Early into the Synchro Era, Konami decided to try something different with their cards, and that is to tell a story through said cards. Over several years, we continuously got cards and archetypes that tied together into the same lore that told a story when analyzed closely. The first lore the game ever saw was the classic Duel Terminal storyline, consisting of multiple archetypes from 2009 all the way until 2015, and arguably even beyond that (but that's for another time). Even when said lore ended, the archetypes involved continued to recieve legacy support to tie up loose ends and add a little bit extra to the completed story. With a project like this, a lot of archetype designing is required to make the cards thematically fit what they do in said lore, while also hoping to make a playable archetype in the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG and OCG. In this series, I will go over every single archetype part of this lore and see how successful the designing process of said archetypes were in the competitve landscape to see what archetypes held some real power in the actual game and what archetypes felt like they were just pack filler.
Introduction
We have reached the end of the official Duel Terminal lore with the remaining 4 archetypes that released in the middle of the Arc-V era. The power has consistently scaled up over time between these Decks, and it continues for some of these archetypes here as one was previously Tier 0 and the other has support that arguably makes it more in its prime today compared to when it released nearly a decade ago. The other two archetypes to be covered are also fairly strong in their own right. The peak of the Duel Terminal lore started in Part 3, and it continues here with some more powerhouses.
Ritual Beast
The first Deck today might be one players have become a bit acustotmed to around the time I'm writing this, the very heavily combo oriented Ritual Beast archetype. None of the cards in this Deck have made a splash outside of its home archetype, so everything talked about here will be about Ritual Beast's own merits as a Deck, which were very respectable. Ritual Beasts are a Fusion-based archetype that uses the Contact Fusion mechanic to banish the materials for your Fusion Monsters from the field to summon them. These Fusions can also return themselves to the Extra Deck to summon back 2 Ritual Beasts monsters, 1 of each subarchetype as this Deck is technically split into the Ritual Beast Tamers and the Spiritual Beasts. This level of being able to keep summoning monsters back is why all the monsters in this archetype's Main Deck have the restriction of only being able to be Special Summoned once a turn. As for these subarchetypes, each one has a different focus, with Ritual Beast Tamers being able to summon more of your Ritutal Beast monsters and Spiritual Beasts being able to banish more of your monsters for various effects while also filling up the banished pile with monsters for your Fusions to be able to summon back.
To start with the Ritual Beast Tamers, each one has its own speciality of where it summons monsters from. Ritual Beast Tamer Elder gives you an additional Normal Summon of any Ritual Beast once a turn, and the only Tamer to not use the one Special Summon per turn of your Ritual Beasts to get them back onto the field, making it one of the better Tamers. Ritual Beast Tamer Lara Special Summons a Ritual Beast from the graveyard, and the same goes for Ritual Beast Tamer Zeframpilica, which also revives a Zefra to go with later. Finally, Ritual Beast Tamer Wen summons a monster from the banishment to complete the trifecta of hand, grave, and banishment.
As for your Spiritual Beasts, the best one is easily Spiritual Beast Cannahawk since it can banish any Ritual Beast from the Deck. You would get it to your hand after two of your Standby Phases, but you're likely summoning it back off a Fusion beforehand. Spiritual Beast Rampengu is the second best, being able to banish a Ritual Beast in your Extra Deck to send a Ritual Beast of the same type from the Deck to the graveyard. This grave setup can be useful with something like Spiritual Beast Apelio to banish a Ritual Beast card in the grave as a Quick Effect to boost your Ritual Beasts by 500 ATK for the turn. Finally, you got Spiritual Beast Pettlephin to banish a Ritual Beast from the hand to bounce an opponent's monster to the hand. 
Now when you combine a Ritual Beast Tamer with a Spiritual Beast, you can banish both on the field to summon one of your Ritutal Beast Ulti- monsters, with all the Spiritual Beasts so far minus Rampengu having its own upgraded form as a Fusion. As a reminder, these Fusions also return themselves to the Extra Deck to summon a banished Ritual Beast Tamer and Spiritual Beast. Just like with Spiritual Beasts, Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk is the best one since it can return 2 of your banished Ritual Beast cards to the grave to search any Ritual Beast card, but you can also cheat this by targeting two cards for the search and then retuurning it to summon one of the two monsters you would have returned to the grave so you only have to return one, but note you have to return at least 1 card for the search. With this, you could search any monster you need or any of the Spells and Traps like Ritual Beast Steeds as removal for up to the number of Ritual Beasts you control, Ritual Beast Ambush to summon your Ritual Beasts on the opponent's turn, and Ritual Beast's Bond to quick summon a Ritual Beast Fusion. Besides Cannahawk, your other options were Ritual Beast Ulti-Apelio for a monster who is unaffected by other effects while it battles and Ritual Beast Ulti-Pettlephin to serve as a big wall who can't be destroyed by card effects. Also, I can't ignore Ritual Beast Ulti-Gaiapelio being an archetypal boss monster you summon using a Ritual Beast Ulti, Ritual Beast Tamer, and Spiritual Beast and while he cannot bounce himself back to summon your banished Ritual Beasts, he can banish Ritual Beasts from the hand to negate and destroy any actitvated Spell/Trap Card or monster effect, but a lot of times he'd be used to fuel Rampengu's effect.
