13 Whoa don’t suddenly start a duel for the ages!
One day, the current Japanese champion Tōma Aida…Daia came into my card shop “Duelist” acting more suspicious than usual.
With a sunglasses and knit cap suspicious style, he was a huge guy over 190cm tall.
Looking around restlessly, he seemed to be on guard about something, acting way more suspicious than usual.
What’s up, did he come to sell some high value cards or something? But if so, Daia would have come in with a straight face as usual.
No matter how I look at it, that’s Daia when he’s about to say something stupid.
Daia basically has a very serious personality.
However, while he acts cool on the surface, he’s actually a hot-blooded guy who gets fired up easily, and on top of that he’s an airhead.
So yeah, when he’s acting like this, even if he thinks he’s being serious, he’s really just having stupid…straightforward thoughts because he’s an airhead.
“Welcome, Daia.”
“Manager, I’ll get straight to the point…”
Saying that, Daia approaches me and immediately asks:
“Is it true that you made a rental deck with [Banishion]?”
“…It’s true, but?”
It’s the one I tested with Erea the other day.
In the end, after that I found some good cards so [God – Declaration] got cut from the deck.
If I used it, it might become a one card deck for me…
“Lend it to me.”
“No way.”
I flatly refused him.
I turned it down without hesitation.
Well, I had no choice but to refuse.
“[Banishion] is the deck you used to use back then, right? If I let you freeroll with that, kids would cry and run away.”
“…! Manager, I was never a pro player who used the [Banishion] deck in the past.”
“Oh, I see.”
The “Banishion” deck. A deck centered around the [Banishion] monster cards that Daia…Tōma Aida used in his student days.
Along with changes in his mindset, he now uses a deck centered on the [Granshion] monster cards, but for Daia it’s surely a very familiar and deep-rooted deck.
In other words, the cards have insane synergy for him.
If one of Japan’s strongest pros used a deck they could bring pretty much 90% of their full power with at some rural city card shop,
it would be a hellish sight.
Also, Daia thinks his true identity hasn’t been revealed, so he denies it very seriously.
But that part doesn’t really matter, so let’s move the conversation along for now.
“Well, we have promising young fighters here like Necca Boy, Crow Boy, and even Yato chan. But there are also just normal people too. Do you want to crush the hearts of those kinds of people, Daia?”
“Of course not! But…yes, I was acting rashly after hearing this from Ren. My apologies.”
So the source was Ren huh…that guy is pretty free-spirited too.
Ren’s not actually the top strongest agent of a Dark Card Agency or anything.
…Between Daia and Ren, is it just weirdos in the positions of super strong fighters in stories?
And for some reason, Erea is glaring this way. What’s up with that?
“Manageeer, if that’s the case, there’s a perfect opponent for a fight right here.”
“Woah, what’s up Erea?”
Glaring, Erea interjects.
She raises both hands in a threatening pose.
Next to her, Yato chan who was rummaging through storage tilts her head but also raises her hands in response.
What’s going on?
“I think the Manager would be a perfect opponent in terms of strength.”
“…!!”
In that moment, Daia’s face changes into a completely serious one.
Well, he probably thought he was being serious before too.
But the atmosphere is totally different, you could say it changed completely.
“–Let’s do it, Mitsuru.”
“Oh, you dropped the ‘manager’ so you’re seriously serious huh, Daia.”
By the way, the name Daia is one I’ve called him at the shop since middle school, so I’ll keep calling him Daia as usual.
Well, if that’s how it is then I can’t refuse.
And with me and Daia fired up, the customers start getting riled up too.
As expected of the Japanese champion, the chance to see a serious fight live must be highly in demand.
“Do you want to use the field? How long is the wait?”
“Luckily today it’s only a 30 minute wait. The usage fee is the usual 500 yen.”
So then 30 minutes later, me and Daia ended up having a fight using the Ignition Field.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a field fight like this huh.”
“Not since the first time Daia came to the shop.”
“That really fired things up back then, Mitsuru.”
“I’ll make this fight even more than that, Daia.”
