Is this the world of card dealers? Yada thieves!

There was no response from Lin Zhong.

"Hayato-kun, could it be..." Bakura, who was afraid of ghosts, instinctively hid behind Hayato, even though he was using the most sinister card.

"It's probably a small animal like a rabbit or a squirrel, Mr. Hayato." The man in black stopped walking as he saw Hayato's interest in the bushes.

Seeing that there was no movement in the forest for a long time, Hayato thought for a moment, then turned to the man in black and said, "It's probably just some small animal, but I'm still quite interested in it. Why don't you go ahead and do your work? I know the way to the castle."

The man in black didn't stand on ceremony. After all, Pegasus's castle was built so high that it could be seen from almost anywhere on the island, and not everyone would get lost like Jaden. Since Hayato didn't need him to guide him, he was happy to relax; he still had work to do.

Watching the man in black gradually disappear into the distance until he vanished from sight, Hayato glanced at the bushes beside him and said, "Come out, he's gone."

No response.

"If you don't come out soon, I'll call him back."

The only sounds in the forest were Hayato and Bakura's breathing and the sound of the wind rustling the leaves.

Hayato raised an eyebrow: "You forced me to use my ultimate move."

Turning around, he opened his mouth and started yelling, "Seto Kaiba lost to Yugi, he's such a loser! Three Blue Eyes and he still lost, what a coward!"

"You're the loser! Yugi just got lucky!" A child suddenly sprang out of the bushes, his clothes torn and snagged with leaves and twigs. The kid, not much shorter than Yugi, glared defiantly at Hayato, who had stopped yelling. "My brother isn't a loser!"

"I didn't say that, you did." Seeing the guy hiding in the woods finally show up, Hayato squatted down slightly and leaned down to look the child in the eye. "You've finally come out. It's been a while, Gomamon."

"My name is Keihei! Kaiba Keihei! What kind of name is that that sounds like a puppy!" The disheveled brat, Kaiba Keihei, protested to Hayato about his name. "Besides, who hasn't seen you in a long time? We've only met once!"

"Hey, practice makes perfect, right? The last time we met was when Kaiba was dueling with Yugi, right? This is the second time, so we can practically call ourselves acquaintances, Gon?"

"It's Guiping!"

"Okay, Takuya."

"The name is even stranger now."

After teasing Keihei for a while in ways that would drive Kōji crazy, Hayato stood up and said seriously, "Alright, alright, stop fooling around. Let's get down to business."

Ignoring Keipai's "Isn't this just you messing around, you bastard?" look, Hayato looked at Keipai and said, "I see you don't have duelist gloves on your hands, which means you probably weren't invited by Pegasus to participate in the competition, Keipai-san?"

"Let me guess, were you sent to the Duel Kingdom as a representative of the Kaiba Corporation without Seth, intending to cooperate with Pegasus?" Hayato paused. "Then you discovered that your subordinates, because Seth wasn't there, saw an opportunity to usurp power and planned to sell you out, so you escaped from Pegasus?"

"Tch, you actually guessed everything right." Guiping said angrily, "In the end, it's all Yugi Muto's fault. If he hadn't defeated my brother, he wouldn't have been so depressed, wouldn't have been so uninterested in handling company affairs, and wouldn't have even disappeared."

Hayato looked at the dejected Keihei, who looked so fragile and in need of protection. Although he was about the same height as Yugi, he was still just a child and had lost his older brother whom he had always relied on.

"While I sympathize with you, I don't think the game did anything wrong." Ignoring Keihei's suddenly fierce gaze, Hayato shrugged indifferently. "That Seth guy won't face his mistakes until he's defeated. The game actually woke him up."

"Besides, as his brother, you know better than anyone how competitive Seth is, right? If Yugi were to hold back in his duel with Seth, I think that would be the greatest insult to him."

"The cliff-jumping incident doesn't count," Hayato silently added to himself.

As dusk fell, nearly ten hours had passed since the opening of Duel Kingdom. It was now 7 p.m., and even though the Duel Kingdom island was located quite far to the west, the sun was gradually sinking below the horizon.

"Alright, don't think about it too much. I believe Pegasus's people will keep hunting you down in order to get the Kaiba Group. Otherwise, you can stay with us for the time being." Hayato extended his hand to Keihei. "Nice to meet you, Naruto."

"I am Guiping!"