Now, Ritual Beasts were a successful archetype after immediate release, mainly for looping Ulti-Cannahawk to search for a ton of cards like several Ritual Beast Steeds for non-targeting removal against thhe opponent's face-up cards. All the Tamers being sub Level 3 Psychics also meant Emergency Teleport synergy, so if you got that or Elder, you just need a Spiritual Beast to summon your Fusions. If it wasn't for the archetype I'll discuss next, it might have performed a bit better in the meta, but it was still a respectable threat to where Konami would hit the Deck by putting Ulti-Cannahawk to 1. The Deck was never the best Deck at its time, but it was good enough and it took so long to play out a single turn that I can see why Konami might have wanted to put their best enabler to 1.
After Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk went to 1, you certainly didn't see Ritual Beasts as much in the meta, especially as powercreep progressed. They would eventually get Spiritual Beast Tamer Winda to basically serve as a monster who can be both your Spiritual Beast or Ritual Beast Tamer requirement, but that wasn't going to be enough. They also got their own Link-2 in the Link era with Ritual Beast Ulti-Kimunfalcos to banish a Ritual Beast from the grave to give you an additional Normal Summon of a Ritual Beast, and he even had the bounce effect that the smaller Ritual Beast Ulti Fusions had. It was still going to take more to bring this Deck back however, even with Ulti-Cannahawk going to 3 in 2020. 
However, the Deck would be modernized with new support from the first Terminal World set, similar to some of the archetypes from Part 3 I re-reviewed. Their best card was Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara, who was bloated with several good effects compared to the other Ritual Beast Tamers only having one effect each. Lara 2.0 could discard herself to give you another Normal Summon for a Ritual Beast monster, giving you yet another way to extend your combos out. That's not all, however, as she also banished herself from the field or grave to prevent the destruction of a Ritual Beast monster, and you for sure wanted to banish her since upon being banished via any means, she could summon any Ritual Beast from the Deck. It was super easy to banish Lara 2.0 when they also got Ritual Beast Ulti-Nochiudrago, who could be summoned by banishing the materials from the graveyard as well as the field, but in return its bounce effect only summoned a single Ritual Beast that was banished, and if that wasn't enough it also gave your other Ritual Beasts you controlled targeting protection.
Ritual Beasts also have a new Link-4 to serve as a second boss monster in the archetype, Ritual Beast Ulti-Reirautari. Reirautari prevented both players from tributing monsters to activate cards or effects, which for sure won't matter for you since Ritual Beasts don't do any tributing like that. Reirautari also returned a banished Ritual Beast to your hand or Extra Deck to give you an additional Normal Summon for a Ritual Beast in the case you can still combo after summoning this card, and it also has a Quick Effect during the opponent's turn to target a Ritual Beast card you control and a card the opponent controls and banish them, but this is a case where the Ritual Beast Ultis being able to return to the Extra Deck on either player's turn helps so only the opponent has to have a card of theirs banished.
The fourth card recieved by the Deck is Ritual Beast Inheritance, a Continuous Spell with several different effects. The first effect decreases the ATK of the opponent's monsters by 200 for each Ritual Beast you control with a different Type, of which the archetype has a few. This helps since if you can't get to Ulti-Gaiapelio, your monsters base stats peak at 2600. It could also let you reveal a Ritual Beast monster in the hand to search for another monster with a different Type and then discard a card, which mostly can be used to reveal a regular Spiritual Beast to get to Tamer Elder and vice versa. The final effect lets you swap the battle position of a monster on the field if 2 or more monsters are Special Summoned at the same time, which could be used to stop an opponent's offensive attack or swap a monster that was forced into Defense Position you have into Attack Position to batttle.
