Yu-Gi-Oh! Volumes 25-31

Over the course of the duel, Joey figures out that Odion isn't Marik. Because Odion has fought fair, and Marik doesn't. Marik tells Odion to use the counterfeit Ra in his possession to convince him that he is in fact Marik.
Odion summons Ra and tries to make it attack, but the dragon strikes lightening down upon him. One of the bolts hits Joey as well, and both of them fall down. Odion is unable to stand, but Joey gets to his feet.
Yami Marik then proceeds to unveil and reveal himself to be Marik.
Due to unconsciousness, Odion loses his duel, and Joey moves on to the next round.
The next duel is between Marik and Mai. Yami Marik turns it into a Shadow Game, natch. Cords of light lead between the duelists and their monsters. Monster gets damaged, your own body reflects the damage they took.
Marik brings out Vicer Des to torture Mai's monsters. It's invincible for three turns after summoning. Vicer Des attaches itself to one of Mai's Amazons, so Mai sends it to the graveyard so she can use its special ability to steal the real Ra from Marik's deck, and to stop the excruciating pain. However, she can't read the ancient Egyptian on the card. Marik repeatedly attempts to torture Mai into submission, but she keeps getting out of them creatively. Mai then summons up her Harpies and Kaleidoscopes them so she can summon Ra. It then refuses to unfurl as if it's a Bakugan without a metal base to activate on. Mai attempts to set up Mirror Wall to block Marik's offense, but he uses Vicer Shock to send it back to her hand. He then activates both Vicer Shock and Vicer Des to drain Mai's life-points. He then reads the Ancient Egyptian off the card and activates Ra. A single shot from Ra and she's on the verge of actual death. Joey rushes up to the battlefield to try and get Mai out of the torture machine, but Marik fires a beam from Ra. Yami takes the blast on his back, and the volume ends.

Yami Marik is declared the winner. He then traps Mai's mind in an hourglass with mind-eating bugs. Death in twenty-four hours. He delivers an ultimatum to Yugi and the gang, kill him in a day or Mai dies.
The next duel is between Kaiba and Ishizu. The appearance of his older sister begins tearing Marik and Yami Marik apart, but Yami Marik overwhelms him. Ishizu uses her Millennium Necklace to predict what she thinks the outcome of the duel will be. She uses her knowledge of Kaiba's actions to counter his every move. She allows Kaiba to activate his Crush Card Virus, but she activates Exchange of Spirit to reverse the effects of those cards. This places all of Kaiba's deck into his graveyard, and gives Ishizu back most of hers. She keeps tossing his cards into the graveyard with traps. He's left with only one option. Use Soul Exchange to sacrifice some of her monsters to summon a high-level monster of his own. She places Blast Held By Tribute on one of her monsters so she can destroy Obelisk if he attacks with it. She rightfully predicts that he'll summon Obelisk with her monsters on her turn. Kaiba almost attacks with Obelisk, but The Millennium Rod in Marik's hand and the Blue-Eyes White Dragon in his own call out to him. He sees a vision of himself before a stone slab of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. He makes his decision, and uses Silent Doom to sacrifice a monster from his graveyard to summon up his Blue-Eyes, subverting Ishizu's predictions and winning the duel.
Meanwhile back in the command-center, Mokuba Kaiba has been using their computers to try and translate the ancient Egyptian on the card. When Seto comes to check on him, he finds that he can read it like it was his native language.
After the duel, Ishizu explains to the gang what's going on with her brother. They went out of their little cave where they lived to explore the outside world. There they ran into Shadi, who told them about some of the things that would soon happen. They went home, found their father found out they left and tortured Odion in an attempt to kill him and then tried to do that to Marik. Yami Marik then took the blade in the Millennium Rod and flayed the skin from his fathers back.

Ishizu gives Yugi her Millennium Necklace. Get all seven of the items, place them in the tablet and Yami's memories are restored.
Yami Marik roams the hallways and goes to Odion's room to kill him, but Yami Bakura stops him. Actual Marik's spirit accompanies him, and they challenge Yami Marik to a duel.
The Shadow Game that they play is different from that of the one Marik played with Mai. You lose parts of your body when you take damage to your life-points.
Yami Marik doesn't draw Ra, but Yami Bakura plays a spell-card to put it in his hand. He then makes Marik discard his entire hand at the cost of 100 of his own life points per card.
Marik then draws Monster Reborn, and uses it to bring back Ra, and to activate its special power. Give your life-points to Ra to increase its attack points. He does that, giving all but one to it. He uses that one attack to obliterate Yami Bakura, and claim the Millennium Ring for himself.
Marik goes over to Téa and possesses her so he can tell his sister to save Odion. As such, when Yami Marik breaks back into Odion's room to try and kill him, he's not there.
While Yugi is asleep, he senses something wrong inside the room of Yami's soul and goes to check it out. He converses with Yami, and he mentions that he can't find out which of the doors leads where. A wide shot of the room shows Yami Bakura hiding behind the architecture within.
The next day, the blimp lands on Alcatraz Island, the old weapons manufacturing facility from when Gozaburo Kaiba ran the show. In the center of the destroyed factories lies the Duel Tower, the final stage of the Battle City tournament.
The pairings for the finals are determined by a four-way duel. The two who lose first duel each other. The other two duel each other. Everyone has to present a card from their deck, and turns proceed in descending order of attack points. The order goes Kaiba, Yami Marik, Yugi, and then Joey. The duel begins, and despite his best efforts Joey takes quite a bit of damage straight off. Joey is determined to face off with Marik in the end, and Yugi and Kaiba want to take on each other.

Thanks to a combination of his and Kaiba's trap-cards, Joey makes Marik the first one to lose. Kaiba then wipes out Joey's life and the brackets are decided. Joey vs Marik, and Yugi vs Kaiba.
Yami Marik makes their duel into a shadow game, but Joey isn't phased. Marik then attempts to torture Joey using Vicer Des, but he manages to snap out of it enough to function. Unfortunately for him, he kills one of Marik's monsters with a special-ability that forces Joey to discard a random card. Marik then activates Coffin Seller to drain Joey's life-points. He also places Malevolent Catastrophe face-down on his side of the field, to destroy all of Joey's monsters and drain his life-points in one go.
Joey then plays Question. They each have to name the top card in the others graveyard. Joey picks out Marik's but Marik doesn't know what the card Helpomer discarded was, so Joey uses Question to summon Jinzo from the grave. He uses Jinzo's ability to wipe out all of Marik's face-down traps and spells. Joey then wipes out all of Marik's monsters, but Marik uses Dark Wall Of Wind to protect himself. He then plays Lava Golem on Joey's side of the field, sacrificing his Jinzo and Baby Dragon to summon it. If Joey can attack with it, he'll win, but it damages him for seven-hundred points every turn.
Marik then uses Monster Relief to pull Vicer Des off the field and re-summon it so he can use it as a wall against the Lava Golem. He then uses Machine Duplication and attaches all three of his Vicers to all of Joey's monsters.
Joey comes up with a plan to de-activate Monster Relief on the two new Vicers, using Graceful Dice to increase their Attack, causing them to self-destruct. Joey then uses the newly sacrificeable monsters to summon Gilford The Lightening. Gilford destroys the one remaining Vicer with its special ability, and then attacks Marik directly. Marik activates Nightmare Mirror to reflect a thousand of that attack back at Joey and take none of it himself.
Marik then uses Monster Reborn to bring out Ra, and he activates Ra's third special ability. The Flaming Phoenix. It's not enough to wipe out Joey's life-points, but he passes out before he can summon Gearfried and declare an attack. Marik declares that Joey will die if he hasn't already, and Kaiba's medical staff do their best. Yugi is almost entirely disheartened by this, but he touches Ishizu's Millennium Necklace and sees a vision of himself dueling with Joey in Domino City. This bolsters his confidence, and he vows to fight to the end and beat Marik.

