Who Let Him Play Yu-Gi-Oh!? [1] & Synopsis

“Yūgen-san, a lot of people believe the dueling scene has gotten more and more… degenerate lately—trap-heavy lockdown metas everywhere—and they say it’s all because you, the new generation’s King of Games, who led everyone astray. What do you think of that?” A reporter asked during an interview.

“Slander! That’s all just pure slander!”

Yūgen Fujiki was furious at the accusation.

“Why the hell is that on me?”

“Dueling’s always been like this!”

——————————————————————————————————————

Yūgen slowly opened his eyes and stared blankly at the unfamiliar surroundings.

A room he’d never seen before, yet it carried a strange sense of familiarity. Sunlight fell in dappled patches through the window lattice onto the soft floor, glittering like stardust. Even the air seemed to turn light and translucent in the warmth.

His head throbbed with a dull ache. Strange images and unfamiliar fragments flickered through his mind. Some instinct deep inside warned him what this abnormal situation meant…

He’d been transmigrated!

Yūgen looked around, and his gaze quickly locked onto the computer on the desk.

It was already on, showing a search engine homepage—except it wasn’t any search engine he recognized.

Above the search bar, the big bold text clearly read: “KAIBA SEARCH.”

Even stranger were the trending headlines underneath.

[Tokyo University Research Team Discovers New Form of ‘Summoned Skull’]
[Fiend Decks May Be Getting a Major Buff!]

Yūgen: “?”

Curious, he clicked it. The article claimed the team, after working day and night, had developed new potential for the famous Fiend-Type monster “Summoned Skull,” and had published their paper in a top international, authoritative Duel Monsters journal.

A spokesperson said they’d already spoken with Industrial Illusions CEO, Crawford J. Pegasus, and that Industrial Illusions was assisting them in developing new cards.

If he still couldn’t tell what world he’d ended up in after that, then all those years of playing cards would’ve been for nothing.

This was the world of Yu-Gi-Oh—a world where cards ruled, where the foundation and laws of the entire world were built on dueling.

And there was an even more outrageous one under the trending list.

[International Conflict in the Middle East De-escalates; Two National Leaders Decide to Settle Negotiations Through a Duel]

Yūgen: “…”

Just reading the headline, he could practically see it. Two armies facing off across a smoke-filled battlefield, soldiers armed to the teeth, rifles and cannons trained on the other side.

Then the commanders step out, each one flashing the Duel Disk on their arm and their Deck in hand, deciding to settle a territorial dispute with one tense, thrilling game of Yu-Gi-Oh.

It was so absurd it was almost beautiful.

But that was how this world worked.

Duel Monsters was the only path here to reaching the extraordinary—to grasping divine power that transcended time and space, rewriting reality itself.

As the haze lifted from his mind, new memories slowly slotted into place. Yūgen quickly sorted out his identity in this world.

Yūgen Fujiki, Male, currently… a Duel Dojo apprentice?

They called it a “dojo,” but it felt more like a paid training course for working adults. Unlike proper Duel Academies, Duel Dojos were basically private cram schools: pay the fee, and you’re in.

In the Yu-Gi-Oh world, dueling obviously didn’t count as slacking off. If anything, if you could actually get good at it, your future would be bright.

Duel Monsters had developed to the point where nearly every industry was tightly intertwined with cards. These days, even running a business meant having a dedicated corporate dueling representative—someone whose job was to handle any business matter that needed to be settled by a duel. And Domino City, the so-called “Battle City,” was rumored to have reached the point—under KaibaCorp’s management—where you couldn’t even register residency without registering a Deck.

That didn’t mean the road was easy, though. The previous Yūgen had been working and studying, earning tuition with part-time jobs while training at the dojo, pushing toward the path of a real duelist—but whether it was him or the people around him, everyone knew his odds were slim.

Because he was bad.

It was true that duelists had limitless potential, but the field was brutally competitive. Unlike his previous life, this world openly acknowledged that dueling was a profession that depended heavily on talent. Not everyone had what it took to become a master.

Setting everything else aside—if you couldn’t even draw the cards you wanted to draw, what kind of duelist were you supposed to be?

Yūgen thought about it and decided the path the previous him had clung to, no matter how hard it was, wasn’t wrong.

In this world, whether you wanted to pursue the extraordinary or make something of yourself in the city, Duel Monsters was the go-to route.

And if he was going to walk that route, his biggest advantage was everything he’d built up over years as a hardcore card nerd in his previous life.