The modern Ritual Beast support helped massively in reviving the archetype, enough to give it a new lease on life as a rogue meta strategy. Being a banish strategy of course means you can use cards like Dimension Shifter and Dimensional Fissure with minimal drawbacks, but the Deck can do more than that. The potential was massively explored in the TCG with the Nemeses cards since the archetype could make Rank 4s fairly easily, meaning you could summon Infernal Flame Banshee in the Deck to search for a Nemeses Flag you'll likely be able to Special Summon due to all the banished cards you'll have. This would either search for Nemeses Corridor as a way for the Deck to summon Thunder Dragon Colossus or get you to Archnemeses Protos, a card that Ritual Beasts can provide the requirements for to Special Summon, to lock the opponent from monsters of a certain Attribute on their turn, especially good when you know your matchup. This second run might honestly have been the Deck's peak in terms of success, even when the modern meta was Snake-Eyes, Yubel, Tenpai Dragons, and more. It was still able to find success here and there in both the TCG and OCG. Now as we shift to Maliss and Ryzeal as of writing this, it seems Ritual Beasts aren't putting up performaces like it was a few months ago, but it's still a respectable Deck that I'm sure can still find tops for a while longer til powercreep once again gets to be too much for it.
Nekroz
Ritual Beasts might have been a bigger focus on release if it didn't come out at the same time as Nekroz. This is without a doubt the most powerful archetype of the entire lore when you look at the Deck's peak, where it dominated top cuts at YCS and any other events it was legal at. This is a Ritual archetype, the second in this lore, with Ritual Monsters who have effects in the hand as well as on the field. The non-Rituuals are also good in this archetype for helping your Ritual Summons and increasing the consistency of the Deck. There's also a variety of different Ritual Spells in this archetype to perform Ritual Summons via several different means.
When it comes to the Ritual Monsters hand effects, they mostly just boost the consistency of the Deck or protect your Nekroz monsters by discarding themselves. Nekroz of Brionac discards itself to search for any other Nekroz monster from the Deck, making it one of the most important Nekroz monsters for consistency. Nekroz of Clausolas also searches, but for your Nekroz Ritual Spells instetad, giving you a way to search for both a Ritual Monster you want and the Ritual Spell that'll make summoning that monster the easiest. Nekroz of Unicore recovers your Nekroz cards from the graveyard, giving the Deck some recovery. Nekroz of Valkyrus negates an attack and ends the Battle Phase, but it also comes with the cost of banishing a Nekroz from the graveyard along with the discard. Nekroz of Gungnir protects your Nekroz monsters from destruction once per turn, while Nekroz of Trishula negates a targeting effect against your Nekroz monster. Finally, Nekroz of Decisive Armor gives your Nekroz monsters a 1000 ATK/DEF boost for the turn.
Some of these Rituals also come with the dilemma of if you want to discard them for their hand effects, or if you want to summon them. However, it should be mentitoned that the Level 7+ monsters prevent you from using monsters of the same Level for the Ritual Summon, while Level 6 and lower just prevents you from using other copies of each other. Nekroz of Unicore has one of the best on field effects out of all the Nekroz, negating the effects of all face-up monsters on the field that were Special Summoned from the Extra Deck, making for a powerful floodgate when most Decks at that time summoned from the Extra Deck. Nekroz of Trishula is basically a copy of its Synchro counterpart, except for the fact you must banish a card each from the hand, field, and grave. Nekroz of Valkyrus comes up to tribute up to 2 monsters to let you draw a card for each, synergizing with cards that want to be tributed and/or sent to the graveyard. Those are the main monsters you'd summon, but the others might come up like Nekroz of Clausolas having Quick Effect negation and stat reduction of an Extra Deck monster, Nekroz of Brionac being able to shuffle up to 2 monsters Special Summoned from the Extra Deck back into the Deck, Nekroz of Gungnir discarding a Nekroz card to pop a card on the field, and Nekroz of Decisive Armor being able to banish a Set card on the field. 
The Main Deck monsters that aren't Rituals are also pretty decent. The main one you'd play, and the only one that was staple for Nekroz was Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz, for its ability to serve as the entire cost to Ritual Summon a Nekroz monster, as well as searching a Warrior-type Nekroz after being tributed, with the legal targets being Brionac, Clausolas, and Trishula. Dance Princess of the Nekroz might come up sometimes since she prevents the opponent from responding to your Nekroz Ritutal Spells as well as giving your Nekroz monsters on field targeting protection, plus she can recover a banished Nekroz monster after being tributed. The others are mainly used for their tribute effects, with Ariel, Priestess of the Nekroz searching for non-Ritual Nekroz monsters and Exa, Enforcer of the Nekroz searching for your Dragon-type Nekroz monsters, which include Nekroz of Decisive Armor and Nekroz of Catastor. Great Sorcerer of the Nekroz searches for Spellcaster-type Nekroz monsters after being tributed (Valkyrus, Gungnir, Unicore), but it also sends a Nekroz from Deck to grave if banished.
