Chapter 14: A gacha system without a pity mechanic is trash, don't you think, FGO?

Due to Kaiba's repeated demands, Juroku was forced to begin telling everyone the stories behind the cards and the emotions he had invested in them, attempting to persuade Kaiba using his theory of "the heart."

At some point, Hayato had drifted back to the rear, and his mind began to wander. He wasn't listening closely to Grandpa Juroku; instead, he was controlling the panel manifesting before his eyes.

As soon as the "Duel Q Duelist System" display screen appeared, Hayato saw several lines of text in the center of the screen

【Congratulations, Duelist, on obtaining your first vic...

Lost? Tsk...

Congratulations on completing your first duel.

Duel Rating: 1100dp (Base Duel Score 1000 + 3 Magic Cards used 100)

Would you like to use the Beginner Reward: Score Doubler? (Remaining uses: 10)】

Immediately after completing the duel against the game, Hayato heard a "ding-dong" notification. After a moment's thought, Hayato's finger pressed "NO."

The number "1100" began to move the moment Hayato touched it, sliding all the way to the top-left corner of the screen. There, an avatar frame emerged, containing a close-up of Hayato's face with an empty square box below it.

The "1100" figure embedded itself into the empty box and remained there, motionless. The text in the center of the screen quickly faded, and instead, four cards surfaced.

The style of these cards was identical to the Monster Cards used in duels, except the central illustration area was replaced with text. From left to right, they were: 【Achievements】, 【Missions】, 【Shop】, and 【Storage】.

Thanks to the games he had played in his previous life, Hayato understood the functions of these modules without needing system guidance. First, he clicked into the "Achievements" section, which was highlighted by a glowing border.

Upon entering the 【Achievements】 section, his eyes were met with countless Yu-Gi-Oh! cards filling the entire screen. Each card displayed the swirling pattern of a card back, and the overall color scheme was somewhat dim.

Only three cards were exceptions; they had a faint golden glow around their edges, and even the color of the swirling pattern on their backs was much more vibrant than the others. Hayato had no intention of looking through them one by one, so he flipped all three cards over in one go.

【Achievement Completed: Attack Power of Blue-Eyes White Dragon Level!】 【Condition: Monster Attack Power reaches 3000】

【Achievement Completed: King of Games, Yugi Muto】 【Condition: Duel Yugi Muto once】

【Achievement Completed: Your Life is Like a Candle in the Wind】 【Condition: Lose a duel when the opponent's Life Points are below 1000 and your Life Points are higher than the opponent's】

Reward Summary: 500dp * 3, R-Rank Card Pack (Dragon) * 1, SR-Rank Card Pack * 1, R-Rank Selectable Card Voucher * 1

Blinded by a long stretch of text, Hayato studied it carefully and deduced the basic settings of the 【Achievements】 module.

First, "Achievements" within the module remained hidden until they were completed, at which point the conditions would be revealed—meaning the existence of 【Achievements】 was merely a bonus that could only be completed by chance. However, since there was an achievement for "dueling a game," there was a high probability of achievements for "dueling other legendary duelists."

Second, completing each achievement yielded a fixed 500dp, which was half the reward of losing a duel. Since Hayato wasn't quite sure what dp was used for yet, he didn't care much about this. However, the main reason was the third point of the 【Achievement】 system.

Third, upon completing an "Achievement," different special rewards would be granted depending on the achievement—for example, the 【Blue-Eyes】 achievement gave an R-Rank Card Pack (Dragon), while the 【Yugi】 achievement gave an SR-Rank Card Pack.

After confirming there were no other achievements available for rewards, Hayato immediately exited the 【Achievements】 module, skipped the middle two, and went directly into 【Storage】.

【Storage】, as the name implied, was a place for items. Hayato tried putting his deck into the 【Storage】, and it worked. However, when he tried to put his shoulder bag in, he found it impossible.

It seemed this 【Storage】 could only hold things related to the "Duel Q Duelist System."

Hayato's gaze fell upon the other three items in the 【Storage】 besides the deck he had just placed there, but he only came to check; he had no intention of opening the card packs or selecting cards right now.

After all, he had just spent money to buy several physical card packs to test his luck, only to find that despite being reincarnated to change his fate, his luck was no different from his previous life—neither exceptionally good nor bad. He would leave the pack-opening to tonight, after he got home and took a shower.

Exiting 【Storage】, Hayato entered the 【Shop】 section. Upon entering, he saw the largest box of cards placed right in front of him.

The card box had no pattern on it, only the words "Basic Card Pack" written in Chinese. Inside, about 30 card packs were neatly arranged, with "100dp/pack" written on the frontmost one.

Great, so it's just the same old gacha mobile game mechanics. Hayato was somewhat speechless. Looking at the setup of the 【Shop】, it was clearly the core system of a classic pay-to-win gacha game—a Duel Monster version of a card-drawing system. The only difference was that in mobile games, you could top up with real money, whereas Hayato could only earn more dp by grinding hard.

There was a text description next to the card box. Hayato read it carefully; it essentially meant—every pack sold in the 【Shop】 contains five cards, with rarities ranging from N to UR, but every pack contains at least one card of R-rank or higher. Furthermore, every box contains at least one SR card.

Additionally, the 【Shop】 featured a recycling system where redundant cards could be recycled, provided they were at least R-rank or higher. Based on the quantity and quality of the cards, the 【Shop】 would return a certain amount of dp.

At the same time, the 【Shop】 would periodically release special limited-edition card boxes. Unlike the Basic Card Packs, which are automatically replenished after being sold out, Limited Boxes would not be replenished once they were gone. Limited Boxes would contain limited cards available only during that period, and each box would contain at least one UR card and three SR cards. Correspondingly, the total number of packs in a Limited Card Box increased to one hundred.

To accommodate the "unlucky" players, the 【Shop】 also had a function to directly purchase cards using dp, but Hayato exited after just one glance. The card purchase area was truly comprehensive, ranging from "Kaiju" to "Red Dragon Archfiend"—everything that could appear within the current era was available. Even "Blue-Eyes White Dragon," which Kaiba was currently desperate to acquire, had three copies available, and one could even freely choose various alternative art versions.

So, what was the cost?

One word: Expensive!

Hayato took a look—good grief. The lowest rarity sold in the shop was R-rank, but even the cheapest R-rank card was priced as high as 100dp. Hayato felt that if he wanted to buy cards, he might as well just open packs; even with terrible luck, he should end up better off than buying a single card, not to mention that packs came with four N-rank cards as a bonus.

Exiting the most feature-rich and complete 【Shop】, Hayato arrived at the final 【Missions】 area.