Keihei excitedly slapped Hayato's outstretched hand. Seeing Hayato wince and shake his hand in pain, Keihei couldn't help but smile smugly: "Since you've made such a request, then Mr. Keihei, I'll stay by your side for the time being."

"Rambo, you're really hard to deal with."

"It's Guiping! Guiping, Guiping, Guiping!"

"Oh, would you like a lollipop? I have extras here, blueberry, orange and strawberry flavors."

"Don't think you can get away with this! I want chocolate."

Chapter 92 This Guiping is just lame.

Late that night, Hayato and his group found a nice campsite. After winning the complete set of equipment from a duelist who had already set up his tent by betting three star tokens, Hayato comfortably lay down inside.

Bakura was starting a fire, while Keihei looked at the tent with a look of disgust: "How can anyone sleep in a place like this at night? There are so many mosquitoes and it's so noisy. Even the room that Pegasus used to lock me up for watching is much better than this."

“But this is the only place you can choose from, unless you want to go back to the cage Pegasus prepared for you.” Hayato lay in the fairly spacious tent, looked at Keipi standing in front of it, and smiled. “So don’t be too picky, young master. At least your conditions are better than that guy I won over, right?”

Judging from his attire, the original owner of this tent seemed to be a rich kid. The tent was quite high-end, but he wasn't rich enough to bring people to the island like Uncle Anasis. Initially, Hayato and his friends were just passing by and noticed his tent was quite large, so they thought they could ask someone to stay the night. Of course, they didn't freeload; Hayato paid with one star token.

However, the rich kid wasn't as kind as Brother Jie, willing to help Hayato and his two companions. Instead, he saw Hayato's stack of star chips as a big fish and insisted on dueling Hayato using his own tent. The result was obvious: Hayato seized the initiative, summoning [VW-Catapult Tiger] in the first round, and in the second round, he directly transformed into [XYZ-Dragon Cannon], instantly killing the rich kid.

Although the duelists who make it to the island have undergone several rounds of selection, that doesn't mean they are all powerful duelists. Duelists like Yu Moth, Mai Peacock, and even Uncle Anasis are ultimately only a minority.

Although still somewhat reluctant, Guiping eventually crawled into the tent and sat down next to Hayato. Seeing Hayato's relaxed demeanor, Guiping thought for a moment and asked, "I saw you talking to him at Pegasus's castle. You must be on good terms with him, right?"

"You probably want to ask why I didn't report you to that man in black during the day, right? Pegasus is a genius game designer, and I happen to have a lot of ideas about this game as well, so we got along well within the scope of this game, but that's all."

Hayato sat up, seemingly nonchalantly removing his duelist's gloves from his wrist and shaking them: "That guy and I are not friends." At least for now, Pegasus, whose mind had been clouded by the power of the Millennium Eye and who had committed many unforgivable acts, was not considered a friend by Hayato.

"Alright, alright, we'll be hunting on the island all day tomorrow, let's get some rest." Taking off the metal box he used to store his card deck from his waist to avoid it digging into his back while sleeping, Hayato moved to a corner of the tent and lay down with his back to Kei. Bakura, having finished building the fire outside, also crawled into the tent and sat there watching the fire burn.

Autumn has arrived, and since Hayato and his friends' campsite is relatively close to the sea, if they don't have any means of keeping warm and are exposed to the sea breeze all night, they're guaranteed to catch a cold the next day.

After a while, Bakura also lay down, leaving only Keihei staring at the fire. The firelight danced in his eyes. Turning his head, he glanced at the dueling gloves and card deck that Hayato had put down.

———Seahorse-kun who flew to the island in a helicopter———

The next morning.

Hayato was still in a comfortable, baby-like sleep. In his dream, he had created a 6-material Lancer King on the field, opened the Demon Bell Cave, and even used Divine Prophecy to counter the opponent's stacking delay. But just as he was about to launch a direct attack on his opponent in this beautiful dream, he was shaken awake.

"Hayato-kun! Something's wrong! Wake up, Hayato-kun!"

As soon as Hayato opened his eyes, he saw Bakura looking like he was about to cry. Seeing Hayato open his eyes, Bakura hurriedly said, "Something terrible has happened, Hayato-kun! Keihei is missing, and so are your card deck and Duel Gloves!"

Upon hearing this, Hayato looked around. Sure enough, his dueling gloves and the metal box containing his card deck, which he had taken off yesterday, were gone. Seeing this, Hayato couldn't help but sigh, "So he did it after all, that brat Keipai."

