Chapter 57

"He's actually bleeding..."

The cuts on Titan's body were real.

The kind left by something with an edge. Alexis, Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley all stared at the damage, the weight of it settling over their faces.

"Rough," Rowan said, shaking his head with a soft click of his tongue.

Titan's brow twitched violently behind the mask.

Of all the insufferable...

And the monster had been a Stealth Bird. Not the Obnoxious Celtic Guardian.

That little blue-haired kid had blurted something out, and Titan had taken the bait without a second thought.

Now, turning it over in his head, he was almost certain the whole thing had been engineered from the start.

That little...

[Ding. +200 Emotion Points from Titan.]

Rowan raised an eyebrow slightly.

Points already. Interesting.

He wasn't complaining.

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

Titan, having swallowed the indignity, pulled one of his remaining two hand cards and set it without ceremony.

His turn was done. With Terrorking Archfiend reduced to 1400 attack, there was no way he was breaking through the Stealth Bird's 1700 defense.

"My turn. Draw."

Rowan pulled from his deck.

He looked at the card.

Another Stealth Bird.

He almost felt bad.

He set it on the disk immediately.

"I Normal Summon Stealth Bird, in attack position."

A second blue-winged, bat-beaked creature flickered into the field beside the first, both of them wearing the same unsettling almost-smirk.

"Attack position?!" Syrus yelped.

The others looked equally confused.

"Heh heh heh." Titan's laugh was sharp with contempt.

"You're greener than I thought, boy. Stealth Bird's effect only activates on a Flip Summon during your own turn. Setting it face-down and flipping it yourself. Not from being attacked. Not from being summoned in attack position."

He let the correction hang in the air. "The effect that deals 1000 Life Point damage to your opponent? You can only trigger it the proper way. What you've done here is nothing."

"I know," Rowan said. He snapped his fingers.

"Stealth Bird's second effect. Once per turn, each Stealth Bird can switch itself to face-down Defense Position."

Thud. Thud.

Both birds folded back into their card forms simultaneously, vanishing beneath the face-down silhouettes with identical cold grins.

Face-down Defense Position. Again.

Titan stared.

This kid had summoned the Stealth Bird in attack position just to flip it back down.

He had deliberately shown his hand, made it perfectly clear that both face-down monsters were Stealth Birds, and done it all with the casual air of someone who couldn't be bothered to pretend otherwise.

That was a provocation. Wasn't it? Was he being mocked?

"You've done it now, boy. You've managed to actually anger me, Titan, the Shadow Game duelist. Let me show you what that costs you."

"My turn. Draw!"

Titan snatched the card from his device with barely restrained irritation.

Behind the field, Alexis, Jaden, Chumley, and Syrus were watching with progressively more complicated expressions.

"That didn't make any sense though," Syrus said, genuinely puzzled.

"He just told Titan both face-down monsters are Stealth Birds. That's the only information advantage he had. Why throw it away just to be annoying?"

The others felt it too. Setting a monster face-down was supposed to create uncertainty, make the opponent second-guess their attacks.

Rowan had discarded that entirely, handed Titan a complete read on his board, and gotten nothing in return except a slightly angrier opponent.

Unless...

Alexis went still.

Her eyes moved to the two remaining face-down cards in Rowan's back row.

Something clicked.

"Oh," she said quietly. A small, almost involuntary smile crossed her face.

She understood now.

This wasn't a provocation.

It was a proof of concept. An open declaration of intent with the trap already laid.

There was nothing Titan could do with the information that would help him, because the board was already set for it not to matter.

A completely open trap was still a trap if you couldn't avoid it.

Even Jaden had gone still, something working across his expression.

And Titan, mid-furious-draw, stopped.

His red eyes tracked past the two face-down Stealth Birds, past Rowan's entirely untroubled face, and fixed on the two back-row set cards.

Cold sweat.

If one of those is another Wall of Disruption...

If Rowan was holding a second copy, everything he'd just done made complete sense.

Announce the Stealth Birds. Dare Titan to attack into them.

And when he does, flip the trap again and reduce both Archfiends to nothing a second time.

It didn't matter what Titan knew. It didn't matter that he could see it coming.

If the trap was there, the play was already over before it began.

That was the whole point.

"Wait," Syrus said, noticing the silence. "He was furious two seconds ago. Why did he just stop?"

"He's not bleeding out," Chumley added, equally baffled. "So why does he look worse than before?"

"Because it's not the blood that got to him." Jaden scratched the back of his head, expression thoroughly uncomfortable.

"Rowan just laid out a completely open strategy with no hidden pieces, and Titan can't figure out how to beat it. He's stuck."

Even Jaden looked like he found it a little unsettling to watch.