Inside the castle's secret chamber, upon the stone altar before the gate, ten cards were neatly arranged.
The altar had nine indentations precisely matching the ten cards. In other words, placing the cards in the correct sequence would activate the stone gate.
After briefly studying it, the mechanism of the stone platform was easily deciphered. Instructions beside the platform clearly indicated the correct arrangement by level and attribute. Matching the cards accordingly was simple enough.
But therein lay the problem: there were ten cards for only nine slots. Eight of them had indisputable positions; the only dispute was at the very last slot… where two cards both fit the conditions perfectly.
Thus, they faced a happy dilemma—choosing one of two…
…Of course, Zero, having watched the original series, knew perfectly well what the right answer was. But to be honest, he was deeply curious—where exactly would the gate lead if they inserted the other card?
"Theoretically," Wizardmon said softly, holding the two cards, "if the cards are arranged incorrectly, the gate could connect to an unknown, entirely different world…"
Wizardmon stared intently at the cards, a strange expression crossing his face.
Zero vividly recalled Wizardmon mentioning before… he felt he didn't truly belong in this world. Seeing the stone gate seemed to stir something deep within him… Could it be…?
…But no—right now, their top priority was returning to the Real World. As intriguing as that mysterious other world might be, it was a question to investigate in the future, after all this was over. Definitely not now…
"Let's go."
Zero took the card representing the gate to the human world from Wizardmon's hand. Taichi still looked a bit nervous.
"Um… We won't make a mistake, right, Zero?"
"Haha, if we mess up, we'll just switch cards. It's not like someone's chasing us, right?"
Taichi suddenly understood. In the original plot, the children had been forced to make their choice while desperately fighting. And at their last second of departure, the entire castle—along with this secret chamber—was destroyed.
Thus, they had neither time nor luxury to reconsider their choice, forced to get it right immediately. In the end, Taichi had simply guessed wildly.
This time, however, there was no such urgency. Zero placed the card onto the altar, instantly embedding all the cards into position. A stream of light flowed along the stone altar, and the heavy stone door rumbled loudly.
Slowly, the stone gate swung open, and from beyond the parted doors, a faint ray of light spilled out…
...
Half a month had passed since the chaos at the Shinomiya Estate.
The only fortunate part was that it hadn't happened downtown. Those villas deep in the mountains belonged to the Shinomiya Family, and everything for miles around was their territory, free of outsiders.
As for the servants employed by the Shinomiya Family, they had been sternly warned never to speak of what they saw.
In fact, those servants hadn't known any specifics. All they'd seen was two enormous monsters fighting, and then both disappearing into the sky… nothing more.
At the scene, both the Aether Foundation and Kamishiro Group expressed their respective stances, swiftly offering their help to conceal the incident.
Given the combined power of the Kamishiro Group, Aether Foundation, and the Shinomiya Family, erasing from existence something the public hadn't yet seen was almost child's play.
If any servant dared gossip carelessly, it wouldn't be hard at all for these combined forces to make an ordinary person with no special connections simply "never have existed."
Frankly, such handling was second nature for them. The world's largest network service provider didn't get where it was solely through "fair competition," after all.
And local giants like the Shinomiya Family, a powerful clan deeply rooted in the 11th Ward, had even more secrets accumulated over their centuries-long history. For every general's victory lay thousands of bones—the sordid details behind wealthy families' histories were better left buried.
Originally, the incident had been a collaboration between the Kamishiro Group and the Aether Foundation, with the Shinomiya Family merely facilitating from behind the scenes. But because of Rina's involvement, suddenly, the Shinomiya Family found itself thrust center-stage.
Everything about this amazed Rina. But no matter how incredible, certain things simply had to be done.
"Kamishiro Group already knew about Digimon ten years ago. The 'major incident' that halted development on the original EDEN System back then… was related to Digimon—to the Digital World."
Rina's voice carried her disbelief. Kamishiro had hidden knowledge of such a miraculous world for nearly a decade, obviously due to their deep fascination with the Digital World.
