Who Let Him Play Yu-Gi-Oh!

"It's true!"

At the seats in the school store, Syrus said excitedly.

"Last night, I got up groggily just wanting to go to the bathroom, but I accidentally walked to Professor Lyman's door…"

"Why would you end up at Professor Lyman's door if you just wanted to use the bathroom?" Chumley retorted. "Sy, can you be any more scatterbrained?"

"Shut up, the real point is coming up!"

Syrus lowered his voice, glanced around warily as if afraid of being overheard, and then continued mysteriously.

"When I got to the door, I saw it wasn't closed. Professor Lyman was sitting at his computer, communicating with someone." He spoke in a hushed tone, "I couldn't catch the details, but it sounded like something about 'ancient tombs,' and that it'd be a waste to just 'bury them.' There was also something about things that are still sleeping.

You have no idea, it sounded really scary."

"What nonsense are you talking about, did you just dream this up?" Jaden chuckled.

"Well, I was a bit groggy," Syrus scratched his head.

Kira was sitting at the same table, eating a golden egg bread from the shop and staying quiet—Jaden, as always, had skillfully drawn a golden egg bread, but he said he was sick of them from eating too many, so he gave it to Kira.

Hearing this, Kira was already calculating in his mind.

Looks like it's time for the extracurricular study.

This matches the plot from the original series. Professor Lyman would arrange an extracurricular activity to search for ruins on the island, but they'd end up triggering a mechanism and enter the Spirit World. There, they'd encounter the Gravekeeper spirits, and Jaden would have to duel.

But it wasn't a deadly shadow game—though the loser would suffer real pain during the duel, they wouldn't actually die.

Looking back, it was probably Professor Lyman's way of testing Judai's abilities—a specially arranged trial.

Now it seemed that the first semester was about to end, so it was just about time for this event.

Sure enough, during class that day, Professor Lyman announced the plan.

After a whole semester, Professor Lyman's alchemy class had driven off nearly all the students. Now, only about a dozen students still bothered to attend, leaving most of the classroom empty.

But Professor Lyman was a good guy—he never cared about absentees, just lectured to himself about things no one cared about, deliberately botched a few alchemy experiments, and muddled through the period.

The bell rang.

"What a great nap!"

Jaden, who had seemed to be sitting upright and listening seriously the whole time, stretched and opened his eyes.

Only then did Syrus realize that his big bro's eyes had been drawn on his eyelids with a pen—he'd been sleeping the whole time.

Syrus gasped, "So big bro was sleeping the whole time?"

"Well, that means it's time to eat," Jaden said cheerfully.

In his world, aside from card games, there was only eating and sleeping—how could he not be happy?

"Wait a moment, everyone, please take these with you," Professor Lyman took out a stack of papers.

"Eh?" Jaden wilted, "Is it homework?"

"No, it's the plan for this Sunday's extracurricular activity," Lyman replied. "There are many ruins hidden in this school, and Sunday's activity is to explore one of them.

Anyone interested can join."

The few students there looked at each other.

…

As expected, not many showed up in the end.

On one side was the Slifer Red trio led by Jaden; on the other, Kira, Alexis, and Misawa made up the research group.

"Say…" Syrus looked curiously at the other trio. "We're here because the Red Dorm head forced us. Why did you guys come?"

"Exploring ruins sounds interesting, doesn't it?" Kira smiled.

And besides, although the Gravekeeper deck isn't top tier, some of its cards are pretty good in the early game—some even show up in World Champion decks. And if you get them from the Spirit World, you might even get spirit versions, so how could I miss this?

More importantly, the key card isn't even a Gravekeeper monster, but their signature Field Spell:

Necrovalley.

As long as this card is on the field, all effects that would affect the graveyard—spells, traps, monster effects—are negated. Also, neither player can banish cards from the graveyard.

Just from that description, you can tell how nasty this card is. Even in modern Yu-Gi-Oh!, it completely shuts down graveyard-focused decks on its own.

"Ruins do sound pretty cool," Chumley chimed in. "They're near the volcano, usually off-limits. Without a teacher, we'd never get in."

Alexis added, "I've heard rumors that the ruins might be tied to Shadow Games, so I wanted to see for myself."

Because of her missing brother, Alexis was sensitive to anything related to Shadow Games or missing students. She was always present at such incidents.

"Alright, everyone's here," Professor Lyman said enthusiastically. "Let's go!"

The group packed up and set off for the mountain ruins.

"According to the information, this ruin is an ancient tomb," Lyman explained as they walked. "There are rumors it's a forbidden tomb—but that's just a rumor, ahaha."

Hearing this, Alexis paid more attention.

A forbidden tomb… It might be related to the missing students.

Maybe there'd be clues about her brother.

Alexis never let any clue slip by, though so far, she'd always come up empty. But perhaps perseverance pays off—Kira actually knew there really was a clue about her brother this time.

In the anime, according to the Gravekeeper spirits, only one person before Jaden's group had ever won their Shadow Duel ritual—Atticus Rhodes.

Atticus had won half of a dark relic in that duel; the Gravekeeper chief later gave the other half to Jaden.

In the later Sacred Beasts arc, when Jaden faced a Shadow Duel, the two pieces combined into a key artifact.

This was the only dark artifact Kira had a clear lead on, and the easiest way to get it. So, while to others this was just extracurricular study, Kira had a clear goal.

He remembered the plot well—just follow Professor Lyman's lead.

After trekking most of the day, the group finally reached their destination under Lyman's guidance.

The entrance to the ancient ruins lay near the volcano of Duel Academy. Supposedly, it housed the ancient Duel Arena tombs, and though old, it looked like a dueling field from the outside.

Perfect—they'd brought the students to the planned site.

Lyman squinted and chuckled inwardly.

Time for the next part of the plan: have his cat, Pharaoh, accidentally trigger the buried dark artifact and bring everyone to the Gravekeeper Spirit World.

But just as he was thinking this, a green light suddenly shot skyward, and the earth trembled!

The blue sky instantly dimmed, and the blazing sun split into three, transforming into three suns hanging above. Rainbow light radiated down, forming a giant net across the sky, enveloping the whole area.

The students were all shocked—even Lyman, the mastermind, was surprised.

What's going on?

This was his plan, but he hadn't even activated it yet!

Lyman turned blankly and saw Kira standing innocently at the side, hands open.

"Professor, did I just touch something I shouldn't have?"

Lyman: "..."

PS: 2 Bonus Chapter at 1000 PS