Bernardello frowned as the meaning of Phil’s words registered in his brain. Then, that same frown was swiftly replaced by a mocking grin.
“Like a pro, eh? What can some pezzo di merda like you do? I watched your duel with Dimitri on the roof. You barely beat the boy, and that weakling was so desperate for anyone to acknowledge him that he never truly devoted enough time to master the game. He could only copy, only admire the giants at whose feet he stood next to.”
Phil cocked his head slightly upon the mention of Dimitri’s name. His expression remained completely unchanged, looking at Bernardello with an empty, cold gaze normally used by scientists conducting experiments on subjects they do not consider human.
“Dimitri? Did you give him that deck too?” Phil eventually replied in a distant tone.
Bernardello’s eyes narrowed as he sensed the subject was a sore point. “Of course. He was a handy tool for testing your ability and distracting the other professors. Heh, with all the commotion the boy caused, I was able to rest nice and easy after disposing of that bastardo head of security. Normally if a person like that disappeared, the island would be even more frantic than when Sartyr washed up on the beach. What, was ickle Dimitri your friend?”
Phil sighed and shook his head. The look in his eyes hadn’t changed during their entire conversation. In a way, it bothered Bernardello. Some kid, not even out of his first year of school, and he was looking at Bernardello like that?
“Well, like a pro indeed.” Bernardello chortled again. His mild irritation morphed into a sort of mocking scorn as he repeated Phil’s earlier declaration. “I’ll let you take the first turn then. As a pro myself, it would only be honorable to give a newbie pro a handicap. Hell, I’ll tip my hat to you if you can make it to turn four alive. And to turn eight? Well, if I didn’t plan to use your soul as currency once this is over, I’d sponsor you in the pro leagues myself!”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil’s eyes scanned his hand as he considered the different lines of play that, while not possible to reach at that moment, were ones that would begin to come up within a few turns. If the circumstances were a little different, he would have found the whole situation interesting. Going first with a control deck, but with the GX-era rule of the person who goes first still gets to draw for turn. Yet, the circumstances of that night had drained any sort of interest Phil would have normally felt from his head.
‘A true duelist goes out shouting in defiance.’
Those words that Crowler had gasped out with the last of his strength while looking right at Phil continued to bounce around his skull with all the force of a speeding freight train.
“I place five cards face down. Then, I normal summon Swap Frog (1000/500). On his summon, I activate his effect to send one Ronintoadin from my deck to my graveyard. Swap Frog’s second effect activates, returning himself back to my hand. Pass turn.” Phil eventually said with such nonchalance that it felt like he was simply discussing the weather with his opponent.
“Oh boy. That bad of a hand, huh. And you said that you would treat me like a pro. You’re nothing but a frog in a well.” Bernardello raised an eyebrow as he began his turn with the lighthearted jest. The red and yellow figure of Phil’s frog monster had hardly even stayed on the field for half a minute before it had been recalled to its owner’s hand. And the face down traps? There were cards like Heavy Storm and Giant Trunade in the game for a reason!
“Just draw your fucking card.” Phil replied with thin, humorless smile.
Bernardello shrugged “Perhaps this won’t even take four turns after all. I summon Koa’ki Meiru Powerhand (2100/1600) in attack po-“
“On resolution of your normal summon, I activate Paleozoic Dinomischus. Targeting Powerhand to banish, discarding Swap Frog from my hand.”
Bernardello blinked in surprise as his grey and yellow drill-covered monster was banished before he could even finish his sentence, all to the sound of Phil’s cold, clinical words that conveyed only the essential information without any of the usual flair or banter that was thrown around in a duel.
“Alllrighty then. Since it appears you really like your traps, I’ll place one card face down, and then activate the continuous spell card Core Transport Unit, discarding Koa’ki Meiru Initialize from my hand to add one Iron Core of Koa’ki Meiru from my deck to my hand.”
Phil nodded to signal that the move was acceptable, but as Bernardello moved to end his turn, Phil flipped over yet another trap card. “During your end phase, I activate Paleozoic Olenoides, targeting your face down trap to destroy it. On activation, I chain Dinomischus’s graveyard effect to special summon itself as a monster in attack position.”
