Chapter 77: The Daily Life of Digimon and Their Tamers

Although Feng Xue delivered his set lines with an air of unmatched bravado, the earlier slip of the tongue had already left an impression of irreverence in Ryuji Makino’s mind. Completely unaware of this, Feng Xue showed no sign of self-awareness.

“Lesser Digimon? Aren’t you supposed to be the Holy Bow Demon Beast? Also, aren’t lesser Digimon supposed to look like this?” Ryuji asked, pulling a card from the deck on the table and pointing to the chibi, three-headed creature depicted on it.

“‘Holy Bow Demon’ is a title, not a species...” Every time Feng Xue heard this somewhat over-the-top moniker, his face would twitch involuntarily. After eight centuries of cultivation, his holy factor had already condensed into a full set of priestly vestments—much like Digimon armor, impossible to remove. With the cloak and gauntlets reaching his elbows, he looked every bit the true Quincy—if one ignored his head, which stubbornly retained the quirky features of a lesser Digimon.

“A title?” Ryuji wore a bewildered expression once more. She suddenly realized that, for all her self-proclaimed status as the ‘Digimon Queen,’ her understanding of the true Digital World was painfully limited.

“That’s right!” Feng Xue replied. As he spoke, however, a wave of black ripples washed over him, and his head shifted into a human appearance—his own, from when he’d been alive.

“Huh?” Ryuji gasped in surprise at Feng Xue’s sudden transformation. She felt as though the events of this single day had already exhausted her lifetime’s quota of astonishment.

“I’m at least a member of the Nightmare Legion; is it so strange that I know a bit of illusion magic?” Feng Xue reached up to touch the air beside his cheek. Yet, illusion was just illusion—though his head looked smaller, it was still just as large as before.

“But even if you turn human, I still can’t introduce you to my family!” Ryuji accepted this premise easily enough; after all, she did know a little about Digimon adaptation zones.

“How about this, then?” Feng Xue waved his hand. Though he could no longer use Origin as a Digimon, erasing his presence here and there through data manipulation was still possible.

However, in that instant, he sensed something and his expression darkened, only for a faint smile to appear a moment later.

“What’s wrong?” Ryuji, a child at heart, was always driven by curiosity.

“It’s nothing, I just feel my body changing and need a little time to adapt... By the way, where’s your kitchen?” Feng Xue deftly changed the subject, while inwardly he felt the subtle shifts of the real world.

As for those changes: he now had a heartbeat, needed to breathe, and his internal organs were no longer for show—they truly began to function. However, as a consequence, he could no longer simply absorb data as in the Digital World to sustain himself. Eating had become his top priority.

If that were all, Feng Xue wouldn’t have been so unsettled. In fact, he’d been anticipating the chance to finally “enjoy a proper meal” for a long time.

The real transformation upon entering the physical world was the absence of omnipresent data, as abundant as air in the Digital World.

For Digimon, both attack and defense required data support, much like how a Quincy needs spirit particles. Feng Xue, too, used data as spirit particles to wield Quincy abilities.

Yet the amount of data in the real world was a pale shadow of what existed in the Digital World. Though countless signals drifted through the air, it was nothing like the Digital World’s omnipresence—especially since this era predated Wi-Fi.

“No wonder, in the original story, Digimon’s combat power drops drastically upon entering the real world. I once thought it was merely a limitation of the animation’s depiction, but now I see it’s a difference in the world’s rules,” Feng Xue mused, quietly redefining what he’d previously considered plot holes.

Take the first and most well-known season as an example: WarGreymon’s Terra Force was supposedly as powerful as a nuclear bomb in the official lore, but in the real world, its explosion was weaker than the Super Flame in the Digital World. If this was just an inconsistency in the setting, then consider the comparable move from Etemon—Dark Network Ball—which destroyed a mountain in one attack!

The real reason is that, after Digimon arrive in the real world, their bodies transform from data factors into something resembling protein, and their special moves likewise shift from data-based attacks to physical ones. If a move’s original effect was physical destruction (such as breath attacks, explosions, or missiles), the power merely decreases; but if it was conceptual or data-based, it loses its very essence and becomes no more than an ordinary attack.

This was most tangibly shown in the movies “Our War Game!” and “Revenge of Diaboromon.” In “Our War Game!”, Omegamon’s attack nearly instantly defeats Diaboromon, but by “Revenge of Diaboromon,” Omegamon’s sword—when used in the real world—proves almost useless. The root cause is that the sword’s true power, “Total Deletion,” is a force belonging to the Digital World’s data laws, and is nearly impossible to use in the real world. Later, after Omegamon passed “Total Deletion” to Imperialdramon and assumed Paladin Mode, the power worked because the sword was infused with data sent by countless people via their phones. With data’s support, “Total Deletion” could finally unleash its true might.

Feng Xue faced a similar dilemma. The surrounding data was pitifully scarce; the Holy Arrow of Annihilation, which he could use as a basic attack in the Digital World, would now have to be reserved as a finishing move.

Yet Feng Xue quickly devised a solution: carry an external hard drive or something similar. Unfortunately, in the current timeline—between 2000 and 2001 (with Ryo Akiyama having crossed to the Digital World on December 21, 1999, at the age of fourteen, beginning his love-hate journey with Millenniummon; and the amnesiac Ryo, brought back by the others from the Digital World, still being fourteen and apparently yet to meet Millenniummon again)—the concept of external hard drives didn’t even exist. Even USB flash drives were only 32 megabytes, equivalent to a mature Digimon with some survival experience. Laughably, such devices—which would be given away for free by 2017—were, at this time, priced at a staggering fifty thousand yen (about two thousand yuan). In fact, back then, flash drives weren’t even popular, and the price was likely even higher; after all, in 2003, a 32MB memory card still cost over fifteen hundred yuan.