Chapter 132: Camula: Why Don’t You Just Seal Me Away Already?

"Nani?!"

Hearing the effect Rowan had just described for Eva, it wasn't just Camula who cried out in shock.

Alexis, Chazz, and the others all wore looks of astonishment as well.

"You mean... he can pull two Level 2 Fairy-Type monsters straight out of his deck, ready to use as 'bullets' for Herald of Perfection's effect?!"

Even Professor Crowler, reduced to a doll in Chazz's hands, managed to let out a strange, strained noise, as if rising from his deathbed in shock.

Faint beads of what looked like cold sweat seemed to well up across the golden mushroom-head doll.

Was this seriously a deck that belonged to the world of the living?!

"That's exactly the effect. So I'll banish Cyber Angel Benten and one copy of Diviner of the Herald from my Graveyard, and add a Level 2 Fairy-Type monster, Herald of Orange Light, along with another Level 2 Fairy-Type monster, Diviner of the Herald, to my hand!"

A faint glow lit up in the Graveyard slot of Rowan's Duel Disk, and in an instant two more Fairy-Type monster cards flickered back into being in his hand, bringing his hand up to three cards.

Alexis and the others all felt their eyelids twitch. Then, in an instant, they all found themselves pitying Camula, standing across from Rowan as his dueling opponent.

Never before had they felt this much sympathy for anyone unfortunate enough to duel Rowan.

That was, genuinely, just tragic.

"..." Camula, meanwhile, simply stood there with a blank look on her face, sinking into silence.

For a split second, she nearly hurled the Duel Disk strapped to her left wrist straight down onto the ground.

Screw this!

The Spell Card in her hand, Book of Life, which could revive a Zombie-Type monster from her Graveyard.

And Vampire Bat on her field, whose effect let her send a copy of itself from her deck to the Graveyard whenever it was destroyed, guaranteeing it wouldn't actually be destroyed once.

Both of them were being completely and utterly shut down by the effect of Rowan's Herald of Perfection on the field.

The moment she activated either of them, the two Fairy-Type monsters that had just been added to that thoroughly irritating brat's hand would immediately turn into fresh "bullets" for Herald of Perfection, negating and destroying whatever Spell Card or monster effect she tried to use.

And even after that, those two Fairy-Type monsters sitting in his hand could keep triggering their own effects on top of it, pulling even more resources into his hand, over and over.

At this point, Camula had only one thought left in her head. Might as well just seal her away already.

She genuinely couldn't take any more of this suffering.

[Ding. Camula's Emotion Points +1000!]

"Wow, quite the emotional swing there..." Hearing the System's notification chime, Rowan couldn't help nodding in satisfaction.

It seemed, he figured, that Camula had truly come to appreciate the laughter and warmth he'd been spreading.

He felt genuinely gratified.

Seeing the obvious satisfaction on Rowan's face, Alexis immediately guessed exactly what was going through his head.

A certain someone had, after all, mentioned something about spreading joy and spreading love before.

But after glancing over at Camula on the platform across the way, teetering on the verge of erupting like a volcano after all that silence, Alexis and her two friends couldn't help but want to voice a complaint of their own.

This was well past just delivering a bit of "warmth."

Her blood pressure looked like it had been driven so high it was on the verge of exploding outright.

"I... concede!"

Right at the last moment before she was about to erupt out of that silence, Camula finally gritted her teeth and decided to give up.

She genuinely couldn't imagine any path to victory left anywhere in her deck.

With her unable to activate any monster effects, Spells, or Traps, all that was left to her was a plain Normal Summon at best.

And among the monsters she could Normal Summon, not a single one in her deck could hope to get past Herald of Perfection's 2800 DEF.

That was even accounting for her higher-Level monsters that required Tribute Summoning.

If it came down to a low-Level monster, the odds were even worse.

There wasn't a single low-Level monster in her deck with more than 1800 ATK to begin with.

And with Rowan holding such a commanding advantage on the field as things stood, there was no way he'd let her keep a monster around long enough to use as Tribute fodder anyway.

He'd just summon a new monster of his own and attack straight through to destroy it.

Given all that, she figured she might as well spare herself some suffering, and avoid taking a hit of real damage from a Fairy-Type monster, a type whose very nature already worked heavily against vampires like her.

If things kept going the way they were, there was a real chance she'd end up dead from an attack before she even got the chance to be sealed away.

"This is a Shadow Duel where losing means getting sealed inside this card, and you're seriously conceding?"

Rowan said, looking at Camula with a bit of a headache, not entirely willing to just accept her surrender, and earnestly asking her to reconsider.

He even put on a perfectly straight face and started encouraging her to keep going.

"I'd suggest you tough it out a little longer. Who knows, maybe next turn you'll actually get a shot at destroying my Herald of Perfection."

Camula stood there frozen, her whole face one big question mark.

"..." Alexis, Chazz, and the others all stared at the scene with equally blank expressions.

For a moment, they genuinely wondered if they were dreaming.

Who actually encourages their opponent to keep fighting a Shadow Duel instead of letting them concede?

Hey now, this was a Shadow Duel they were talking about.

A terrifying, genuinely life-or-death Shadow Duel that dealt real damage.

Alexis and the others could only stare at Rowan with a whole head full of exasperation.

Camula, after a moment of blank confusion, still immediately confirmed her surrender on her own, her face going dark.

"Bzzzz!!"

An instant later, her bewitching figure was forced, by the power of the Shadow Duel's ritual space, into a beam of dark green light, drawn down into the dark card that had materialized from Rowan's pocket.

It settled back into Rowan's hand.

The vampire monster Camula had summoned on the field before her vanished right along with her, in the same instant.

The great hall of the castle itself wasted no time before it too began to shake and crumble apart.