Similar to how Bernardello’s monster had been removed from the field before it could even be used, Bernardello’s trap card was destroyed in the blink of an eye.
“Hm. Not bad.” Bernardello acknowledged. “My Reckoned Power trap would have wiped out all of your face down cards if it had stayed on the field. Che palle! You have some fire in your belly today for sure! I do wonder if you can keep that fire lit. Perhaps if you can, I might even still remember your name after today.”
Phil didn’t bother to reply as he drew a card to start his turn. “Draw phase, standby, entering main phase one. I activate Ronintoadin’s (100/2000) effect in the graveyard, banishing Swap Frog to special summon itself in defense position.” Phil paused for a second, as if he was heavily considering his next move. His eyes glanced at Bernardello, and then glanced towards the spot that Crowler had made his last stand at.
‘A true duelist goes out shouting in defiance.’
Phil took a deep breath in while pushing past the memory of a fellow Ra Yellow first-year collapsed on a roof like an abandoned sandbag. His ears rang with Crowler’s words. Together, those two scenes replayed in his mind over and over again in a loop that only served to firm up his conviction.
“I overlay the level two Paleozoic Dinomischus (1200/0) with the level two Ronintoadin. Two twos, two pairs. To bring forth the frog of duality, the symbol of croaking victory.” Phil let out a wet cough as his lungs began to feel like they were being squeezed with a vice grip with every word he said. “I XYZ summon Toadally Awesome (2200/0) in attack position.
All of a sudden, every single inch of the entire building fell silent. The walls around the hallway where Phil and Bernardello dueled cracked and shuddered. Stars poked out from each and every crack like a legion of unblinking witnesses to the dawn of a new age. The floor trembled as one of the cracks on the walls widened to admit a large, pale webbed foot. Another crack, then a third, then a fourth fissure split in the walls and the ceiling as a gargantuan, pale amphibian tore a hole through reality itself, squirming through cracks of space and time to appear on the battlefield of duelists with a backdrop of distant stars serving as a silent spectator behind it all.
It was a giant, pale frog, with a smaller pale frog resting on top of its head. Above it all, settling quietly on the smaller frog’s head, a ruddy orange peach rested with an unnatural stillness, the warm color providing a stark contrast to the paleness of the two beasts. The mouth of the bottom frog opened to produce an unearthly bellow, one that was quickly followed by words that felt like they twisted through the air to burrow into the ears of the unwary.
“Hi! I’m bottom toad!” The larger frog on the bottom said in a cheery voice. “I hope that you are having a super special wonderful day today! Top toad, wouldn’t you like to greet these fine fellows?”
The toad on top did not blink a single time during the bottom toad’s introduction. His eyes stared silently until he eventually let out a tortured scream in between mangled bouts of words. “I… am top toad. The peach upon my back used to be the very top toad. It turns out, that he was actually a peach. Once I removed his skin, at least.”
The bottom toad nodded with a floppy grin filled with the kind of enthusiasm and general positivity that one would normally see in a dog. “Yessiree! These are my two brothers, and I’m one happy toad! Pardon very top toad for not speaking, he doesn’t have a mouth anymore!”
Bernardello stared at them in shock. “X…YZ summon?” He muttered in confusion. “What the hell? I’ve never heard of that before. But… the shadows should be enforcing the legality of this duel…”
“I will skin you alive and wear you like a coat, funny Italian man.” The top toad replied without missing a beat.
“Entering battle phase.” Phil said without care for the antics of the toads or the questions of Bernardello once he had steadied his own trembling hands from the strain of the summon. “Toadally Awesome, attack directly.”
“Oh boy, won’t this be such fun!” Bottom toad said with joy, standing completely still while the top toad grabbed the peach off his own back, winding up like a professional baseball pitcher and throwing it at Bernardello’s knee with so much force that even Phil could hear the bone shattering into several thousand pieces as the man fell down with a howl of pain.
Phil: 4000 Bernardello: 1800
“Woah, great toss!” The bottom frog exclaimed and clapped in appreciation. “I keep forgetting that you used to play baseball in the duel spirit league! Say, what ever did happen to those recruiters that were trying to poach you for that Dark World sponsored team?”