The EDEN System itself was an online world built upon the internet, but the Digital World was entirely composed of data—capable even of physical interactions with humans.
In a sense, the Digital World represented the perfect realization of Kamishiro's understanding of "virtual reality."
A data-based world, governed by physical laws both similar yet subtly different from the Real World, capable of giving birth to true, living creatures—it was a genuine world in every sense.
If Kamishiro grasped those secrets, applying such technology to EDEN, they might not just create a virtual online world, but perhaps a truly new world altogether.
Perhaps humans could finally shed the limitations of mortal flesh entirely, achieving eternal life in a digital paradise.
And once the logic underlying such a data-based world was fully understood, it could even be rewritten from the code up, shaping the world precisely to their ideals.
A flawless heaven—no disasters, infinite resources, a place where every wish could be granted, and eternal happiness achieved!
Rina personally had little interest in Kamishiro's envisioned paradise. But, for now, Kamishiro was at least polite toward Rina and Hajime. You didn't slap a smiling face, after all, and Yuuko was there as well—so Rina didn't object much.
Besides, Kamishiro's current interest appeared to be focused solely on analyzing the fundamental logic behind the Digital World to implement in their EDEN System.
They weren't aiming to invade or destroy the Digital World—it was merely a straightforward, scholarly exploration of the unknown.
At least for the moment, their actions gave Rina nothing to criticize. Unless Kamishiro stepped beyond certain boundaries later, Rina saw no reason to trouble them.
As for the Aether Foundation…
Its president, Lusamine, had once been a simple white-collar worker. After losing her husband in a sudden accident, she'd spiraled into depression. Yet, abruptly one day, she'd transformed completely, becoming an exceptionally capable, decisive leader, eventually founding the Aether Foundation from scratch.
She had privately confided to only a select few close friends: the change originated from an experience during her lowest point, when she stumbled into a miraculous world, where she spent a year and a half.
She had never shared details about that time with anyone, including her daughter, Lillie. But one thing was clear: that year and a half completely remade her.
Yet, in reality, Lusamine had never disappeared for a year and a half. Investigations afterward showed her only disappearance had been a brief, few-day period of not answering her phone during a personal trip.
For an adult, taking a few days off after feeling upset wasn't unusual at all.
So, most who heard her story dismissed it as a fantasy born from grief—a woman traumatized by losing her husband, romanticizing a private trip in her mind.
But Lusamine herself was certain it was no mere dream. If the timelines didn't match, perhaps it was simply a matter of an immense time gap between the two worlds. She firmly believed in that miraculous world's existence!
"That mysterious world… those incredible creatures… I hope that one day I can reunite with them again!"
This was the secret Lusamine had kept buried all these years. When she happened to encounter Kamishiro Group later, she realized that the world she had stumbled into… was most likely the Digital World itself.
Thus, both sides instantly agreed to collaborate, sharing their knowledge and searching together for the Digital World.
And now, before they had even officially started, Rina's experience confirmed the Digital World's existence—and Hajime, as a real Digimon, proved it beyond doubt.
They immediately offered the highest possible level of collaboration with Rina and Hajime. As previously said, you didn't slap a smiling face—and their smiles toward Rina couldn't be brighter right now.
Rina herself only truly cared about one thing:
The Digital World was in crisis. Zero had been forcibly taken back there. She needed to get there immediately, find her precious missing partner, and fulfill the promises she'd made.
Luckily, her goal aligned perfectly with Kamishiro and Aether's own desires, so after some consideration, Rina agreed to their cooperation.
How to get back to the Digital World was still unclear, even after Kamishiro's decade of research—but recently, there had been frequent occurrences of data loss and destruction in cyberspace.
Some thought it was the work of a large hacker group, but Rina knew the real culprits:
…Digimon. Just like Infermon before, Digimon accidentally entering cyberspace from the Digital World!
Thus, the task occupying Rina's last half month had become quite clear…
"Hajime-chan…"
Rina raised her Digivice, aiming it at the server in front of her. Hajime nodded firmly beside her.
"Yeah! Let's do it, Rina!"
"Well then… Log-in Jump!"
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