Is this the world of card dealers? Yada thieves!

Whether before, during, or after the duel, Caesar Ryo always wore an expressionless face, revealing nothing of his inner thoughts. He walked up to the group, and Marufuji Sho, who was still holding the [Power Welding] card, suddenly felt the card in his hand getting hot, and he couldn't help but lower his head, not daring to look at Caesar.

“Brother—” Marufuji Sho managed to muster a little courage, but before he could even utter a sound, he heard Caesar say, “The existence of a teacher who does not have professional ethics is a disgrace to the academy. Now that we have defeated him, I think there is nothing more I can do, Principal Kobayashi.”

"Don't worry, Caesar, this guy is definitely not going to be a teacher at the school anymore. After all, I, the principal, clearly saw him gambling." Hayato pointed to himself with a thumbs up and said to Caesar with a smile, "But you, did you hear what I just said? Even such a terrible guy can see your flaws. Don't you have any thoughts about improving yourself?"

“Principal Kobayashi, you yourself said that Kido Ryuga is a terrible guy, right? In that case, I don’t necessarily need to listen to his advice. I still believe that a duel with ‘respect and dignity’ is the right thing to do.”

Seeing that Hayato was about to say something, Caesar quickly turned around: "Anyway, I'll be leaving now. You can handle Kido Ryuga, Principal."

As Caesar walked past Marufuji Sho, he paused, as if talking to himself, and said, "Wasting your time with pointless emotions is foolish, and relying on others or external things is even more foolish. You'd be better off using that time and energy to improve yourself; only your own efforts are truly reliable."

Marufuji Sho lowered his head even further. He felt as if Caesar was talking about the arrogant Ryuga who used cheating methods, or perhaps about his own cowardice in recognizing Judai as his older brother and using uncontrollable cards as external forces. By the time he raised his head slightly, Caesar had already disappeared without a trace.

"Sigh, I've done everything I could, but this kid is so stubborn. Even though he was taught by Samejima, he's still trapped in a 'perfect' state. In fact, he's not even as good as Samejima. At least Samejima had a strong competitive spirit." Hayato recalled Samejima's burning fighting spirit every time he met with the principal of the Northern Branch School, which was even stronger than when they first started the duel to unlock the secret technique of Electronic Flow.

Asuka looked at Ryuga with a frown: "But I feel something is strange. Ryuga-sensei, no, Kido Ryuga's behavior seems to be very contradictory."

Asuka felt that Ryuga was unworthy of being called a teacher, not only because he gambled to steal students' cards, but also because he even used [Explosive Armor] as a legitimate card-setting trick. Asuka called him by his name, "Although I don't know the principle, since Principal Hayato said that Ryuga's ring can hack into the Duel Disk to seal magic cards, it means that he wants to win the duel."

"He's willing to use such methods to win the duel; he definitely has the ambition to become a dueling academy teacher. That's one of his definite goals. Excellent dueling performance is enough to make up for his lack of classroom skills and provide a satisfactory internship report." After a pause, Asuka said with great doubt, "But if his goal is to become a teacher at the school, why is he in such a hurry to use gambling cards in duels?"

"If he hadn't been exposed, that would have been fine. But once he was exposed, Longya wouldn't even be able to stay at the school as a teacher. Gambling to obtain rare cards and becoming a teacher at the Duel Academy are both Longya's two goals, which can be deduced from the idea of ​​'winning even if it means cheating.' But no matter how you look at it, there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the two goals."

“An irreconcilable contradiction? Not necessarily, Tenjouin-kun.” Hayato interrupted Asuka, “You think Ryuga’s two goals are parallel, which is why you feel they conflict with each other. But if you reverse your thinking and assume they are causally related, it makes perfect sense.”

"However, the following part is not suitable for students like you who haven't experienced the darker side of society yet, so hurry back and eat, otherwise you'll be hungry this afternoon." After a pause, Hayato said with a smile, "There are club recruitment events starting this afternoon, so find a club you like and spend three happy years there."

