The Four Items! (4)

The 7th Circle had the gravestone of Sir Bedivere, and the ingredient Kai got from it was…

5000-years-old Mummy!

What part exactly, this remained to be seen, though.

The 8th Circle was the Circle of Chivalry, where Moraine again took the center stage. The knight in this Circle carried a spear and had the strength equivalent to a mid-level 8th floor Contestant. Combined with her sword mastery and the impressive might of the Mark 49 armor, she somehow managed to dispose of the knight without using her Blessing.

The knight turned out to be Sir Tristan, when Kai read the glyphs over the gravestone, collecting the black marble.

And the ingredient he got it from this place was — Ashes of Thestral!

The 9th Circle was the Circle of Splendor, where two knights in pristine black armor faced Moraine, both with the strength of top-level 8th-floor Contestant.

Even after depending upon her Blessing, Moraine just barely managed to kill one of them. Kai had to send all the ladies to back her up and finish it.

This knight was Sir Percival, as it turned out.

The ingredient they got from it was their first purely herb-based ingredient, but equally rare, to say the least.

Thaumatagoria!

The 10th Circle was the Circle of Loyalty, and it was in this Circle that the ladies had to throw their hands.

Three 10-ft tall knights stood in the desert, guarding an enormous, floating gravestone. Air was rippling in their surroundings, burning and screaming. They weren't even wielding the same weapons.

One was carrying a sword, the second a shield, and the last a bow and a quiver of arrows.

All with equivalent strength of low-level 9th floor.

A breath of dry air slapped against their faces, and all waited for Red Sun to step up. The knights had already begun dashing toward them with an unparalleled speed, the last knight knocking arrows half as long as him.

"…?"

Kai looked over his shoulder and saw Red Sun fingering his ear, eyes closed. Red Sun must have sensed something, for he opened his eyes and paused, taken aback by all looking at him. "What?" he asked, and then noticed the knights charging at them. "Oh! Was I supposed to handle them? I thought we were doing it according to our strengths. I am the strongest in our group, after all. Haha! Hahaha! Cough-Cough!"

"Is that so?" Kai asked, amused. He turned around and took a step toward Red Sun.

Kai had been delaying it, taking his actual form. As they did not know how long would it last, and knowing that he could take his original form for only 3 hours, he had thought it best to delay it as much as he could.

The wait was over, at least for him.

A black fog puffed out of Kai's shadow as he changed. The fog covered him instantaneously, and no one seemed to mind the two knights charging at them, letting out booming sounds.

It was then the black fog collapsed, returning to wherever it had come from.

The Faceless walked out from the fog, wearing a neat black doublet, pants, and shoes. His long white hair spilled on his back like a milky waterfall, and in his hazel pupils, two crystals bobbed up and down.

And now Kai looked down at Red Sun, his height an inch taller than Item-R.

At 21, Kai was a tall and handsome man, with a lean build and a hard face. This was his actual age, as the interference caused by D-Mail, unsynchronizing the Timelines, didn't prevent him from aging up.

Kai stood in front of Red Sun with his hands behind his back.

Suddenly, the knights arrived over their heads.

And paused.

It was as if the world had given up at that moment. The knights had literally been statued over their heads, without the tiniest hint of movement. The only way to tell them if they were still functioning or not was through the beastly growls coming out of the Inferi.

In the distance, the archer Inferi let go of the arrow. With a boom, it arrived, rocking the sand in its wake.

And then it paused too… just near the two knights.

Cersei was the first to bend her knees. Item-M and Item-S followed. "Your majesty!"

Moraine looked at Kai, still wearing her Rescue Armor, and then thrust her sword into the sand. She bent the knee by her claymore. "Your majesty!"

Red Sun gulped. Then he laughed ruefully. "Haha! Of course, I meant that little girl. Haha! You aren't a little girl, are you? Haha!"

Kai grinned at him, making Red Sun stumble back. "Uncle Red Sun," he said, his voice shockingly similar to Darcie's. "Don't make fun of me. I am little, but I will soon grow up, no?"

The creepiness of the situation seeped into their bones, a horrifying chill running down their spine.

Red Sun's face paled. "Your majesty…" he mumbled, bending his knee.

Kai grunted, letting them stand up. "I will do it," he said, turning around and walking toward the gravestone. "It will barely count as a warmup."

