Chapter 55

"It's completely real..."

Jaden, Syrus, and the others felt it too, the wrongness of the space around them, the weight of the Pandemonium field pressing in from every direction.

Cold sweat was back on more than one face.

Alexis looked to Rowan again, concern pulling at her expression.

She trusted his ability. She'd seen enough to have real confidence in that.

But what she was watching now was something else entirely. This wasn't an ordinary duel. Shadow Games dealt actual damage.

Every hit would register on his body. Even if Rowan won in the end, there was no scenario where he came out of this without taking some punishment.

No matter how skilled he was, he couldn't stop every point of damage from landing.

"Heh heh heh. Yes. This is a real Shadow Game."

Titan's eyes glowed red behind the mask, his voice carrying the weight of the darkness inside him, pressing down.

"No tricks. No fakes."

An attempt at psychological pressure.

He needed to win.

He had no interest in finding out what being fully consumed by that darkness felt like.

"That line would've actually landed pretty well," Rowan said, nodding along thoughtfully, "if you hadn't spent ten minutes waving a lightbulb around pretending it was a Millennium Item."

Titan went rigid.

"You..."

He covered it with a sharp exhale and pulled himself back to the field.

"Hmph. Then let me show you what that forbidden power actually does to a person. Most duelists never come back from it."

"The duel continues."

"Pandemonium's effect activates. While this field exists, all Archfiend monsters on my field are exempt from the Life Point cost normally required during each of my Standby Phases."

He raised a fist, the mask catching the red light of the transformed chamber.

"Additionally, when an Archfiend monster I control is destroyed by means other than battle and sent to the Graveyard, I may add one Archfiend monster from my deck to my hand, with a Level lower than the destroyed monster's."

"And I set one card face-down. Turn end."

"He used a Field Spell to completely eliminate the Archfiend deck's biggest drawback..." Alexis said, genuinely unsettled.

Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley's expressions had all gotten considerably heavier.

An Archfiend deck without the Life Point upkeep was a different beast altogether.

"Come on then," Titan said. "Your turn."

"I was already moving." Rowan drew from the top of his deck.

He looked at the card.

A small, satisfied smile crossed his face.

He hadn't even triggered his once-per-duel forced draw ability.

And he'd already pulled exactly the soul of this deck.

"I set one monster in face-down Defense Position. I then set three cards face-down. Turn end."

Four sets, opening hand.

Please be gentle.

Alexis, Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley all felt an immediate and deeply familiar sense of dread.

"He set one monster and three backrow again," Syrus muttered to himself, expression going strange.

"Don't tell me that monster is the Obnox..."

He caught himself just in time and swallowed the rest.

"The Obnoxious Celtic Guardian duelist?" Titan let out a short, dismissive laugh. He'd already figured it out, or thought he had.

Before accepting this job from Crowler, Titan had won a duel against another player and taken two cards off them, both decent rarities.

One of them had been Yugi Muto's Obnoxious Celtic Guardian card. He remembered clearly the trouble that card had caused him.

The memory was sharp. Conditioned reflex sharp.

"I slipped up!" Syrus's face crumpled with immediate regret.

"Syrus!"

Jaden and Chumley both turned to glare at him.

This wasn't a casual duel. Losing here had real consequences.

Though if it really was the Obnoxious Celtic Guardian, then Rowan's three face-down cards were probably the same suffocating trap lineup as always.

That at least was something to work with.

Still, there was one thing nagging at all of them.

Hadn't Rowan just said this was a new deck?

So was the face-down monster actually the Obnoxious Celtic Guardian?

Alexis glanced at Rowan, whose expression remained completely unreadable, and quietly suspected that Titan had just been led astray by Syrus's accidental slip.

"Keeping a brave face, are we?" Titan drew his card. "My turn."

"Thanks to Pandemonium, I don't need to pay the 500 Life Points for my Infernalqueen Archfiend during the Standby Phase."

He placed the new card directly in Attack Position.

"I Normal Summon, in attack position, the Terrorking Archfiend!"

The field cracked with dark electricity. A howling figure tore into existence, massive and raw, muscle and bone laid bare beneath what might have been armor, a pair of skeletal wings spread wide at its back, a great sword gripped in both hands.

It landed in front of Titan and stood there, power radiating off it.

Beside the gaunt, robed ugliness of the Infernalqueen Archfiend, it was something else entirely.

Terrorking Archfiend Level 4 / DARK ATK 2000 / DEF 1500

"Terrorking Archfiend cannot be Normal Summoned or Flip Summoned unless I control another Archfiend monster. However, I have the Infernalqueen Archfiend from last turn, so that condition is already met."

Titan gestured toward the purple-robed figure on his left field.

"A Level 4 at 2000 attack points. That's a genuinely strong card for its level."

Rowan gave a calm nod, assessing it without alarm.

Good stats, balanced defenses, effect synergy built in. In this era of the game, that put Terrorking Archfiend in the upper tier of rare cards, no question.

"And I'd guess that face-down you set last turn," Rowan continued, tone almost leisurely, "is a trap. Insurance. Something to revive the Infernalqueen Archfiend in case I tried to remove her before you could get Terrorking onto the field."

He tilted his head slightly, watching Titan's reaction.

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