"Darkness? Could my brother's disappearance be related to this? Wait a minute, Principal Hayato!" The quick-thinking Asuka hurriedly tried to stop Hayato, but Hayato just shook his head and left without saying anything, dragging Ryuga along. He would arrange for someone to come and deal with the bloodstains later.

Jaden and the others rushed here, but did nothing except watch the duel between Kaiser Ryo and Ryuga. They had no choice but to leave the dueling classroom as Hayato had suggested, putting Ryuga's matter aside for the time being.

When Longya awoke again, he found himself sitting in a chair.

The good news is that, although the excruciating pain from the hole in his palm was still lingering in his mind, Longya found that his right hand was no longer in much pain, and his fingers could move freely without affecting his future card drawing duels.

The bad news is that Longya finds himself inexplicably tied to what appears to be a chair and unable to move!

"The island where the Duel Academy used to be located was the territory of an alchemist named Diablo. He conducted many experiments here that caused physical disgust. In short, most of the things he left behind on the island have been destroyed."

Hayato's voice came from behind Ryuga. Because his neck was fixed, Ryuga couldn't even turn his head. He saw Hayato walk out from his left and walk around the chair where he was. "However, it's only most of it, not all of it. I've left a little bit out so that people know that there was once an alchemist here who dared to do even evil biological experiments."

Hearing Hayato's words, even though he had nothing in his hands, Ryuga instinctively felt that Hayato was probably going to "experiment" on him like the so-called alchemist he had mentioned: "Wait, wait a minute! What are you going to do to me! Hayato, aren't you afraid that your act of privately imprisoning others and using vigilante justice will be exposed!"

"If others find out what you've done, you'll lose your position as the principal of the Duel Academy! And if the people from the Kaiba Group find out about you, you'll definitely come to a bad end!"

"Wow, what an adorable threat, I almost laughed out loud." Hayato spread his hands and snapped his fingers. Suddenly, a screen lit up in the darkness in front of Ryuga, revealing a very high-tech laboratory. One of the people in the laboratory was not wearing a lab coat but was wearing a long overcoat that almost reached the ground, looking at the screen.

Ryuga recognized the other person. Wasn't this Seto Kaiba, who frequently appeared in the advertisements for the Kaiba Group, where he would put his face up to the screen and display it all over the world?

"Guess who put in the effort to build the Duel Academy? Actually, more than me, Seth is curious about how you managed to 'hack' his Duel Disk with this little gadget." Hayato said with a smile, holding a ring in his hand.

Having been distracted by his right hand, which didn't feel much pain, Ryuga realized that the restraint on his left middle finger was gone, and the ring he always wore on his left hand was now in the hand of Hayato Kobayashi!

"Kobayashi Hayato!"

Hearing Ryuga call his name venomously, Hayato shook his head in dissatisfaction: "What kind of attitude is that? Although I did hurt your hand, I also dragged you all the way here and treated your injury with the medical equipment from the Kaiba Group. After balancing out our good deeds, shouldn't you be thanking me properly?"

"Even if you healed the wounds you caused, why should I be grateful to you, you bastard!"

"Tsk tsk, you're really short-tempered. Luckily, I have plenty of time to slowly interrogate you about this ring and find out what's going on." Hayato leaned down in front of Ryuga, whose forehead was covered in cold sweat. "Now, you have good news and bad news."

"The good news is that Haima Group has excellent medical facilities, so your hand is recovering very well."

"The bad news is that Haima Group's medical standards are really quite good."

Snapping his fingers again, Longya saw four monsters of different appearances emerge from the darkness before him, and at the same time, a powerful melody began to play—

I really liked a line from Chapter 1086: Malik?

"Hey! YoungMan—"

"You bastard, you can't do that!"

"Wow, take your dirty hands off me!"

"Ouch, don't touch it!!"

Sitting leisurely in his chair, Hayato glanced at Ryuga, who was tied up, and made "humphs" and "ahhhhhh" noises. He then calmly turned back to continue examining a rather peculiar-looking cube-shaped device.