Seeing Bakura's remorseful expression, Hayato quickly comforted him, "Alright, alright, don't cry. Actually, I was prepared for this." Reaching into his waistband, Hayato pulled out a metal box containing a card deck and ten star chips, much to Bakura's surprise.

Faced with Bakura's puzzled and confused gaze, Hayato simply smiled, offering no explanation, and merely said, "Everything is within the plan."

On the other side, Keihei, his face covered by a mask, stood on the dueling platform, wearing ill-fitting, loose-fitting dueling gloves. Several star-shaped chips were embedded in the gloves.

On the opposite side of Guiping, the "Dark Game" Yogi, whose temperament was completely different from the usual Yugi, also stood on the rising duel platform, placing his deck on the field: "Although I don't know who you are, stealing other people's cards and star chips is unforgivable."

"Shut up! It's all your fault! If it weren't for you, my brother... Anyway, let's duel!"

Guiping didn't seem to want to reveal his identity, and stopped himself just in time when he almost let it slip. Although Yugi looked at him with some suspicion, he didn't say anything more when he saw that Guiping had already shouted "Duel!" He just drew a card from his hand.

As Guiping drew cards, he thought to himself, 'That guy Pegasus actually contacted the Five Elders and put the Kaiba Group on the gambling table. If you lose to Pegasus, the Kaiba Group will fall into his hands, and I absolutely will not allow that.'

"So, let me use Hayato's deck to crush you. As long as you don't qualify for Duel Kingdom, Pegasus's bet won't stand!"

Keipai's plan was quite good—the bet between the Five Elders and Pegasus was to "defeat Yugi Muto, who defeated Kaiba, in the official match." So, as long as Yugi didn't enter the official match and had already lost his chance to leave Duel Kingdom Island beforehand, the bet would be invalid.

Keipai's solution was to use a deck strong enough to defeat Hayato, the Japanese national champion, and wager all of the game's star chips to eliminate him. In Keipai's mind, a game deck without the invincible Exodia was utterly insignificant.

Thinking this, Guiping looked down at the five cards he had drawn, and then froze—

Among the five cards in his hand, Hayato's "ace monsters"—the three brothers of [Disruption]—were all gathered, and the other two cards were both [Death Stalker], which Hayato used most often.

From another angle unseen by Guiping, the three brothers of [Disruption] had already climbed onto his head and were dancing merrily on his headscarf:

"The invincible disruptive brothers!" "The strongest trump card given by Annie!" "It's the three of us!"

Chapter 93 Seahorse: The Blue-Eyes White Dragon has great attack power.

Let's shift our focus away from Keibai, who's dealing with so many weak monsters that he doesn't know which one to summon, and return to Hayato's side.

Climbing out of the tent, Hayato and Bakura stretched comfortably in the early morning light, and once again embarked on their hunt.

Hayato had actually anticipated that Keipai would steal his deck and Duel Gloves. After all, in the original timeline, this was how Keipai met Yugi and the others. The only difference was that the person who was stolen from was a stranger that Yugi and the others didn't know.

That's why Hayato was careful last night. He only embedded one star chip in his duel glove and hid the rest. The deck in the metal box contained only N-rank cards that he had discarded, except for the three brothers of the [Disruption] card set.

As expected, Guiping will probably still go after that guy Yugi and try to eliminate him from the game, right? Hopefully, he'll have some fun using that deck of ordinary cards.

Looking at the ten star-shaped chips in his hand, Hayato carefully inserted them into his glove. Keipai had stolen his original ten-slot glove; the larger, twenty-slot glove was still in Hayato's possession.

"What a pleasant morning. Waking up without the noise of the 'Disruption' monsters is like wearing a perfectly fitting new pair of underwear to welcome the first day of the new year." With a piece of candy in his mouth, Hayato checked his deck. "I wonder what kind of duelists I'll encounter today?"

Just as Hayato finished speaking, a familiar voice suddenly came from behind him: "Your name is Kobayashi Hayato, right? And the other one is Bakura?"

The voice was so distinctive that even without turning around, Hayato could recognize who was speaking. But what was this guy doing here? Turning around, Hayato greeted the man in the long trench coat carrying a briefcase, "Yo, isn't this Seth? It's been a while."

