The Red Dragon Lord is OP, but Insists on a Pop Culture Invasion!

As everyone knows, happiness doesn’t disappear, it just gets transferred.

Therefore, Zog’s happiness was primarily derived from his opponents in the game.

However, this method of obtaining happiness had an obvious drawback.

It wasn’t sustainable.

Only a few hours had passed, and already no one was willing to play cards with him.

Zog had sucked everyone’s happiness dry.

Every Yu-Gi-Oh! player participating in the event in Winter City was spreading a legend by word of mouth—a legend about a malevolent Kuriboh who loved to torture its opponents.

A group of victims who had played against Zog gathered together, trying to reverse-engineer his entire deck based on their various traumatic experiences.

They then discovered that the most crucial cards for a Handscroll Destruction deck—the trio of milling brothers, Detention, Strongly Attracted Foreign Soldiers, and Mischievous Twin Demons, as well as that one card perfect for a slow, torturous death, Eight-Tailed Crow—had never been pulled from a card pack by anyone.

This only made everyone more convinced that the Kuriboh was a plant, specially arranged by the event organizers to disgust people.

They further deduced that this lump of a Kuriboh’s role was to crush players with sheer power, forcing them under pressure to frantically buy card packs and spend loads of Gold Coins, only to never pull the key cards they needed.

A shill! A damn shill! A damn shill planted by the damned game planners!

Thus began the "Boycott the Damn Shill Kuriboh" movement. They resolutely refused to duel him, determined to thwart the planners’ sinister scheme.

Even when Zog offered a deal of three stars for a win and only losing one star for a loss, still no one took up the challenge.

’Zog felt wronged.’ ’Though he had indeed arranged for shills to promote power creep back when he was a game planner, that was actually the operations team’s decision. The planners just took the fall for it.’

At this point, some might wonder, doesn’t power creep shorten a game’s lifespan?

Yes, it does.

However, many games don’t consider their lifespan at all, like the ones he had been involved with.

Their sole objective was to rake in as much money as possible within their limited life cycle.

Besides, he wasn’t here to be a shill today. His original intention was genuinely just to spread the true gospel of Yu-Gi-Oh!.

To better continue his "proselytizing," Zog even swapped to a Sangan costume midway through. Unfortunately, after persecuting two unlucky souls, he was exposed on the forums.

No matter where he roamed, someone would report his position in real-time, warning newbie duelists to beware of the costumed monster.

His reskinning plan had failed.

Unable to find any new victims, Zog had no choice but to return home in disappointment.

Although Zog had left, his underhanded deck was passed down to Galina, and his devious playstyle had also gained a fair number of adherents.

Everyone paid lip service to dueling honorably and restoring a clear blue sky to the Dueling Disc scene.

But in reality, on the newly established Yu-Gi-Oh! forum, a crowd of simple, honest card players had been deeply inspired and were already starting to research burn decks.

These were decks that completely ignored monster battles, relying solely on various effects to directly chip away at the opponent’s life points.

In terms of sheer deviousness, they were in no way inferior to Handscroll Destruction decks.

One could only say that during this test event, Zog had set a great "bad example" for the card-playing environment of the Feilin Continent.

Meanwhile, Zog had already taken off his costume and was on his way to check on the game development competition.

The venue was set up just outside the Ice and Snow Paradise.

Mage Apprentices and amateur Illusionists from all over the Continent, all filled with a passion for game development, were gathered in one round little snow hut after another.

No professional Illusionists were participating.

It wasn’t that Zog didn’t want to invite professional teams; it was mainly because he had already poached every professional Illusionist on the Continent, so he could only hold a student-level competition.

These snow huts weren’t made of pure snow. They were wooden huts with a layer of snow on the outside for aesthetic purposes.

The temperature inside the huts was maintained at around 20 degrees Celsius through Magic.

The intensity of the development competition was already high enough; it wouldn’t do to have the apprentices catch colds on top of that.

