Bird in 1945?!
"I deploy the ripple magic circle Operation: Nuclear."
I reached out with my left hand and crushed one of the mana crystals floating in the air.
Ricardo Bardi
Mana Crystals: 2 → 1
"I offer up the machine-type creatures on my field and zone as tribute, raising the total stats to 4,500 or higher."
The tributes would be Machinery Deep Sea Dragon - Nautilus and Machinery Siege Dragon - Gustav Dora.
Weeeeeeeeeeng!!!!!
The siren wail that should have been devoured and vanished echoed once more, shaking the entire world. It was the scream of the old world, its lingering reverberation.
The echo of screams remembering the moment of annihilation.
Kikik, kiki-gik, kiki-gi-gi-gi-gik... Puuuuaaaaaang─────!!!!!
There was light. But there was no holiness within it.
For that light was the flame of utter destruction, burning all things away.
Like the hand of a demon bursting from the depths of hell, a mushroom cloud rose high. Wings stretched out from both sides of the flash piercing from earth to sky.
Its form resembled an inverted cross.
"Ugh! H-Hot...!!"
Erhun recoiled in shock from the heat wave surging beyond the battle field toward them. Of course, the fact that damage was materializing at all was already far from normal. But for spectators who weren't even participating in the duel to feel pain? That was on another level of abnormality.
It was as if the creatures were influencing reality beyond the game itself.
[Hahahahaha...]
Laughter echoed. It was the wail of a man with his guts ripped out. The sob of a woman being violated. The howl of a child watching their parents slaughtered. The cry of an elder clutching their child's coffin. Erhun couldn't comprehend it. But it was the voice of war. The stench of clotted blood and entrails, steel and gunpowder, assaulted the small beastkin's sensitive nose. Erhun trembled, gripped by a fear thicker and more viscous than the rising nausea.
Suddenly, a slick, wet sensation clung to her hand, and her acorn-round eyes rolled wide in terror.
Reflected in those eyes: chunks of flesh barely recognizable as once-human appendages.
"Hic...!"
Erhun gasped. Just hearing that laughter hurled her into hell in an instant. Saliva drooled from her mouth, her eyes rolled back showing whites.
Her brain, unable to bear the hellish vista, was about to shut down to protect itself.
"Erhun."
Ricardo spoke.
"...Gasp!"
Erhun, on the verge of fainting, snapped back to awareness at his voice.
Her small hands, which she'd instinctively glanced at first, bore no blood or flesh.
An illusion...?
"Bardi-nim...!"
The ratkin turned toward the voice that had anchored her sanity—then froze, swallowing hard.
Ricardo's left eye. The whites of his unnaturally wide-open left eye had turned pitch black.
"Fall back. With Pollux."
Despite the change, Ricardo's voice remained remarkably calm. No, not just calm—detached, like ashes left after a blaze.
"Hurry."
As Erhun hesitated without replying, Ricardo shrugged off his uniform jacket and tossed it to her.
With no choice, the little beastkin draped it over herself and Pollux, dragging his unconscious bulk backward with beastkin stamina far surpassing her size.
Confirming this, Ricardo turned back and declared,
"Come forth—"
Machinery Bombardment Dragon - Enola Fortress.
Kuung───!!
The dragon's disproportionately massive left arm slammed down on the remnants of Lost World. Composed of intricate, shadowy machinery, that arm gleamed blood-red under the mushroom cloud, like a twilight sky.
Its steel body stretched far behind, dwarfing even Nautilus and Gustav Dora. Four engines at the shoulders effortlessly lifted its bulk, resembling a flying fortress in the heavens.
Gazing up at it felt like shrinking oneself to ant-size.
[Haa─────.]
The dragon's head, revealed in the flash, exhaled deeply. Erhun's Ratatosk-sharp nose caught an indescribable stench from within—like the reek from hell's bedrock, mingled with scents neither living nor dead.
