Chapter 46- Finally There

They fought their way deeper into the Shadow Realm's core for nearly twenty more minutes. There were fiends everywhere. The farther in they got, the happier Matt got.

"Almost there!" Matt said cheerfully, slicing a fiend into many pieces with the precision of a surgeon. "It should only take us about ten more minutes to reach the very core!"

"What about the Vault of Souls?" Drake shouted, hammering away on his AK-74su. "Don't we need to free those people too?"

"We can do that after we confront the mastermind!" Matt shouted back. "If we release the souls now, it is very likely that those who were possessed will simply be repossessed when the fiends are kicked out! Besides, the Vault is closer to the surface." He turned to face an entourage of about 300 intelligent fiends. "Oh, dear."

"Ha! Now we can take you all out!" One fiend said. "I-"

"Stop! I challenge all of you guys to a… hang on, how many of you are there?" Matt interrupted quickly.

"I think I brought exactly 307 of my brethren." The fiend said.

"Okay, a 307-on-1 duel, how about that? All you guys versus me." Matt said.

"Matt, you're insane!" Julie said. "How can you possibly win?"

"Hang on, we need to confer on this." The head fiend said. All 307 fiends huddled into one giant circle. Matt raised an eyebrow.

"Don't worry about me, Julie. I've taken more people down with a worse deck than this." Matt said.

"Oh, are you talking about that 683-on-1 trick?" Brooklyn asked. Matt nodded. "Ooooo, this is going to be good!" The fiends un-huddled.

"We accept!" The head fiend said.

"You needed to confer to decide that?" Matt said, and activated his duel disk. "I'll go last."

"Very well!"

"Let's duel!" said 308 voices.

All Fiends: 4000

Matt: 4000

The first fiend drew his card. "This is going to take a while." Matt said over his shoulder.

"We all make exactly the same move! I summon my Archfiend Soldier (Dark/Fiend, 1900/1500) in attack mode and set a card!" said the first fiend.

"Yes, we all do!" said all the other fiends. 306 more Archfiend Soldiers appeared as well as 306 other facedowns. "Just try and take us!"

"I will." Matt said, and drew his card. He smiled. "Just what I expected. I activate Mpirian Power Fusion! Do you know what it does?"

"Yes." Said the head fiend.

"Good, that saves me a great deal of tedious explanation. I fuse High King Matt, the Legendary Wizard (Secret Unveiled) and Thorgricarian King Lv. 16 to form the almighty Matt and Thorgy (Light/Warrior/Mpire/Fusion/Effect, 12600/12000) in attack mode! Of course, I must give up half my life points…"

All Fiends: 4000

Matt: 2000

"Oooo, this is good." Flynn said.

"Got that right! And I think I know what else he has in store…" Brooklyn said.

"So what?" said one of the fiends. "On the next turn, after you've destroyed one of us, one of us will activate their United We Stand spell card to give one of our soldiers an insurmountable amount of attack points!"

"None of you will have a next turn." Matt said. "Because now I activate the Prosperity of Mpire Continuos Spell Card!"

"What does that do?" said the same fiend.

"Well, I pay 1000 life points…"

All Fiends: 4000

Matt: 1000

"Why would he give up this many life points in one turn?" Julie asked.

"Because unless those facedowns are all Rush Recklessly, and they aren't, Matt's going to win this turn." Brooklyn said.

"Right!" Matt said. "By playing this card, I do not have to pay the cost of an Mpire card as long as it remains on the field!"

"What kind of effect do you have in mind???" said the fiends, almost in perfect unison.

"Well, Matt and Thorgy has the nice ability to retain all the effects of its fusion materials. And one of those effects allows me to pay 1000 life points per activation to allow him at attack again and again, so long as I keep destroying monsters. So, I'll just attack and destroy the first fiend… then activate the effect, destroy another, 307 times. So, die!"

All Fiends: 0

Matt: 1000

"Everyone, get down." Matt said. Everyone dropped to the grounds as all 307 fiends exploded. Matt was smiling a wild grin. "I love that trick."

"Matt, where do you get your tricks?" asked Flynn.

"Oh, right! I never told you." Matt said. "You mean the cards, right?"

"Yeah, I've been wondering for a while."

"So have I. How did you get such overpowered cards?" Drake said.

"Simple story really. I was an acquaintance of Maximillion Pegasus for a number of years, and helped him out in a few tight spots. Nothing huge and notable at any time, but it all stacked up enough that he decided to let me create an entire series of my own specialized cards. So I created two decks: one for me and one for Brooklyn. That's really all there is to it."

"I see." Flynn said.

"So you did get them directly from II." Julie said.

"Yep." Matt said, and stood up. "Come on, let's get moving." Everyone stood up and followed him. They walked for about seven minutes, killing whatever got in there way. A further three minutes found them on a large balcony overlooking what seemed to be a massive army of fiends, all lined up into columns and rows. Each was armed. Every fourth column of fiends was intelligent. There was a large stone door behind all this, as well as a what looked like a throne. No mastermind or overlord of any kind was present.

"Well, gents and lady, welcome to the core of the Shadow Realm." Matt said.

"It's huge!" Julie said. "There has to be over 4,000 fiends down there!"

"There probably is." Flynn said. "What's the plan?"

"Screw a plan, when has that ever helped us?" Brooklyn said.

"Many times, Brooklyn, many times." Matt said. "We need to find the mastermind. Once we do, we can challenge him to a wonderful game of chance. We need to win, if we're smart, we should have five chances- one for each of us. Now that we've gotten here, everyone is relatively expendable, but please don't try to get yourself killed. That's just stupid."

"How do we find the mastermind?" Drake asked.

"We look for the guy that's shouting at everyone. Or, just look for the only human amongst them. The great thing about these fiends is that they never just randomly invade our realm, there's always someone else controlling them that's not a fiend." Matt said.

"How are we going to get down there?" Flynn said. "Maybe you can do your little ninja thing and get down there perfectly quietly, but we can't."

"We can always take these convenient stairs." Brooklyn suggested.

"Well, that would work."

"Wow, Brooklyn, you're getting smarter by the hour!" Matt said.

"Stop making fun of me!" Brooklyn said. His tone was joking. "I'm not that stupid."

"Right, let's go." Matt began to creep down the stairs. They all followed. Drake was wondering how the stairs had gotten there, he could have sworn that they hadn't been there when they had walked in. He took another step down and the stair crumbled under his foot!

"Crud!" Drake said under his breath. The entire stair case seemed to be crumbling. Everyone began to fall towards the fiends below. Surprisingly, the fiends caught them, which was still a bad thing. Each fiend was smiling evilly.

"Well, look what we have here." The intelligent fiend among them said. "You guys are going to the boss."

"I knew those stairs were too convenient!" Brooklyn shouted, shaking his fist at the crumbling shell of the stairwell. "If something seems too convenient in the Shadow Realm, never touch it, because it is!"

"Blast. Why didn't I see that coming?" Matt said.

"Don't feel too bad about it… you can't foresee everything…" Julie said.

"I know, but I should have seen this one."

"Ah, it's always the ones you should have seen coming that get you." Said a new voice. It cam from a figure wearing a huge black hood that covered his entire face, Darth Sidious-style. "That is the brilliance of it. And now that you are all finally out of the way, I can take control of the world!"