The game development competition was divided into two stages. The first stage, lasting three days, required each team to independently complete a demo.

The completed demos would be submitted to the judging panel for review—that is, Zog, Furin, and Toto.

Outstanding works that passed the review would, with the help of the Zog Group, be expanded into a two-to-three-hour-long playable demo within a week. This demo would then be available for tourists in the Northern Domain and players on the Divine Remains Network to try.

Whether each project ultimately got the chance to be developed into a full game depended entirely on player feedback from the demo.

No media scores, no expert opinions. Whatever the players liked, they would make. It was purely market-driven.

It was now nearing midnight, but every snow hut in the venue was still brightly lit.

Due to the tight schedule, most teams chose to work around the clock during these three days.

’It was what you’d call getting an early taste of the game development grind.’

Zog sipped his Red Dragon Beverage while checking the first-day progress of the various teams.

According to the rules, contestants had to upload their work to the Divine Remains Network periodically to prove it was being made on-site.

As this was the first-ever game development competition and the industry itself hadn’t been around for long, the theme was simple: "Ice and Snow."

As long as the game had some connection to ice and snow, the specific content was completely up to them.

Zog chugged a mouthful of the drink. Though the Red Dragon Beverage was clearly piggybacking on Red Bull’s name, its taste was actually more like Monster.

In other words, another one of those drinks that loves to sponsor "I’ll put up the cash, you risk your life" events, but with the distinction of being carbonated.

"BURP—"

He let out a burp tinged with sparks and extended a claw to flip through the Illusion Mimicry before him.

The ideas for most of the projects were rather conservative, mainly consisting of platformers and puzzle games. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

That was understandable. After all, those two genres were easy to make—though hard to make well—but the barrier to entry was low.

However, there were a few gems that made the Dragon’s eyes light up.

"Team Failed the Final with a 59," Zog read the absurd team name aloud.

’As expected, college students are the same in every world; their memey nature is a universal constant.’

They had created something a bit like Minesweeper. A bunch of boxes hid Alchemy bombs, and opening a box without a bomb would reveal a number.

The number indicated how many bombs were in the surrounding boxes, and the ultimate goal was to use numerical deduction to mark all the bombs.

Opening a box with a bomb would cause an explosion that froze the entire game screen.

’What a ridiculously contrived way to cater to the ’Ice and Snow’ theme.’

The biggest difference, however, was that the boxes were designed as hexagons.

Zog gave it a quick try and soon discovered the advantage of the hexagons: unlike the original Minesweeper, you wouldn’t end up with two final squares that were impossible to deduce, forcing you to rely on a guess.

It looked like they were planning to make several levels, too.

’Thumbs up.’

Zog marked it down, hoping for their sake they didn’t actually score a 59 on their finals.

"Team Sleep On Your Problems."

Zog tried another demo.

Upon entering the game, he was greeted by a boundless snowfield. The character he controlled was a person riding a horse.

The Illusion was so crude it looked like a few polygons stuck together.

The controls were also extremely simple: just "forward," and if the rider started to lean left, you press right, and if they leaned right, you press left.

The background audio was a constantly looping sound of falling snow.

And that was it.

Zog, refusing to believe that was all, played for over an hour, but still found nothing new.

The game actually made him drowsy; not even chugging Red Dragon Beverage could wake him up.

’Are they nuts?!’

’What the hell kind of game is this!’

’Do you also have a ’get-a-rebate-for-losing-money’ system? Are you deliberately trying to make a bad game?!’

Zog glanced at the demo’s title.

"Sleep Aid".

"..."

Zog’s mouth twitched. Damn it, that actually made a lot of sense.

One more, then sleep.

Zog started searching for his favored protegee, young Uffie, who was clearly a heaven-sent Magic Programmer but insisted on doing a planner’s work.

"Team Woof Woof."

Zog found the Liebin Study Tour Group’s team and opened their demo for the day.

"Druid vs. Necromancer?"