Chapter 188

"Tch tch, that looks pretty rough..."

Rowan shook his head with an exaggerated sigh, watching Titan's tall, black-coated figure, now torn open in more than a few places, scorch marks visible beneath the fabric. He looked about ready to shed a few crocodile tears over it.

Jaden, Chazz, and Syrus, watching from the sidelines, all broke out in a light sweat, each of them fighting the powerful urge to point out the obvious.

Whose fault was that again, exactly?

"Damn you! Forcing my Ritual Monster, the one I worked so hard to summon, Archfiend Matador, straight back into my hand!"

Titan ground his teeth, glaring down at the two extra cards now sitting in his hand before turning his glare on Rowan. The veins bulging beneath his skin multiplied visibly with the surge of raw emotion.

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

Rowan was starting to genuinely wonder if this unlucky old bastard's blood pressure might just spike high enough to burst something for real.

"Your turn's over now, isn't it, kid? Then it's my turn, draw!"

Once Rowan wrapped up his turn without fanfare, Titan reached for the card automatically popping up from his segmented Duel Disk, his eyes burning with the fire of vengeance.

"Heh heh heh. The more hatred I feel, the more I want to crush you and make you suffer just like I have, the stronger the power this Shadow Charm, my death mask, grants me!"

Titan let out another dark chuckle after glancing at the card he'd drawn.

"Don't think that sending my Archfiend Matador back to my hand once means you're safe now."

"I activate the Spell Card Pot of Greed from my hand, drawing two cards!"

A green, cackling pot with a face bearing an uncanny resemblance to Professor Crowler's own materialized in front of him, then shattered apart as Titan drew two more cards from the deck automatically popped up on his Duel Disk, bringing his hand up to four cards total.

Everyone could see that two of those four cards were the ones just returned to his hand moments ago: the Ritual Monster Archfiend Matador, and the Level 4 monster Archfiend Matador Knight. What he'd be able to summon next depended entirely on what he'd just drawn from Pot of Greed.

"Heh heh heh, there it is. Exactly the Ritual Spell I needed."

Titan chuckled after glancing at his hand, immediately placing one of the drawn cards onto his Duel Disk to activate it.

"Witness the power my death mask grants me! Activating a second Ritual Spell from my hand! Matador Ascension!"

That same familiar bone-white altar materialized once more on Titan's field, rumbling into existence amid a swirl of dark light.

"You already know exactly what this card does, don't you. Tribute monsters from my hand and field totaling Level 6 or higher to Special Summon Archfiend Matador!"

"I'll Tribute both of these Level 4 Archfiend Matador Knights from my hand as the offering, and Ritual Summon Archfiend Matador once again!"

As Titan gestured, presenting both copies of Archfiend Matador Knight from his hand, two ghostly silhouettes of the ram-riding jester fiends appeared briefly above the bone altar before dissolving into a pillar of dark light. From within it, the deep indigo, vampire-like fiend materialized once more.

"Wait, why would Titan choose to summon Archfiend Matador right now, instead of Archfiend Matador Knight, the one that can attack Rowan directly as long as Dark Arena is active?" Zane asked, puzzled, from the sidelines.

The others wore matching looks of confusion.

"Don't tell me he got so worked up over Rowan's Underworld Timelord deck that he just made a bad call out of pure frustration...?" Chazz guessed, his expression a little strange.

After all, facing down monsters that couldn't be destroyed, took no battle damage, and each carried their own uniquely brutal secondary effect on top of it all, even someone as composed as Chazz would probably be losing his cool by now. Nobody wanted to keep fighting a rock that just wouldn't crack.

Rowan, however, didn't think for a second that the unlucky old bastard had simply lost his head and made a mistake out of anger. His gaze immediately drifted to the two face-down cards still sitting on Titan's field.

Clearly, that was where the real plan and combo were hiding.

And sure enough, that turned out to be exactly right. A moment later, Titan let out a triumphant snort.

"Let me enlighten you ignorant fools as to why!"

"Activating both face-down cards! Continuous Trap: Call of the Haunted! Selecting a monster from my Graveyard to Special Summon back to the field!"

"Rise again, Archfiend Matador Knight, and rise as well, Summoned Skull, the very monster I Tributed as the offering during my first Ritual Summon!"

Titan raised his left arm's cylindrical Duel Disk, and two flickers of light shot out from its Graveyard slot, landing on his field and reforming into the familiar 1600 attack power, ram-riding jester fiend, alongside a towering, bone-armored, winged humanoid demon.

[Summoned Skull] [Level: 6] [Attribute: DARK] [ATK: 2500] [DEF: 1200]

"What?! He just brought back both of those monsters at once, and on top of that, a Summoned Skull with 2500 attack power?!" Syrus clapped a hand over his mouth, his voice dropping with dismay.