Chapter 26
"Well, if you're putting it that way, I don't really have a choice."
Rowan spread his hands in easy surrender.
"Rowan..." Syrus looked genuinely moved.
Rowan felt a flicker of something almost like guilt. Was he selling this kid out and helping count the money at the same time?
"Then show me firsthand," Alexis said, her smile sharpening into something more deliberate as she pulled out her deck and slotted it into the duel disk rising from her left wrist.
"The secret behind that Dark Magician deck of yours. How you handle being countered."
"Wait - he one-turn-killed Chazz? The top-ranked first-year in Obelisk Blue?!"
Jasmine and Mindy both turned to stare at Rowan with wide eyes.
"Was it just lucky draws again? Did he pull the Dark Magician combo pieces in the first couple of turns?"
"No!" Syrus stepped forward immediately, indignant on Rowan's behalf. "During that duel with Chazz, Rowan drew over twenty cards from his deck in a single turn and one-turn-killed him on pure skill!"
Jasmine and Mindy both covered their mouths.
"So he's not just lucky - he's actually that good? No wonder Alexis is..."
"MAMMA MIA..."
Out on the darker stretch of the lake, a golden mushroom of hair broke the surface just enough for two eyes to peer toward the boats.
Crowler floated there, soaking in the water and in horror, listening to everything.
He had been working out his next move after tonight's failure - maybe find someone like Chazz, arrange a match during practical class, have them beat Rowan down and shake his confidence until the boy quit on his own.
But Chazz had apparently already been one-turn-killed by Rowan first.
Oh, no.
Crowler bobbed in the lake in quiet despair and decided to keep watching.
Alexis had mentioned something about knowing how to counter the Dark Magician deck.
If he could learn that, he could pass it along to someone else, have them beat Rowan with it - or better yet, use the information as leverage to get that photograph back.
Rowan had no idea Crowler was still out here. It didn't matter much either way.
His attention was already on the duel.
He borrowed Jaden's spare duel disk, strapped it to his wrist, and pulled out a deck - new, still fresh from the System - and loaded it in with a faintly complex expression.
Alexis had misread the situation, but he wasn't about to correct her. The Dark Magician deck wasn't coming out tonight.
Jaden and Chumley rowed their boat aside, collecting a released Syrus along the way, and settled nearby to watch.
The lake opened up between the two vessels, leaving a wide stretch of dark water between Rowan and Alexis.
A light breeze moved across the surface.
"Duel!"
Both duel disks activated simultaneously. Five cards each flew into waiting hands.
Rowan: 4000 LP / Alexis: 4000 LP
"My turn - draw!" Alexis's expression sharpened into focus.
She glanced at the card, folded it into her hand, and let a small smile settle on her face.
She placed a card on the field.
"Summon, in attack position - Etoile Cyber!"
A shimmer of golden particles rippled across the lake's surface.
A figure spun into existence above the water: a tall woman with deep orange hair, a blue-and-crimson bodysuit, and white silk ribbons wrapped around both wrists.
Etoile Cyber Level 4 / EARTH ATK: 1200 / DEF: 1600
"Then I set two cards face-down. Turn end."
Alexis let the smile linger as two large card silhouettes materialized on her field.
She looked across the water at Rowan. "Let's see your secret up close, shall we?"
"You're going to make me blush, saying it like that."
"My turn - draw!"
Rowan pulled the top card, glanced at it.
On the card's face, a small round brown creature - chestnut-shaped, fuzzy - seemed to shift faintly.
A tiny sound, almost affectionate.
Kuri. Kuri.
"A Duel Spirit, in this cursed Lava Golem lockdown deck..." Something stirred in Rowan's expression.
A quiet smile.
Exchanging for this deck had been the right call.
One card already had a Spirit awakening inside it, right here in the first duel.
"Huh - did I just hear something?" Jaden muttered from the nearby boat, scratching his cheek with a puzzled look.
"I set one monster face-down in defense position." Rowan selected a card from his hand - not the fuzzy little thing he had just drawn - and placed it on the field.
A large horizontal card silhouette appeared above the water in front of him.
"...What?"
The reaction came from everywhere at once. Alexis, Jaden, Syrus, all of them.
Rowan's deck only had two Royal Magical Libraries and five sealed Dark Magician combo pieces.
That was what everyone had seen. A face-down monster made no sense.
Unless...
He had changed decks.
That's the secret.
That's how he counters being targeted.
"I see..." Alexis's expression shifted into something quietly satisfied as Rowan set two more cards face-down in his back row.
She was already fitting pieces together.
The face-down monster was probably Royal Magical Library itself.
Placing it in face-down defense, rather than opening with the OTK combo immediately, was a deliberate psychological play.
It forced the opponent to hesitate - if they used their counter traps too early, they risked wasting them on the wrong card.
And Rowan's two set traps were almost certainly there to negate her traps in return, protecting the Library when she did commit.
Traps couldn't be activated the turn they were set. They had to wait until the opponent's next turn.
That was the timing Rowan was building around.
She was sure of it. She had completely worked out his plan.
What she had not considered, not even for a moment, was the simpler possibility.
That Rowan was playing an entirely different deck.