Speaking of banishing, all 3 Nekroz Ritual Spells can banish themselves from the graveyard along with another Nekroz monster to search for another Nekroz Spell, but you must control no monsters to do so. This should give you access to a variety of different Ritual Summoning options. All the Ritual Spells also require you to use the exact Levels for your Ritual Summons as well, but it works with Shurit serving as the entire material Nekroz Cycle lets you Ritual Summon any Nekroz from the hand or graveyard by using materials from your hand or field, Nekroz Mirror lets you Ritual Summon using monsters in your hand or field as well as banishing the monsters from the graveyard, and Nekroz Kaleidoscope lets you use the hand or field, as well as the Extra Deck to summon Nekroz monsters whose combined Levels equal the Level of the monster you'd send from the Extra Deck. Cycle is great for reviving some of your better Rituals like Unicore or Trishula. Mirror combos well with Brionac and Clausolas to summon Trishula using those two in the grave. Finally, Kaliedoscope was great to summon Nekroz of Unicore while sending Herald of the Arc Light from the Extra Deck to the graveyard for the search of any Ritual Monster or Ritual Spell.
All this consistency, Ritual Summoning options, and varying effects made Nekroz a Tier 0 force at the time of release. The Deck was so good that Nekroz of Brionac was quickly Semi-Limited after release. The initial way to play the Deck was to try and lock the opponent from the Extra Deck by using Djinn Releaser of Rituals to Ritual Summon your monsters, which was easy to do when you could just banish it from the graveyard as a Ritual Material. It also being Level 3 meant it could be the entire material for a Nekroz of Clausolas, but it was more powerful the bigger the Ritual you are able to summon with it. Djinn was sent to the grave via Lavalval Chain, which the Deck could make with combinations of Unicore, Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands, or Senju of the Thousand Hands. The latter 2 you use to search for your Ritual goodstuff. This version of the strategy only lasted until the banning of both Djinn and Lavalval Chain, with Preparation of Rites also getting hit for an indirect consistency hit, and Shurit directly getting hit for a proper Nekroz hit.
With those initital hits, the Deck was still consistent enough to continue along as a meta threat. It got an indirect boost eventually as well with the Performage cards being released, mainly Performage Damage Juggler being great Ritual or Valkyrus tribute fodder so you could banish it from the grave to search for Performage Hat Tricker to Special Summon itself for free to make summoning Rank 4s in the the archetype become even more simple considering Manju and Senju were both still at 3. The common target was Daigusto Emeral to keep recovering resources back into the Deck and drawing a card, and with Emeral at multiples at the time, you are basically given an infinite resource loop to keep getting your monsters back.
The run would eventually have to come to an end, which it did in November of 2015. At that time, Nekroz of Unicore and Nekroz of Brionac both went to 1 to limit the searching of your monsters and giving the opponent less copies of Unicore they would have to out to be able to use their Extra Deck effects. For an added bonus, Shurit also got hit by going from 1 to 0, meaning you no longer had an in-archetype way to give you an entire Ritual Summon fodder from a single monster and making the Warrior Rituals much harder to search for in the Nekroz Deck. The archetype was still decent, but it was going to be far from a Tier 1 force with hits like these, let alone Tier 0.
After a while, however, Nekroz became much more acceptable for the modern meta game to where by mid 2020, the archetype had every single support card back at 3, along with Preparation of Rites for good measures. We weren't getting Lavalval Chain or Djinn back, but the Deck was now super consistent again and had its own dedicated toolbox. It also helped that around this time, the archetype got a lone support card in Nekroz of Areadbhair to negate the activation of monster effects, making for a great boss monster to try to end on in Nekroz. The new card and support did give the archetype a bit of a revival, but it was never going to meet the standards of power it saw on its release, but it was a good archetype to mix with Drytron for a time considering how much that archetype did for the Ritual mechanic at the time.
Once the archetype had its cards released and the support it was given, that was about it you'd see from Nekroz for several years. That is up until Terminal World 2 gave the archetype some brand new support. Some of the most important cards given to the archetype in this wave of support were Emilia, Dance Priestess of the Nekroz and Avance, Swordsman of the Nekroz. Both these monsters could be used as the entire material to Ritual Summon a Nekroz monster if they are on the field, making Shurit's role not as important anymore, but enough to where he is still played at 1. Emilia can be Special Summoned from the hand if you have a Warrior-type Nekroz on the field or in the graveyard, and upon being summoned can search for any Nekroz Ritual Monster or any Nekroz Spell from the Deck. Avance on Normal Summon can summon any Nekroz monster from the Deck, which would most likely be Emilia. This does give the Deck access to Rank 4s even more now, with the most relevant thing being Bahamut Shark to summon Toadally Awesome, but this hasn't been relevant yet with Toad banned in the OCG and the TCG not having this support as of writing. Avance also recovers any number of banished Nekroz cards with different names back to the hand if it is tributed by a card effect, fueling your Ritual Summons once again.
