Chapter 58

"Scared off by an open strategy?"

Syrus turned to Jaden with a thoroughly lost expression.

"You mean the part where he summoned the Stealth Bird in attack position and then flipped it back down? What does that actually accomplish?"

Chumley nodded along with the same confusion.

"If Rowan's back row still has another copy of Wall of Disruption," Alexis said, her eyes on the field, a quiet smile on her face, "then telling your opponent exactly what your face-down monsters are isn't a mistake. It's a sentence."

She let that land before continuing.

"Stealth Bird deals 1000 Life Points of damage whenever it's Flip Summoned. But the obvious counter is to attack it every turn before Rowan can flip it himself. Force it to trigger passively instead of actively, and the effect never fires."

Syrus and Chumley were both nodding now.

"The problem is that attacking a 1700 defense monster when there might be another Wall of Disruption in that back row could deal more damage than just letting the Stealth Birds flip on their own. Titan knows what's on the field. He just can't do anything useful with that information."

The two of them went still as it finished clicking into place.

That meant Titan was trapped between two bad options with no exit.

If he didn't attack the Stealth Birds, Rowan would flip both of them next turn and peel off 2000 Life Points in a single go.

Against a Life Point total that was already sitting at 2300, that was effectively the end of the duel.

And if he did attack them, one Wall of Disruption would slash every attack position monster's stats by 800 per monster on Titan's field.

Given what Titan was running, the math would hurt more than just eating the Stealth Bird damage.

Destroying the Stealth Birds outright, or picking off the face-down traps, would break the whole thing open.

But Fiend decks built around Pandemonium almost never ran spell and trap negation cards.

The Archfiend monsters had their own passive protection against being targeted, so running dedicated counter-traps would create internal conflicts.

The backrow in this kind of deck was almost always recovery cards and direct attack enablers.

Which meant the strategy had no clean answer.

An open trap is still a trap if you can't avoid it.

Syrus, Chumley, and Jaden, who had already worked it out earlier, were all thinking the same thing with varying degrees of discomfort.

Why did a strategy called "open" feel so thoroughly suffocating to watch?

"Damn it all..." The pressure behind Titan's mask was visible. The cold sweat had gotten worse.

Rowan watched him and privately thought: in an actual video game, you'd have timed out by now.

Titan finally clenched his fist and committed.

"I Normal Summon, in attack position, Archfiend General!"

The field cracked with dark energy as another demon tore through into existence.

Orange-yellow muscle, bone-plate armor, black bat wings spread wide at its back. Ugly in its own specific way.

It landed with a heavy thud, bone sword in hand.

Archfiend General Level 4 / DARK ATK 2100 / DEF 800

"2100 attack? That's higher than Terrorking's base stats."

Jaden looked genuinely surprised.

"Archfiend General would normally be destroyed while Pandemonium isn't on the field," Titan said, not slowing down.

"But Pandemonium is active, so that doesn't apply."

He turned to the Infernalqueen Archfiend.

"Infernalqueen Archfiend activates her effect. I select Archfiend General as the target. His attack increases by 1000 points until my next Standby Phase."

Dark violet energy poured from the Queen into her newly summoned general.

2100 climbed to 3100.

And Terrorking, stripped of the Queen's boost and still carrying the penalties from Wall of Disruption, dropped from the already-reduced 1400 down to a pitiful 400.

Rowan looked at the tableau for a moment.

The Queen, lavishing her power on the new general, while the old king stood diminished and forgotten at the edge of the field.

Infernalqueen Archfiend discards the aging king and rides off with the general, he thought. Compelling storyline.

He understood the logic, at least. With Wall of Disruption potentially still in the back row, Terrorking's 1400 attack would get zeroed out entirely.

Attacking the Stealth Bird with 0 points would cost more in reflected damage than just not attacking at all.

Better to consolidate everything into the newly summoned General. Even if Wall of Disruption fired, 3100 minus 1600 still left 1500 attack.

That was survivable. Fewer variables. Lower risk.

Reasonable thinking.

Just not quite thorough enough.