The next volume begins with Yugi's fated duel with Kaiba. They exchange some banter before they start.
Joey's EKG (It's spelled ECG but I learned it at EKG) actually starts to move a bit, showing that he's not entirely dead.
Kaiba draws Obelisk on his first turn, but Yugi doesn't get Slifer on the same turn. However, Yugi manages to impale Obelisk with a Lightforce Sword, negating Kaiba's plan to summon it. Yugi comes up with a strategy to win with Slifer, but he doesn't have it in his hand at the moment. Kaiba then uses Voice of the Heavens to pull Slifer from Yugi's deck to his hand, but Yugi plays exchange to get it back, and into his own hand.
Kaiba manages to wait out the Lightforce Sword long enough to summon his XYZ-Dragon Cannon. However, Yugi anticipated his attack on his main defensive monster and activates Soul Rope, and summons Kings Knight, and combined with his previously summoned Queens Knight, special-summons Jack's Knight. This allows Yugi to sacrifice them and summon Slifer immediately. Yugi tries to destroy Kaiba's XYZ-Dragon Cannon, but Kaiba protects them with Interdimensional Matter Transfer. He then sacrifices them on his next turn to summon Obelisk.
Seeing this from the blimp, Tristan drags Joey over to the window in the hopes that he'll wake up because of it.
Yugi uses Slifer's special ability to knock Obelisk's attack down to two-thousand.. He then uses Pot Of Greed to draw two more cards and thus boost Slifer up to five-thousand attack when Kaiba made Obelisk attack it. Kaiba then activates Life Shaver, which makes Yugi discard a card for every turn it's been face-down. It's only been face-down since Kaiba's last turn, so their attacks are equal.
The two gods annihilate each other, and Yugi and Kaiba get a flash from the depths of their ancient memories. With both of their gods destroyed, the two of them get down to fighting for real. Kaiba uses Cost Down to summon his Blue-Eyes with only one monster as a sacrifice. Yugi then uses Monster Reborn to summon his Dark Magician, which was the card he discarded when Kaiba played Life Shaver.
Kaiba figures rightfully that Yugi was planning on activating Spellbinding Circle, so he brings out Lord of D. to protect his Blue-Eyes. Yugi tries to take it out, but Kaiba brings Obelisk back as a shield for one turn, and then uses Flute of Dragon Summoning to bring out his other two Blue-Eyes.
One thing I would like to mention to Kazuki Takahashi if anyone hasn't brought this up already, Joey's upper torso should have been entirely bare. The sensors are supposed to be on the skin, not on the shirt.

Kaiba attacks with his three Blue-Eyes, but Yugi uses the side-effect of the Flute of Dragon Summoning to pull out Joey's Red-Eyes Black Dragon. He also uses Magic Cylinder to destroy the Lord of D., allowing him to use Spellbinding Circle on one of Kaiba's Blue-Eyes, and destroy it with the Red-Eyes. The one remaining Blue-Eyes destroys Yugi's Beta The Magnet Warrior.
Joey weakly opens his eyes and sees Yugi and Kaiba dueling, which boosts the gangs spirits to no-end. Joey then gets up and they run to the tower to let Yugi know.
Kaiba uses Monster Reborn and Polymerization to create his Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. Yugi then uses Double Spell to bring back Buster Blader, and fuse it with his Dark Magician to create The Dark Paladin. Buster Blader has a special ability which boosts its power in the presence of dragons. The Dark Paladin inherits this power, and its 2900 attack is boosted by by a thousand by the presence of the Red-Eyes and the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. Yugi uses Magic Formula to boost Dark Paladin's attack, but Kaiba uses Absorb Spell to counter. Yugi then falls back to De-Fusion to split the Ultimate Dragon into the three component dragons, boosting Dark Paladin's attack to 4900. On his turn, Yugi plays Diffusion Wave-Motion to target all three Blue-Eyes at once and win the duel, and Obelisk The Tormentor.
Joey and the gang meet Yugi at the top of the tower and congratulate him on his victory.
On their way back to the blimp, Mokuba and Seto run into Ishizu. She mentions to them that the inscription on the Pharaoh's tablet was signed by the priest who buried him. The previous owner of The Millennium Rod, none other than the priest Seto. Kaiba almost leaves the tower, but Mokuba convinces him to stick around. He then gives Yugi the one card which can boost his chances of beating Marik, Devil's Sanctuary.
It all comes down to this. Yami Yugi vs Yami Marik. And this time, the other half of their souls are on the line. For Yami Marik and Marik, one can go without the other being consumed, which is how Yami Marik intends to survive. For Yugi and Yami Yugi however, they're so interlinked that if one of them goes they both do.
Yami Marik places Ra in his graveyard so he can put one of his monsters in defense-mode. All he needs then is Monster Reborn and he can attempt his one-turn kill. With the help of Left Arm Offering, he discards his entire hand to pull it from his deck. Fortunately for Yugi, he drew Card Exchange and played it face-down. He takes Monster Reborn from Yami Marik, halting the attempt at summoning Ra in its tracks. Yugi then manages to pull out his Knight trio to both defend himself with and as sacrifices for when he draws Slifer or Obelisk. Thanks to Yami Marik's Card of Sanctity, he does. He summons Slifer with six-thousand attack-points thanks to that same card, but Yami Marik activates Revival of the Dark to bring out Monster Reborn and summon Ra. In its final form, Ra is immune to even Slifer's summoning weakening attack. Ra obliterates Slifer, and Monster Reborn goes back to Yugi's graveyard. That's when Yami Marik activates Zombies Jewel, which lets him do that all over again. The only difference is that Yugi is allowed to draw a card from his deck as compensation.