The top toad looked down at the bottom toad while panting heavily. During this entire conversation, the creature still had not blinked a single time. “I tore their flesh from their limbs, flaying their spirits before the heat of a thousand suns. Their screams echoed amongst the cosmos before their life sparks were extinguished forever to fuel my cursed ritual. That so-called ‘Team Dark World’ shall never win another baseball championship while the blasphemous words of my malicious sacrament linger in the ears of the damned to fuel the instrument of their demise. Invest all of your money into betting on the victory of Team Lightsworn, for they are the eternal winners whilst my curse persists.”
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Phil ended his turn while the bottom toad remarked offhandedly that he didn’t know that top toad hated bureaucrats that much. Meanwhile, the peach shuddered in place from where it sat abandoned on the ground. Its shaking intensified, and then it grew several spindly legs that had absolutely no business supporting a peach of that size. One by one the legs trembled as they began to lift the peach off the ground, skittering it backwards to hop onto the top toad’s head like a drunken spider finding a way back onto its cozy web after a night of alcohol-soaked debauchery.
“What a bunch of mouthy duel spirits.” Bernardello eventually gasped out between the waves of pain from his shattered kneecap. His entire leg was bent in ways that bone should not naturally be bent in, and it was to the point that he had to sit on the floor with his leg to his side to avoid putting any weight on it. It took all the strength he had to even say that one snarky sentence instead of simply screaming incoherently in pain. “I draw.”
Bernardello grunted as another tidal wave of suffering washed through his body. Flecks of foam dotted his lips and even his breathing was light and fluttery as his mind processed the sudden injury.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Lumina leaned against a wall at the end of the hallway with her arms crossed to watch the distant duel. She hadn’t originally planned to observe, but since her TV program wrapped up early the little voice in the back of Lumina’s mind whispered that it would probably be a good idea to be on standby near the duel.
Not because she was worried Phil would lose. Sure, she was gradually growing fond of the guy now that the rougher parts of his personality that were exaggerated by the brutality of his transmigration were shaved off, but she had a good idea of his skill level compared to the average duelist in the GX world. As long as Phil was legitimately trying, there was hardly a question of winning or losing, only a certain fact.
That of course brought her to the source of her concern. It was something she had seen in Phil’s eyes when he had stepped out of the dorm room.
“This is no duel… duels have back and forth plays. Duels have hope. In a duel, the opponent actually has a chance to win.” Lumina muttered as her thoughts were confirmed by Phil’s every move. “This is an execution.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“During your standby phase, Toadally Awesome’s effect activates.” Phil emotionlessly interrupted Bernardello’s turn. “By detaching one XYZ material, I can special summon one Frog monster from my deck. I choose to detach Dinomischus, and to special summon Dupe Frog (100/2000) in defense position.
As the pale blue froggy figure of Dupe Frog hopped onto the field with one webbed arm holding its graduation cap to make sure it did not fall off with the movement, Phil looked hardly any better than Bernardello did, aside from the lack of shattered appendages. Phil’s face was pale, almost as pale as the skin of the top and bottom frogs of Toadally Awesome, while a thin sliver of blood leaked out from the side of his mouth.
Bernardello shuddered as Phil’s field began to gradually fill up with monsters. Every single drop of his earlier confidence and mockery was gone, replaced by a burning rage that was slowly being battered down to nothing by sickening waves of agony from his leg.
“I summon Koa’ki Meiru Ice (1900/1200) in atta-“
Phil narrowed his eyes. “No. I activate my trap card Solemn Judgment. By paying half of my life points, I negate that summon and destroy your monster.
Before the crystalline shape of Koa’ki Meiru Ice could properly form onto the field, a stern, white-robed elderly man with a long, grey beard rushed onto the field. With a wave of his left hand, the wise-looking elder attracted the attention of the half-formed shape of Bernardello’s monster. With a swing of his right hand, the dignified sage sucker punched the ice creature in the nether regions, earning a scream of pain every man could relate to as it shattered into a billion freezing pieces. Several beautiful, white-robed angelic women clapped gently near the edges of the field as the old man spun around, pumped his fist in the air, and vanished, with the women following him in quick succession.
