The searing fireball of the tactical nuclear explosion instantly swallowed the entire ruin and everyone present.
Whether they were the drug lords of Colombia's Medellín Cartel or the Purifiers from the Purification Society's South America branch, none had time to react before the intense heat at the center of the blast vaporized them on the spot, leaving nothing behind.
The stone statues that had already been mostly burned within the ruins were likewise destroyed and vaporized. Not a trace of anything like the Stone Statue Virus remained.
It was simply the quickest and most convenient method of disinfection.
Though it was a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon, only fifty kilotons, it was still a nuclear weapon. Its power was no trivial matter. The entire hilltop was flattened by the explosion, leaving behind a massive crater.
Other than the glassy material formed where the ground had melted under the extreme heat, and the trees knocked down at the edge of the blast, virtually nothing remained.
Without a sound, everything had ceased to exist.
The explosion of this tactical nuclear weapon first drew the attention of Eagle Country's military.
After all, South America had always been Eagle Country's backyard, regarded as its own reserved territory. Outsiders were simply not permitted to interfere, and surveillance equipment was everywhere.
When they discovered signs of a nuclear weapon in Colombia, the Eagle Country government's first thought was whether the Cuban Missile Crisis was repeating itself.
After all, deploying a nuclear weapon somewhere as close to Eagle Country as Colombia was absolutely no small matter.
But they soon discovered that it had merely been a low-yield nuclear blast, conducted deep in Colombia's forests.
Could the Colombian government have been secretly conducting a nuclear test?
That possibility was roughly on the same level as children at the kindergarten