Chapter 198

"Rowan, we've got a serious problem!"

The moment Rowan arrived near the infirmary, he found Alexis practically running straight into him, bursting out from inside.

The instant she spotted him, a flicker of relief crossed her face before it immediately hardened into something far more urgent.

"Uh... what happened?" Rowan blinked in surprise.

He glanced past her into the infirmary and saw the place in complete disarray, a large gap smashed through one of the windows, wind blowing in from outside.

It looked exactly like someone had broken through the glass and fled the scene.

Nurse Fontaine and Alexis's two close friends, Jasmine and Mindy, came running out right behind her.

Had Professor Banner been here?

A theory was already forming in Rowan's mind.

"My brother's been taken, by someone calling himself Amnael, claiming to be the last remaining Seven Stars Shadow Duelist!"

Alexis quickly filled him in, her voice tight with urgency and worry.

"He just appeared out of nowhere in the infirmary and teleported all of us into a nearby forest. He wanted to challenge me to a Shadow Duel, with the Spirit Key as the wager."

Jasmine and Mindy, Alexis's two close friends, jumped in to help explain the rest.

"Then Atticus, Alexis's brother, volunteered to take her place, offering himself as the sacrifice in case Alexis ended up losing the duel."

"And in the end..."

Jasmine and Mindy both trailed off, glancing at Alexis's guilt-stricken expression, and lowered their heads, unwilling to rub any more salt into the wound.

"In the end, my brother lost the Shadow Duel because of me, and that Shadow Duelist calling himself Amnael sealed him away inside a Shadow Charm, a book with a golden eye on its cover."

Alexis forced herself to say it plainly, her expression growing considerably more serious.

"He barely said a word during the duel, and he kept himself completely covered the whole time, but when he used his dark power, I caught a glimpse of the same green alchemical symbols I'd seen before, in his alchemy class."

"It's very possible this is exactly what you suspected earlier."

After hearing the full account from Alexis and the others, Rowan quickly pieced together the whole situation, along with what they were planning to do next.

"So you're planning to head to the Obelisk Blue dorm now, to confront Professor Banner?"

Rowan said, having put it all together already.

He had to admit, this squinty-eyed professor was moving even faster than he'd expected.

Probably because that alchemically constructed body of his was starting to give out completely.

With that thought, Rowan spread his hands and addressed the group, who were nodding along with his theory.

"Except heading to the Obelisk Blue dorm right now probably won't get you anywhere. When I left there just now, Professor Banner wasn't in his room. And come to think of it, that hot-blooded idiot Jaden and that goofball Chazz weren't there either."

"How could that be?!" Alexis and the others gasped in shock.

Though, in a way, this only confirmed Rowan's earlier suspicion even further.

Professor Banner was very likely the same Shadow Duelist who'd just introduced himself under the fake name Amnael.

"So where should we go looking for them now?" Nurse Fontaine asked, turning to Rowan on reflex.

"Finding them shouldn't be too hard. We can use the connection between the Spirit Keys, along with the round Kuriboh's sensing ability."

Rowan raised the Spirit Key he kept in his own possession.

The fact that Jaden, that hot-blooded idiot, and Chazz, the goofball, were also missing from the Obelisk Blue dorm strongly suggested they'd likely been lured out by Professor Banner as well, for a Shadow Duel of their own.

Or perhaps they'd noticed the professor was missing and gone looking for him on their own.

Either way, the result was the same: a Shadow Duel was very likely already underway somewhere.

The Spirit Keys carried a connection between them. Whenever one of them was used in a Shadow Duel, the others would resonate in response.

Rowan had actually felt a faint tremor from his own key on the way over here.

The catch was, that resonance alone couldn't pinpoint an exact location, only confirm that somewhere, someone holding a key was currently engaged in a Shadow Duel.

But combined with the sensing power granted by the Mark of the Crimson Dragon — Dragon's Heart, and the round Kuriboh's own keen sensitivity to Duel Spirit energy, once they got reasonably close, pinpointing the exact spot shouldn't be a problem.

"Kuri kuri!"

The round Kuriboh appeared beside him at once, nodding and chirping to reassure everyone it would definitely find the location.

"The key, it's starting to tremble a little!"

Just then, Jasmine and Mindy both cried out in surprise, noticing the faint vibration coming from the key in Rowan's hand.

"Then let's start by heading back to that southern forest, where they transported us before!" Alexis suggested immediately at the sight.

That was where she'd been forced into her own Shadow Duel earlier, so it stood to reason the most likely spot now was still somewhere within that same stretch of forest.

Rowan nodded in agreement.

If a Shadow Duel were happening anywhere near the Academy grounds, the round Kuriboh would surely have picked up on it by now.

Which meant it almost certainly had to be somewhere within that forest.