With the cosmos split apart by a blade of light, the god-slaying weapon's final blow ended the duel, and the scenery of the abandoned factory reappeared.
Aisha: "You won, Mr. Miles!"
"All I can say is... as expected of me. You really were extremely hard to deal with."
The victory came down to the very last move: Divine Arsenal AA-ZEUS's Speed 2 chain.
If not for the round of deck upgrades gained through the battle at the Obelisk Tower earlier, the final outcome would truly have been hard to say.
Thud!
The heavy, resounding impact rang out. After the numbers representing Life Points jumped to zero, the experimental young Miles's body collapsed straight down like a puppet with its strings cut, and the 'interstellar war' series decks within the Spirit Eyes scattered all over the ground.
Ren looked at Miles's unconscious body with confusion: "What's going on? This wasn't even a Shadow Game."
Viel explained, "After all, it was only a temporarily imported, pre-known dueling persona. Disappearing after losing a duel is completely normal."
"So that means this young Miles now is an empty shell that won't resist, no matter what you do?!"
A glint of desire flashed through Krista's eyes—one that even sent a chill down Miles's own spine.
This Shooting Star girl… she doesn't have some kind of unknown, special XP system, does she?
No. Since the Magic Workshop had already burned down, this was the last remaining material. He absolutely had to protect his body properly.
He couldn't lose his purity before officially reclaiming his body, right? That would be way too weird!
Stepping forward first, Miles—controlling Aisha's body—approached his own unconscious form.
Scattered across the ground were cards—Drytron and Ursarctic—cards the experimental young Miles had somehow awakened from the remnants of battles fought ten years ago within this abandoned factory.
Even more curious was the extremely special Level 1 monster [Drytron Alpha Thuban], the first-ranked star of the Draco constellation, which Aisha claimed she had seen somewhere before.
It was just that this useless little tofu brain had somehow forgotten the most crucial detail: exactly where she had seen Alpha Thuban.
However, just as Miles had initially planned—to use this deck as the starting point of his brand-new dueling life, then slowly collect and create a duel style uniquely his own—this wasn't a bad choice either.
"Still… it shouldn't end there."
As he picked up the scattered cards, Miles was deliberately searching for something.
Among all these cards representing interstellar war, there should be one card distinctly independent—one that didn't belong to this archetype at all.
That was the unknown monster card the experimental young Miles had independently summoned at the very beginning, exhausting all the mana in the Spirit Eyes, and then used to immediately destroy Viel's Witchcrafter Workshop.
"That card definitely exists in the experimental deck."
Even if it was a card totally unusable, as long as he had personally summoned it, with his personality, he would absolutely keep it in the deck.
The experimental version would do the same—because the one who understood Miles best was always Miles himself.
"Mr. Miles, what card are you looking for?"
"I'm looking for… this one!"
Even through the touch of Aisha's fingertips, Miles could clearly feel how different this card in his hand was from the others.
Flipping the card over, the white card frame revealed a Synchro Monster.
His very first summoned monster… was actually a Synchro Monster?
Could it be that Synchro Summoning was the method most suited to him—or perhaps… simply because the summon had been completed in the Synchro nation of Axet?
Anyhow, above all, what mattered most was the Synchro Monster card itself.
[D/D/D Gust King Alexander]
"DDD… Alexander."
A great heroic spirit whose name pierced through history—there was no need to elaborate on the name Alexander.
Alexander the Great, the King of Conquest. He unified Greece, conquered Egypt, destroyed the Achaemenid Persian Empire, established the Alexandrian Empire, and ushered in the Hellenistic Age: a great hero whose fame echoed through antiquity and the present alike.
And this history should not exist on the Spirit Continent at all; it belonged exclusively to the world Miles came from before crossing over.
So this card had not been summoned by a Duelist of the Spirit Continent, but by Miles himself—someone from another dimension who carried the legends of that historical world. That, too, made perfect sense.
"Miles, do you remember?" At the same time, Dark Aisha's voice suddenly rang out in Miles's mind. "What Chi said inside the Obelisk Tower."
