The emerald beam of compressed kinetic energy tore through the forest like a localized meteor.
It atomized the redwood trunk, incinerated the canopy, and sent a shockwave of heat rippling across the clearing.
WezenGammamon lowered his smoking twin cannons from the ridge, the heavy green light fading from the barrels.
“Squished,” he rumbled with satisfaction.
“Wait,” I said, my Observation Haki suddenly flaring with a sharp, electric warning.
“It’s still there.”
As the smoke and falling ash cleared, the truth of Zone 2 revealed itself.
The Silken Widow-Maker hadn’t been vaporized.
In the microsecond before the blast hit, the massive arachnid had woven a dense, multi-layered cocoon of silk around itself, hardening every single strand with a pitch-black coating of Armament Haki.
The outer layers of the web-shield were scorched and brittle, but as the cocoon unraveled, the spider dropped to the forest floor, entirely unharmed and absolutely furious.
Its eight eyes locked onto me, glowing with cold, predatory intent.
“Alright,” I grinned.
I gripped the familiar black handles of the Jade Wings and willed the alchemical metal extending from them to widen and flatten, shifting the blades into a pair of heavy, brutal meat cleavers.
My arms instantly blackened with the metallic sheen of my own Haki, the dark color bleeding up the handles and into the jade.
“Let’s see what a month of gravity actually did for us.”
I triggered Soru, blurring across the clearing in an instant.
But the Widow-Maker was a master of future sight.
It didn’t wait to see where I was going, it anticipated my arrival.
Before my boots even touched the dirt, the spider twitched its two front legs, snapping a hidden tripwire.
An invisible, Haki-coated net dropped directly over my landing zone.
A month ago, I would have been diced into cubes.
Today, my Observation Haki mapped the falling grid perfectly.
I aborted my forward momentum, sliding on my knees across the dirt.
I swung both cleavers upward in a cross-slash.
The Haki-blackened blades met the Haki-coated silk with a screech like grinding metal.
I severed the anchor threads, the ruined net collapsing harmlessly behind me.
The spider didn’t give me a second to breathe.
It dropped from its boulder, thrusting its two front legs forward like heavy spears aimed directly at my chest.
I brought both cleavers up, catching the points of its legs on the flat of my blades.
CLANG!
The impact rang out like a struck bell.
The kinetic force shook my bones, but compared to the crushing weight of the Gorilla’s ten-times gravity, it felt manageable.
I planted my boots and pushed back, forcing the massive spider to yield ground.
Realizing it couldn’t overpower me in a test of pure strength, the Widow-Maker flipped backward.
Mid-air, it sprayed a wide fan of thick, hardened silk from its spinnerets.
It wasn’t meant to cut; it was meant to bind.
I used Kami-e, letting my body go entirely limp as I twisted and bent my torso unnaturally to weave between the incoming globs of silk.
I dodged three, but the fourth clipped the heel of my boot, instantly anchoring my leg to the forest floor.
The spider landed and immediately used that anchor point to launch itself directly at my face, a final, lethal garrote held taut between its front pincers.
“Not happening!” I yelled.
From the ridge, WezenGammamon fired a pinpoint suppression shot.
The kinetic blast didn’t hit the spider, but it struck the ground mere inches from its trajectory, throwing up a blinding curtain of dirt and stone.
The concussive force threw the spider off balance mid-air, causing the garrote to miss my throat by a fraction of an inch, slicing a shallow cut across my cheek instead.
Using the momentary distraction, I shifted the cleaver blades into a pair of heavy hook-darts attached to my telekinetic chains.
I didn’t aim for the airborne spider.
Trusting my Observation Haki, I aimed for where it had to land.
The black chains shot forward, wrapping tightly around the spider’s two back legs the exact millisecond its feet touched the soil.
I channeled a massive surge of Fa-Jin into my core and yanked the chains with everything I had.
The beast was ripped off its feet, slammed onto its back in the dirt, and securely pinned.
The Widow-Maker hissed, its mandibles clicking frantically as it tried to sever the chains, but its strength was failing against my Armament.
I stepped forward, shifting my right blade back into a dagger, and coated it in a lethal, concentrated layer of Haki.
I raised it high, aiming straight for the cluster of its eight eyes to finish it off.
“Victor, wait!”
I froze, the tip of the blade hovering inches from the spider’s face.
WezenGammamon’s heavy footsteps echoed as he bounded down the ridge, his artillery form shifting back into the small, white base form of Gammamon.
He ran up beside me, grabbing my wrist.
“Don’t kill it,” Gammamon said, his voice earnest.
The grudge from a month ago was entirely gone.
“It didn’t run away or hide.
It fought us head-on, even when it knew we were stronger.
It’s a warrior.
Use a slot on it, Victor.”
I looked down at the trapped predator, then at Gammamon.
I lowered the blade, a smirk tugging at my lips.
“You know, you’re getting awfully soft for a dinosaur.”
“I’m a Digimon!” he huffed.
“Sure you are,” I said.
I knelt beside the struggling spider.
“Hold still.
This is going to suck for both of us.”
I plunged the dagger deep into the spider’s thorax.
The Jade Wings didn’t just need a drop, to forge a clone, the alchemical process demanded massive quantities of blood.
As the jade began to glow and drink, the spider shrieked, its body violently seizing as its blood volume rapidly depleted.
It was going to die before the process finished.
I slammed my free hand against its carapace.
I forced my Fa-Jin reserves outward, pumping kinetic healing energy directly into the spider’s biology.
