"To be remembered by the master of the Wild Hunt… that's truly an honor." Nene Amano looked surprised for a heartbeat, then smoothly returned to her flawless professional smile. "We really are fated, you and I."
"Fated?" Akira echoed.
"There are only two human commanders in this world. It'd be stranger if I didn't know you." His tone was mercilessly blunt. "So tell me—when did you start watching me?"
"From the moment you stepped onto the battlefield and delivered victory to a resistance that was about to collapse." Nene's smile grew complicated around the edges. "It may sound odd, but… that was also the moment I became your admirer."
She wasn't lying.
She really did like Narumi Akira.
If she had to give that feeling a reason, it was simple:
He was dazzling.
His debut battle had been in the Dessert Zone—a territory that was the textbook definition of "easy to attack, hard to defend," an open plain populated by Digimon with no appetite for war, Digimon who only wanted to make sweets.
And the army poised to conquer it wasn't some ragtag raiding party.
It was one of the Bagra Empire's elite corps—the Bullmon legion.
To put it bluntly, the Dessert Zone looked pretty, but strategically it was garbage.
And yet Akira made a choice no one expected.
He didn't force the pastry makers to fight. Instead, he made them watch what happened when war rolled through a land like theirs—what remained after the flames moved on—and then he asked them a single question:
Are you willing to fight?
He understood that Digimon who'd lived in peace for too long wouldn't grow "resolve" in a single day. So after asking, he only armed the ones willing to abandon their lives as confectioners and take up battle—then he marched them against the enemy.
And he won.
He killed Bullmon, dispersed the Digimon under its command, and seized the Code Crown belonging to the Dessert Zone.
From Nene's perspective, even without local support, Akira could have defeated Bullmon and taken the Code Crown anyway.
But he didn't do that.
More than that—after taking the Code Crown and becoming the Dessert Zone's new ruler, he didn't issue a single decree.
He simply tossed the Code Crown and the captured weapons from Bullmon's legion at their feet, and asked them:
"Digimon of the Dessert Zone. I have obtained the Code Crown of this land, but I have no interest in ruling it.
"I know you love sweets. I know you don't want to fight. And I have no interest in forcing Digimon without fighting spirit to go die.
"I only want to ask you one thing:
"Do you want to fight?
"This has nothing to do with your bodies, your strength, or whether you have weapons. It only has to do with your will.
"Every gap in battle that isn't the heart—I will erase for you.
"So… do you want to fight?
"Will you come with me to overthrow the Bagra Empire and free more of our kin?"
From that moment on, the Dessert Zone took on a new color.
Because the Digimon there were no longer "just" pastry makers.
"Fight!"
"We'll fight!"
"We'll fight to liberate our people!"
The warriors born from the Dessert Zone were no inferior to warriors from any other land.
After that, everything changed.
The pastry makers followed Akira from battlefield to battlefield.
Some took up weapons and became front-line soldiers. Some abandoned sweets and became medics. Some remained confectioners—bringing warmth to Digimon shattered by war.
In the end, the Dessert Zone was still violently conquered by the Bagra Empire's First General—Tactimon.
But the mark it left was everywhere.
And from then on, the Bagra Empire's pace of conquest slowed… and even began to retreat.
Because Digimon across the world no longer clung to their birthplace as a shackle—nor did they give up fighting simply because their homeland fell.
Nene knew exactly whose doing that was.
It was Narumi Akira who had lit the first fire.
A fire bright enough to illuminate something long buried:
the will to resist.
How could deeds like that not be dazzling?
If Nene had been allowed to choose, she would have thrown herself into that blaze long ago—one more spark for a chaotic world.
But she had no choice.
Because she had family.
And her family was held in the grasp of the most wicked schemer alive.
That schemer, watching everything Akira did, had offered a judgment as twisted as it was cruel:
"So he lacks a Xros Loader's power of fusion and evolution, and chooses instead to use words—stirring up powerless weaklings to fight for him, patching his shortage of forces with boring medical and logistics support?"
"Powerful. Cunning. A reader of hearts… The darkness behind him is something even the world's light cannot reach."
"A perfect candidate for a prince consort, of course. But if our princess engages with a man that clever, she'd better be careful—lest her heart be stolen."
