As Red Sun had theorized before Switching Worlds, Kai had failed to devour a Digimon.
Despite coming under the definition of creatures, they were digital lifeforms based primarily around Breath, not much unlike the Tailed Beasts and Bit Beasts.
Dejected, Kai had changed the directive of the jump from devouring a Digimon to getting another one for Red Sun instead, then.
As they had already gone to the Digimon World, it wouldn't have made sense for them to not get something outrageous, either.
What they ended up getting, at last, had surpassed even their hopes.
However, along with getting a Digimon, Kai had also fulfilled another purpose there... spreading despair.
Kai and others entered a place with no color but grey.
Grey was the color of cracked earth and grey was the color of the still sky. Even the wind felt grayed somehow to Kai, for no fucking reason.
He felt a bit annoyed at his judgment.
Annoyed because when he sensed the Inferi standing in the distance, he again realized that he had judged the situation wrong.
It made it the second time for tonight.
It might as well have been the thousandth.
The guardian of 12th Circle should have been Inferi with the strength of a Top-level 9th-floor Contestant.
Well, they weren't...
With only one Circle remaining after this one, Kai knew who was he facing surely this time.
Sir Galahad, the greatest knight of the Round Table!
Kai and his team had it easy till now because of the sudden rise in power of all the members. It didn't mean he had been underestimating his opponents or this place.
It also didn't mean he had ample time to finish them.
Now that Kai had entered his Identity Period, he only had some two hours remaining before his forced transfiguration.
He wanted to test out his powers with the last guardian.
But when he saw and felt the 12th Inferi, it seemed unlikely at a glance.
Sure enough, the greatest was no exaggeration.
There were five Sir Galahad, all in rusty silver armor, wielding longswords.
All swords were shining like stretched strips of sun, and yet the grayness of this Circle persisted.
All knights were standing in line, their hands resting on the hilt of the sword, with its tip kissing the broken, dry land underneath.
And all had the strength of Low-level 10th floor Contestants.
Even if Red Sun was the best of the best among newly ascended 10th-floor Contestants, he was still only that strong.
Contestants of Mid-level 10th floor he could take on easily.
But against the high-level 10th floor, if he were to survive, then it would already be counted as great luck.
The discrepancy between the four levels of the 10th floor was just too great for one to compare them to the four levels of the lower floors.
The 10th floor was where the powerful gathered.
The 10th floor was where the true competition began.
All lower floors' businesses and conflicts were nothing but children's squabbles for them.
And Red Sun must take on these beings. He was half lost already. Half lost, if... if he didn't use that Digimon, that is.
The five Inferi begin walking toward them, their steps unhurried.
They dragged the shining longswords on the grey earth, tearing it apart like paper.
They could survive this, he knew.
He wouldn't go from this place without getting all the ingredients. "Take it out," he said.
RizeGreymon jumped into the air above them and rocket-like propulsion burst out from its back, keeping it in the air.
Below it, Red Sun took out another Beast Ball.
With a bang, a bolt of black electricity shot out of the Beast Ball from midair.
The black electricity-like bolt snaked around left and right.
Air crackled as it rushed toward the incoming knights, who also shockingly paused, sensing a stupendous threat.
But before the bolt reached half the distance, it turned around and entered the Beast Ball.
The Beast Ball snapped shut and fell on the dry earth and rolled away from them.
When Kai looked at him, Red Sun was holding his face.
Sometimes it was impossible to tell if he was laughing or sighing behind that hand of his.
But the thing was, Red Sun wasn't good enough to keep it hidden, anyway.
"Hehe..." the chuckle reverberated in the silence, Red Sun's massive body shaking. "Hehehe..."
Kai filled his lungs with the hot, grey wind in a long breath, lest he snapped at the grown man.
The Inferi knights seemed to agree with Kai.
They lifted their swords, bent their knees, and dashed.
Hundreds of metres got covered in a fraction of a second.
Red Sun's transformation took even less time. A red overcoat appeared around him and his hair became golden yellow.
Glasses appear on his face, resting on his nose as if they had always been there. A long, silver .45 Long Colt appeared in his right hand.
If there was a childishness about Red Sun, then this transformation eradicated it from him in its entirety.
Now he truly looked like one.
A 10th-floor Contestant!
Red Sun stepped forward and vanished with a pop.
The bangs echoed in the world almost instantaneously.
From above, RizeGreymon fired multiple short bursts of the revolver, which was also its hand.
Standing farther away from the knights, Red Sun fired five shots.
The heavy shots of the Digimon forced the Inferi in different directions.
Red Sun's shots hit the knights' helmets simultaneously.
Five black holes popped into existence, each having a diameter of a metre.
With a sickening crunch, they sucked in a part of the five Inferi's heads, along with everything that was nearby, before vanishing out of existence.
Tch! Red Sun tsked. He had aimed to behead them in one go.
A boom rang out as the Inferi tore themselves away from the black holes' pull.
Suddenly, two knights dashed toward Red Sun, two flew toward RizeGreymon, and one shot toward Kai and others.
Red Sun kept firing, but even the black holes, or the Mini-Collapsars as they were called in the lore, only momentarily paused the knights' advance, doing nothing else.
RizeGreymon flew up, firing shots after shots, but the knights were faster than it.
The remaining one landed 10 ft away from Kai, shattering the earth under its feet.
Five swords flashed simultaneously.
Red Sun dodged one but got hacked down by the other, blood splattering from his back.
RizeGreymon's tail fell from above, creating a pit.
The Ultra Digimon charged the revolver to fire another Trident Revolver move, but the second knight rammed a sword into its chest, making the Digimon return to Beast Ball.
The 5th Sir Galahad flicked the sword up, sending a bright flash of vertical slash toward Kai.
Kai let out the breath he had filled in his lungs beforehand.
Blood Flames escaped his mouth, hissing out with the speed of a jet.
He raised his left hand and the blood flames condensed on it, becoming a red glove, reaching just above his wrist.
The slash arrived, creating sonic booms in its wake, and Kai grabbed it.
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