Of course the archetype got a new Spell as well to help Ritual Summon, this time in the form of a Quick-Play Spell with Nekroz Divinemirror. Divinemirror lets you Ritual Summon any Nekroz Ritual from the hand or banishment by tributing materials from your hand and/or field, but you can also send Nekroz monsters from the Extra Deck to the graveyard to Ritual Summon as well, plus this card lets you use monsters whose Levels exceed the Level of the monster you'd want to summon, being the first way to do so in archetype. Divinemirror also has the same banish to search effect the other Ritual Spells have, only this lets you do so while controlling monsters, meaning you got a for sure way to fuel the recovery effect of Avance. Divinemirror is a great card for the Deck to finally let the archetype summon Nekroz of Trishula on the opponent's turn, but overall is just good for a 4th way to Ritual Summon in general.
Speaking of the Extra Deck, besides Zefrasaber, Swordmaster of the Nekroz and Zefraxa, Flame Beast of the Nekroz being Pendulums and therefore can end up in the Extra Deck, you got a brand new Ritual Pendulum with Nekroz of Metaltron. Metaltron as a Pendulum Scale just banishes an opponnent's Spell/Trap if your Nekroz cards are banished, but the main part is the Monster Effect to be able to banish itself and a face-up monster thte opponent controls for an entire turn, serving as an extra piece of disruption for Nekroz. It also has the bonus effect where any monster destroyed in battle with your Nekroz monsters are banished instead, which is fairly useful considering how big ATK stats some of the Rituals have. Metaltron is not something you'd always see in Nekroz Decks, same for the other Pendulums besides the fact Zefrasaber can let you Ritual Summon under Anti-Spell Fragrance, but they are decent cards, especially Metaltron.
Overall, the modern support for Nekroz is nice, but it's still not reaching the Levels it previously saw in 2015. If anything, the Gem-Knight and Jurrac support from the same Terminal World set have made their archetypes perform better in the OCG than Nekroz is currently, but that's not to say it's done nothing. Nekroz did see some slight play after the new support released, and it's still pending to see how this stuff performs in the TCG. A common way to play this will likely be with Dogmatika cards since Dogmatika Maximus can send a copy of Herald of the Arc Light and other monsters in the Extra Deck with effects to trigger in the graveyard. You'll likely see Dogmatika Ecclesia, the Virtuous and Nadir Servant alongside Maximus as well for a consisitent way to search for it as well, and Maximus is easy to summon when Kaliedoscope can send the requirement to Special Summon it directly from the Extra Deck to the graveyard. It's neat to see Nekroz still get support considering how strong the archetype once was, but it needs a lot more to keep up at a higher level, besides some Ryzeal lists using both new Level 4s and a copy of Brionac for searching.
Infernoid
Now for the Infernoid archetype, which might be one of the least friendly archetypes for generic play out of all of the Decks in this lore. Not to say there wouldn't be innovations for the Deck, there were many different techs you could run, but the restriction on 90% of the Main Deck monsters make it hard to run with other generic stuff. This restriction being Infernoids not being able to be Special Summoned if the total Levels and Ranks of all your Effect Monsters are 8 or lower. The Infernoids also required you to banish other Infernoids from your hand or graveyard to summon them, so you could run some unique stuff for your Normal Summon if you wish. The Deck loves the graveyard being full of monsters, since it's fuel to summon your Infernoid monsters, which is very similar to the Dragon Rulers. The restrictions and effects of these monsters mostly depend on what Level range you're looking at for the Infernoids.
For the first group of Infernoids, we have the Level 1-4 monsters. These monsters only require you to banish 1 Infernoid from your hand or grave to summon, but they can only be summoned from the hand. They also come with a Quick Effect for the opponent's turn only to let you tribute a monster to target a monster in the opponent's graveyard and banish it. All 4 of them share those traits in common along with the aforementioned requirement that they can't be summoned if the combined Levels/Ranks of Effect Monsters on your field are greater than 8, but they all also come with unique effects. The Level 1 of the archetype is Infernoid Pirmais, who can let you target a Set card on the field and shuffle it into the Deck, with that card not being able to be activated in response to this. The Level 2, Infernoid Antra, targets a face-up card the opponent controls and returns it to the hand. Infernoid Harmadik is your Level 3 and can target and destroy any monster on the field, and Infernoid Patrulea is your Level 4 that can do the same for a Spell/Trap Card, but both have to give up their attack for the turn to do so.
