Chapter One Hundred and Four: They Have Arrived

Although Feng Xue had figured out why certain Digimon were able to come to the real world carrying intelligence and reason, that knowledge seemed to be of little use in his current situation.

After all, he had no need to return to the Digital World. And if he were to take Ruki there in the future, the Dark Area would be far too dangerous.

Still, now that he held such a trump card in his hands, Feng Xue felt an inexplicable sense of reassurance. It seemed that, somewhere in his subconscious, this information held considerable value for him.

As an honor student of the Central Transmigration Academy, Feng Xue certainly would not treat his subconscious as a mere illusion like some mediocrity. After all, it was an insurance mechanism forged by life through countless ages of evolution.

Though he still did not know what kind of opportunity this information concealed, Feng Xue, who believed that matters would resolve themselves when the time came, trusted that once the proper moment arrived, its effect would naturally reveal itself.

...

Day by day, more and more Digimon appeared in the real world, and by the time Feng Xue arrived, many Digital Fields had already vanished.

This did not mean those Digimon had returned to the Digital World. They had merely re-quantized and begun wandering the real world. Once given the right trigger, they would materialize again, and by then they should already have gathered a considerable amount of data, regained their rationality, and become troublesome opponents indeed.

On the other hand, Digimon that had recovered their reason would not go around destroying things like those mindless creatures. Instead, they would carefully conceal themselves, fighting other Digimon doing the same while searching for the tamer fated to meet them.

This made the warning in Feng Xue's heart grow ever stronger.

More Digimon meant that the Digimon of the Digital World had already realized they could no longer evolve.

But at the same time, it also struck a hard blow against Feng Xue's earlier guess: that so long as the data was sufficient, evolution would naturally follow.

Ever since evolving into the Mature Stage, Feng Xue had understood that data alone could drive evolution only for those below the Mature Stage.

The Mature Stage, as the name implied, was the stage of full development. In general, as long as a Digimon developed normally and did not die along the way, it would inevitably reach this stage. Yet most Digimon would also die of old age here, never advancing another step in their lives.

To become a Perfect Stage, one had to reach completeness, as the term suggested: to bring every ability to its utmost, thereby attaining perfection.

As for the Ultimate Stage, one had to break through limits, pushing some aspect of the self beyond its extreme to achieve the ultimate.

This required continuously sifting through data, refining it, and then undergoing transformation under the proper conditions. Of course, data remained the most fundamental requirement. For example, the Perfect Stage of a Numemon was the complete embodiment of trash itself. In essence, it was still only a matter of accumulating data; once the amount of trash data exceeded one gigabyte, a certain trigger could lead it to evolve into Black Emperor Numemon.

Yet in all this, one crucial element was missing.

And that element ought to be the so-called light of evolution.

In order to prepare for the trouble ahead, Feng Xue began actively stockpiling his own data.

This method of accumulation was not limited to absorbing Digimon. Feng Xue even began to absorb data from the internet.

Of course, not just any data would do. If he had been a Data-type, then documents, novels, and the like could naturally serve as food for evolution. But Devimon, a fallen angel type, was a virus among viruses. To expand his own data volume, he could only choose virus data.

Mojyamon was an exception. It had been created for the very purpose of devouring the data of the entire network. One could only say it was uniquely gifted.

However, the timeline had only just reached the year 2000, and viruses on the internet were not all that numerous. Even more maddening was the fact that download speeds in this era were measured in kilobytes, or even bytes. Not to mention one-hundred-megabit fiber; even a one-megabyte broadband connection, which in a past life would have been dismissed as a tiny pipe, was an extravagant luxury impossible to hope for in this age.

But Feng Xue was not like Mojyamon, a specialist in devouring data. At first, he did not even know how to enter the network. Even later, he still could not truly enter it. He could only connect the network cable directly to himself, then use the data manipulation granted by his Quincy abilities to send part of the data under his control into the network, thereby seizing some useful information.

But the efficiency of this method was deeply underwhelming, not even comparable to the data gained from ordinary Digimon hunts. Still, it was a viable way of stockpiling data on a regular basis. If hunting Digimon was like an occasional feast, then directly searching the web for viruses and absorbing them was nothing less than daily meals, even daily drinking water.

Through the combined accumulation of hunting and internet use, Feng Xue's data volume increased at an astonishing pace. Perhaps if he waited another ten or half a month, he would be able to touch the threshold of Perfect Stage evolution.

Yet time showed no mercy to anyone. Just as Feng Xue was preparing in anxious anticipation, disaster descended.

The landmark building of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government erupted with a strange beam of light, while the air currents in the sky converged into a vast and aberrant vortex. Like a black hole devouring all things, it sucked countless Digimon hidden across the city into its depths.

"Damn it! This is the Eradication Plan!" Seeing this scene, Feng Xue finally remembered the original turning point of the story.

At the same time, he also understood why the Eradication Plan had failed.

Because that idiot Yagami had never found the true Digital World at all.

The Eradication Plan he had linked to was, in truth, the Dark Area.

The Dark Area itself was a repository for discarded data. Once the Digimon were reduced to data by the black hole of the Eradication Plan, they should have been utterly shattered, but instead they were directly sent into the Dark Area.

In this way, the Digimon that should have been obliterated by the Eradication Plan were merely cast into the Dark Area to be rebuilt, thereby turning into virus types.

This did not have much impact on the Digimon themselves. After all, they were still alive; only their attribute had changed. In fact, becoming virus types might even greatly increase their strength.

But for the Digital World, it was a different matter. There was a limit to how many Digimon could accidentally enter the real world, and that limit was the speed of the real world's network. Since the fastest internet in the real world at this time was no more than a few megabytes, at most only Mature Stage Digimon could enter, and even then they would lose a great deal of data, becoming mentally impaired.

But there was no such restriction between the Dark Area and the Digital World. The instant the Eradication Plan linked to the Dark Area, it was equivalent to building a high-bandwidth broadband line for the Digital World.

That connection could transmit dozens or even hundreds of gigabytes of data instantly and without loss, allowing powerful Perfect Stage Digimon to descend directly. If this world had not been the homeland of Ryo Akiyama, Millenniumon might have come down in person.

Perhaps this was the work of Suzakumon: using the Dark Area as a buffer between the real world and the Digital World, thereby blocking the slaughter brought by the Eradication Plan, while also opening a gate through which the light of evolution could be brought back from the real world into the Digital World.