Chapter 120: Strapped onto the Moral High Ground Grill Rack

"How are things looking over at the lake right now?"

Rowan asked Alexis's two friends, who'd come rushing in with the news.

"Going by how long it took us to get here and tell you, the duel over there should be just about to start," Jasmine said.

Nurse Fontaine pulled out her own Duel Academy communicator, switched on the screen, and quickly pulled up a live feed, handing it over for Rowan and Alexis to see.

"Is this... a live feed from the lake?"

Rowan saw Professor Crowler, Jaden, and Kaiser Zane displayed on the communicator's screen, and his expression turned faintly strange.

So exactly how was this footage even being captured? Was someone livestreaming it from the scene? After all, as far as he knew, there wasn't any kind of surveillance satellite hovering over Duel Academy capable of capturing footage like this...

"It's me and Mindy. We had the short one, Syrus, and koala-faced Chumley, who's always tagging along with you and Jaden, relay the footage back to us."

Jasmine said, practically fishing for a compliment on how clever she'd been.

"Hey! I'm not short! And I'm not a koala either!"

Syrus and Chumley's protests, the two ever-put-upon extras, came through the communicator at almost the exact same moment, which served, in its own roundabout way, to confirm exactly what Alexis's two friends had said.

No wonder Syrus and Chumley weren't anywhere in the shot. Rowan hadn't quite expected that, he thought to himself. He should have known, with that hotblooded idiot Jaden around, there was no way Syrus, Jaden's faithful little sidekick, and Chumley wouldn't be tagging along too.

Turned out they were just here playing camera crew.

"Whoosh!!"

Just then, something new appeared on the screen. A cold gust of wind swept through, thinning the thick fog over the lake, and almost immediately a stretch of red carpet began unrolling across the water. Like some uncanny red carpet road, it laid itself directly across the surface of the lake, all the way to the shore, not so much as a ripple of sinking, as though it were rolled out over solid ground rather than water.

Then, out from the depths of the fog, a small boat emerged. A bewitching woman stepped off it and onto the red carpet, walking steadily through the mist all the way to shore. Dark green hair, a slit red dress, a black bat-shaped pendant hanging at her chest, and a red ribbon wound around each leg in place of stockings. She cut a striking figure, equal parts seductive and touched with the air of some fallen aristocrat.

"So this is... the second Seven Stars Shadow Duelist. The vampire everyone's been whispering about at the academy today."

Not just back at the infirmary, where Alexis and her two friends watched with grave expressions, but out at the lake itself, Jaden, Chazz, and Kaiser Zane all wore equally serious looks. They'd all either witnessed firsthand, or heard secondhand in vivid detail, just how terrifying a Shadow Duel could be. They'd seen the wounds still marking Atticus's body after his own encounter with one. So they approached this new arrival with every ounce of caution they had.

Professor Crowler, meanwhile, didn't believe Shadow Duels were even real, but faced with that uncanny red carpet stretching across the lake, sweat had already started beading on his forehead. He was starting to regret showing off in front of his students earlier, declaring he'd take point and put an end to this rumor once and for all, dealing with whatever "theatrical charlatan" calling herself a Seven Stars Shadow Duelist had shown up.

Mamma mia. Something really did seem off about this woman.

"The Shadow Duel opponent you're about to face is me. The noblewoman among the Seven Stars Shadow Duelists. The vampire, Camula!"

The green-haired woman, once she'd stepped onto the shore, raised a hand to her chest and introduced herself with all the poise of a fallen noblewoman. Then she turned her gaze on Professor Crowler, Jaden, and Chazz.

"So then. Who will be my first opponent today?"

The moment she said it, Jaden, Chazz, and Kaiser Zane all turned, in perfect unison, to look at the blond, mushroom-haired professor standing in the middle of the group. Even Bastion was no exception, swiftly falling in line with everyone else.

"..." Professor Crowler froze, stunned. His mouth twitched as he swallowed back whatever he'd been about to say about maybe negotiating this a little.

Super mamma mia. There didn't seem to be any way to back out of this now.

"Now that's Professor Crowler for you. Even faced with a Shadow Duelist like this vampire, he steps right up and puts himself between the danger and his students, leading by example!"

Rowan chimed in directly over the Duel Academy communicator, putting the mushroom-haired professor squarely on the moral hot seat.

The words had Professor Crowler snapping straight up at once. Hands on his hips, back ramrod straight, he declared, "Well, of course!"

"As one of the top authorities here at Duel Academy, I, Vellian Crowler, have never once known the meaning of the word retreat!"

"Which means, Vampire Camula, your opponent is me!"

Crowler said, his face deadly serious as he faced Camula across the distance.

"Well then, let's not waste time. What are the rules of this duel?"

"Naturally, the winner takes the Spirit Key, and the loser gets sealed straight into this doll."

Camula said, producing a small, plain brown cloth doll no bigger than the palm of her hand. Aside from a few simple stitched seams, the doll had nothing else to it at all, as if it would only take on the appearance of whoever was sealed inside it.

"That's nothing but a cheap trick to fool idiots. Who would actually believe a doll could seal a person's soul inside it!"

Professor Crowler let out a confident laugh at that. He, Vellian Crowler, believed in science. A staunch materialist through and through.

"..." Rowan's mouth twitched.

As far as he was concerned, once an unscientific little detail like an actual vampire woman had shown up in the flesh, what exactly was left to doubt about the existence of Shadow Duels?