As Yugi is about to draw his free card, Yami Marik begins taunting him. He points out that Bakura is missing, and then whips out the Millennium Ring and gloats about how he's going to kill Yugi the sake way he killed Bakura. Yugi draws the card and plays it face-down on the field. Then, Marik uses Monster Reborn once again to bring out Ra, and he sacrifices all but one of his life to boost Ra up. He even sacrifices one of his monsters to boost it further. On his attack though, Yugi reveals his face-down card to be none other than Devil's Sanctuary. The card summons a Metal Devil, which has as many attack as the opponent does life. In addition, the damage it takes is inflicted upon the opponent. However, Yami Marik plays De-Fusion to separate himself from Ra.
Yugi then uses Multiply to triplicate Metal Devil and sacrifice the three of them to summon Obelisk The Tormentor. Obelisk's direct attack drops Yami Marik to seven-hundred life. However, Ishizu suspects and Yami Marik later confirms that this was all a ploy so he could activate Metal Reflect Slime. He uses this to create a reflection of Obelisk with 3/4's the originals attack. On his next turn he summons a Revival Jam and plays one card face-down. On Yugi's turn he tries to destroy the reflection of Obelisk, but Yami Marik fuses the Metal Reflect Slime with the Revival Jam, making the Obelisk clone immortal. He then plays Bowganian (One of my favorite cards) which will damage Yugi for 300 points ever single turn it's alive. Yugi tries to wipe it out with his Dark Magician Girl, but Yami Marik activates Jam Defender, which makes the Obelisk copy defend all attacks. Yugi shows some hesitation in his attempts to win the duel because of the other Marik. Marik, who has since made his peace with his family, uses Téa to tell Yugi to not worry about him.
Yami Marik then plays Magical Stone Excavation to bring back Monster Reborn, and with it, Ra. Together, Yugi and Yami Yugi come up with something they think might work to kill Yami Marik and leave regular Marik alive.
Yami Marik attacks with Ra, but Yugi uses Monster Reborn to bring Slifer back to shield Obelisk from the attack. Yami Marik then activates Surprise Attack From The Darkness to bring Ra back again. He fuses with the monster, and sacrifices all of the monsters on his field to raise Ra's attack far, far above that of Obelisk's. Yugi counters with Soul Taker, and sacrifices the God Slime to give Marik a thousand life-points. Yugi uses this to activate Obelisk's Soul Energy Max power. Unfortunately, it doesn't scratch Ra. As Yami Marik is about to attack Obelisk, Yugi activates Dimension Magic to sacrifice Obelisk and the King of Mythical Beasts to summon The Dark Magician and The Dark Magician Girl. He uses their combined abilities to kill the fused Ra. The sudden appearance of Odion allows Marik to regain control of his body, and with all but one of his life-points gone, surrenders the duel to destroy his dark half himself. Marik reunites with his brother and sister, and gives Yugi The Winged Dragon of Ra. He also shows him the carvings on his back, and Ishizu explains what it means. It's a prophecy which tells that the one who holds the soul of the pharaoh will possess the forms of the three gods. He also gives Yugi the Millennium Rod and the Ring.
After that, they all board the blimp and leave. On the airship, they find regular old Bakura right as rain, and Mai Valentine has woken up from the coma Yami Marik put her it. Unfortunately, the Kaiba brothers are nowhere to be found as the island explodes. The blimp takes off, and the Kaiba brothers fly out on a massive jet painted to look like a Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
The arc ends with Yugi and Joey having one last duel between themselves to conclude the saga of the Red-Eyes Black Dragon.

We're in the home-stretch of this series, and we've only got seven volumes left. Tune in on September 30th for the final part of The History of Yu-Gi-Oh! I know there hasn't been much history for the first several parts of this series, but I'll make up for that at the end. Plus this is the series that started the history, so there's not much to cover aside from the plot for the first series.

If you've enjoyed this series, please consider contributing to my Patreon. Any money you could give me helps a lot.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Volumes 19-24

Yugi accepts Arkana's challenge, but because the shop is so small, they go downstairs to a larger room. A place with shackles and hundred-tooth carbide-tipped saws. Loser of the duel gets their feet chopped off. Thanks to his cheating ways, Arkana gets one of his three Dark Magicians in his hand straight. Yugi anticipated this since Arkana shotgun-shuffles his cards, and plays card-destruction to put the Dark Magician into the graveyard. Yugi then activates Brain Control so he can sacrifice one of Arkana's monsters to summon his own Dark Magician. Yugi then attacks Arkana directly. Yugi summons another monster, which activates Arkana's trap, bringing his own Dark Magician to the field. This leaves them with a stalemate.
Arkana pulls out a guillotine to execute Yugi's Dark Magician, but Yugi plays Magical Hats. To get around this, Arkana activates Thousand Knives, but Yugi counters with De-Spell. Arkana then attacks Yugi's Dark Magician with his own and destroys it. The two of them activate Monster Reborn to bring them back. Arkana pulls out Beckon to the Dark to take out Yugi's Magician, but Yugi switches the effect with Mystical Rift. This was bait so Arkana could activate Nightmare Chains to nullify Yugi's Dark Magician and kill it. Arkana then uses Ectoplasmer to get around the rest of Yugi's defenses, sacrificing his own monsters in the process. Including his very own Dark Magician. However, Yugi's Dark Magician becomes ectoplasm itself to protect Yugi from the second, stronger attack. Arkana then uses Devil's Scales to break down Yugi's defenses and open him up to a forward assault. Arkana then pulls out Dark Magic Curtain to summon up a second Dark Magician.Yugi takes advantage of this to summon his Dark Magician Girl, the Dark Magicians apprentice. She is powered up by the Dark Magicians in both graveyards, allowing Yugi to defeat Arkana and win the duel. Arkana tries to escape from the shackles with a key hidden on his person, but Marik forces him to stop. Yugi uses his own key to get out and unlocks Arkana so he can not get his feet chopped off. Marik then takes control of Arkana to shout at Yugi for a bit about how he blames him for his wasted childhood and wants to gain control of the three Egyptian God Cards and the seven Millennium Items to free his people from their responsibility to guard the items. Marik then baits Yugi into looking for the guy in the city with Slifer, and Yugi accepts the challenge.
Meanwhile Téa and the rest of the gang are searching for Yugi and Joey. They run into a mime before the chapter cuts to Joey eating in a restaurant. He takes his duel-disk off to keep from constantly bumping into people, which leads to a kid taking it. Joey runs him down and gets his Disk back. The kid feeds Joey and the gang a line about his deck and Duel Disk being stolen. This leads to Joey encountering none other than Weevil Underwood. Meanwhile, Tristan and Duke go to bring Serenity from the hospital to Domino City.
Eventually, Joey draws a card that the kid who stole his disk planted in his deck, Parasite Paracide. The parasite infects Joey's monsters, turning them into insects. He also activates one of his own traps as well. This allows Weevil to power up his own monsters and prevents Joey from attacking or summoning any higher-level monsters. Weevil then uses a card to sacrifice his own monster and summon up his Insect Queen, paying off the parasite from earlier. Plus, every time she attacks and destroys a monster, she lays an insect egg which in turn buffs up her attack even further. Fortunately, Joey has a trap of his own up his sleeve, which redirects the Insect Queen's attack against the newly spawned larvae. This reduces Weevil's life-points significantly, and gives Joey a chance to summon Gearfried The Iron Knight. A metal construct immune to infection. Weevil tries to turn the tide, but Joey uses Graverobber to copy his insecticide card from earlier in the duel and wipe out the Insect Queen. Joey then attacks Weevil directly, ending the duel, the chapter, and the volume.
This is the very first time I'm actually going to bring up the cover of the volume. While it's not a bad cover, it kind of gives away certain aspects of the Arkana duel. First off, there's the Dark Magician Girl behind Yugi. Second is the appearance of Arkana's own Dark Magician. Personally speaking, I'd prefer to have Arkana's Dark Magician back-to-back with Yugi's. Put those two behind Yugi with the DMG silhouetted so vaguely behind them that you can only pick it out after knowing what she looks like.

