Be Chappy, Don't Worry

     Whenever he had first woken up, the first thing he did after checking his surroundings was to immediately activate his system and summon a monster. 

     The white bracelet on his left wrist with a golden circular indentation on it was the Interface Bracelet that held the power to form upon itself a case-like attachment that could hold his cards and a holographic projection that formed the game field and all of the associated displays required for play. The bracelet held a semicircular blue gem on one end and a similar shaped red gem on the other end. The golden indentation in the middle had various symbols that he recognized from the Egyptian Artifacts featured in the anime and elsewhere.

     The bracelet had an internal dimensional storage space that was limited to only items generated by or related to the system. This is where his cards were stored when not in use.

     Once he had summoned his first monster, [Elemental HERO Sparkman], he spent a lot longer than he probably should have simply walking around, inspecting, and feeling up every inch of the real life versions of his favorite monsters. Those real life versions, he quickly noticed, were quite tall, some being almost a head taller than Jaden himself. 

     Eventually he sat down and took a moment to fully come to terms with everything that had happened to him so far and to formulate a plan of action.

     He knew he had wound up inside a cave that was generated by the system's combined efforts with his Contract Magic. The terms of his contract had temporary conditions placed into it so that, for one time only, whenever he was attacked by an assailant, instead of initiating the Shadow Game, all of the power of the system and his contract would be diverted into creating a Starter Zone. This Starter Zone would last only for one month and would provide food and hygiene provisions, until it disappeared. Whatever powers were involved with making all this possible had spawned him into this world directly in front of a boar type magical beast that attacked him almost immediately, thus placing him in the Starter Zone immediately after arrival.

     As Jaden was laying on his bed and remembering all that had come to pass, he decided it was finally time for him to leave his comfortable life in the Starter Zone. He had spent the past month sleeping as little as possible and spending as much time as he could outside the Starter Zone grinding G ranked beasts.

     One of the differences, held by Jaden's system generated monsters, was the inclusion of an intelligence stat. This stat, unlike some RPG games that Jaden had played, was precisely what it sounded like. In this world, his monsters had to face his opponents in live real-time battle and so they needed some baseline level of intelligence in order to fight effectively.

     The maximum intelligence level was five and any card that the system generated for him would come with a default intelligence level of zero. Immediately upon learning of this new stat, he had decided that raising all of his monsters up to Intelligence level one would be his first priority.

     This endeavor took him almost the entirety of the first two weeks to complete and every day afterwards he spent grinding for a specific card that would help give him a lot more confidence in his deck's combat potential moving forward.

     Now that he had finally sealed away enough G-Ranked beasts into Shadow Cards and used his system to exchange them for the card he wanted, Jaden stood at the entrance to the Starter Zone cave and activated his Interface Bracelet (IB). He quickly summoned [Elemental HERO Burstinatrix], one on each side and one in front of him. He then walked out into the night, treading carefully through the darkened forest.

     Jaden knew that the Starter Zone would be completely dissipated by morning and so decided it would be best to sleep in his new base for tonight. 

     After increasing the intelligence of his monsters to level one, he had become well adjusted to his new system and its new rules and, although his monsters had yet to increase their strength, he was still quite proficient at dealing with G-Ranked monsters with little effort. This proficiency allowed him to delegate certain non combat tasks to some of his monsters while reserving others exclusively for battle.

     Upon discovering that his monsters could follow very basic non combat commands, he summoned all of his Claymen and Bubblemen and he had them begin working together to dig out a suitably sized cave that he insisted be at least twice the size of his bare bones Starter Zone. For combat, he had used all his other monsters exclusively during this period and allowed those six to continue building his base cave as he carried on with his grinding. 

     It had been rather slow going due to the monster's limited intelligence. More than once he returned from his grinding only to find that his commands were apparently not simplistic enough, as they would have managed to find some way to screw things up. Those instances, however, were rare and eventually, by two days ago his new base had been completed.

     As Jaden and his three Heroes walked towards that familiar location, they faced very little adversity. He and his monsters, over the past month, had made the knowledge of their presence and potency known to all of the beasts in that area. 

     One of the main reasons it had taken him so long to acquire just those few upgrades was because of population density. There just weren't enough monsters in the area and, after sealing so many, he had to continuously expand his search area to find more. Furthermore, exploring too far to the south led him towards F-Ranked and higher beasts and too far north led towards more human populated areas.

