of them were just playing games together, Saffee ran a fairly basic Junk Synchron deck, but for the tournament, she was using a Quasar turbo deck that Hiro made her. I was a little worried as she clearly didn’t have the combo heavy nature of the deck fully down, but she had managed to qualify for the final tournament, so I shouldn't be saying too much. 

Keeping up with the Royalty, Legio, the first prince of Ruiso Kingdom qualified with a Red Dragon Archfiend and Red Nova Dragon deck. By the way, the Red Dragon Archfiend used in the tournament is a custom version I made. I didn’t want to allow Scarlight as it is a bit too good. But the OG version is bad. So I made a compromise. I made a new Red Dragon Archfiend, same stats, type, attribute and summoning method as the original, but new effect. It now, after damage calc, destroys all Defense or Attack position monsters your opponent controls, depending on which it attacked. And I removed the ‘During your End Phase: Destroy all other monsters you control that did not declare an attack this turn.’ effect.

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Indigo had qualified, so she was back defending her title. She was using Gusto.

Many of the Sages had also tried out for the tournament, and three of them qualified. 

Ted Miller qualified with a Jurrac deck, Shisu Tensei had her own Naturia deck and Ray Way was running Psychics.

There were some students from the different magic academies. Each of the academies had leased a few Factory VR stations, by the way. And with that, we got four more competitors from amongst their student populace. They were running different stuff like Power Tool Dragon/Morphtronics, one was running Scraps, one had a decent Vylon deck and the last one ran a T.G. deck.

Arvin from Saber Fang had also qualified. Each member of the party did take part in the qualifiers, but only Arvin made it. He is running X-Sabers. 

Ula, the definitely not a spy, cat-girl from the Hero’s country had once again made an appearance. She was there for the first tournament, but skipped the second. Now she is back and she is running Blackwings.

The last three were actually HomeBase residents. … kind of.

First of the three, Jonin, the no longer paralyzed knight who came to work as an artist. Yeah, we dealt with the little paralysis problem. I don’t know what you expected. There were so many ways of dealing with it from just forcing him to evolve to what we actually did, which was a surgery. … or I removed all the damaged parts from his body and had Alice and Lua reform them with magic. Evolution was our backup plan in case that didn’t work.

Jonin is running a Warrior Synchro deck focused on Colossal Fighter.

Next, Janina. Yeah. She decided to take part. I think she is just bored, and honestly, it kind of looked like she was barely trying. She is using the Nordic Gods, by the way. And yes, I did buff some of their cards to make them actually usable.

And last was Nir. Yeah. Nir is … not a normal person to have in the tournament, but he can use enough Soul Magic that he can come to the Factory on his own, and he has his humanoid form so he can ride a duel runner, so he did fulfill the requirements to enter.

Nir’s deck of choice was Dragunity.

But yeah. Those were the sixteen who made it. Now let’s just get to the tournament. And don’t worry, I’ll cover their D-wheels as they come up.

I won’t cover all of the first round, because I just don’t feel like it. And I don’t want this tournament arc dragging on for too long.

Myla beat the Morphtronic user. Her duel runner is pretty basic, it being based on Aromaseraphy Sweet Marjoram in color scheme. It does have wings that open up at high speeds, stabilizing the D-wheel more than normal ones do, which seemingly helped her ride it.

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The Morphtronic user had a D-wheel based on Akiza’s Bloody Kiss, he just color swapped it to match Power Tool Dragon’s gold.

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Second match was Arvin vs. Janina. Arvin’s X-Sabers are good, but with some of the ‘custom’ Nordic monsters that Janina has, she won the duel. As for their duel runners, Arvin’s resemble a scimitar, or as close as you could get to one with a bike. Janina’s was somewhat designed after the Valhallander that Team Ragnarok used in the anime. Except that the seat was even more comfortable, basically an armchair, and she drove the thing with her magic.

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Third match was Indigo vs. Ula. Indigo’s D-wheel was basically Gusto Griffin, but the griffin’s paws held the wheels between them. 

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Ula on the other hand was just used a carbon copy of Crow’s Blackbird.