Except for the eight corners which are mechanical structures, all six sides of the cube device are transparent, allowing Hayato to clearly see that the ring containing Ryuga is locked in place by several beams of light of different colors, floating in mid-air and rotating erratically.

"Having those so-called 'Planars' work for Haima Group isn't without its rewards and benefits. The final product that combines the performance of the so-called 'Planars' is this thing right in front of you," Haima explained to Hayato on the other side of the screen. "Its perception, comprehension, and spatial sensing capabilities give this device the ability to analyze and calculate almost any substance, and it can transmit data losslessly over extremely long distances to the laboratory at Haima Group headquarters."

"It sounds pretty good, but until today, I had no idea that the main campus of the academy had a basement, and that there was such a thing in there." Hayato didn't need to understand the principles Kaiba was talking about; he only needed to know what kind of results this device could provide. "If I hadn't told you that your Duel Disk had been hacked, were you planning to keep this thing hidden forever?"

"Hmph, who do you take me for?" Kaiba scoffed at Hayato's words. "This 'Blue-Eyes Deconstruction Machine' at Duel Academy is just a backup. Kaiba Corporation headquarters has a newer generation of products, and I also have backups of backups elsewhere, as well as backups—"

"Alright, stop preparing. How much longer will it take to analyze this thing?"

Upon hearing Hayato's words, Kaiba casually held up two fingers.

"Two hours is that long?"

Unexpectedly, the moment Hayato spoke, Kaiba withdrew one of his fingers.

When Hayato turned back to look at the so-called "Blue-Eye Deconstruction Machine," as Kaiba retracted his last finger, the ring inside the machine fell back onto the tray that had risen at the bottom and lay quietly. The light that had previously locked onto it was also retracted into the eight corners. Looking from the open side, Hayato could only see a smooth inner wall.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the seahorse on the screen turned around and started operating the computer, bringing up the data that had been transmitted to his laboratory, and using the database to intelligently compare and quickly filter out any overlaps with the Dragon Tooth Ring.

“Boring, repetitive work is the biggest waste of my talent and time; that’s the meaning of technology.” Looking at the intelligent program he wrote that had found data in the Haima Group’s database that had more than 50% overlap with the Dragon Fang ring, Haima crossed his arms and said smugly.

But the data he opened the next moment made him frown.

"Code name 'D-Wheel'?" Hayato, on the other side of the screen, could naturally see Kaiba's view as well. He read out the only file name Kaiba found in the database that had more than 50% overlap with Ryuga's ring. "Wait a minute, 'D-Wheel'!?"

“It should be ‘Dragon Wheel’.” In front of Hayato, Kaiba changed the file name, adding a few letters after the “D”. “And the part with the highest overlap is not ‘Dragon Wheel’ itself, but the data in another sub-file of it.”

Quickly switching to the target file, Hayato saw a structural diagram of the D-Wheel, with the power components connecting the entire D-Wheel highlighted with outlines.

“I easily cracked the technology of all the other parts of that D-Wheel back then, but the final power part is the one I can’t seem to get past.” Seahorse tapped the table in frustration. “Even the part that collects and transforms emotions has been completely figured out, but I can’t reproduce how energy can be transmitted to another place without loss through the air.”

"But this technology is precisely the foundation and key to the D-Wheel, especially the function that you mentioned can even travel through time and space, which requires this technology to provide a sufficient amount of high-purity energy. Without this technology, even if I use the Ark Reactor from Haima Group to power the D-Wheel, I will not be able to use it successfully."

At this point, Haima couldn't help but recall his own experiment, which resulted in him being sent to ancient Egypt by the D-Wheel... No, what do you mean by being sent to ancient Egypt? That was clearly a hallucination caused by hitting my head, and it should have been the Dragon Wheel.