Phil: 2000 Bernardello: 1800
Bernardello let out a pained gasp as he accidentally moved his damaged leg in his shock from the sudden negation. His face paled, and then he began to shout angrily in Italian. Each word dropped from his lips faster than the last, until the man was screaming rapid-fire sentences for nearly five minutes straight while Phil watched on with an immovable, stony-eyed expression towards his former professor’s frustration. Eventually the man’s ire faded as quickly as it arrived, leaving the man panting for breath with bloodshot eyes after the strength of his tirade.
“I… place two cards face down and end my turn.” Bernardello bit out the words like he was chewing on a mouthful of bitter horseradish.
Phil nodded. “I draw. Standby phase. I activate Toadally Awesome’s effect again, detaching Ronintoadin to special summon Swap Frog from my deck in attack position. On summon, Swap Frog’s effect activates to send one copy of Swap Frog from my deck to my graveyard.” He glanced at his grave and mentally counted the number of Frog monsters and Paleozoic trap cards contained in it. At this point in the duel, he didn’t even need to flip through his own graveyard to double check his numbers.
More than enough…
“In my graveyard, I activate Ronintoadin’s effect, banishing Swap Frog from my graveyard to special summon him in defense position. Then I overlay Dupe Frog and Ronintoadin…”
Bernardello looked around the hallway with wild movements that only served to aggravate his injured knee even more. The cracks in the stone and concrete walls widened once more to show glimpses of cosmic truths taking place millions of light years away from their world. A cacophony of shrieks and bellows pried their way through the walls in a salvo of incoherent cries.
And another copy of Toadally Awesome was burst through the void.
“Howdy partner! I’m not going to think about what existential questions this brings up for there to be two exact pairs of us right now!” Both of the bottom toads said cheerfully in unison, while the top toads each plunged their webbed fingers into the folds of their skin to reveal several collapsible knives they used to brandish at each other with threatening motions.
“THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!” The top toads said in unison. For a moment, while Phil’s body swayed under the might of the gentle evening breeze that had infiltrated the abandoned dorm, it almost seemed like the two top toads were a single second away from stabbing each other to death. Yet, as they tensed their hind legs to jump at each other, an ominous croaking bellow blasted through the air.
The sheer force alone from the sound caused Bernardello to begin vomiting sickly green bile from the pain of having his wound aggravated again, while the two top toads clutched their ears in shock.
“Yes sir gotcha sir torments beyond mortal comprehension if we continue you got it boss.” The top toads responded in unison while they placed their knives back in the hiding spots within the folds of their skin.
“Ba… battle phase.” Phil forced out once the antics of the toads ceased. “Toadally Awesome, attack directly for game.”
“NO!” Bernardello frantically shouted like a drowning man grasping at one last lifeline, one that was fraying before his very eyes. “Trap card, activate! Mirror Force!”
Phil weakly shook his head in contempt. “No.”
A moment of silence passed as Phil mustered enough strength to elaborate. “In response I activate Toadally Awesome’s second effect. By sending my Swap Frog that I summoned earlier this turn to the graveyard, I negate, destroy, and set that Mirror Force to my side of the field.”
With his final trap card neutralized, all Bernardello could do was look on in terror as the bottom toad of the first Toadally Awesome picked him up by his legs and slammed him several times into the nearest solid objects, alternating between bludgeoning him against the walls and the floor with each swing.
Phil: 2000 Bernardello: 0
Yet, despite the brutal ending to the duel, Bernardello’s body still twitched once Toadally Awesome discarded him onto the ground like a forgotten bag of trash. The man groaned in pain as he peeled himself off the floor to force his broken limbs to move, to do anything. The motions swiftly transformed into a coarse series of swears as Bernardello endured the unimaginable pain shooting through his nervous system to slap a single card onto his cracked duel disk. A faint outline of a silvery, metallic snake began to form in the air, but by then it was far too late.
“Now… how do you say it? Ah yes, that’s right.” Phil said as he watched Bernardello’s last-ditch attempt to dig himself out of the hole he dug with his own actions. “Arrivederci, Bernardello.”