The second group are your Level 5-8 monsters and they all have shared traits that are all different from the Level 1-4 group. Instead of 1 Infernoid, they require 2 Infernoids to be banished from the hand or grave, but you can also summon these monsters from the graveyard. The Quick Effect to tribute a monster and banish a card from the opponent's graveyard can also be used during either player's turn as well. Their unique effects also require them to battle as well. The Level 5, Infernoid Piaty, randomly discards a card from the opponent's hand when it deals damage after battling a monster. The Level 6, Infernoid Sjette, forces the opponent to banish a monster of their choice from their Extra Deck after it battles. Infernoid Seitsemas, the Level 7, banishes a card on the field at the end of the Battle Phase after it battles an opponent's monster. Finally, the Level 8 Infernoid Attondel lets you attack once again in a row after it destroys a monster in battle.
Finally for the Main Deck monsters that cannot be Normal Summoned or Set, we got the Level 9 and 10 boss monsters. These once again can be summoned from the hand or graveyard, but requires you to banish 3 Infernoid monsters to do so. The Quick Effects to tribute also become negation effects instead of banishing stuff from the opponent's graveyard. Infernoid Devyaty is the Level 9, destroys all non-Void Spell/Traps on the field on summon and tributes a monster to negate the activation of a monster effect and banish said monster. On the other hand, the Level 10 Infernoid Onuncu destroys all other monsters on the field on summon and tributes a monster to negate the activation of a Spell/Trap Card and banishes that card.
Besides all those monsters, there are two more that belong to the archetype that don't work like the others. The first is the Level 1 Tuner Infernoid Decatron, and it's one of the best monsters in the Deck since on Normal or Special Summon, it can send any Infernoid from your Deck to the graveyard to increase this card's Level by the Level of the sent monster and it copies said monster's effects, making it a much easier monster to summon to get Onuncu or Devyaty into the graveyard to get their negation effects. The other monster is the Level 11 Fusion of the archetype, Infernoid Tierra, who needs both Onuncu and Devyaty to summon alongside at least 1 other Infernoid monster. When Fusion Summoned, it gains effects based on the number of materials used for its Fusion Summon. Using 3 or more monsters forces each player to send 3 or more cards from the Extra Deck to the graveyard, 5 or more monsters forces each player to send the top 3 cards of their Decks to the graveyard, 8 or more forces each player to return 3 of the banished monsters to the graveyard, and 10 or more forces each player to discard their entire hand. All good effects, but the first effect you get off this has been the main one to send more copies of Tierra to the grave to fuel your Infernoids, along with cards like Elder Entity N'tss with graveyard effects.
Earlier I mentioned how Devyaty doesn't destroy Void Spells and Traps, which is due to those being the sub-archetype that supports Infernoids as their Spell and Trap support. Void Seer is one of the earliest Void Spells/Traps that saw play in the Deck for making an Infernoid you control unaffected by the opponent's effects for the turn, plus it could banish itself from the grave to prevent an Infernoid's destruction. Void Vanishment comes later as the archetypal way to search the Void Spells/Traps since it was a Continuous Spell that did so each turn at the cost of a discard, though it did lock your summons to Infernoids for the rest of the turn. Void Imagination turns all your Infernoids whose original Levels are 2 or higher into Level 1 monsters, which allows you to summon more Infernoid monsters at the cost of halving all battle damage they would inflict, but it could also let you Fusion Summon by sending it to the graveyard along with the Fusion Materials from your hand or field, but you could also use up to 6 Infernoids from the Deck if the opponent controls a monster summoned from the Extra Deck. The final relevant Void card dedicated to Infernoids is Void Feast to send a Void Spell/Trap from your hand or face-up field to the graveyard to summon up to 3 Infernoids from the Deck whose combined Levels equaled 8, ignoring summoning conditions. This would commonly be used to get 2 Decatrons on the field to copy Onuncu and Devyaty, plus a copy of Infernoid Sjette for the last 6 Levels required to summon your Infernoids. You could use generic Void Spells/Traps like Into the Void and Void Trap Hole, but mostly you relied on Void cards dedicated to Infernoids.
The Deck had a decent run at the start, getting some tops off the power of some of these Infernoid cards like Decatron and the boss monsters. You would commonly see other mill engines like Lightsworns and Card Trooper ran to get some milling going in the earliest versions of Infernoids. Another popular card that got Infernoid its earliest YCS win was PSY-Framelord Omega since it could put banished Infernoid names back into the graveyard during each of the opponent's Standby Phases, plus it banished itself from the field with its Quick Effect to also rip a card from the opponent's hand til your next Standby Phase, when both that card and Omega would return. The monsters also not counting non-Effect Monsters and their Levels for the summoning requirements also let you use generic Extra Deck monsters like Gem-Knight Pearl, Gaia Knight, the Force of Earth, and Scrap Archfiend for big beatsticks.
