Kyhotae said:
That's ridiculous. You can't activate it unless you take damage.
The text never says that.
Make the Battle Damage inflicted to your Life Points by 1 of your opponent's monsters 0
Make is present tense, imperatif mood. The very nature of the imperatif means its talking about something that has to happen in the future (usually near future). e.g. If i tell you to "go to the store" it means you're still at home.
SInce the sentence is present tense, to add a past tense into the sentence you would need to make it "perfect".
So if it were talking about something that happened; it would have to go perfect (or better), it would say "
was inflicted".
But it doesn't so you're left with the word "inflicted" that its practically meaningless in the sentence, its closer to an adjective than a verb in meaning (although closer to a verb in structure))
The only reason its there, is perhaps to make it clear that it protects only your Life points, and not your opponents Life Points. (i.e. " Make Battle Damage from your opponent's monster 0" isn't quite clear)
Or to avoid a broken sentence: "Make battle damage to your lifepoints from your opponent's monster 0" doesn't quite say how it gets from the monster to your lifepoints.
But its consistant with other card effects e.g. "Cross Counter"
Cross Counter
Normal Trap
"¦ the Battle Damage inflicted to your opponent is doubled. "¦
And the ruling clearly shows is activated before damage calculation: "¢ You activate "Cross Counter" before damage calculation but after flipping the attacked monster face-up. The "Cross Counter" card is sent to the Graveyard after resolving its effect and destroying the attacking monster.