"Kaiba? He was invited to the island too?" Bakura asked, puzzled. He didn't remember seeing Kaiba on the ship. If he had come by ship, he should have been the focus of attention among all the duelists on board.

"Hmph, whether I participate in a tournament like Duel Kingdom isn't about whether Pegasus invites me or not, it's about whether I want to participate or not," Seto Kaiba said arrogantly. "But you, you're not even with Yugi?"

“Although Duel Kingdom invited a considerable number of duelists to participate, and you could see all sorts of decks, there were simply too many people. So Pegasus came up with this idea.” Hayato raised his dueling glove. “Collect star chips to qualify. That’s why Yugi and I parted ways.”

Seahorse, true to its name, immediately grasped the purpose of the Star Chips: "Is it about eliminating the weak and selecting the strong? But even if a weakling defeats a lot of small fry, it doesn't mean they have the right to compete with the dragon."

Even so, Kaiba secretly kept Pegasus's actions in mind, thinking that if he were to hold a large-scale dueling tournament someday, he could modify Pegasus's rules and apply them.

"Well, that's basically the rule. To enter Pegasus's castle, you need to collect ten star tokens." Hayato lowered his arm. "Whatever he wants from Pegasus. After all, every duelist who comes to the island has a desire to duel."

"Hmph, those are Pegasus's rules, why should I follow them?" Kaiba said expressionlessly, letting out a cold snort before heading towards the castle. Hayato's meaning was practically clear: Kaiba, don't even think about getting into the castle ahead of time. You'd better collect the star chips obediently.

The seahorse's answer was, "I won't listen."

"Tsk, what an annoying guy." Hayato watched as Kaiba ignored him and walked towards the castle. Although he knew that even if Kaiba didn't collect ten star chips, Pegasus would still let Kaiba in in order to get the Kaiba Corporation, Hayato was still annoyed by it.

"Hey, Seth, let's duel." Hayato called out to Kaiba. "If I didn't know, I might pretend I didn't know, but I can't stand it when you tell me you're going to use your privileges to take shortcuts."

"Hmph, a mere fourth-rate duelist dares to challenge me? You dare to defy me, who possesses the Blue-Eyes White Dragon?" Kaiba turned his head away with an unfriendly expression. The information revealed in his words made Hayato frown—the plot seems to have changed?

Hayato recalls that in the original storyline, Kaiba was attacked while researching a new Duel Disk. Although he escaped, his deck, which included three Blue-Eyes cards, fell into the hands of Pegasus, the attacker's backer. Pegasus then gave the deck to an impersonator who impersonated the "dead" Kaiba, who then kept it safe until it was finally returned to Kaiba.

But now, clearly from what Kaiba said, he hasn't even met the game yet, so is Blue Eye still in his hands?

After a moment's thought, Hayato remembered that, for some unknown reason, in the original story, Kaiba's briefcase was filled with all sorts of random cards, from [Great Moth] and [Heart Change] to [Red-Eyes Black Dragon]. But since he had time to carry those cards, it was really inappropriate that Kaiba didn't carry his own deck with him.

Judging from the current posture of the seahorse, it is clear that he has not lost his Blue Eye but has carried it with him.

"It's just Blue-Eyes, it's not like it hasn't been defeated before, has it? There are Duel Monsters stronger than Blue-Eyes, like Exodia, Exodia, and Exodia again." Hayato provocatively challenged Kaiba.

"You bastard! How dare you be so arrogant with such a lowly minion. I've decided, I'm going to use my invincible [Blue Eyes] to completely defeat you, so you'll never dare to touch a Duel Monster again!" Kaiba's temper was indeed easily ignited, especially after Hayato repeatedly brought up the time when he was brutally defeated by Yugi's God of War, Estelle.

An enraged Kaiba took his deck out of the box he was carrying, but just as he was about to throw the experimental Duel Disk he had just completed to Hayato, he found that Hayato was already standing in front of a Duel Platform that had risen from the ground not far away.

"I don't want to use those weird-looking duel disks. What if you cheat or cheat?" Hayato said, already standing on the elevator of the duel platform. "If we're going to use one, we'll use this one!"

"Hmph, you fourth-rate duelist, I, Seto Kaiba, would never do such a thing!" Kaiba said, standing opposite Hayato as they ascended in the elevator.

'That's hard to say,' Hayato thought to himself. Hayato would never admit that he didn't want to use Kaiba's experimental Duel Disk because he thought it would be tiring to play with.