Chapter 31
Rowan did absolutely nothing that turn.
He drew his card, looked at it, and turned to face Alexis across the water with a perfectly cheerful smile.
"Your turn, Alexis-senpai!"
The vein that appeared on Alexis's forehead was almost visible from the other boat.
Her fist tightened.
She was having serious thoughts about that smile and what she would like to do to it.
Jasmine and Mindy behind her were clenching their fists too, teeth pressed together, glaring at Rowan with identical expressions of barely contained fury.
He had done nothing. Just sat there. Not even a courtesy play. The sheer audacity of it.
"My turn. Draw!"
Alexis pulled from her deck with sharp energy, and almost simultaneously felt the familiar sting of molten rock raining down from behind her as Lava Golem's damage triggered right on schedule.
Alexis: 3000 LP... 2000 LP.
Her expression did not change. She looked at the drawn card.
It was not what she needed. Nothing she could do this turn would change the shape of the duel.
She stared across the water at Obnoxious Celtic Guardian, crouching there with its modest 1200 DEF, completely unreachable.
"Turn end."
The words came out through her teeth.
[Ding! Alexis's Emotion Points +500.]
Rowan's turn again.
He drew, listened to the chime with quiet satisfaction, and considered his hand.
Doing nothing again felt like it might push things somewhere unpleasant. He glanced at his six cards.
"Kuri. Kuri."
A small, affectionate sound from somewhere in his hand. He looked down.
A thought surfaced.
If he brought this one out directly, would it help accelerate the Spirit's awakening?
Worth trying.
"I summon Kuriboh in defense position."
He placed the card on the field.
A round, brown, wide-eyed little creature materialized in front of him, blinking.
Kuriboh Level 1 / DARK ATK: 300 / DEF: 200
"A 300 ATK monster."
Alexis and both of her friends stared.
Then they closed their eyes. The veins on their foreheads grew noticeably larger.
Is this man mocking us.
"Oh no," Jaden whispered. He, Syrus, and Chumley instinctively huddled together and shuffled toward the far corner of their boat.
"I can feel the temperature rising over there."
Rowan took a quiet breath.
He had the sudden, belated realization that this might have been misread.
On the field, Kuriboh looked up at the three furious women, then back at Rowan, and produced a very small, very humanlike drop of sweat.
Women are terrifying.
"I concede."
The words came out flat and controlled.
Alexis took one measured breath, closed her duel disk down, and looked at Rowan directly.
"After you summoned a second defense position monster, there's no winning path left in this deck for me. I'm not letting you drag this out any further."
The massive Lava Golem behind her boat slowly dissolved into light. The iron cage around the vessel faded with it.
It was, of course, a calculated decision. She had done the math clearly.
At the start of her next draw phase, Lava Golem would tick again. That would bring her to 1000 LP.
From there, she would need to either defeat Rowan's full 4000 LP in a single turn or destroy Lava Golem herself.
With Obnoxious Celtic Guardian and Kuriboh both on the field, Lava Golem had no target it could actually destroy.
Her hand held an equip spell she couldn't use meaningfully.
Even with one more draw, reaching Rowan's untouched life points in one turn was not possible.
The only cards in her deck that could destroy Lava Golem were Trap Cards.
Royal Decree had made every single one of them useless.
There was no path forward.
She had seen it, accepted it, and ended it cleanly.
She would go back and rework her deck. Refine it.
Eliminate the weaknesses this duel had exposed.
And then she would find this insufferable person again and make him regret every second of it.
Next time, I'll make him kneel and call me Queen.
A flame of pure, stubborn pride burned quietly in her chest.
"Rowan won!"
Syrus let out a long breath, shoulders dropping with visible relief.
Then he looked at Alexis, Jasmine, and Mindy.
He pulled Jaden and Chumley closer and they all huddled tighter.
Angry women were a force of nature.
"No class whatsoever! Provoking your opponent like that twice in a row!"
"Don't get smug just because you won once while Alexis was working with the wrong information from the start!"
Jasmine and Mindy rounded on Rowan, eyes blazing, voices sharp with the shared grievance of having endured an entire duel's worth of rising blood pressure from the sidelines.
After all of that, one thing was now absolutely certain to both of them.
There was no way Alexis could possibly have feelings for someone this aggravating.
Whatever they had been thinking earlier, they had obviously misread the situation completely.