Phil flipped over the top card of his extra deck with trembling fingers and the world shuddered with far more force than it had even after the two XYZ summons.
From behind Phil, the air bubbled and churned like a stormy sea until it split to reveal a single pink eye larger than a semi-truck. The eye blinked, and the very action itself seemed to both stretch on for untold centuries and be over in under half a second at the same time.
To Bernardello’s credit, the final few scraps of his courage lasted for a full second as his mind bore the brunt of that being’s gaze, the attention of something that should not have been received. After that second passed, he screamed.
He screamed as his throat burst, as his mind began to crumble slowly yet quickly. After another second, his screams ceased. Not because he was dead, for D.3.S. Frog would allow no death to come this swiftly to the man, but because the concept of his ‘voice’ had changed to a different meaning.
It was no longer a sound, nor an idea or even an expression. It was a thing. It was a creature. It had become sentient. It could perceive. It could feel. Four arms and four legs of a silvery, half-transparent beast dug their way out of Bernardello’s mouth as what was formerly his voice claimed its freedom from the crowded confines of his vocal chords. The beast frantically cast its head left and right, producing screams and wails of its own as it understood its newfound existence and realized the impossibility of its creation.
On Bernardello’s head, his scalp rippled as the piece of skin that made up the concept of the ‘scalp’ found the available real estate on the Italian man’s skull to be lacking, especially if it hoped to grow later in life and create little scalp kiddos alongside its cute scalp wife.
It understood that much more space would be needed in order to raise a healthy and happy family. As a successful, career-oriented family-loving scalp, it pulled itself up by its bootstraps to become a self-starter in the game of life. It tugged. It heaved. It solved the space issue by forming the roots of Bernardello’s hair into seven dainty, porcelain-like humanoid legs and walking off his skull with a soft ‘schlicking’ sound to plop onto the ground in an unsteady tangle of legs and bloody flesh.
Any further developments of the situation were abruptly hidden from Phil as Lumina’s soft hand gently covered his eyes.
“Look any more, and you might go mad yourself. The big guy seems to be a bit too hungry to remember that like he usually does.”
Phil nodded in response to the unexpected intrusion. “I thought you were going to catch something on TV tonight back at the room?”
Unknown to Phil, who still had his eyes covered, Lumina frowned in concern at the sheer nonchalance in Phil’s tone. “It finished early, so I came down here to check up on you. And it’s good that I did. I might get fired if you go crazy and eat your own eyeballs.”
“Mhm. Thanks.” Phil said. The ease of his words and the lack of concern in his voice continued to ring several large bells in Lumina’s head. “It appears… it appears that XYZ summoning is more difficult than I had first thought it would be.”
The strange, unearthly sounds coming from Bernardello’s direction faded, and once Lumina removed her hand from where it had covered Phil’s eyes, there was not even a speck of the man that still existed in that hallway. However, Phil did not spare any attention to where Bernardello had been standing only a few minutes ago, choosing instead to step over to where Professor Crowler now lay on the floor.
Fortunately, the professor did not look quite as bad at this moment as he had at the end of his duel against Bernardello. The slight sunken look to his chest made it quite obvious that his ribs were still damaged, but there was a lack of blood leaking out of his mouth that made Phil consider the possibility that Crowler’s time trapped within the card had stabilized his condition somewhat. Even the laceration to his chest was oozing blood at a much lower rate than it had earlier, before Crowler was defeated in the duel against Bernardello.
“Unconscious… but no obvious immediate dangers.” Phil muttered to himself as he checked the man’s condition the best he could. “Probably best not to move him by myself then since the area seems fairly safe now and he’s not bleeding to death anymore.”
Phil lowered himself to place his ear right up to Crowler’s mouth. “His breathing is steady as well.” A hand brushed over Crowler’s chest confirmed that his heart rate wasn’t too abnormal either. Phil stood and brushed himself off.
“I’ll be back in a moment with Nurse Fontaine.” Phil eventually said to the unconscious Crowler. “Don’t go anywhere in a hurry, ay?”