"Even Seth, there are things you can't do?" Hayato said with some surprise. He knew very well what level of cutting-edge technology Kaiba had reached. Just recently, Kaiba Corporation had successfully built a space elevator and a near-Earth space station connected to it. They were even trying to extend it to create a solar power ring around the Earth. It was estimated that in another ten years or so, Kaiba would be able to go to Jupiter and build Gundam.

However, after building the near-Earth space station and the space elevator, Kaiba actually turned his attention to conquering the Quantum Cube. Using gravity, he swooped down from the space station along the space elevator, accelerating to its maximum speed, and almost crashed into Atem's Underworld. Atem in the Underworld was startled by Kaiba's actions and mentioned it when they met in the mortal world. Jonouchi joked that he was just messing around with the Blue Eyes.

Even so, Haima actually told him to his face that he couldn't overcome the technical difficulties of the D round?

"If I were to switch places with people from ancient times, I'm confident I could invent a steam engine or even alternating current in the Middle Ages, but I couldn't manufacture computer chips in the Stone Age. This isn't a limitation of my talent, but rather a limitation of the era," the seahorse said confidently, shifting all the blame to the times. "You also said that the key to its power core lies in the 'perpetual motion machine' and the accompanying 'planetary particles,' but the activity of the latter is crucial to the manufacturing of the former. In the Jurassic period, without oil, an engine was just a pile of scrap metal, and that's the point."

"But once those so-called 'planetary particles' become active, I will definitely detect their existence immediately. And at that time, they should probably be called 'hippocampal particles' too, hehehehe!"

“You’re right, but ‘Apex Particles’ are something that Dr. Fudo discovered decades in the future… Wait a minute, something feels off.” Hayato paused, pointing to the files on the computer screen of the seahorse, “You said that since ‘Apex Particles’ haven’t become active, the D-Wheel’s power unit shouldn’t be able to be manufactured or used, but why does Ryuga’s ring have more than half of its power unit overlap with the D-Wheel’s?”

“It’s the Dragon Wheel,” Kaiba corrected, glancing at the screen before calmly saying, “Although we don’t know who the maker is, there’s no doubt that person only has a superficial understanding of power devices. They probably just haphazardly modified it and happened to complete some unimportant functions, and even reversed the device’s function.”

"Reversal?"

"The Dragon Wheel can convert the intense emotions invested in a duel into a special form of energy stored in so-called 'planetary particles,' which are then converted into regular energy for human use via a 'perpetual motion machine.' However, this thing unexpectedly completed the first half but reversed the second half, becoming a forced simulation of active 'planetary particles' that do not yet exist, using both regular energy and a certain degree of emotion to charge them simultaneously."

After explaining the principles behind the Dragon Fang Ring, Kaiba frowned: "But how exactly did these so-called 'planetary particles' hack into Kaiba Corporation's Duel Disk? Could they have hidden functions that even the 'Blue-Eyes Deconstruction Machine' couldn't detect?"

"Stop thinking about giving your inventions those lousy names all the time." Hayato muttered, but then he remembered some of the settings for the future Yusei and said, "But I do know a bit about 'Yusei particles.' In the future, duels will be more about riding D-Wheels that can convert emotions into energy and speeding along dedicated highways, rather than the standing card-drawing duels we have now."

"In high-speed riding duels, regular spell cards become unusable because they can't keep up with the speed, and can only be used by taking 2000 points of damage. Spell cards called 'High-Speed ​​Spells' are used more often."

"The activation of those high-speed spell cards is not like that of regular spell cards. It requires a special cost, namely, the addition of high-speed counters that affect the duelist's movement speed each turn during the duel. In addition to being removed by using high-speed spells, high-speed counters can also be reduced by taking damage. Therefore, in addition to the regular way, the way to win a riding duel is also the way of the first to reach the finish line."

Kaiba listened attentively, and after Hayato finished speaking, he nodded and said, "It's a very interesting way to duel. It's a pity that the conditions for such duels are not yet in place. Otherwise, I could start building a dedicated duel road in Domino City right now."