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Ula ended up winning, so she knocked out the last tournament’s champion.

Fourth match. Nir vs. the T.G. user. Nir won. The T.G. user had a black and gold bulky duel runner somewhat based on the T.G. Halberd Cannon.

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Nir on the other hand had likely the most unique D-wheel of the entire tournament, as his is a mechanical wolf that runs on four legs, no wheels needed. I almost didn’t allow him to use it, but I ran a few test laps with it and it honestly isn’t any better than any other D-wheel. It is actually worse and more difficult to use, but Nir preferred it so I allowed it.

Fifth match was Saffee vs Alvin. Saffee won.

Her duel runner is actually based on Clear Wind and Crystal Wing. Neither of them are allowed in the tournament, but you can see both in the Factory, so Saffee took inspiration from them. The clear crystal structure for most of her bike actually made it my favorite of all of the bikes.

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Alvin’s D-wheel was just the basic model, but his riding outfit resemble Colossal Fighter.

Sixth match. Shisu Tensei vs. the Vylon user.

Shisu’s D-wheel was based on Naturia Exterio, while the Vylon users was based on just the general Vylon esthetics. I think the closest might be Vylon Hept.

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The Vylon user lost, but I feel like that is at least partially because he was playing against a sage. He crashed in the third duel when he was under pressure, costing him the duel and the match. And in a situation where he really shouldn’t have.

I’m not saying Shisu wouldn’t have won, but I looked at the duel data and I know for a fact that if the Vylon guy had played his cards right, he could have made a comeback. 

Well, it wasn’t the easiest combo and not everyone can do well under pressure.

Seventh match. Ray Way vs. Scrap user. 

The Scrap user’s D-wheel had a general Scrap aesthetic, which was my least favorite of all of the D-wheels. I know you are using Scraps, but you don’t have to have a scrapped bike.

Ray’s bike took inspiration from Hyper Psychic Blaster, being primarily white with plenty of glowing light-blue highlights. 

And Ray won the match.

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And the last match, as you may have been able to figure out, was Legio vs. Ted Miller. 

Ted’s duel runner had a red color scheme, and had plenty of spikes pointing whichever way. It was another one I almost banned, but the Factory doesn’t have permadeath, so I let it through. I did warn Ted though, as any contact with a D-wheel like that could be dangerous.

Legio’s was a pretty basic model, but it had a red and black color scheme mimicking that of Red Nova Dragon.

And Legio won.

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But yeah. That was the first round of the tournament. Tomorrow will be the next four duels, then the semi-finals and finally the finals and the winner’s duel against me.

After I got out of the Factory, I began reading reports from the different guilds across the world. As I said, the tournament was live streamed, and I had a team of monsters already editing the matches into individual videos, as well as a compilation video of the first round. 

It is honestly great that they can do that for me, so that I don’t have to waste the time.

The reports that I had gotten from the guilds were decent, though some of them didn’t like the downtime the show had. 

Yeah, admittedly I hadn’t come up any ‘halftime’ shows, but I quickly sent a message to the Factory and asked my monsters to come up with a few things for tomorrow, as there will likely be even more downtime. And we can also live edit duels into highlight clips that will be shown as well. I just didn’t think about that when I came up with the program.

Actually, we have all the qualifiers also recorded, so we can just show some of the qualifier duels during the downtime. And maybe something like the best, aka. the worst, crashes in the qualifiers.

There had also been some fights, mainly because of bets placed for or against some of the competitors. And when there are bets, there are winners and losers. 

Luckily no high ranking adventurer had started anything, and since some of them were also watching, they could quickly put an end to any unnecessary fights.

And even if there had been some damage, they aren’t technically my fault. I’m just offering a service. 

… oh. By the way, it might be worth mentioning that all of the finalists, except Nir and Janina, are currently on HomeBase, using HomeBase VR stations. Well Janina technically is on HomeBase with her scale copy, but she isn’t using a VR station. But she is Janina, she doesn’t need one.

I wasn’t about to risk another Myla situation in the finals, and bringing everyone over really isn’t a big deal.