Chapter 83: Even the Topdeck God Doesn’t Know What to Draw Anymore

"Six hundred Emotion Points barely into the duel. The Chosen One really does deliver."

Rowan acknowledged the system chime with quiet satisfaction, then pressed forward without missing a beat.

He pulled one of the two remaining cards from his hand and held it out.

"Spell card, Pot of Greed. I draw two cards from the top of my deck."

Two cards.

Hand back up to three.

He looked at what he'd drawn, set one of them to his duel disk, and called the summon.

"Attack position. Elemental HERO Shadow Mist."

A faint shimmer rose from the field, and beside Dark Law, a familiar figure materialized: jet-black from head to toe, clad in something like a sleek dark bodysuit, blue-faced, dark-attributed, 1000 attack points.

"Another one?!" Jaden's eyes snapped wide. "Are you going to use Mask Change again and bring out a second Masked HERO Dark Law?!"

He'd caught something earlier, when Rowan was drawing. A flicker of that same sensation he'd felt before, something passing through the air like a current.

"Exactly what you're thinking. Quick-Play, Mask Change!"

Rowan smiled and extended the card from his hand without hesitation.

He did, after all, have his Divine Draw. And at this point it had evolved all the way to Superior Still Water Clarity.

Getting the second Mask Change exactly when he needed it was hardly a surprise.

Light burst from the activated card and descended on Shadow Mist's head.

The familiar column of dark radiance gathered, swelled...

"The Fusion monster I'm calling out is, of course, Masked HERO Dark Law!"

The light column collapsed.

Standing beside the first one was a second figure in black armor, identical in every detail, claws gleaming.

A second Dark Law.

"Elemental HERO Shadow Mist's effect. When this card is sent to the Graveyard, I add one other HERO monster from my deck to my hand."

Rowan reached into his deck and took out another card, smiling all the while.

From the sidelines, Kaiser Zane had already read the situation clearly.

"Both Shadow Mist effects triggered. Two HERO monsters added from the deck to hand. His hand is sitting at exactly two cards right now."

"Two hidden HEROs," Bastion muttered, his expression somewhere between impressed and disturbed.

He kept his eyes fixed on Rowan's next move. "I wonder which particular brand of dark HERO he's keeping up his sleeve."

"Battle phase. First Masked HERO Dark Law attacks Elemental HERO Flame Wingman. Dark Claw!"

Rowan gestured with a wave that carried just a hint of theatrical flair.

The left-side Dark Law vaulted into the air and came crashing down, claws raking directly into the half-crouching Flame Wingman.

The impact detonated in a burst of flame and smoke.

Flame Wingman was gone with a pained rumble, dissolving into a scattering of cinders.

Dark Law dropped back and returned to position.

Jaden raised an arm to block the acrid smoke drifting his way, and his expression, already serious, grew heavier still.

He had a face-down card on his field. De-Fusion. He'd been holding it specifically for this moment, to undo Flame Wingman's fusion and pull Sparkman and Burstinatrix back from the Graveyard.

One of them would still fall to Dark Law's attack, but at least he'd preserve something on the field.

Except Necrovalley was sitting right there, and De-Fusion's effect activated in the Graveyard.

It simply did not work. Sparkman and Burstinatrix were not coming back.

Only effects that reached out from the field into the Graveyard, like Shadow Mist's trigger, could still function.

Nothing that activated from within the Graveyard itself.

And Rowan was nowhere near finished.

"Masked HERO Dark Law's continuous effect. While this card is on the field, any card that would be sent to my opponent's Graveyard is instead banished."

He snapped his fingers.

A pulse of dark energy radiated from both black-armored figures on the field.

On Jaden's duel disk, the slot that served as the Graveyard entrance lit up in the same shadowed glow, and in its place, a dark rift yawned open.

A seam in space leading somewhere else entirely. The Graveyard entrance had been replaced.

"What?!"

Jaden stared at his duel disk. The Solemn Judgments he'd activated after Dark Law hit the field.

Flame Wingman, just destroyed. None of it had gone to the Graveyard.

It had all passed through that rift and been banished outright.

The headache set in immediately.

He'd had a plan.

His deck had a monster, the Dark Sage, that might be able to destroy Necrovalley and give him a way back into the game.

He'd been steeling himself to draw it next turn.

But now Dark Law's effect was sitting on top of everything else, and suddenly the question of which problem to solve first became completely unanswerable.

If he focused on breaking Necrovalley, the banished cards stayed gone.

If he tried to retrieve the banished cards first, he'd have nothing left to deal with two Masked HERO Dark Laws sitting at 2400 attack points.

Neither path was clean.

[Ding. Jaden Yuki Emotion Points +700.]

"A monster he calls the 'Friendship Ender' and people are surprised it has an effect like that?"

Alexis said, somewhere between a laugh and a groan. She pressed a hand to her temple.

The rest of the audience had already done the mental exercise of imagining themselves across the field from Rowan, and most of them looked equally done in.

Necrovalley sealed the Graveyard: no revival, no retrieval, no recursion.

Masked HERO Dark Law's effect finished the job by banishing everything else.

The two layers locked together perfectly.

Even if Jaden managed to destroy Necrovalley, the banished cards would never come back.

And if he spent his energy reaching for those banished cards instead, he'd have nothing left to answer the field pressure bearing down on him.

It was, by any measure, a thorough trap.