Chapter 88: At Least It’s Nice to Look At

"Mark of the Crimson Dragon, Dragon's Heart?!"

Rowan's eyes lit up the moment he saw it in the shop rotation.

He barely even registered the three deck options above it.

Sure, it was only the ability to hold mental conversations with duel monster spirits and other people.

Nowhere near as practically useful as the Dragon's Head's protective power, which he still hadn't found a proper opportunity to test.

But it was another piece of the Mark of the Crimson Dragon set, and picking it up was an obvious call.

With enough pieces assembled, he might eventually put together the complete power of the Crimson Dragon and Quetzalcoatl.

The one thing giving him pause was timing. The inter-school match against North Academy was tomorrow morning.

The shop wouldn't refresh again for another two days. He had 4000 Emotion Points sitting in reserve right now, which meant he could spend some on a deck tonight, grind a solid haul off Chazz tomorrow, and still come back to claim the Dragon's Heart skill afterward with room to spare.

Completely workable.

Satisfied with that calculation, Rowan pulled his attention away from the Dragon's Heart entry and looked at the three deck options.

Deck: Underworld Cyber Stream Deck (Chancellor Sheppard Edition) — 500 points. Deck: Disruption Lock Deck (Seal of the Cursed) — 1500 points. Deck: Catapult Turtle Deck (One-Shot Kill Build) — 1500 points.

The Underworld Cyber Stream was cheap enough that he could grab it alongside the Dragon's Heart in one go.

But he had basically no interest in the Chancellor's version.

The Underworld Cyber Stream on its own, even bolstered by Sheppard's Cyberdark monsters, still came in well below Kaiser Zane's Cyber Dragon setup.

More importantly, in the entire dueling world there was only one copy of that deck in existence, currently sealed away somewhere by the Chancellor himself.

If Rowan pulled it out of nowhere, the conversation that followed would be impossible to navigate.

Weak and inconvenient.

He crossed it off and moved on.

The Disruption Lock Deck was clearly the Ojama line, the yellow, green, and black ones that Chazz would eventually get his hands on a fraction of later down the line.

Lockdown-heavy, suffocating to play against.

The Catapult Turtle Deck was a one-turn construction project: build a monster with an absurd attack stat over the course of a single turn, then hit the opponent with direct damage and effect damage at the same time for an instant kill.

Rowan considered his opponent for tomorrow.

Chazz Princeton.

A slow smile spread across his face.

There was a certain poetry to it. Especially the Disruption Lock Deck.

In terms of sheer psychological damage dealt, it sat comfortably in the same range as the Shadow HERO deck.

And beyond that, there was something deeply satisfying about the idea of teaching Chazz his own future cards to his face.

Rowan made his choice and redeemed the deck from the system without further deliberation.

...

"I figured if you weren't anywhere else, you'd be here."

He had just stretched and risen from the deck chair, the round Kuriboh tucked under one arm, ready to head back to Slifer Red, when a familiar voice drifted up from the stairwell entrance.

Footsteps followed close behind it.

He didn't need to turn around to know.

Alexis, with Jasmine and Mindy right beside her as always.

Ever since the afternoon they'd all shared a bento lunch up here a few days back, he'd been running into the three of them on the rooftop with quiet regularity.

Sometimes they arrived early, sometimes late. But they kept showing up.

He turned. Sure enough.

"The inter-school match is tomorrow morning and you look completely unbothered," Jasmine said, eyeing him with her arms loosely crossed.

Her dark hair caught the late light. "How are you this relaxed?"

"Seriously! Meanwhile Alexis has been way more worried than you, so you should at least..." Mindy started, leaning in with an accusatory look, her red hair bobbing.

Jasmine's hand shot out and clamped over her mouth before she could finish.

"Mmph! Mmmph!"

"That is absolutely not what I meant!" Alexis's cheeks went faintly pink.

She cleared her throat, straightened, and redirected with practiced composure.

"What Mindy means is that you've beaten me before, so if you end up losing to North Academy, it reflects poorly on me. That's the part I care about. Nothing else."

She paused, then pressed on.

"So if you need to adjust your deck or work through anything before tomorrow, as a friend, and as someone whose loss you're technically carrying around, we're available to help. Offer stands."

Rowan's expression shifted, just slightly, somewhere in the neighborhood of touched.

Partly because the Kuriboh had been making small insistent noises at his side this whole time, which he'd learned to read as the little creature picking up on emotional signals nearby.

The girl standing in front of him was running considerably warmer than her tone suggested.

"I appreciate it," he said, and meant it. "But I actually just finished putting a new deck together."

He spread his hands with a mild shrug.

It wasn't that he'd have minded sitting down and building something with them.

The company alone would have been worth it. But the fundamental reality was that Rowan had never once built his own deck.

They came pre-loaded from the system, fully formed, ready to deploy.

"A new deck...?"

All three of them went still for a moment. Then they looked at him with the same expression, somewhere between suspicion and dawning unease.

This guy.

He hadn't come up with another cursed deck, had he.

The decision was unanimous and unspoken.

Tomorrow morning's match against North Academy. They were going to be there, front row, without exception.

Even the vague worry Alexis had been carrying quietly dissolved on the spot, replaced by something considerably more alert.