We exchange words. As rivals, as best friends, light banter to stoke each other’s fighting spirit.
And as we draw our cards,
we speak those words:
“”Ignition!””
And ignited our fighting spirits.
Hence ignition, to set something on fire.
It really has that feel of a card game, personally I love that rallying cry.
With that cry, the fight between decade-long best friends became an incredibly intense one.
The [Banishion] deck focuses on bringing out the card called [Paradise of Ignition Banishion] and battles while protecting it.
[Paradise of Ignition Banishion] is an extremely powerful card, but it has the straightforward weakness of falling into a pinch if destroyed.
As mentioned before, despite his cool outward appearance, Daia harbors a burning passion in his heart.
That calmness builds an unwavering paradise for the people, and that passion becomes the flames to protect that paradise.
Thus, the burning paradise Burning-Elysion is the essence of [Banishion].
“It’s fun pitting our full strengths against each other like this, Mitsuru!”
“I’m a bit worried if I can even keep up with your strength that has been so thoroughly honed, Daia!”
Maybe there’s also the meaning of polished vanishing in there somewhere.
In any case, it’s a deck perfectly suited to the person Daia is.
Daia has always continued moving forward.
When he saved the world in middle school, when he became a pro at the youngest age, at the major tournament we fought in,
and above all when he became the Japanese champion.
He polished himself, ignited his passion, and built the paradise that is Daia.
Sometimes I feel a sense of admiration toward that way of being.
Can I continue burning with passion like Daia does?
Am I just feeling satisfied with my current life and stopping in my tracks?
Yeah, I have those thoughts sometimes.
But–
“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Mitsuru. I only made it this far because you were the one pushing me from behind.”
“You’re saying I have to take responsibility for pushing you? Don’t be so hard on me.”
“It’s always been that way between us!”
Back when Daia was fighting to save the world,
there was apparently a time he felt scared of fighting.
At that time, I received his consultation without knowing the circumstances and ended up pushing him from behind.
I didn’t know the circumstances, so I carelessly, but also purely from the heart, pushed him forward.
Keeping that feeling in his heart, Daia continues fighting to this day.
So if that’s the case, isn’t it a lie not to respond to that?
“Then…I guess I have to live up to that responsibility!”
“Yeah, let’s go Mitsuru! To make this the greatest fight–!”
And so we light the fire in our hearts once more today, continuing to fight in order to keep moving forward.
The outcome was–
After our fight ended, the shop fell into silence.
Everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch the fight intently, and then applause gradually started from someone.
It’s been a long time since I felt this sensation.
A fight where we gave everything, like that battle back in college days.
Neither me nor Daia have any regrets about the result.
We wordlessly approach each other and end up shaking hands somehow.
I have a smile, while Daia glares at me competitively but also looks like he enjoyed it.
And with that, our fight has reached its conclusion here.
–However.
Some days later.
“…Erea, doesn’t it seem like there are way more customers than usual?”
“Well yeah, the fight between you and Daia went super viral online.”
Dealing with the crowds of customers pouring in with Erea’s help.
Apparently the video of that fight that Erea recorded got posted online later
Of course, it was with my and Daia’s consent, right?
As a result, it seems to have spread at an insane rate and has now been viewed hundreds of millions of times online.
Unbelievable.
Thanks to that, the shop has been super crowded even on weekday afternoons recently.
We had to borrow a nearby plaza because we didn’t have enough fight space, setting up a temporary free duel area over there and everything.
Man, the internet is scary these days.
Thinking that, I once again took to fights as a card shop manager to deal with the huge influx of customers.
“Now that I think about it, after seeing Daia and Ren before, you said top-class fighters only seem to be weirdos.”
“How did you know that?”
Ignoring my question, Erea continues:
“…Well if you’re saying top fighters are only weirdos, then you’re a weirdo too Manager?”
–Eh!?
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT GADGETIZEDPANDA.COM
TIPS: By the way, fight videos going super viral is something that happens globally quite often, so the booming business will die down again after a little while.
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