Seto Kaiba has his people scan through the databanks of registered duelists to try and find the other god-cards to no avail.
Meanwhile, Marik Ishtar arrives in Domino City and activates his pawn who carries Slifer. He finds Yugi and challenges him to a duel.
Marik's avatar summons up a couple of monsters and fuses them into one. He then plays a card to make it attack immediately, catching Yugi off-guard. Yugi however pulls out De-Fusion to break the two apart. This was just Marik's way of testing the waters however, and he summons up Revival Jam and activates his Jam Breeding Machine. Yugi pulls out Buster Blader to take out Marik's monsters, but he pulls out Nightmare Steel Cage, which keeps Yugi from attacking for three turns. This gives Marik time to summon up Slifer The Sky Dragon. Since Slifer's attack goes up by a thousand for every card in Marik's hand, he plays Infinite Cards, which allows him to have as many cards as he wishes in hand. On the next turn, Slifer is up to 4000 attack, but Yugi plays Life-Force Sword to knock it down to 3000 just as it attacks Buster Blader. Marik then activates a trap of his own to turn Revival Jam into a permanent shield for Slifer. Then he pulls out Cards Safe Return to add cards to his hand whenever his Jam revives itself. This gives him enough power to kill Buster Blader.
Kaiba's men inform him of the appearance of Slifer, meanwhile Yugi tries to summon his Dark Magician Girl to take out Slifer, but the dragons special ability almost kills her before Yugi pulls out Magical Hats to keep her safe. This barely helps him enough to pull out Spellbinding Circle and Magic Cylinder. Somehow the Revival Jam manages to get in the way and block the reversed attack. Slifer breaks the Spellbinding Circle, and wipes the DMG off the map. Yugi can't figure out a way to get around this until Kaiba shouts at him for a bit. Yugi summons Buster Blader back from the dead and uses it to attack Slifer. Jam Defender intercepts, and Yugi uses Brain Control to take command of the Revival Jam. This puts Marik in an infinite feedback loop until all of the cards are farmed out of his deck and he loses the duel. Marik informs Yugi that he has people watching Joey and the gang, so Yugi rushes off to find him. Yugi runs into a couple of douchebags who may or may not be rare-hunters, but he and Kaiba burn them to the ground with god-cards and run off to check on Joey and the gang.
Meanwhile, Joey is tracking down more duels. Eagerly looking for competition, Joey and the gang don't notice Bakura slipping off to search for Marik with his Millennium Ring. Figuring (Rightly so) that the Millennium Item wielder has something to do with the tournament, Yami Bakura knocks out a duelist in an alleyway and takes his Duel Disc.
Joey runs into Mako Tsunami at the aquarium and challenges him to a duel. It doesn't go all that well to start.
Meanwhile elsewhere, Bakura confronts Marik over his Millennium Rod.

Bakura and Marik come to an agreement and form an alliance. Bakura helps Marik achieve his goals, Marik gives him The Millennium Rod and directions on how to unseal The Door of Darkness once Yugi's been defeated. Yeah, like that's gonna happen.
Meanwhile at the aquarium, Mako tries to overwhelm Joey with his ocean creatures, but Joey manages to survive through brute force. Joey manages to fly his monsters over Mako's ocean and attack him directly. Mako then blocks the next attack with a trap, and begins killing Joey's monsters from the depths. Mako brings Joey down to the wire, but Joey manages to pull out a win from behind with his Magic Arm Shield and Kunai With Chain, managing to strike his opponents Fortress Whale with a bolt of lightening. He then takes out Mako's Legendary Fisherman with his Panther Warrior, ending the duel.
Marik then uses a wounded Bakura to bait Joey and the gang into allowing him to accompany them under the pseudonym of Namu. Marik also activates a pair of rare-hunters, Umbra and Lumis to take the god-cards away from Kaiba and Yugi. Yugi and Kaiba run into those two while on the way to find Joey and the others. Umbra and Lumis force the two of them into dueling under threat of Joey being killed and threat of Kaiba not getting the key to unlock his Duel Disc.
The duel takes place up at the top of a nearby building, on a skylight with explosives planted beneath. Life points hit zero, explosives go off, player falls to a horrible death.
Lumis puts out masks that prevent Yugi and Kaiba from sacrificing any of their monsters, as well as preventing one of Yugi's monsters from attacking. Kaiba tries to bait and trap Umbra, but Lumis transfers the trap onto Kaiba and he takes the damage. Umbra then almost wipes out Kaiba's life-points, but Yugi pulls out a Kuriboh shield with Multiply. Next turn Lumis dispels the Multiply, leaving both of them wide-open to attack. Kaiba then signals Yugi that he should use Card Destruction so they can special-summon higher-level monsters from their graveyards. This also weakens Umbra's Masked Beast so Kaiba's Blue-Eyes can destroy it.
Lumis then activates Mask of Weakness, cutting the Blue-Eyes attack in half, making it weaker than Umbra's monster. Yugi then switches the effect of the mask to Lumis's monster, allowing Kaiba to damage Umbra's life-points.

Lumis and Umbra start bickering over their tactics, letting Kaiba drive the wedge further with an attack for Umbra, and some words for Lumis. Lumis uses Chosen One to summon Masked Beast of Guardius. He wants to use it to take out Yugi, but Kaiba goads him into wiping out his Blue-Eyes instead. This lets Yugi summon up the last of the three Magnet Warriors and fuse them into Valkyrion. This finally gets rid of the cursed mask on Beta, stopping the constant drain of Yugi's life-points. Yugi uses Valkyrion to attack Guardius, but a piece of the creature attaches itself as a Mask of Possession. Yugi uses De-Fusion to split them into component monsters, and Kaiba uses Soul Exchange to sacrifice the three Magnet Warriors to summon Obelisk. Obelisk wipes Umbra's life-points out, and the explosives blast the window to smithereens. Umbra pulls out a parachute to keep him from falling to his death, much to the disgust of Yugi and Kaiba. Lumis can't believe this. He can't figure out how to win the duel, so Marik takes over and taunts them about how he's gotten to Joey and the gang and wants Yugi to face Joey head-on. Mokuba arrive in a helicopter and they fly Yugi to Joey's location for the showdown.
Meanwhile, Duke and Tristan are accompanying Serenity Wheeler back to Domino City when Tristan calls the mind-controlled Téa to try and figure out what's up. They figure out from the background noise that she and most likely the other members of the gang are at the Domino City Pier. Marik forces Yugi and the mind-controlled Joey to handcuff themselves to a six-hundred pound anchor. Fifteen seconds after one of them drops to zero life-points the bomb goes off and the anchor drags the one who doesn't get to the handcuff key in the box at their feet first to a watery grave. Kaiba attempts to intervene, but Marik's men nab Mokuba and stop him.
While Marik forces Yugi to remove Slifer from his deck, he adds the Red-Eyes Black Dragon into it in the hopes it might be able to shake Joey out of Marik's control.
The Marik-controlled Joey pulls out direct damage card after direct damage card, something which Kaiba banned from the tournament. This eventually brings Yugi down below two-thousand life-points.
Yugi decides to take full control of the duel, letting Yami have a break and allowing Yugi to try and get through to Joey. Yugi plays Card Exchange to see what Joey would do. He doesn't take the dragon despite Marik's urging, allowing Yugi to sacrifice two of his monsters to summon the Red-Eyes.
On the way from the train-station, Tristan, Duke and Serenity run into Mai as she's finishing up her last duel to enter the finals. She offers them a lift to the pier in her car and they accept.
Joey pulls out Rocket Warrior and tears one of the wings off his Red-Eyes, but Yugi doesn't pay it any mind. Instead, he hangs his Millennium Puzzle around Joey's neck so Yami won't take over, and in an attempt to jog his memory. Marik tries to make him take the puzzle apart and toss it in the ocean, but his memories of all the things he's been through with Yugi keep that from happening.
Yugi uses Magic Arm Shield to redirect Joey's Rocket Warrior back at his Panther Warrior, and then uses Archfiend of Gilfer to kill the Rocket Warrior.