     He had decided that the Starter Zone, being a temporary one time benefit, shouldn't be wasted and so made his mind up not to interact with any humans or strong beasts before it expired. Strong beasts could potentially cause him setbacks and humans were never simple, almost always having multiple troubles to get caught up in.

     Thus, he had stuck strictly to East and West exploration and grinded his heart out, until he finally achieved his two most pressing goals.

     Arriving at his new base, he walked down the incline and inspected the interior of the cave. It wasn't anything too fancy but, as far as caves go, he could definitely do a lot worse. For example, the Starter Zone, which he wasn't ungrateful for, but its oversimplified and crowded interior was hard to overlook.

     "Very nice! And when I say 'very nice' I mean 'at least it's not the Starter Zone.'" Jaden stated aloud, as he finished his inspection.

     'This place will do fine for now. There's a river close by and it's closer to the more dangerous parts of the forest so I won't have to travel as far when I start hunting stronger beasts. The only immediate problem right now is food. While the Starter Zone was active there were plenty of provisions but now I'll have to spare some of these beasts for my appetite instead of sacrificing them all at the altar of power.'

     Jaden sat down on his new bed and pulled out his deck ready to think through, one more time, everything he knew about the Shadow Games and his new strategy.

     Because Summoning his monsters was different outside of battle, all of his cards were accounted for, despite the fact that at least one of each was currently either guarding the cave entrance or patrolling the immediate vicinity. Looking over all of them, he wanted to feel remorse at how lacking was the starter deck that he had gotten from the system's Beginner's Box, but ultimately could only feel grateful.

     Upon opening that one time gift to help him get started in this world, he had received his IB, the Elemental HERO Starter Deck he had chosen after Character Creation, all the provisions he would need to hold him over for the next month, and a fresh set of red themed clothing to cover his initially naked body.

     The clothes weren't currently looking so hot and he wasn't sure how much longer they would last. The deck, on the other hand, was obviously much more impressive, even if it still left him quite wanting.

     It included three copies of each card it contained, despite his current system not having a limit on how many cards or card copies could be in a deck. The only non-Extra Deck monsters were the eight original Elemental HEROES. The spells included [Polymerization], [Fusion Recovery], [Miracle Fusion], [Fighting Spirit], [The A-Forces], and [Banner of Courage]. The traps included [A Hero Emerges], [Hero Barrier], [Hero Blast], [Half Counter], [Hero Counterattack], and [Elemental Recharge]. Finally, the Extra Deck was the only exception containing two copies each of Flame Wingman, Steam Healer, and Mariner.

     With sixty six cards in total, he wasn't entirely dissatisfied with this deck and, when considering the overpowered nature of his system and his luck so far, it was incredibly difficult to feel as though he had missed out. Sure the deck wasn't ideal but he had to start somewhere and it wouldn't do to simply have everything handed to him on a silver system. That would be entirely too boring and he was already entirely too far into that territory. He didn't wish to walk the path of lazy entitlement.

     In all fairness, the deck actually held some pretty powerful cards and he could see himself wiping the floor with many-an-enemy, with just these cards in hand but, of course, Jaden dreamed of a perfect Elemental HERO Deck that would be the ideal counterpart to the Shadow Game Contract. He simply needed more souls, bodies, and cores in order to acquire all of the appropriate cards.

     According to his system, when sealing defeated enemies, only the soul was required by the contract but, if the corpse and core were available for the taking, a simple increase in the consumption of required mana would see these other resources also being absorbed, thus increasing the value that the Shadow Card held in the system's assessment.

     Now that he not only needed corpses for food but also cores to increase his strength, the rate at which he could exchange for new cards would be reduced, unless he started taking on monsters above his level. This is something that he had been considering for a while and felt he was ready for this step, considering the ease with which his deck could mow through G-Ranked beasts.

     The card he had worked so hard to acquire, after increasing his monster's intelligence levels, was the Field Spell [Luminous Spark]. This card normally decreased the defense of all Light Attribute Monsters by 400 and increased their attack by 500. However, due to the automated nerfing in order to synchronize the power of his cards with the level of his current personal power, it only increased their attack by 5 points and decreased their defense by 5 points as well.

     During his editing escapade in his soul state, among many others, he had made this change to this card. The available information had informed him that the way that his card artifacts worked was to mold his own mana into the required patterns in order to initiate the magic and then would draw magic from the environment in order to complete the magic. Thus, the amount of his own mana that would be consumed from a spell, trap, or monster card would increase in proportion to the power or intensity of the effects. Powerful spells usually required far larger and more complex mana patterns in order to activate.