Its camera eye, mirroring Ricardo's left, scanned the battlefield, lingering on Erhun. Then it narrowed, glowing redder than its fresh heart, and grinned wickedly.
"...!?"
A summoned creature from Magic & Creature recognizing someone outside the duel? Impossible. It should be impossible.
[Hahahahaha...]
It laughed again, as if debating logic before it was absurd.
The hell-crawling dragon, wreathed in flames hotter than infernal fire, brought its head close to Ricardo.
[At last, you reach out, my pitiful king.]
[This is your glory.]
Machinery Bombardment Dragon - Enola Fortress
★6 / Wind / Machine, Dragon
Stats: 4,500
"Rank... 6?"
"Stats of 4,500...?"
Erhun and Glontes's stunned voices overlapped. Rank, stats—both off the charts.
But Enola Fortress ignored such trifles, addressing only Ricardo.
[Now, command me.]
[Simple enough. Place your finger on the trigger, give it the slightest push.]
[And I shall gladly burn this world to ash.]
"Enola Fortress."
Ricardo spoke lowly. In that instant, Erhun caught a faint scent from his psyche amid the cooked blood and guts.
Unyielding even in carnage. A conviction harder than steel.
"This is a fight to save Adella."
Ricardo's right eye glared sharply at the hellspawn dragon.
"If you don't wanna crawl out just to head straight to the grave, shut up and follow my orders."
[Oh ho──.]
Enola Fortress let out an intrigued, sinister chuckle like a death rattle.
[Very well, my king.]
[For now, instead of this pathetic hill, I'll burn those filthy worms.]
[However.]
Enola Fortress opened its maw. Teeth sharper than a guillotine blade gleamed darker than the abyss.
[Remember this, my king.]
[My chains are already broken.]
Ricardo didn't respond. He fixed his gaze on the Lord of Flies as if Enola Fortress no longer existed.
"Battle. Enola Fortress attacks Banquet Lord - Belzebub."
The air grew heavy as the abyss.
Weeeeeeeeeeng.... The old world's echo rumbled dully.
[Indeed, this is the feeling.]
Tok, tokodok.
Enola Fortress's mechanical hand drummed rhythmically on the old world's ruins, just as Belzebub had moments ago.
With that, the last remnants of Lost World crumbled utterly.
[Hahahahahaha...]
Kurururung─!!
With a thunderous roar, Enola Fortress leaped skyward. The Gluttony Demon King, who had lounged on its throne moments before, lurched to its feet.
-Kieeeek!!!!!
Sponge-like maw, fur sprouting thick on six limbs. Finally, flesh-crown atop its head sprouted gaping mouths, shrieking horrifically.
Why did such a repulsive screech, ear-plugging worthy, sound to Erhun like a desperate scream?
The kingdom of flesh quaked violently, vomiting forth swarms of tens of thousands of flies.
The black wave of flies surged toward the airborne dragon—but
[Worm.]
[Know your place.]
Before nearing its body, they melted away in the flames, traceless.
"Belzebub is Earth-type, Enola Fortress is Wind-type. Due to type advantage, Enola Fortress's stats rise by an additional 500."
Machinery Bombardment Dragon - Enola Fortress
Stats: 4,500 → 5,000
Ricardo muttered flatly. Glontes, face drained pale, rasped,
"What... what is this creature...? What the hell are you...?"
No answer came to his question. Ricardo's mouth issued not reply, but command.
"—Little Boy."
Death took form and fell. The old world called it the destroyer of worlds.
It incinerated the persistent fly swarms without mercy—
-Kieeeek!!!!!
Devouring the Gluttony Demon King and its kingdom utterly.
Its size mattered not. Sturdy chitin charred blacker than the abyss, shattering to dust.
Fleshy masses blanketing the field softened, melted, ballooned, and burst.
When the instant passed, nothing remained.
No need for the dragon's hidden power. The fly lord was far too soft.
"Gaaaaaaaah!!"
[Glontes of Gluttony]
Soul Points: 4,100 → 0