At Kaiba Entertainment Group, the chief Deck Compatibility Specialist, Chi, had once helped Miles observe which deck was the most compatible with him.
Although the answer Chi gave at the time had been extremely vague, it still mentioned a key phrase, "heroes that truly existed."
"Heroes that truly existed… heroic spirits. So it was D/D/D all along."
DDD, bearing the names of historical heroic spirits, "Different Dimension Demon," demon kings from another dimension.
Setting the demon kings aside for the moment, the concept of coming from another dimension was simply far too fitting for Miles, who had crossed over into the Spirit Continent.
Even Miles couldn't help but exclaim, "As expected of a veteran Kaiba Group employee, was the guess really that accurate?"
After finishing recovering the deck, Miles found himself hesitating: should he first have Viel finish repairing his body, or seize the momentum and further explore this abandoned factory that slept with a Drytron deck and felt so familiar to Aisha?
At that moment, the crimson warning lights above everyone's heads suddenly blazed to life without warning. Red light flooded the entire interior of the abandoned factory, accompanied by piercing alarm sirens.
"W-What's going on all of a sudden?!" Bathed in red light, the group looked at one another, utterly unable to understand what was happening.
Only Viel sensed it, from the faint magical fluctuations spreading up from beneath her feet.
"This is bad!" Viel warned urgently. "It looks like we triggered some kind of dangerous failsafe. The factory is going to… explode!"
"Explode? Wait a second, how is that even a thing?!"
Another explosion. An inexplicable sense of déjà vu washed over Miles. The last time had been… the Obelisk Tower's explosion.
Was this some kind of curse?
Why did it feel like everywhere he went lately ended up inexplicably blowing up? The Obelisk Tower, and now this abandoned factory too.
Or was it that stepping wherever he went and causing explosions was just another kind of destiny that heroes had to bear?
"There's no time to hesitate! We don't know when it'll blow, so, run!"
With that shout, the bratty loli Viel didn't bother with anything else and took the lead, sprinting straight toward the factory exit.
While everyone scattering in the face of disaster wasn't exactly blameworthy, the sight of that loli's legs pumping wildly as she ran still made Miles feel deeply irritated.
"Mr. Miles!" Aisha called out urgently. "Little Mr. Miles!"
Calling his name twice like that, if you didn't know the situation, you wouldn't even understand what Aisha was trying to warn him about.
If the factory was going to explode, of course, they had to escape, but they had to escape with his unconscious body as well.
He couldn't just let himself die here for no reason!
But with Aisha's physical strength, even in her shota-sized body, trying to carry another body while running would inevitably end with both of them dying here together.
"Then, Monster Summon! Triple Summon, [Mokey Mokey]!"
The Spirit Eyes lit up once more. Just as Miles was about to perform a Monster Summon to use for transport, the red-haired girl's body suddenly flashed past him, scooping up the unconscious young Miles into a princess carry.
"Leave this to me, Miles!"
"Ren!"
"Don't worry, I won't let your body get hurt, Miles!"
With Ren's near-monster-level athletic ability, escaping while carrying young Miles's body was indeed effortless.
With that, Miles had nothing left to worry about.
Though seeing his own body being carried bridal-style in a girl's arms still left him feeling… a bit complicated.
"Yeah, then I'll leave 'me' to you, Ren!"
"Ah…!"
Ren's cheeks, under the red glow of the warning lights, were already impossible to tell apart, whether the color came from the lighting or from her own blush.
"Then let's run, Miles!"
Cradling young Miles's body, Ren took off at full speed.
It had to be said, Ren's athleticism was no joke. Even while carrying someone, her running speed far surpassed everyone else's. She surged into the lead and even overtook the bratty loli who had started running first.
As Miles watched Ren's back as she excitedly ran off carrying his body, he could still faintly hear the thrilled shout coming from ahead.
"Hahahaha! I got it, I really got it!"
This Ren… she wasn't seriously about to just abduct his body like that, was she?
...
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