"But do you mean that because of this device, the duel has been indirectly affected into a so-called 'riding duel'?"

“That should be it. And because it’s not fully developed, it can’t even force the use of a magic card by paying 2000 base points. It’s also not compatible with the high-speed counter system.” Hayato tossed the ring in his hand, still puzzled. “But who exactly made it? I don’t think Ryuga has that kind of ability.”

"Of course he doesn't have that ability, and we don't know who was in charge of the file review. He was able to pass the review and be admitted to the Duel Academy with a forged file."

Haima's expression turned frosty; it seems another department of the Haima Group is about to suffer.

Hayato also saw a file that Kaiba had placed on the screen, which contained the real file that Ryuga had found. It said that Ryuga had even graduated from high school.

"Tsk tsk, just like so-and-so, he didn't even graduate from high school."

"Hmph, don't try to compare me to third-rate duelists with fourth-rate decks. I didn't go to high school because there's nothing there for me to grow, unlike these nobodies."

Hearing Kaiba's words, Hayato shrugged: "Now I know why he's so dry in class, and even occasionally mispronounces words. It's a pity that his mouth is as hard as if it's sewn shut, and you can't get anything out of him at all."

Turning around, watching Dragon Fang being lifted up by [Announcer of the Light], being brutally surprised by [Summoner-Aleister] with his staff, and with [Earthbound God-Veracocha Raska] preparing to toy with his soul, while [Disruptor-Yellow] directed them to adjust their actions at any time to prevent them from driving Dragon Fang to the brink of collapse, Hayato couldn't help but exclaim, "He's even more courageous than I thought."

"Huh?" [Disruption Yellow], who was just about to command the materialized spirits to take turns and bring more novel pain to Dragon Fang, paused, looking at Hayato and asking, "Did Annie ask this guy any questions?"

"No?"

"Is there?"

"No?"

[Disruption·Huang] thought back somewhat uncertainly, then said with certainty, "Absolutely not! I thought Ani was deliberately trying to torture him, because Ani is usually like this—"

"Shut up, it's your fault for annoying me!" Hayato slapped [Disruption Yellow] away, then watched as [Summoner Aleister], who was halfway there and had nothing better to do, directed [Announcer of Light] to begin the ultimate insult to [Disruption Yellow]. Hayato looked at Ryuga, who was slumped in his chair, and said, "Tell me honestly, where did you get this ring from!"

"I said, if you had asked earlier, I would have said it from the beginning!" Ryuga was afraid that Hayato would insult him again by having those monsters that could materialize from the cards. He quickly said, "I traded this ring with other people because they said it was a powerful item that would allow me to realize my ambitions and gain a higher status through continuous victories. So I traded with them and wanted to become a teacher at the Duel Academy."

Under Hayato's "Is this all your ambition?" look, Ryuga continued, "As the price of the deal, I need to hunt rare cards for those people for a long time in exchange for the time I can use this ring. The rarer the card, the more times I can use this ring."

“I see. No wonder you use the card-betting rules to snatch cards from students, and you only activate the ring when your opponent is about to use a magic card.” Ryuga’s information successfully completed the reasoning that Asuka had failed to complete before, and it all made sense now. “But you still haven’t explained where you got the cards from. You’re clearly dishonest and uncooperative.”

"Alai, come here—"

"I'll tell you, I'll tell you!" Although he didn't know who Alai was, Longya hurriedly revealed the last piece of information, "Those people were all wearing black robes when they traded with me. Their robes had a golden eye printed on them, and they called themselves 'Gurus'!"

Seahorse: "Hmm?"

Hayato: "Huh?"

Malik, who has lived in Hayato's house in Domino City for years, eating fried chicken and watching the suited man, is suddenly confronted by Hayato: "Huh?"

Chapter 1087 Gurus

"You have to believe me, brother-in-law, I'm absolutely innocent!"

Malik clutched his heart and said solemnly, "There can't be two suns in the sky, and in my heart there is only one sun: brother-in-law!"