The Infernoid Deck also got better support cards a little while after their initial release. Void Feast was a card that came much later after the first run of Infernoid support, but it also released alongside That Grass Looks Greener, which made 60-card Infernoid Decks a thing so that when you drew into your Grass, you could potentially mill 20-ish cards assuming the opponent was running the standard 40-card Deck. Grass was so important to this strategy that they also ran Left Arm Offering to banish their entire hand so they could search for this Spell Card, especially after it was initially limited. Fairy Tail - Snow was great in this version of the Deck since it could banish 7 cards to revive itself with its Quick Effect, then on summon you would flip an opponent's monster face-down. You would also run Lightsworn in the strategy still for more milling options, but the Deck's best play was of course to open the Grass and mill a ton of cards. The archetype was certainly already good, but Void Feast and Grass both brought the archetype to its peak performance, whether as a Zoodiac variant during the Tier 0 Zoo era, or just simple Grass Infernoids. The Deck had a nice run until Grass got banned in the TCG for nearly 7 years.
The banning of Grass was pretty major in knocking the power level of Infernoids down since they no longer had a way to mill so many cards at once to fuel the summon of their monsters. Eventually in 2023, the Deck got new support in the first Terminal World set to try and bring some prominence back to the archetype. The best card in this support wave was easily Infernoid Evil, a Level 1 Fusion that only needed 2 Infernoids to summon and upon being Fusion Summoned could banish an Infernoid from the graveyard to send Infernoid monsters with different names from the Deck to the grave equal to the Level of the banished monster. This was once again a way to fuel your graveyard for Infernoid summons, and Evil being a Level 1 meant you didn't really have to limit yourself with the Levels of monsters you summoned. Evil also let you search a Void Spell/Trap if sent to the graveyard or banished, which makes it easy Link Material in the archetype you could summon off Instant Fusion. Speaking of Link Material, Infernoid also has a Link-4 now in Infernoid Flood, who only needs 2+ monsters to summon just as long as you include an Infernoid monster. In return you get a monster who can negate the Special Summon of an opponent's monster by tributing another monster of your own and then the monster whose summon was negated gets banished, it banished any card on the field if a card(s) was banished from the graveyard, and the opponent destroying this Link Summoned card would let you summon any Infernoid from the Deck, ignoring summoning conditions.
This wave of support also gave us 2 new Void Spells to run in the archetype. Void Reignition lets you reveal an Infernoid monster or Void Spell/Trap in the hand to serve as an archetypal Card Destruction for you only, but it also has a once per Duel effect in the graveyard to banish itself to return up to 11 Infernoids with different names that are banished back to your graveyard to once again fuel Infernoid summons. You also have a new Continuous Spell in Void Breach to boost your Infernoids by 100 ATK/DEF for each banished Infernoid, also if you control no monsters or only Fiends, you can either add a banished Infernoid back to your hand or summon an Infernoid from your hand while ignoring summoning conditions.
The support was decent, though honestly a bit underwhelming besides Evil and the grave effect of Reignition. It wasn't going to bring Infernoid anywhere close to where it was in 2017, even when the TCG got Grass back to 1 later in 2024. The Deck was still able to find success still, with an FTK involving Number 33: Chronomaly Machu Mech and Phantasmal Lord Ultimitl Bishbaalkin running around. The best way to run the Deck in 2024 was with a Snake-Eye package since Snake-Eye Ash could search for your Infernoid Decatron and Original Sinful Spoils - Snake-Eye could summon Decatron from the Deck. Snake-Eyes also give you a bunch of good Link fodder since Link Ratings don't matter for summoning your Infernoid monsters. This is no longer legal in the TCG due to Original Sinful Spoils now being banned, meaning you now go back to pure Infernoids using Grass to mill a bunch of cards. Promethean Princess, Bestower of Flames is a nice indirect support card to revive Evil or Decatron at least.
Zefra
The final archetype of the lore is a combination of most the archetypes from Part 3 and 4 of this series coming together to create the Zefra archetype. Most the Zefra monsters being parts of other archetypes does also mean you could see some of these Zefra monsters ran in those archetypes. The Pendulum Scale effects of all these Zefras also only let you Pendulum Summon monsters of those dedicated archetypes plusu the Zefra archetype and besides that were usually just Scales of 1 or 7 you could run in said archetypes. The best Zefras without a doubt were the Yang Zings, with Zefraxi, Treasure of the Yang Zing turning your monsters into Tuners and Zefraniu, Secret of the Yang Zing searching the backrow of both the Zefra and Yang Zing archetypes. This made the Yang Zing Zefras a staple in both the Yang Zing Deck and a dedicated Zefra Deck. Besides that, you would see niche use of the Zefras in their own dedicated archetypes. Ritual Beast Tamer Zeframpilica was useful in Ritual Beasts for being able to revive your monsters on summon, though isn't as useful in modern variants of the Deck since being a Pendulum could mess things up for your combos if it ended up in your Extra Deck. I already mentioned Zefrasaber being ran in Nekroz in this article as a way to Ritual Summon under Anti-Spell Fragrance. Besides that, most Zefras sticked to a dedicated Zefra Deck.
