For 40 advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/AutumnXd
Pure white raiment edged in red, laced through with threads of brilliant gold filigree. The four pairs of wings that had numbered eight now numbered twelve, and the newly grown pairs were not white at all, but a radiant, burnished gold.
The Angewomon X who emerged from the light had not merely grown holier, more inviolable in her bearing. The change in her form ran vast, far past what the X-ings of Guilmon, Growlmon, or the Sistermons had ever wrought.
And with her descent, a grand holy chorus rang faint and clear across the sky. The darkness saturating the whole region was driven out in a single breath, and even the air itself came away purified, clean in the lungs.
*「 Angewomon X 」*
Race: Digimon, Archangel type
Quality: Legendary
Level: ★★★★★★★★ (Eight-Star)
Skills: Grand Celestial Arrow, Heaven's Charge, Saint Air, Arrow of Light, Light's Aegis
Grand Celestial Arrow: Liberates her holy power a step further. Fire, earth, wind, water, every element she touches runs through with purified aura. By fusing different elemental powers into the arrow, its might rises, and it gains a different corresponding effect with each.
Light's Aegis: Risen to the Archangel type, the wings of Angewomon X hold mighty sanctity within them. Spending that sanctity can block all attacks of her own grade; spending it whole in a single breath can turn aside one fatal blow.
*「 Angewomon evolution successful. Angewomon X's information has been updated. Mana backflow obtained. Level raised to the Three-Star Monarch Realm! 」*
A full Eight-Star grade. Even evolved up from Seven, the backflow that poured out of the X-ing carried Luke cleanly through into the Three-Star Monarch Realm.
Beyond the new Light's Aegis, even her old finisher changed under the X-ing. The Celestial Arrow, remade into the Grand Celestial Arrow. Should I just say every angel-line Digimon is a cheat-wall and be done with it? Even Luke, reading the data as it scrolled, let out a low breath of appreciation.
Angewomon's offense and utility had always run elite. The X-ing hadn't merely pushed her finisher's destruction another step. It had patched the one soft face she'd ever had, her defense, outright. Call her one of the most apex spirits of the entire Eight-Star grade, and no one could name it exaggeration.
Layer the Legendary quality on top, and against a low-quality Nine-Star enemy, she could genuinely stand and fight.
Set beside that gleaming panel, the Abyss Devourer's kit, skills and attributes both, read a full shade duller for something of the same grade. As for the Seven-Star Predators, they'd simply been outclassed into the dirt.
"Isn't this transformation a little much?" Elise and Iris stared up at the Angewomon X hanging in the sky, and both girls' lovely eyes had gone faintly unfocused.
Beside them, Viola had lost her voice entirely, wearing the look of someone shaken for a full year of her dragon life.
Because this was no mere change of appearance. The strength underneath had truly, verifiably risen to the Eight-Star grade, level with the Abyss Devourer's.
Then the three girls traded a glance, and each read the joy in the others' eyes. This really was life snatched back out of a dead board.
"How. HOW!" The one soul present who could not accept it was Silas, and his voice ran thick with fury, with disbelief and fear bleeding through underneath.
Everything was supposed to have run along his design. And at the start, it had. They had even deceived Celestial's sight itself. Then Luke appeared, and every single thing began sliding out of his control.
First the Valley girl he should have killed, saved at the last instant. Then his grudge-beasts and grudge-hunters, the whole prepared host, bound by one strange holy ring and swept off the board like trash. Until at last he had played even the forbidden card, the Black Gate itself, with an Eight-Star Abyss Devourer to anchor the field. That should have crushed everything.
And the angel simply rose another step and matched it.
Feeling the pressure rolling off the transformed angel, Silas very nearly coughed blood on the spot. There have to be LIMITS to cheating! What manner of monsters are the Ancient Kingdom's Card Masters?!
And in a corner of his heart he hadn't yet noticed, the first small thought of retreat quietly took root.
"So you see. If you'd told us the way out at the very start, and come along quietly to turn yourself in, none of this trouble would have been needed." Luke drew back his gaze and gave the man a brilliant, sunny smile. "No matter. Once you've been beaten into agreement, the result comes out exactly the same."
The words fell, and Angewomon X opened on the Abyss Devourer first. Every lift of her hand hurled a streaming light of holy force so dense it deserved the word terrifying, and where the streaks passed, the air behind them showed faint fractures of cracking space. The Purgatory's fabric ran fragile, granted. It still said everything about what those lights carried.
In the same breath, the Dragon Knight Dark Magician Girl led Red-Eyes, WarGrowlmon, and the rest of the spirits crashing down onto the Abyss Predators.
Spirits who had run at Luke's side this long had no habit of standing to be hit. Their instincts all pointed one direction: strike first, and put the enemy on the ground. That was never the wrong answer.
They still remembered a line Luke had spoken once. Persuade them with virtue. Persuade them with reason. The virtue in question being martial. The reason being physics.
"Counterattack!" Silas flung the command, and the Devourer and Predators answered. Attacks like those, landing clean, would leave anyone dead or broken, and pain either way.
He refused to believe it. After paying a price this steep, he couldn't even put down a handful of rookies?
ROAR!
Madness bled through the Abyss Devourer's eyes. Attribute-suppressed or not, this beast held no fear of Angewomon X. The alien dimension it called home never lacked for existences more terrifying than her.
Predator!
Masses of shapes dripping black liquid welled up out of the shadow beneath the Devourer's feet, hurling themselves at the incoming streams of light.
POM!
The predators met the holy light head-on, and the collisions detonated in horrific bursts of sound. But the light ran stronger. However many predators the shadow birthed, the holy streams ground through them raw, and several slammed home into the Devourer's body, blasting the great beast backward through the air.
Grand Celestial Arrow: Wind!
Brimming with the powers of light and wind together, the arrow fired last and arrived first, running down the flying Devourer mid-air and punching clean through it.
The old Celestial Arrow had changed under the X-evolution. Fused with a different element, it gained a different blessing, and the wind's gift was piercing, and impossible speed.
AWROO!
The Abyss Devourer loosed a grief-cry as light and wind rampaged through the wound, gnawing the injury deeper with every breath.
Forced Devour!
The Devourer's body ran liquid, and the eroded flesh was swallowed down into itself whole, its surface sealing back to smoothness as though nothing had touched it.
"My power is not so easily digested." Angewomon X gave one cold little snort, and detonated the Grand Celestial Arrow inside the Devourer's body.