Chapter 193

"Come to think of it, Atticus, why did you end up caught up in the world of Shadow Duels in the first place?"

Seeing the awkward situation Atticus had stirred up, Zane stepped in to bail out his close friend, steering the conversation elsewhere while also raising a genuinely important question.

The moment he asked, Alexis, Jaden, and Chazz all turned toward Atticus with serious expressions. They were plenty curious themselves about the origins of the Shadow Duel ritual space hidden inside this abandoned dormitory. There might well be some secret buried in here connected to the Seven Stars' dark faction.

Only Rowan shook his head, already having a good idea of what was coming. Looked like that squinty-eyed Professor Banner wasn't going to be able to keep his identity hidden much longer.

Sure enough, a moment later, Atticus's expression turned solemn as he answered.

"No, actually, I didn't end up in this on my own. We were originally taking a special course held in that dormitory, and one day, during an impromptu test held on the duel field inside, something happened."

Atticus seemed to sink into the memory, his brow furrowing as he continued slowly.

"Just like what happened to Titan a moment ago, I lost that test duel, and those dark shapes swallowed me whole, dragging me off into some dark realm where Duel Spirits live. That's how I ended up possessed by Darkness."

"How could that be?!"

Alexis's mind immediately flashed back to the disturbing sight of Titan getting swallowed by that swarm of dark shapes just moments ago. She quickly pressed further.

"Then who was it that had you take that impromptu test, brother?"

Whoever had sent her brother into that test clearly had something to answer for. There was no way a Shadow Duel ritual space, with all its markings, could have simply appeared inside this abandoned dormitory, originally built for the Academy's top students, by accident.

Zane, Professor Crowler, and Jaden all turned to Atticus with expressions growing more serious by the second, waiting for his answer.

"All I remember is that the person who told me to take that impromptu test was Professor Banner, from the Obelisk Blue dorm."

"Huh?!"

Jaden, Syrus, and Professor Crowler all froze on the spot, faces twisting with sheer disbelief.

"That can't be right. Maybe it was just some kind of coincidental misunderstanding?" Even Chazz tried to offer an explanation, sounding reluctant to believe it.

After all, that perpetually squinty-eyed, cat-loving Professor Banner didn't look the least bit like the kind of person capable of something like this, at least on the surface.

"I think so too," Professor Crowler nodded along, agreeing with the sentiment.

"Rowan, what do you think?" Alexis, clearly uncertain now, turned to ask Rowan. Everyone else's eyes followed hers.

After going through several Shadow Duels against the Seven Stars' dark faction together, they'd all developed a fair amount of trust in Rowan's judgment, whether they consciously realized it or not.

"The way I see it, there's a real possibility that Professor Banner has some kind of connection to the Seven Stars' dark faction, and to that ritual space."

Rowan didn't bother holding back, laying out a piece of what he actually knew.

"No way!" Jaden, Chazz, and Syrus all looked utterly stunned. None of them had expected Rowan's take to go in this direction at all.

"Problem student, you really shouldn't go around saying things like that so carelessly..." Professor Crowler said, sounding a little panicked.

"I'm not saying it carelessly."

Rowan shook his head.

"I've actually had a vague feeling for a while now that something about Professor Banner's condition doesn't seem quite normal. After sitting through several of his alchemy classes, I've become pretty confident that his current body is likely a product of alchemy."

Rowan smoothly reached for a convenient cover story to explain away how he'd actually figured all this out. It wasn't like he could just say he already knew...

"You figured that out... from his alchemy class?"

Alexis, Bastion, and Chazz, who'd been listening carefully to Rowan's reasoning up to that point, all suddenly wore identical looks of "are you messing with me right now."

They all wanted very badly to point out that Rowan spent every single one of those classes either zoning out or napping.

"Ahem. The fundamental principle of alchemy holds that what exists above must also exist below, and what exists below must also exist above."

Rowan, apparently realizing how awkward that gap looked, cleared his throat and dredged up a couple of vaguely remembered lines that sounded suitably profound.

"In simpler terms, it's basically like the Spell Card Polymerization in a duel: fusing two weak monsters together into one powerful one, taking something ordinary and refining it into something perfect!"

He even dug into his extensive mental library of anime plots to pull out an example, using it to thoroughly overwhelm Alexis and Bastion, neither of whom had studied alchemy in much depth either.

"Oh? So using the Spell Card Polymerization is basically a form of alchemy too? No wonder Professor Banner's alchemy class is part of the Academy's curriculum," Jaden said, playing along with Rowan's bluff with genuine-sounding astonishment, given how little he studied himself.

Alexis, Bastion, and Zane all found themselves swayed, more or less convinced by what Rowan had just said.

After all, if Rowan really did know something about alchemy, then that absurd-sounding claim about Professor Banner's current body being some kind of alchemical creation suddenly seemed a lot more plausible.