With only a few minutes left before the bomb goes off and their life-points equal, Yugi hatches a plan to bring their life-points to zero simultaneously. Kaiba decides to take a gamble and save his brother from Marik's man with the knife with a Duel-Monsters card flicked into his hand.
Marik makes Joey play Meteor of Destruction, but Yugi plays Mystical Rift Panel to buy himself some time. This breaks Joey out of Marik's spell, and Yugi takes off his Duel Disc, then directs the fireball towards himself so Joey can live. This opens up the box at Joey's feet with the key in it. Joey's panicked that his best friend is about to die, so he orders his Red-Eyes to reduce his life-points to zero so he can swing over on his chain and unchain Yugi. He takes off the Millennium Puzzle and his Duel Disc beforehand. Unfortunately, the bomb explodes and drags them into the water. Joey manages to unlock Yugi's cuff, but his key was left at the surface in his haste and Yugi's doesn't work for him. However, Kaiba drops they key down to him and Joey manages to get free.
Mai arrives with Duke, Tristan and Serenity. Serenity removes her bandages finally, and reunites with her brother.
With six puzzle-cards apiece for Kaiba, Mai, Yugi and Joey, they head off to the finals. The other finalists are Marik Ishtar (Under the guise of Namu) his stepbrother Odion disguised as Marik, their sister Ishizu, and Bakura. Kaiba's dueling blimp descends from the air and they board. The first duel will be Yugi vs Bakura.
Yami Bakura lets Yugi destroy three of his monsters so he can special-summon Dark Necrofear. He doesn't attack though. This lets Yugi summon his Dark Magician Girl, and he equips her with Magic Formula to boost her attack points. He kills Dark Necrofear, and Yami Bakura reveals that this was his plan all along. Dark Necrofear's death activates its special power and possesses one of Yugi's monsters. When Yugi attacks with a possessed monster, his life-points are reduced by half of that monsters attack, and those points are added to Bakura's. Bakura then pulls out Destiny Board, a permanent trap. And another permanent trap, The Dark Door, which limits Yugi to only one attack per round. Yugi tries to attack with his Dark Magician Girl, but the ghost assaults him. Thus ends the volume.
The first four chapters of this volume are entirely dedicated to wrapping up the Joey vs Yugi duel. Yet again I must take umbrage with the placement of the chapters in each of these volumes. Move the climax of Yugi vs Joey back into the previous volume, then move the climax of Double Duel into the volume before that, and add a few chapters from the next volume into this one and boom, it all flows better. This is why I didn't have a volume breakdown in the last two sixths of the review.

Yugi correctly guesses which of his monsters isn't possessed by the spirit, but Bakura forces him to attack with the Dark Magician Girl through use of another permanent trap, Dark Spirit of the Silent. Yugi manages to figure out how to counter that combo and beat Bakura's Destiny Board. Yugi uses Monster Recovery to clear his field, and shuffles his hand back into his deck. He then summons Kuriboh in attack mode so the spirit would possess it. He then activates Chain Destruction to destroy Kuriboh and the spirit alike. Marik, who remains in contact with Yami Bakura through possession of his host, tells him what Yugi's plan is. To resurrect Dark Necrofear with a face-down Monster Reborn. Bakura tries to get around this to no avail, but his secondary plan works. He uses Deja Vu to reset the monsters positions so Dark Necrofear can keep moving the lens on the Destiny Board.
Yugi uses his three monsters Bakura gave him back to summon up Slifer The Sky Dragon. Bakura believes the spirit of Necrofear would possess Slifer and end the duel for him, but it's too weak to control a god. Marik uses Odion to undo his possession of Bakura in an attempt to make Yugi lose the duel to keep his friend from possibly dying when Slifer attacks, but Yami Bakura takes over and Yugi finishes the duel with a direct attack from Slifer. Bakura is left weakened and in pain from Yami Bakura stabbing himself earlier, but he's alive. Mokuba orders the security team to set up the first-aid station and they haul him off, while a Marik-possessed Téa grabs the Millennium Ring.
The next duel is between Joey and Odion, who everyone still thinks is Marik. Odion puts out a bunch of trap-cards, and Joey sees fit to wipe them out with Giant Trunade. However, Odion anticipated this and pulls out Judgement of Anubis.
Joey then activates one of Odion's traps on purpose so he can run out Odion's deck. However, this was also anticipated by Odion, who activates Embodiment of Apophis. Correction. Three Embodiments of Apophis. Apophis is a trap-monster akin to some of the ones featured earlier in the series. It gets special-summoned to the field when an enemy attacks.
Joey tries to protect his life-points with Scape-Goat, but Odion De-Spells it with... De-Spell. Joey is about to seriously give up, but his sister's voice spurs him on to finish the duel. Joey activates Foolish Burial and Graverobber, to place Jinzo in Odion's graveyard and bring it back to his side of the field. This allows him to destroy all of the Embodiments of Apophis and attack Odion directly. Odion then activates Swords of Revealing Light to protect himself for a while. Joey and Odion use these turns to boost up their defenses. Odion even manages to summon Selket, a devastating scorpion that eats Joey's monsters alive to bolster its own attack points. It is also revealed that Odion has been given a counterfeit copy of The Winged Dragon of Ra.
For the last few pages of this chapter, we get a brief insight into Odion and Marik's origins. It's interesting, but I personally prefer the way the second animated series handled it. We'll get to that in time. It just feels somewhat redundant when we get a far more in-depth look at their origins later on.

So yeah, I haven't forgotten about this series, I was just a bit delayed by time. The series will continue until I've finished reviewing the manga, which will hopefully be before the start of October. I've only got fourteen volumes left, so if I can keep up the pace I was working at in this review, I can easily get that done. Then I've got The 31 Days of Evil 3 after that, so hopefully I can manage to not work myself to death over the next month and a half between school, this and all my side-projects.