     If he used only Normal rated cards, a categorization that had been carried over from Duel Links in disregard for the foil based categorization, he could easily duel all day and night without worrying about his mana running dry. However, cards with a higher rarity rating had more powerful effects and, even though the cards did most of the work, forming the correct mana patterns was something that still consumed his mana even if it was only a fraction of what would normally be required.

     This was his reasoning for increasing the downside to this card, which was to decrease the amount of mana consumed to keep this Super Rare rated Field Spell card in play. With the increase and decrease being exactly equal, the magic only needed to rearrange the monster's stats, not give them an actual overall boost. This would naturally decrease the complexity of the spell that needed to be cast and thus also decrease the drain on his mana.

     He actually felt kinda lucky to have a HERO deck that seemed to revolve mostly around a beater strategy. He suspected that in the initial stages of his new path towards power this type of deck would be most effective and it seemed the system agreed, considering the Spell Cards he was given. So, his short term plans didn't actually see him building his perfect HERO deck but rather fleshing out his current HERO beater deck to make it more versatile and effective. 

     Of course, the newly designed rules saw most insta-kill (card destroying monster effects) type effects relegated to Level Six and above monsters. Thus, creating anything other than a beater deck before acquiring several Level Six monsters was already pretty difficult. 

     This is why he had exchanged for this particular card, since his immediate combat needs obviously outweighed his long term plans to acquire the perfect HERO deck. Now that he had it, he could confidently face down F-Ranked beasts without fear and start increasing his own power and, in turn, the power of his deck.

     After inspecting his deck for a while longer, he finally laid down on the hard earthen raised platform that he called a bed and drifted off to sleep.

     The next morning he awoke, still quite dirty but also refreshed and reenergized. He felt confident in the power of his deck and was ready to start forging his own path, after being coddled in the Starter Zone for so long. Even though it was only a month and even though it was a gift he couldn't pass up, he still felt stifled and yearned to let loose and exercise his potential to its maximum.

     Thus, with a much lighter heart he ventured forth to start the day off right with a nice bath in the river.

     After a quick bath and a confirmation of his steadily increasing hunger, he swiftly recalled all of his monsters and set off towards the F-Ranked area of this forest.

     The information provided during his soul state, claimed that this world had fifteen ranks of power after the initial unranked stage. Unranked individuals all had stats that were below 10, with the G-Rank of power beginning at ten and ending at 19. Each rank after that started at double the minimum stat value of the previous rank. F-Rank started at 20, E-Rank started at 40, D-Rank started at 80, and so on and so forth. After reaching A-Rank, there was then S - SSS and then X - XXXXX. 

     Beginning at G-Rank, an individual's core would form and become the source of most of their power from that point forward. 

     The forest that he had been sent to was named Forlean Forest and was widely known for housing powerful beasts in its deepest parts. Its outer parts, however, held only weak beasts and, due to the power of each rank being relatively close to one another from G-D Ranks, very few people bothered hunting these weaker beasts unless they became a problem for the unranked citizens and travelers. 

     Most people who wanted to grow in strength, for whatever reason, would usually hire someone or ask for a favor from friends and family, in order to get their hands on D or C-Ranked cores right off the bat. Only the poorest and most socially isolated people had to crawl their way up through each of the lower ranks, even most poor people could hope to find some wealthy assistance with the promise of repayment.

     Due to these factors and the fact the forest itself was apparently quite vast, Jaden had witnessed only one person during his time in this forest and had easily managed to avoid him.

     Jaden continued striding confidently forward, hoping that an F-Ranked monster would soon attack him. Even though his system informed anyone or anything bound by its contract about the rules of the game, these beasts could hardly understand such complexities, thus giving him an edge over most unintelligent opponents. The magical beasts of Forlean almost always attacked him preemptively and on site, so long as he didn't have any monsters already summoned.

     Even if the beast managed to put up an impressive struggle, he would always have the advantage of extra Life Points, so long as he walked appetizingly into danger, seeming to be a lonely and vulnerable meal.

     Jaden heard a commotion on his right and turned his head to see a black wolf type beast with red eyes dashing towards him. Smiling at this completely expected event, he activated his IB and stood perfectly still ready to receive the beast's attack.