Chapter 71

"Since your face-down monster is Stealth Bird, let's give it exactly what it wanted."

Para pointed squarely at the large face-down card resting in defense position on Rowan's side of the field.

"Gate Guardian, attack! Tri-God Shockwave!"

Gate Guardian's three fused bodies reared back and unleashed simultaneously: a golden arc of lightning from the top, a screaming cyclone from the middle, a churning torrent from the base.

The three forces twisted together into a single spiraling vortex of destruction and tore across the field toward the face-down card.

"If that attack goes through, Gate Guardian's 3750 ATK punches through Stealth Bird's 1700 DEF," Zane said from the sideline, brow furrowed. "That's 2050 piercing damage."

Alexis was the younger sister of Atticus, his closest friend who had gone missing. He had always thought of her as a little sister in her own right.

Watching her get expelled was not something he wanted to see.

"I wouldn't worry," Bastion said beside him, his expression caught somewhere between analytical and vaguely traumatized. "With Rowan and face-down cards on the field, the only one about to take damage is the person reckless enough to attack into them. I'm fairly confident of that."

He had, after all, experienced it firsthand not long ago. His blood pressure still hadn't fully recovered.

And the look on Rowan's face right now, calm, almost bored, utterly devoid of concern, was exactly the same expression he'd worn when systematically dismantling Bastion's deck during their duel.

"Bastion's right," Jaden agreed, nodding at him with the enthusiasm of someone who had watched the whole thing from the abandoned dorm just last night.

He'd seen what those trap cards could do: Reverse Glasses cutting every monster's ATK in half across the board, Wall of Disruption piling on further reductions.

Against a deck built like Rowan's, one face-down card could turn an entire attack back on itself.

Alexis, still watching from the field, let herself smile slightly. She was looking forward to seeing what he'd flip.

She was expecting Reverse Glasses. Maybe Wall of Disruption.

Rowan thought: small thinking.

"Trap Card: Cylinder Arsenal!"

He raised a hand and one of his two remaining face-down cards flipped open, revealing its image: a munitions factory floor, production lines churning out not one or two but several deep crimson tubes simultaneously.

"Cylinder Arsenal?!"

The reaction was universal. Alexis, the Paradox Brothers, Bastion, Zane, Chancellor Sheppard, Crowler, and a good portion of the spectator stands all wore the exact same expression: complete unfamiliarity.

Another card nobody had seen before.

But even without knowing the effect, the image on the card told a story. A factory. Manufacturing Magic Cylinders. Multiple of them.

The cold sweat started almost immediately.

One Magic Cylinder was already one of the most feared traps in the game: negate an attack, redirect the damage back at the attacker for the full ATK value. A factory producing them?

"That can't be good," someone in the stands said, to no one in particular.

Across the field, Para and Dox had gone very still.

The same word formed in both their minds.

Oh no.

"Cylinder Arsenal's first effect: select one Magic Cylinder from my deck or graveyard and set it on my field. If it was set from the deck, it can be activated immediately this turn."

A massive card appeared on the field in front of Rowan, already flipped face-up and active.

Two deep crimson cylinders materialized from the glow, their open ends trained directly at the Paradox Brothers.

The left cylinder caught the full force of Gate Guardian's spiraling tri-element shockwave and swallowed it whole, every arc of lightning, every gust of wind, every crashing wave, absorbed cleanly into its barrel.

The right cylinder began to charge.

"And now Cylinder Arsenal's second effect?" Alexis said, right on cue.

Rowan gave her a thumbs-up.

Alexis felt a faint warmth reach her face and very deliberately maintained her composure.

"When Magic Cylinder is activated, I banish this card from the graveyard. In exchange, the damage Magic Cylinder inflicts is doubled."

A beat of silence.

"...Two... doubled?!"

Para and Dox stared.

"Gate Guardian has 3750 ATK," Dox said, his voice going slightly hollow as the math landed. "Doubled that's... 7500 points of damage?!"

Both brothers turned their eyes to the right cylinder, now swelling with the absorbed shockwave, its barrel growing as the banishment triggered and the multiplier kicked in.

The factory trap dissolved from the field and the power it had fed into the cylinder redoubled, the glow at its opening going from a steady pulse to a blinding charge.

[Ding. Paradox Brothers (combined): Emotion Points +1200!]

"Your Gate Guardian hits hard," Rowan said, raising one hand and pointing forward with the relaxed delivery of someone ordering food. "I'll be borrowing that attack now."

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