If you liked this review, please consider contributing to my Patreon. If I got any money through it I'd put it all back into the site.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Volumes 13-18

Welcome back to The History of Yu-Gi-Oh! Today we're covering Volumes 13-18 of the original manga! (Or Volumes 6-11 of Duelist, but I don't count it that way) Let's go ahead and get back into the groove!
Kaiba takes five of Yugi's star-chips and proceeds to Pegasus's castle for his confrontation after a swift chastising from Yugi's friends for being a dick over a duel. For basically blackmailing Yugi into forfeiting.
Yugi and company spend the rest of the second day trying to accumulate five more star-chips, but to no avail. Eventually, they get back to the castle, and rather than let Yugi get disqualified, Joey wants to give Yugi five of his star-chips. However, Mai shows up at the castle too, and gives Yugi the five star-chips he needs to enter the finals as payback for him getting her star-chips back from PaniK. She herself has gotten ten on top of the ones she gave Yugi, and the three of them enter the finals.
Inside the castle they run into Bandit Keith, who's getting ready to watch the duel between Kaiba and Pegasus.
Kaiba tries to make Pegasus use the Duel Disk, but he wants to have Mokuba's lifeless shell use it if he does, so Kaiba agrees to a regular duel.
Pegasus plays dumb for a while, but then starts playing for real. He snatches one of Kaiba's Blue-Eyes with a trap-card, and from here the real dueling starts.
Pegasus goes all-out with the Toon-monsters, even pulling out his Toon-World field card. He knocks Kaiba's life-points down by half, so Kaiba discards his entire hand and plays cards off the top of his deck. This pays off, as he manages to get one of his other Blue-Eyes onto the field. He tries to wipe out Pegasus's toon-ified Blue-Eyes, but the thing stretches out of the way. This is when we find that toon-world operates on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? logic.
Kaiba blocks the Toon-Dragon's attack with a trap-card and then latches onto it with a spell-card to prevent it from moving and take down its Attack. He blasts it away with his own Blue-Eyes, but Pegasus pulls out the Dragon Capture Jar and eats Kaiba's dragon. Kaiba tries to kill Pegasus's Dragon Piper, but Pegasus duplicates Kaiba's Crush-Card Virus and infects his deck. Ths burns through most of Kaiba's deck, except for his spell-cards. He runs out, and Pegasus seals his soul inside a card alongside Mokuba's.
The realization that Kaiba was fighting for his brother brings out a feeling of sheer rage in Yugi, and this brings out Yami. He declares that he's going to demolish Pegasus.
In the dining-room where the duelists are being fed, Yugi and the gang see a painting of Shadi alongside a painting of a young woman.
They then find Millennium Eye replicas in their soup with letters in them. Yugi is paired with Mai, and Joey is paired with Bandit Keith.
Everyone goes to bed for the night, but Tristan decides to look around the castle and see where Seto and Mokuba are. Yami Bakura checks out the picture of Shadi before encountering a pair of guards and leaving his host to fend for himself. Tristan and Bakura meet up, and Bakura agrees to distract the guards while Tristan looks around for the Kaiba brothers. Tristan finds Mokuba, but one of Pegasus's men sneaks up on him with a gun.
Meanwhile, Bandit Keith breaks into Joey's room to steal his prize-card. Yugi catches him, but Keith beats him up. Joey then proceeds to beat Keith up, but they don't catch that he stole Joey's card.
Téa cleans the cuts on Yugi's face, and he expresses his frustrations at being so small and weak. He doesn't like not being able to protect anyone on his own, and declares that he'll make himself strong enough to stand up for himself, strong enough to take on his other self and win. Yeah, just you wait. This comes back in a big way later on.
Tristan gets tossed into a cell, but Bakura knocks out the guard and unlocks the cage.
The next morning, Yugi talks to Solomon through the video-camera before Joey asks him if he's ready.
Yugi begins his duel with Mai. She springs a trap on him, and the volume ends.
Being titled "The Terror of Toon World" is fairly accurate, since the volume really introduces the true terror of Toon World. Then there's the rest of the volume, which is mostly dedicated to building up to the rest of the tournament.
If anyone has ever seen a promotional shot for this franchise, if it has Yugi on it, he's most likely wearing his jacket as a cape. This is the volume that debuted in.

Yugi, preoccupied by his impending duel with Pegasus falls for a few of Mai's traps before engaging full dueling mode. He mind-controls Mai's dragon and uses it to destroy her mirrored wall. She falls for Yugi's bluff, giving him time to pull out Swords of Revealing Light to delay her attack. This gives him time to bring out the Black Luster Soldier and wipe out Mai's dragon. Mai sees no path for her to win, so she surrenders.
Joey and Bandit Keith go to duel, but since Keith took Joey's prize-card he has to find another so he can not be disqualified. He searches around for his, but doesn't find it since Keith took his. However, Mai gives him hers, and he goes back to the dueling room to face Keith.
Joey baits Keith into attacking, but the machine-monsters are immune to his magic-attacks. Keith plays a non-machine monster to lure Joey into attacking with his Flame Swordsman. One trap-card later the Flame Swordsman is destroyed and Joey loses 850 life-points.
Keith tries to finish off Joey with his other monsters, but Joey was waiting for his powerful monsters to attack so he could hit it with Chasm of Spikes and destroy it.
Keith keeps trying to kill Joey's monsters, but Joey keeps boosting them with spells and traps. Keith pulls out the Barrel Dragon, but Joey ages it to rust with the Time-Wizard and blasts it away with the Thousand-Dragon. Then Keith brings it back with a time-machine.
Joey manages to get his Red-Eyes out and copies one of Keith's cards to create the Red-Eyes Metal Dragon. Bigger and better than the Barrel Dragon, the Red-Eyes melts it to slag.
Joey then tries to wipe out Keith's last monster, but he pulls out Seven Completed and boosts the defense of the slot-machine monster to damage Joey. Keith then attaches an explosive monster to the Red-Eyes, and begins plotting to cheat to take out Joey. Joey then plays an equipment card on the Red-Eyes to boost it up to take the attack.
Keith uses Pillager to take a card, Sword and Shield from Joey's hand, which switches the attack and defense points of all monsters on the field. This takes the then-equal Red-Eyes and Slot Machine monsters points and leaves the Red-Eyes at a disadvantage. At the last second, Joey activates Grave-Robber, and steals the Time-Machine to bring the Red-Eyes back to full strength. This wipes out the rest of Keith's life-points, and wins Joey the duel.
As far as ways to close out a volume goes, that's brilliant. An underdog victory from so far behind you'd never think he could pull it off. Take your pick of Never Surrender, the Rocky theme, You're The Best, or better yet, the Yu-Gi-Oh! theme. That's what we're looking at here. That's the level of epic we're seeing.