Creak!!!

As they followed Kai, the two knights suddenly trembled. A stupendously powerful force fell upon them from all sides and crushed them into balls in mere seconds.

The archer Inferi fired another arrow, but it couldn't come nearer than 10 ft with Kai walking in the lead.

Behind him, Cersei looked at his tall back and his imperial presence and blushed profusely. Item-M's cheeks were already red, her mind a mess.

Moraine had already decided to look in all directions but ahead.

Among the ladies, only Item-S seemed to be not affected by Kai's growth, both physically and mentally, and his charisma.

Red Sun quietly followed Kai, sweating in heat and terror.

Arrows after arrows kept coming, pausing, and falling around Kai. Nothing could touch him. Not even wind, if he didn't want it to.

Suddenly, the archer inferi stood up. He took out another arrow, silver of color, and knocked it. As he drew the bowstring, a dust storm rose in his surroundings, full of magic and destruction. The knight's armor melted then under the heat of its own power, and a shockwave of unknown origin rippled out.

The Inferi let go of the arrow.

Even the beam fired by Moraine, using Energy Displacers, wasn't as destructive and as fast as the thing that came for them.

Kai's step didn't halt, though. And the rest followed in his tall shadow, unworried.

The moment this arrow arrived 100 meters from Kai, his eyes narrowed into slits. Both life and death paused in that area.

The arrow began slowing down as if one was looking at a fast bullet through the screen of a camera, its frame rate hundreds of thousands slower than the original.

Just as the arrow arrived inches away from Kai, it stopped.

And he passed by it, not losing a bit of his momentum.

The Inferi mechanically took out another arrow magically but then it got lifted in the air as Kai arrived 100 meters away from it. There the knight hung, motionless.

Kai looked at the gravestone and then looked up. "I respect you, Sir Gawain," he said. "May your soul rest in peace."

With a sickening crunch, he crushed the Inferi into a ball.

Kai pulled out the black marble and waited for the ingredient to appear.

Basilisk's Fang!

Kai shook his head and took the others toward the 11th Circle, the Circle of Madness. Few personalities from the Round Table remained. So it took Kai only a breath to know which knight he would meet next.

Sir Lancelot!

They arrived near a lake once entered, where 3 mid-level 9th floor Inferi Knights, wielding nothing, stood, puffing out red, putrid breath. The waters of the lake behind them were bubbling, the ground was shaking, and even space itself was fluttering like a veil.

In the middle of the lake, there hovered the gravestone.

Then the knights charged.

Red Sun threw out the beast ball. "RizeGreymon…" he said, the Digimon taking shape, "… Trident Revolver…"

"RizeGreymon!" the Digimon roared, levitating tall midair like a tower. It thumped its revolver in hand and aimed at the three knights, who immediately took evasive actions.

Futile actions.

Three fires shot out of RizeGreymon, spinning around each other, and landed somewhere between the three knights.

And a red sun rose in this world for the first time in hundreds of years.

All things got reduced to dust and ashes as a massive mushroom cloud of hotness engulfed everything. If it wasn't for Kai's Telekinesis keeping the scalding hot winds away, the sheer shockwaves alone could have sent the ladies flying in all directions.

This was the might of a 10th-floor Contestant. And Red Sun was no ordinary Contestant, to begin with. It took raw absurdness to counter Red Sun's might. Raw absurdness, named Kai Stormborn.

When it ended, there was no lake to be seen anywhere.

Even the gravestone itself had cracked, though the cracks were healing gradually.

Kai looked at Red Sun and nodded. "Next time, just do this when asked," he said.

"Next time?" Red Sun asked, confused.

Kai walked toward the ditch, where the look once stood, and pulled out the black marble from the gravestone. "Yes, next time," he told Red Sun. "In the next Circle, use the Digimon we obtained in the Digimon Random World."

"Him?" Red Sun blurted, shocked. "He… He might not act against these knights, master. The enemy is too weak in his eyes, I think."

Kai looked at the ingredient—Sphinx's eyes—and smiled. "We will see."

**************

AN: Break Tomorrow

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Mass Release Goal Progress: 60% [A heavy Shout-out to Tobizone for subscribing to a Ko-Fi tier and supporting the work.]