6 The usual story of store clerks being monsters。
At the card shop “Duelist,” there is another staff besides me.
Or rather, this shop that only has one day off per month simply can’t function with just one person.
Convenience stores and such can have the manager run the whole place alone, but I don’t think that would work here!
Getting back to the topic after that digression.
The other staff at my shop.
Her name is Eclraire.
Perhaps because it’s hard to say, she usually goes by Erea. She is—not human.
She has pale skin and silver hair.
Her slightly unruly hair is tied up and hangs down from her nape.
The hair tie is apparently one of her favorites.
She’s petite, around 150cm tall at most, like a small animal. But she insists her body is fairly developed for her size.
Well, she’s not wrong, but pointing that out would be sexual harassment, so I stay quiet.
She’s an adorably cute girl.
Her eyes always look sleepy and her expression is extremely unamicable.
But her surpassingly beautiful looks more than make up for it – she’s unmistakably a sublime beauty.
In truth, she is a monster.
In my past life, or within the flavor text of a story,
it was common for monsters to appear as characters.
In this world, such examples are rare but do exist.
Erea is one of those examples..
Well, she lives an ordinary life in this world now, though.
“By the way, Erea. I’ve put together some rental decks, so test them out for me.”
“Ehh, but I’m busy grinding in a social game right now.”
“Don’t say that while you’re at work.”
“You should tell me that when customers are here.”
Right now, in the customer-free early hours after opening Duelist, Erea and I are just killing time.
It’s a weekday, pouring rain outside.
Of course there are no customers coming around this time on a day like today.
It’s just me and Erea in the store, which is deserted and the birds are singing.
To kill her boredom, I’ve called out Erea from the back room where she was grinding her social game, to test out the rental decks I’ve just built.
Despite complaining, she readily agrees to duel when asked – seems she was bored too, after all.
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Basically, she’s lazy but can’t stand being alone.
“But anyway, do rental decks even make sense? I’ve never seen anyone borrow them, even though you’ve made all these for no reason.”
“People do borrow them actually. Daia and other skilled players only use the rental decks.”
“Well, I guess for him…he wouldn’t be able to duel other customers otherwise.”
Aside from Daia, the strong players who come to this shop in secret mostly borrow rental decks for their duels.
But normally, rental decks aren’t really needed.
That’s because of the compatibility between duelists and their cards – using a rental deck is much harder compared to using one’s own deck.
Conversely, it provides a nice handicap, and experiencing decks besides one’s own is good practice, so skilled players tend to like them.
And for some reason, some of the shady characters that occasionally show up want to duel me using the rental decks.
When asked, I entertain those requests, but I wonder what the demand is?
Do they see me as some sort of secret boss who only uses meta decks?
“I simply make them because I want to. There are so many cards in this world. Just building the decks is work enough.”
“Well, even our prized storage doesn’t have any duplicates.”
In my previous life, I was the type to build all sorts of decks.
I didn’t have a ton since I’d constantly take them apart and rebuild,
but I usually had around 10 decks prepared.
But it’s not so easy in this world.
There are so incredibly many card varieties that just collecting one category is an enormous task.
Our storage may have cards numbering in the tens of thousands, but they could all be different kinds.
So even just putting together rental decks, gathering the necessary cards takes a long time.
“But you could build them faster using mint condition cards, right?”
“Those mint cards are product stock, I can’t just use them for a hobby.”
The rental decks are decks I build as a hobby.
So they’re made up solely of cards that have slight damage or wear.
This self-imposed rule is actually quite troublesome, since the cards in this world are incredibly sturdy and resistant to damage.
They can be thrown around and shoot from Ignition boards like guns, after all.
Anyway, we place the decks on the table fields set up on the counters, readying for our duel.
“Also, I can’t hold back, you know? Are you sure you want me as the tester?”
“It’ll be fine, let’s just go for it.”
“Okay then.”
She can’t hold back.
That’s because
she’s a monster.
Well, of course – her own monster card is included in her deck.
In terms of compatibility between duelists and cards, there’s no one better suited than another monster.
As a result, Erea can’t hold back her strength.
Moreover –
“- Ignition.”
The instant she utters those words, Erea’s demeanor shifts drastically.
Her previous sleepy small animal look is nowhere to be seen – instead, the form of a warrior stands before me.
Erea, Eclraire.
Her homeland is another world where monsters live and fight Ignition Duels.
This “other world,” though called such, is actually connected to multiple worlds including the one I currently live in.
These other worlds come in various forms, but they share one commonality:
Ignition Duels take place in all of them.
Fantasy worlds, sci-fi worlds in space, and especially the worlds where monsters dwell –
Ignition Duels happen everywhere.
There are some exceptions –
the so-called “flavor text worlds.”
Worlds where the monster cards play out their stories.
In those worlds, sometimes the monsters directly battle each other.
But even monsters from those story worlds usually end up possessing cards and participating in Ignition Duels once they connect to this world.
The rule is that my previous world – one without Ignition Duels – cannot connect to those other worlds.
Erea’s homeland is a brutal world where Ignition Duel strength is everything.
A world where losers must sacrifice everything to the winners.
When her parents lost a duel there, the infant Eclreaire was sold off to the strongest nation, the “Empire,” to be raised as a soldier.
Her rank, however, was merely a common infantry soldier.
Nothing special, on the weak side.
As a result, Eclreaire was chosen to be a scout – with the goal of spying on our world before an invasion.
–And by chance, right after arriving in this world, she happened to duel and lose to me, stripping her of her scout status.
In her world where the defeated have no value, of course she would lose her position after a loss. That’s only natural by their rules.
The problem was, what would become of Eclreaire herself.
Normally, her ownership rights would transfer to her victor.
But this is another world, and I, her winner, have no need to claim ownership over her.
So Eclreaire ended up living in this world as an ordinary person.
There are systems in place for dealing with monsters who become residents here.
For some reason I’ve been registered as her legal guardian, but…
I wish she could have gone to a proper facility instead.
After that, one other person did come from the Empire to this world once before.
Well, I defeated him in a duel too, and he returned to their world, so it’s not a problem.
Apparently the Empire has given up on invading since then.
They must have gotten intimidated by the duelists of this world.
I ended up averting another major incident, it seems.
What I should reflect on, though, is that I got pissed at them underestimating this world’s duelists and, right in front of Erea,
I used my forbidden Killer Ignition technique that I hate unveiling in public.
Well, whatever, no point dwelling on it now.
“…Imperial Vanguard Eclreaire, effect…”
“Ah crap, God-Declaration instead.”
This is just a test for the rental decks right now.
Though it seems the generic card I included happened to be Erea’s key card, beating me before the rental’s gimmick could kick in.
Erea’s expression shifts back from the warrior’s gaze to her usual sleepy look.
“Um, your generic card was too strong, so I lost before the rental deck’s strategy could even start!?”
“I didn’t have anything else to put in it…!”
And so on and so forth.
Erea is definitely more like herself in this lazy mode.
That’s how we spent that rainy weekday afternoon.
TIPS: While monsters coming to this world is rare, the fact that it occurs is common knowledge.
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