Rather than waste time and further reveal strategies to Pegasus, Joey and Yugi agree to have Yugi be the one to face Pegasus.
Yugi gets the first turn in the duel, but Pegasus can still see into his mind and predict his strategies. Yugi tries to beat out the mind-scan, but he doesn't until he starts shuffling around his mind. From Yami to Yugi and back again. With the combination of their strategies, they wipe out Toon World, and knock him down to 800 life-points.
At this point, Pegasus starts the shadow-game. Yugi can't really handle it, but he wants to help anyways.
Pegasus manages to bait Yami into attacking so he can summon Relinquished, (One of my favorite monsters in the card-game) and uses it to further bait Yami into damaging his own life-points. Relinquished is a ritual-summon monster, which takes an enemy monster as a shield and takes its attack and defense. If it would be destroyed, the monster it took from is destroyed instead. It's a really cool monster if you can manage to summon it. I hope to have three in my deck at some point.
Yugi takes over so Yami can try and come up with a plan, but he passes out after playing two cards.
Yami takes over with a new vengeance, and the rest of the gang help prevent Pegasus from reading his mind. This gives Yami enough of an edge to sacrifice Pegasus's bomb monster, Jigen Bakuden and one of his own monsters to bring out the Magician of Black Chaos. He can't attack with it this turn, but Pegasus doesn't absorb it with Relinquished. Instead, he fuses it with the Thousand-Eyes Idol and creates Thousand-Eyes Restrict. He tries to absorb Kuriboh and the Magician of Black Chaos, but Yugi activates Multiply, which creates thousands of Kuribohs. This keeps Thousand-Eyes Restrict from absorbing the Magician, and Yami wipes out the rest of Pegasus' life-points with a single attack.
Pegasus holds up his promise and sets Solomon and the Kaiba brothers free. Pegasus then begins telling Yugi some of the secrets of The Millennium Items. He tells him about the death of his wife, and the state he was in when he found himself in Egypt. There, he ran into a thief trying to steal The Millennium Ring, and Shadi in the group trying to stop him. Shadi and the others take the thief back to the temple and see if he's able to wield the Ring, but it eats him alive. Pegasus tells Yugi of the Tablet of the Pharaoh's memories, with spots for four items empty and three items inside it.
Later on, Mokuba wakes up, and so does Kaiba. One of Pegasus's men gives Yugi the prize-money and Kaiba's duel-disks. This was why Pegasus wanted Kaibacorp. So he could use the solid light technology to create a permanent vision of his beloved.
Before they leave the island, Yami Bakura plays a Shadow-Game with Pegasus, and as a penalty for loss, rips the Millennium Eye out of Pegasus' face.
Kaiba flies everyone else off the island on his helicopter, and the arc as well as the volume concludes.
The volume contains some amazing moments. Even reading it over for the third time for this review, I had chills running down my spine throughout. Yugi's final showdown with Pegasus, the mind-shuffle, Yugi's friends intervening against Pegasus. It's all amazing to read. Speaking as mainly a fan of the Duelist series, the events just popped off the page to me.
Not only do the eight volumes of the Pegasus arc work incredibly well as a standalone arc, they set up future events and pay off storylines started back in the beginning of the series. As the mystery of The Pharaoh's powers and the Millennium Items begins to unravel, the story and stakes start amping up.

After all the times people stole Yugi's puzzle by breaking or cutting the cord, he replaces it with a chain. We see Yugi's mother one more time in two short panels as Yugi rushes to meet Téa on their walk to school. Téa notices Solomon isn't too happy right now, and he shows them why. A new, high-end game shop has opened up across the way, and there's a huge amount of interest in it. So much so that he fears going out of business sometime soon. The shop, Black Clown has exclusive contracts, they make and sell their own games. Sort of like console-exclusivity turned up to eleven. Yugi's naturally interested, but he and Téa have to go to school, so they leave.
Looking on is Duke Devlin and his father, the titular Black Clown.
At school, Yugi and the gang run into Duke doing dice-tricks in the classroom. Duke tricks Joey into a bet over a rigged magic-trick. He then tricks Joey into a shell-game. When he loses, Duke forces him to be his servant for four weeks, before Yugi intervenes and challenges Duke. He changes the shell-game from four aces to four aces and a joker. You get two aces of the same color, you win. You get an ace of both colors, it's a tie. You pick the joker, you lose. Duke loses three hands of the game, and accuses Yugi of rigging it. Yugi then explains the rules, and Duke realizes the game was completely fair.
The next day, Black Clown's new game, Dungeon Dice Monsters, goes on sale. Yugi and the gang try to get a copy, but Yugi gets separated frm them, and Duke's security team plants stolen bags of DDM on Yugi's person. They haul him away and throw him into a room with Duke to play Dungeon Dice Monsters. Each player picks twelve dice from their pool (Duke gives Yugi access to all five-hundred different dice) and then the machine shuffles them. There's a dungeon floor to explore and targets with life to attack. Get to the target, destroy the target, boom. Roll two summon-crests and you can summon a monster. This plants out six squares for the summoned creature to roam about on. Built a path to your target, and attack it.
Duke gets the first summon, and then it's Yugi's turn. Yugi finds that his dice are all higher levels, and don't have many summoning crests on them. For several turns, Duke summons and moves more monsters. Duke even manages to get them to Yugi's target, his Dungeon Master, and attack it. Finally, at the eleventh hour Yugi summons a high-level monster and stops Duke's advance in its track. Yugi sacrifices one of his Dungeon Masters life to destroy two more of Duke's monsters.
Duke explains that his father challenged Solomon for control of The Millennium Puzzle, but the game aged him horribly. Duke wants to beat Yugi and take the puzzle from him to become the new heir to the legend.
Duke summons a special Rare Black monster with a teleporter pad inside the dice, but Yugi summons his own Rare Black monster and kills it. Yugi manages to make his way to and attack Duke's Dungeon Master. He knocks it down to a single point, which enrages Duke's father to no end. He comes out through a secret door and starts berating Duke for letting Yugi get this far, and then takes apart The Millennium Puzzle.
After the gang has some difficulty finding Yugi, Yami Bakura decides to track him with The Millennium Puzzle, when his needles detect something happening to the Puzzle. Here we find out some more about Yami Bakura's motives. He wants Yugi alive and needs the puzzle intact for his master plan to come together.
Duke manages to take out Yugi's best monster and teleports into his territory, and destroys several of Yugi's other monsters.
Yami Bakura then shows up to taunt Duke overt his idiotic assumption that he could wield the Puzzle without being burned alive.
Earlier, Tristan saw Bakura entering the game store wearing The Millennium Ring, and they rush in to see what's going on.
Within the shop, Yugi manages to summon one last monster and manage to find a spot to place it. Thus the volume ends with Yugi triumphant, and Duke aghast.
I'm left to wonder if the introduction of Dungeon Dice Monsters was intended to be a standalone arc or if it was supposed to try and get the series away from Duel Monsters. Considering it went into a lengthy Duel Monsters-related arc afterwards I'd bet on the former.