In a dedicated Zefra strategy, the monsters were decent for the Deck in general. Satellarknight Zefrathuban and Stellarknight Zefraxciton were archetypal ways to pop your own Zefras along with an opponent's face-down and face-up card respectively. Zefraxa, Flame Beast of the Nekroz could be summoned from the hand if a Zefra is destroyed on your field. Ritual Beast Tamer Zefrawendi recovers Zefras face-up in your Extra Deck back to your hand on summon. All these might not have been great in their own dedicated archetypes, but for Zefra they were fine tools to have. There is one Zefra not part of another archetype, however, and that is Zefraath. Zefraath in the Pendulum Scale could put a Zefra in the Deck face-up into your Extra Deck to copy its Scale for the turn while also getting you to a Zefra you could Pendulum Summon. Zefraath could also be a boss monster, though it could only be summoned from the Extra Deck by tributing all monsters you control while including at least 3 Zefra monsters. In return, after you summon it you can get an additional Pendulum Summon that turn for Zefra monsters, plus it could let you tribute a monster to summon a Zefra from the Deck. The 2017 Master Rule update made Zefraath hard to use as a monster, but it was a great Pendulum Scale for a Zefra Deck. Besides that, there's Zefra Metaltron, but his claim to fame was being a Link-3 you could use with Pendulums up until it was outclassed by Selene, Queen of the Master Magicians.
The Spell/Trap lineup for the Zefra archetype is pretty great as a whole and is mostly the selling point of the archetype to be honest. Oracle of Zefra and Zefra Providence both search for a Zefra on activation, with Oracle being a popular Set Rotation target since it requires the search of a Zefra to be activated, though Gateway to Chaos was more popular for that use since you were more likely to run into a Zefra Deck than a Black Luster Soldier Deck when Set Rotation was at 3. Oracle of Zefra also gave you effects when you would use a Zefra as material for a particular summon with Ritual letting you shuffle a monster on the field into the Deck, Fusion letting you summon a monster from the hand, Synchro letting you place any monster in your Deck on top of your Deck, and Xyz letting you draw a card and discard a card. Zefra Providence also had a bonus effect, a grave effect to banish itself to prevent the destruction of a Zefra card(s). Zefra Divine Strike is an archetypal Counter Trap to negate Spell/Trap Cards or monster effects by banishing a Zefra face-up from the Extra Deck, and Zefra War let you destroy another Zefra card you control and any card the opponent controls, with it being a Trap you could use from the hand if you have 2 Zefras in the Pendulum Zone.
Zefra as a whole has honestly been associated with being ran as it's own Pendulum Pile Deck or being mixed with other Pendulum strategies like Endymion and Superheavy Samurai. It has certainly been more of a pet Deck in the OCG since they have kept Heavymetalfoes Electrumite much longer than the TCG has, allowing you to see some Pendulum Piles with Zefra cards every once in a while to get a bunch more negates and disruptions. It also helps you could use Nine Pillars of Yang Zing in the Deck via Zefraniu. Zefra was never the best Deck, far from it, but it's been a nice strategy for smaller events for the boards it could build at the cost of being a very high skill ceiling Deck. As this lore keeps getting revisisted, however, once could hope for more Zefra support in the future.
Conclusion
To look back on this lore as a whole, the earliest archetypes from it were rough to look at considering how near unplayable or underwhelming they were, but over time we did recieve better archetypes and some real meta contenders from the whole Duel Terminal saga. The legacy support for some of the older Decks have also given them a new lease on life and you've even seen stuff like Ice Barriers and Jurracs see play in modern times, even if it is mostly their new support. You did have some early successes like X-Sabers and Lavals, the latter with the use of Rekindling from the Flamvell archetype, though Flamvells are decent in the early Synchro days. There were some major powerhouses in the later years with Shaddoll, Tellarknights, Qliphort, and Nekroz with legacy support for Ritual Beasts helping it see arguably peak success in 2023/2024. There were some other nice strategies in here as well like Constellar, Evilswarm, Yang Zings, Infernoids, and Zefra that have their own merits over the years. Konami does love to revisit this lore from time to time, so I still expect new support for each Deck. It'll be nice to see how much more of a legacy the Duel Terminal lore leaves on the game. Soon I will cover the Dracoslayer lore, which does have a loose connection to this one via Metaltron XII, the True Dracombatant, but it'll still be its own separate thing til we see more connections between the two lores. The card lores overall have been an interesting experience, whether gameplay wise or storytelling wise, and I look forward to covering more lores in the future.