With that in mind, Yūgen immediately sat down at the computer and started searching.

First, he had to confirm what era and what setting he’d landed in. Yu-Gi-Oh had multiple series, and the later you got, the closer the anime came to real-world card environments. The further along the timeline, the smaller a transmigrator’s advantage became.

After a quick search, he got what he needed.

This was the classic, original dimension—the place where the dream began—the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.

The current point in time should be after DM ended, and either before GX started or early in its story. With that, Yūgen had a rough idea of the current card environment.

Now, time to look at the previous Yūgen’s Deck.

Yūgen: (─_─)

No, seriously—this deck? Are you for real?

Spread out, it was a bloated sixty-card monstrosity… No, calling it a “Deck” was generous. This was a pile.

For starters, the monster lineup was a whole bunch of Normal Monsters with no effects at all—stuff card players usually like to describe with a word President Kaiba loves to throw around: vanilla trash.

And the build was basically “every man for himself,” a total hodgepodge. There was almost no synergy between any two cards. Any opening hand of six would be six cards doing their own thing. Yūgen genuinely couldn’t imagine how this pile was supposed to have any fighting power.

But after another look, he sort of got what the previous Yūgen’s deckbuilding philosophy had been.

It wasn’t useful… but It was expensive.

It was basically like those two episodes in GX where Manjōme’s two rich older brothers show up—loaded as hell, absolute beginners at dueling, but devoted to the belief that money was everything and expensive meant best.

So they threw cash around like it was free, built a pay-to-win Deck out of the most expensive rare cards they could buy, and challenged Manjōme… only to get completely wrecked by a slapdash Deck Manjōme cobbled together from junk cards he found in an old dried-up well behind the school.

Clearly, the previous Yūgen had made the same mistake as those two tycoons. A lot of the cards in this Deck were probably ones he’d ground out by working himself to the bone—and after seeing those ridiculous market prices, Yūgen had reason to suspect the only reason he’d transmigrated was because the previous guy had no-lifed so hard he dropped dead.

And yet, holding these “ultra-rare” cards that meant nothing to him, Yūgen couldn’t help feeling like the previous Yūgen had gotten a raw deal.

Sure, in the world of dueling, a lot of powerful cards really were expensive—but expensive didn’t necessarily mean good. A lot of cards were pricey in this world for one simple reason: “rare.” Some were made from excavated antiques, others crafted from diamonds and gemstones.

And some were expensive just because the monster looked amazing when summoned, had a huge fanbase, and low production numbers—especially certain “holy goddess” fairy types blessed with generous curves and dressed in something that barely counted as clothing.

So after flipping through the whole Deck, Yūgen figured only a handful of pricey Trap Cards were even remotely useful.

Looks like the starter Deck needed to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

Thinking that, Yūgen went back online and pulled up match footage from today’s mainstream pro duelists, getting a general sense for the current meta and how people approached the game.

As expected—just like in the anime—duelists of this era were mostly still chasing straightforward power. Their whole plan was to slam down a high-ATK, flashy ace monster and win through sheer dominance on the field.

After watching a few clips in a row, Yūgen couldn’t help but sigh.

What an innocent world.

In any case, it seemed most duelists right now shared the same problem…

They were way too “bright.”

There were eight measures of degeneracy in the world; the former King of Games, Yūgi Mutō, alone took a full ten. The rest of the world still owed him two…

But now that Yūgi Mutō had sealed away his cards and stepped off the stage, the world’s duelists all took Seto Kaiba—the legendary duelist who never stopped talking about ‘Crush it! Shatter it!’—as their role model, and the entire environment was suddenly filled with bright, wholesome energy.

So Yūgen made his decision.

He was going to bring a tiny little taste of darkness to this overwhelmingly “fair” dueling scene.

—

T/N: WOOOOOOOO i’ve been on a yugioh craze lately playing master duels im almost platinum! with DM!! uhhh i know there’s already a translation of this so this isn’t really to get views but just so I can read it, I don’t read webnovels or other translations except mine I’m sure the other translation is good you can check it out it has like 600 chapters already lmao

anyway if you’re weirded out by Kaiba Seto, since we I will be using their japanese names, it’s last name first! then first name ACTUALLY while typing this out i kept reading kaiba seto and i got pissed off, so we aren’t doing the rule of surname first now 😀 still japanese first though

This is a fan translation of 谁让他玩游戏王的！by 名称被占用 Rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!