I was simultaneously draining its life and aggressively jumpstarting its cellular regeneration, keeping it alive by the sheer force of my stamina.
Sweat poured down my face at the twin drains, the weapon taking blood, my hand giving life, taxed my system.
Finally, a sharp CLICK echoed in my mind.
The Widow-Maker had finally occupied a slot in my jade clone line up replacing the Silk-Spider.
I yanked the dagger out and retracted the chains.
The Widow-Maker staggered to its feet, thoroughly traumatized, swayed for a moment, and then scrambled up the nearest redwood, vanishing into the canopy.
“We have the Trapper,” I exhaled, wiping my brow.
“Now, let’s go find the Gorilla.”
We trekked deeper into the heart of Zone 2, navigating by memory to the massive crater where we had first encountered the Gravity-Crag Gorilla.
I was practically buzzing with adrenaline, ready to trade blows with the titan in a fair fight.
But when we reached the rim, the clearing was a slaughterhouse.
The earth was gouged and torn.
Scattered across the mud were massive, shattered fragments of familiar obsidian plating.
Oceans of dark, heavy blood soaked into the dirt.
But there was no body.
“Victor,” Gammamon whispered, pointing toward the far edge of the crater.
A massive trench had been dragged through the forest floor, snapping ancient cedars like toothpicks.
Whatever had killed our multi-ton, gravity-manipulating apex predator had dragged its corpse away like a ragdoll.
We followed the bloody drag marks in silence.
The trail led us directly toward the dense, unnatural fog that marked the border of Zone 1.
The Haki pressure radiating from the inner sanctum was suffocating.
We crossed the border.
The transition was immediate.
The trees here were petrified, their leaves a ghostly white.
The silence was absolute.
We followed the drag marks for another mile until the trees gave way to a massive, rocky basin.
I crouched behind a petrified stump, peering into the clearing, and felt my blood run cold.
Standing in the center of the basin was a colossal, bipedal dinosaur.
It was easily forty feet long, its thick hide a mottled olive green covered in spikes.
Its massive jaw extended unnaturally far back, filled with rows of jagged teeth.
It looked exactly like a Deviljho pulled straight out of a video game.
Beneath its clawed feet lay the half-eaten remains of the real Gravity-Crag Gorilla.
But the Deviljho wasn’t eating.
It was aggressively advancing toward the sheer cliff face at the edge of the basin.
Cornered against the rock was a tiny, dark-furred Ferret.
Behind the ferret, shivering in terror, was a small Unicorn foal and four other ferrets.
The little dark ferret slammed its tiny paws into the dirt.
Instantly, the physical shadows cast by the cliff face were ripped from the ground, coalescing in the air to form a massive, perfectly circular, pitch-black shield of solid shadow.
The dinosaur’s jaws clamped down on the umbral construct.
The shield buckled, spiderweb cracks appearing across its surface.
The little ferret let out a strained squeak, blood dripping from its nose.
The shock broke my paralysis.
“Gammamon, now!” I roared.
I dumped kinetic energy into the Jade Wings.
“Summon: Widow-Maker!”
A cloud of green mist exploded at the edge of the basin, and the massive jade spider materialized.
“Pin that ugly bastard!” I commanded.
Draining almost all the energy stored in me.
The spider clone launched a torrential barrage of Haki-hardened silk, wrapping around the Deviljho’s legs and snapping across its open snout, forcing its jaws shut and yanking it backward.
Gammamon, who was standing right next to my left shoulder, glowed with blinding crimson light.
He instantly shifted into the massive, heavy-artillery form of WezenGammamon, his cannons leveling right next to my ear.
“Dust it,” I ordered.
“Albion” WezenGammamon unleashed a full-power, double-barrel blast.
The emerald beam tore across the basin, engulfing the trapped Deviljho completely and atomizing its upper torso.
But because WezenGammamon was standing mere inches from my head, the supersonic kinetic release shattered the sound barrier directly into my left eardrum.
KA-BOOM.
The world instantly dissolved into a high-pitched, agonizing EEEEEEEEEEEEE.
I dropped to my knees, clutching the side of my head as the smoking remains of the dinosaur collapsed.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” I screamed, my own voice sounding like it was underwater.
“I DUSTED IT LIKE YOU SAID!” WezenGammamon bellowed back, shifting back down to his base form.
“YOU BLEW OUT MY EARDRUM, YOU OVERSIZED GECKO!” I yelled, stumbling to my feet and smacking the side of my head to stop the ringing.
“DON’T STAND NEXT TO THE CANNONS THEN!” he yelled back, his paws on his hips.
We continued shouting and bickering as we walked out into the open basin, completely ruining whatever dramatic entrance we might have had.
The Ferret had dropped the shadow shield, panting heavily, its dark eyes darting frantically between the dead dinosaur and the two idiots yelling at each other in the center of a bloodbath.
I stopped ten feet away from the shivering animals.
I dissolved the spider, and placed my weapons on the dirt.
I raised both of my empty hands.
“Hi!” I yelled, wincing at the ringing in my ears.
“I’M VICTOR.
THIS WALKING SAFETY HAZARD IS GAMMAMON.
WE’RE CURRENTLY DEAF, BUT DON’T WORRY, WE GENERALLY HATE BULLIES.”
I flashed my most sarcastic, lopsided grin.
“Looks like you guys could use a hand.
Or an ear doctor.”
The ferret stared at us, utterly bewildered.
But after a long, tense moment, recognizing the utter lack of killing intent, it finally slumped forward onto its belly, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.
Word Count: 1938
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