While this volume is titled "The Egyptian God Cards" the first three volumes are dedicated to wrapping up the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc. Another case where they could have and should have re-arranged the chapter selection. You don't start a volume named after the plot-devices from one arc with the last three chapters of what otherwise could have been a largely self-contained volume. The Dungeon Dice Monsters arc was small enough that it could fit into one decently-sized book, but they spread it across two volumes, and thus took away from both the end of that arc and the beginning of the Battle City arc to follow. Punctuating your collections is as important as punctuating each chapter in a multi-part arc. It ain't a series-killing error by any means, just a pace-killing one when you're not reading multiple volumes at a time.
Within the Black Clown store, the gang find it empty save for the possibly unconscious, probably dead guards.
Yugi uses some stored crests to activate his new monsters special-power and block Duke's assault on his Dungeon Master. He then activates its second ability to slay Duke's best monster. There's no way for Duke to win, since he's got nothing that can stand up to it.
Yugi gets the puzzle, and Yami Bakura seals a bit of his soul inside a piece of it. Duke attempts to reconcile with Yugi, but his dad yanks Yugi into a room with the game he played with Solomon twenty years ago. He nails the puzzle to the table and tries to solve it, but Yami's spirit screws with his head. This causes Duke's dad (I don't think we've learned his name) to freak out and knock candles off the table. This catches the building on fire.
Duke and Bakura run into the rest of the gang when they notice smoke coming through the secret door.
Yugi tries to get the rest of the puzzle off the table, but the nail won't come out of the table so he can get the last piece.
Joey and Tristan break the door down and Duke rescues his father at Yugi's behest.
Even with the help of Joey and Tristan, Yugi can't wrest the nail from the table. Yugi wants to try and build the puzzle again for fear it will melt, and Joey decides to stay with him. Eventually, Yugi passes out from the heat and the smoke, so Joey braves the flames and tries to get him out. He finally manages to leverage the nail out of the table since Yugi won't let go of the chain. As the building goes up in flame, Joey exits the building with Yugi in his arms.
The next chapter starts off with Yugi in the hospital recovering from the smoke inhalation, overheating, and possibly burns as well. He's playing Duel Monsters with Joey when the man n the bed next to his points out that there's a woman with an eye on her necklace that's similar to the one on Yugi's puzzle.
The woman is Ishizu Ishtar, who invites Seto Kaiba to the Domino City Museum to show him the new exhibit early. There he finds the origin of the Duel Monsters game. Exodia, The Blue-Eyes White Dragon, the Dark Magician, Summoned Skull, Kuriboh, everything. As well as a carving depicting the unnamed pharaoh who looks distinctly like Yugi squaring off against a priest who looks a lot like Kaiba himself. Everything is there, right down to their preferred monsters of the Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes White Dragon respectively. Kaiba disbelieves that this is legit, but Ishizu bribes him into sticking around in exchange for Obelisk The Tormentor, one of the three rare-cards Maximilian Pegasus drew up during the creation of Duel Monsters. Three powerful cards that if wielded improperly could legitimately kill someone. They're that tied to the actual powers that govern the Shadow Games. He tried to destroy them, but he couldn't. As an alternative, he gave them to the Egyptian government to deal with, and they hid them in three places in The Valley of The Kings. Then the Ghouls, a group of treasure-hunters led by Ishizu's brother, Marik Ishtar, stole two of them. If there's a high-profile theft of Duel Monsters cards, you can bet The Ghouls are behind it. Ishizu wants Kaiba to hold an ante-tournament to lure out the Ghouls so they can recover Slifer The Sky Dragon and The Winged Dragon of Ra. Plus, Kaiba sees this as an opportunity to show his dominance as a duelist and collect the other two cards.
At the Kaiba Corporation R&R headquarters, Seto tests out the card and his new and improved Duel-Disks. He goes up against his Duelist Kingdom deck, complete with the three Blue-Eyes. He negates the Blue-Eyes attack, summons Obelisk, and wipes them out in one go, along with the dueling-bot.
Meanwhile, Yami goes on a date with Téa. They sit at a while in a coffee-shop talking before roaming around. They stop in at a card-shop to pick up some newer cards and later at an arcade to play some games. There, a guy named Johnny Steps challenges Téa to a game of Dance Dance Revolution (Or something like that) and she accepts. She beats him, and she and Yugi go to the museum to learn what Kaiba did after some conversation. There they run into Ishizu, who tells them of a great battle approaching. She also mentions that Yugi needs to find all seven Millennium Items to regain the Pharaoh's memories.
Outside the museum, they run into a ton of duelists. Mai Valentine, Weevil Underwood, Rex Raptor, Mako Tsunami, and new faces. Then the Kaiba brothers show up to explain what's going on. Seto tells them that a Duel-Monsters tournament starts tomorrow, and that they need a forty-card deck and a next-generation Duel Disk to enter. Players bet their rarest card on the duel, and everyone at the finals will have a deck full of rare cards.
Marik gets wind of the tournament, and mobilizes the Rare Hunters.
Yugi explains that Yami doesn't really want to play for ante, but the stakes of the tournament and the chance to face Kaiba again is too good to pass up.
Yugi and Joey have to go to a specialty gaming store to get their duel-disks. Joey is almost not admitted to the tournament (Despite being the runner-up in the Duelist Kingdom tournament.) but one of Marik's men has infiltrated the shop and notices Joey's Red-Eyes. He gives him a duel-disk and inform's Marik. On the way back from Yugi's, one of Marik's men ambushes him and challenges him to a duel. He farms out cards until he draws out Exodia and trounces him.

The Ghouls beat up Joey and take his Red-Eyes, leaving him unconscious in the alleyway.
The next day, the duelists gather together, and Kaiba explains the new rules. Collect puzzle-cards to create a map of the city, stack six and a location lights up. Same as Duelist Kingdom, you bet these puzzle cards on duels as well as your rarest card. Four-thousand life-points, closer to standard rules. Then even closer to standard rules, sacrifices for summoning higher-level monsters.
Meanwhile, Joey has been trying to find the guy who stole his Red-Eyes and finally tracks him down. Yugi challenges the guy to a duel for the Red-Eyes. Yami Yugi don't care who the guy is or what cards he uses, he's gonna beat his ass.
The rare-hunter starts farming out Exodia, but Yugi figures out his strategy and nails one of the pieces with Light-Force Sword. He then activates Chain Destruction to wipe out all copies of the one piece of Exodia his hand and deck. Boom. No more Exodia. Marik then takes over and expresses his disdain for the mans weakness before handing the Red-Eyes and the puzzle-card to Yugi. Joey however refuses to take the card back until he's more worthy of it, and goes to find a duel of his own.
While looking for his duel, Joey runs into Rex Raptor getting beaten by Esper Roba. After having faced off with Mai, Joey is confident that he can take down psychics. Plus, he beat Rex Raptor himself, so there's no real reason to be afraid.
Roba's brothers feed him information about his opponents. Joey finds this out when they feed their brother a false piece of information based on the partial obscuration of a single card. However, this doesn't prevent Roba from summoning Jinzo, the Psycho Shocker destroying Joey's trap-cards and attacking him directly. On his turn, Joey manages to protect his life-points with a bunch of scape-goats in defense mode. Joey then plays Roulette Spider, making Jinzo attack one of Roba's monsters and wipe out most of his life-points. On his next turn, Joey plays Baby Dragon and wins the game. He gains himself a puzzle-card and Jinzo for his troubles.
Meanwhile, Mokuba and Seto bust a guy trying to blackmail another player into giving up more cards or being beaten up. Seto then challenges the dude to a duel and wipes him out with Obelisk.
Yugi and Yami have a talk about how the Ghouls knew Joey had the Red-Eyes, and they conclude that it must have been the guy from the shop who told them. They rush to the store and find the computer with the duelist data on it, and a recolored Dark Magician pops out of the screen. There he meets the illusionist Arkana, who also uses The Dark Magician card that Yugi is fond of. Arkana challenges Yugi to a duel, and he accepts, wrapping up the volume on an epic cliffhanger.
For some reason, despite properly translating Pegasus's name in previous volumes (With small errors here and there) this volume calls Pegasus Pegasus J. Crawford instead of Maximilian J. Pegasus despite the character introducing himself as Maximilian J. Pegasus. I'll break this down at the very end of this feature in further depth when I break down the localization of these comics.

Well, I'm a little bit late, but that couldn't really be helped. This has been a ragged week for me.
We've been trying to straighten out our financial situation as best we can, plus I had to take a small break on Sunday so I wouldn't be working myself into oblivion.
If you like this series so far, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Every dollar makes it easier to do what I do here. And I love doing what I do here. If you love reading what I write, I'd appreciate knowing, either through the comments, or through Patreon. It doesn't matter to me.