Chapter 200

"Armed Dragon LV5, destroy Alchemy Beast - Salamandra the Steel! Armed Missile!"

After discarding V-Tiger Jet, the 1600 attack power monster in his hand, into his Graveyard, Chazz pointed straight at the silver dragon standing on Professor Banner's field, calling out the attack.

"Rrraaah!!"

The red and gray armored dragon let out a roar as a volley of small, spike-like missiles burst from its body, streaking across the field and slamming into the silver Alchemy Beast - Salamandra the Steel.

It exploded into a burst of fire and smoke, destroyed without resistance.

"I activate the effect of my Continuous Spell, Chaos Distill. Any card I send to my Graveyard from now on gets banished instead."

Professor Banner raised the Duel Disk strapped to his gray-cloaked arm, utterly unbothered, his tone calm and unhurried.

"He's banishing his own cards with a Continuous Spell?!" Chazz frowned, unable to see what the man was actually going for.

Jaden and Syrus, watching from the sidelines, wore matching looks of bewilderment as well.

Only Rowan, who already knew the situation, and Alexis and the others, who'd just faced this squinty-eyed professor's tactics firsthand not long ago, showed little change in expression.

"That's a setup meant to deliberately banish his own cards, feeding into a specific Alchemy monster that boosts its attack power based on them," Alexis explained, sharing what little she already knew.

After all, what was on the line here wasn't just the Spirit Key.

It was whether her brother could be freed from that dark book at all.

Rowan, for his part, already knew that in this squinty-eyed professor's deck, only a single specific Alchemy monster actually made real use of all these banished cards.

"A special monster that grows stronger based on banished cards, huh? Then I'll crush you before you ever get the chance to use it!"

Chazz waved a hand again, pointing at one of the two remaining 500 attack power Alchemy Beasts on Banner's field, the bronze serpent.

"That was just from an effect a moment ago. Now feel the full force of Armed Dragon LV5's attack!"

"Armed Dragon LV5, attack Alchemy Beast - Ouroboros the Bronze! Death Claw!"

"Heh heh, I won't let an attack that simple land so easily."

Before the red and gray armored dragon could even finish charging toward the bronze serpent, Professor Banner calmly raised a hand toward the single remaining face-down card on his field, smiling faintly.

"Activating a face-down card. Continuous Trap: Elemental Absorber."

A strange device, formed from four triangular shapes fitted together, rose up from the flipping Trap Card.

"This card's effect. I banish one monster from my hand, and for as long as this trap remains on the field, every monster you control that shares an Attribute with the one I just banished becomes permanently unable to attack."

"What?!" Chazz's eyes went wide with alarm.

"That trap's lockdown effect is actually pretty solid..." Rowan nodded, offering a genuinely fair assessment.

After all, as long as you had enough monsters to spare, shutting down an opponent's entire offensive capability outright wasn't difficult at all.

The catch, of course, was needing a monster of the specific Attribute you wanted to lock down actually sitting in your hand at the right moment, something the average duelist couldn't reliably pull off on demand.

It was the kind of card that really only shined in the hands of someone with absurdly good luck drawing exactly what they needed.

Which, in turn, said a lot about just how genuinely skilled this squinty-eyed professor actually was.

Even if his draw luck didn't reach the almost divine, chosen-one level of someone like Jaden, that hot-blooded idiot, the bond between him and his deck, combined with his own drawing instincts, clearly weren't far behind.

"Heh heh, I'll banish this monster from my hand, Garuda the Wind Spirit, locking down every WIND Attribute monster on your field!"

Professor Banner chuckled pleasantly, flipping over the single card in his hand to reveal it, a WIND Attribute monster exactly as needed.

Someone get this man some flowers too, apparently.

As he revealed the card, it dissolved into a faint green glow, drawn into the four triangular components of the Elemental Absorber.

A wave of green energy rippled outward from the device, forcibly yanking Armed Dragon LV5 back from its mid-air leap, dragging it back down onto Chazz's side of the field before it could land the attack.

"Damn it!" Chazz clenched his fists, brow furrowing.

Even if he leveled his Armed Dragon up again into LV7, it would still be a WIND Attribute monster.

Unless he could destroy that troublesome Continuous Trap, nearly half of his deck's offensive options were now completely locked down.

In the end, Chazz had no choice but to reluctantly end his turn there.

"My turn now, draw!"

Professor Banner drew from his dark-colored duel deck, glanced at the card, and immediately placed it onto his Duel Disk.

"Activating the Spell Card Black Process - Negredo from my hand!"

A Spell Card bearing a simple black design materialized on his field.

"This card's effect can only be activated when I control Chaos Distill, and my hand is empty. Every monster on my field with 'Alchemy Beast' in its name gets banished, and for each one banished, I draw two cards from my deck!"

"Banishing his own monsters and cards again...?!" Syrus cried out in alarm.

Counting everything from before Rowan and the others had even arrived, Professor Banner had already banished a total of five cards by this point.

"I control two Alchemy Beasts, which means banishing both of them lets me draw four cards from my deck!"

Professor Banner drew four fresh cards from his deck as he spoke.

On his field, the bronze serpent and the lead-gray lion both dissolved into particles and vanished along with the draw.

-------------------------