"After all… you understand the little princess's condition, don't you?"
Nene didn't deny that Akira was brilliant. His decisions and actions were too crisp, too ruthless, too deliberate—there was clearly a plan behind everything.
But that only made her admire him more.
Because despite having the intelligence and strength to choose the safest path…
he still chose to light a torch.
And she refused to believe that someone willing to carry fire for others could be as evil as the schemer claimed.
Yet she couldn't refute him.
Because right now, she herself was the "bad woman"—wearing a saleswoman's smile, approaching Akira as a fellow human in order to deceive him into trust.
So her feelings were a mess.
She wanted her family safe.
And she wanted this dazzling boy not to be destroyed by the ambition hiding in the dark.
Because she had no freedom to choose.
At some point, night fell.
And Nene suddenly realized her Xros Loader had lost its teleportation function.
An endless darkness surged from behind the boy who had once lit that fire, forming into dreadful tentacles that snatched the Xros Loader from her hands.
She wasn't afraid of the darkness at his side.
Because the boy who commanded it was answering her hope.
"I have no interest in attacking a puppet propped up by an ambitious schemer," Akira said calmly.
Countless tentacles drilled into the black Digivice, forcibly seized control, activated its storage system—and dragged the hidden mastermind out of the shadows.
Data Manifestation—DarkKnightmon.
With the device's voice line, a towering knight of pitch-black armor stepped into view, radiating cold, merciless power.
[Image: DarkKnightmon]
It was massive. Powerful. Its aura carried a darkness comparable to the Seven Great Demon Lords—strength enough to contend with the Bagra Empire's Three Generals.
And yet before those countless tentacles, DarkKnightmon was as helpless as a marionette.
Even—
"Narumi Akira, Your Majesty, I have come to form an alliance with you. Why would you—"
"Who gave you permission to put on a performance in front of me?" Akira cut the speech off without mercy, then gave a low command:
"DarkKnightmon—DigiXros Release."
Black light poured from the Digivice, wrapped the schemer in evil radiance, and split it in two—returning it to its true components:
SkullKnightmon and DeadlyAxemon.
[Image: SkullKnightmon]
[Image: DeadlyAxemon]
Akira walked up to SkullKnightmon, planted a foot on its small body, and smiled with open contempt.
"This is what you really look like, isn't it?"
Humiliation that absolute set SkullKnightmon's heart ablaze with rage.
It had sworn to become strong by any means necessary precisely because it was so small, so weak—so utterly unlike its brother, Bagramon, who had shone like a god before his fall and still ruled the Digital World after it.
And now—after finally becoming strong—being trampled like this…
How could it not burn?
But no matter how much darkness and curse-power it gathered, no matter how violently its rage boiled, it couldn't shake the tentacles pinning it down.
It couldn't even make a sound.
It even felt—as if the tentacles' power of suppression surpassed Bagramon's.
Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
My brother is invincible. How can anyone be stronger than him?
Yet no matter how fiercely SkullKnightmon refused to believe it, reality sat before it like a blood-soaked verdict.
"Speak." Akira's boot pressed down on its head. "SkullKnightmon—how do you want to die?"
"I'll grant you the right to say one sentence," he declared, cold and final. "Choose your death."
So… this is really where I die.
No matter how unwilling it was, SkullKnightmon couldn't overcome the iron fist of reality.
Thinking back on everything, it decided to leave itself a shred of dignity.
"Victory crowns the king. Defeat eats the corpse. If you want to kill me—then kill me."
"Oh?" Akira sounded almost impressed. "Didn't expect you to have that much backbone."
Then he muttered something SkullKnightmon couldn't understand at all:
"Looks like the 'second-son route' isn't thrilling enough for you."
He turned slightly, addressing the presence in his phone.
"Partner," Akira asked Negamon, "I've heard there's a Digimon called Invasionmon—it has the tech to remodel Tailmon into DarkKnightmon. Tell me… can that tech be reverse-copied?"
That level of technology is not difficult for me.
"Excellent!"
Akira's smile was pure delight—yet to SkullKnightmon, it was more terrifying than ten thousand Invasionmon.
"Then let me see your technique."
Because the boy standing before it—
was far more evil than it had ever imagined.
-------
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