-Chapter 40-

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<Continent Server Desert> <Third Person - POV>

Emerging from the portal created by Piximon, the Chosen Children along with BlackGarurumon found themselves inside a rock formation in the middle of the hot, endless desert that covered most of the Server Continent. Not far from the picturesque group, a strange structure could be seen that defied the laws of physics in its entirety, as if it were a joke towards the world itself.

The Inverted Pyramid, Etemon's base of operations and Noah's prison.

Joe looked at the huge structure, feeling a lump in his throat at the thought of attacking this place. "It's bigger than I imagined..."

Mimi, Matt and Sora nodded absentmindedly as they also looked at the imposing structure the size of a large building. Palmon, Tentomon and Gomamon simply shrugged as they sat on the ground.

BlackGarurumon stepped between the sight of the trio of children and the pyramid as he growled to draw the attention of the entire group to him. "Listen well because I will only repeat this once. We will split into two groups, one group will be in charge of distracting Etemon and his minions while the other group will infiltrate the pyramid to rescue Noah."

The big wolf paused as he looked each boy in the eye, nodding with satisfaction when they all seemed to be giving him their full attention.

As BlackGarurumon met the chaotic group I couldn't help but show some annoyance and disappointment at the shocking attitudes of each Chosen Child. I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother him to be disappointed by that, he was really expecting a group with a calm attitude and tactical sense more akin to Noah's lazy idiot.

In retrospect, that was a foolish thought on his part.

The Digimons while having different attitudes and personalities from one another, all moved with the same purpose in mind.

Consume Data, become stronger and Digievolve.

Those were the key pieces behind the simple mindset of each Digimon.

And because of that simple mentality, many Digimons ended up being practically the same in personality as other Digimons of the same species. And cases where a Digimon's personality or attitude varied from what the World informed them were extremely rare.

Very, very rarely will you find a Digimon that hides its true intentions or thinks beyond what its basic programming tells it to do.

But at the same time, it was those rare cases that caused the appearance of never-before-seen Digievolutions or completely new Digimons caused by mutations in the Digimon's Data.

However humans were not like that, they were fundamentally different from each other but so similar at the same time that it was puzzling.

Humans see the world in a unique way that made them stand out in some way or another.

Humans think and feel completely differently from other Humans.

Humans desire and dream of a great diversity of things, unlike us who only dream of one.

Yes, at first he was deeply disappointed in the children.

But there was the key, 'was'.

But now, seeing that each and every one of the children was paying as much attention to him as possible with a frankly surprising seriousness let him know that there was much more to Humans than they let on the surface.

'Perhaps I judge them too quickly...'

Quickly hiding the smile on his face, BlackGarurumon growled bitingly. "The moment the second group has Noah in their hands they should leave the pyramid as quickly as possible, no matter the how but preferably without alerting Etemon to their presence inside the pyramid. Once they are far enough away Piximon will open a portal to his dimension to get Noah out of Etemon's detection range."

Sora quickly held up a hand as the wolf finished speaking. "How are we going to communicate in there?"

"That's the thing, we won't" BlackGarurumon replied sharply as he turned around to stare calculatingly at the pyramid. "As you know, the entire desert is littered with Etemon's Wires. If we try to communicate through the Digivice surely Etemon will figure out what we are planning. The best thing to do is to put a time limit on the whole operation."

"But we don't know how big the pyramid is! It could take more than an hour to find Noah and another to get out!" Joe exclaimed as he looked intriguingly at the big wolf with a raised eyebrow.

The big wolf simply shook his head. "I know, but it's a risk we'll have to-"

"I think I can help with that!" Izzy exclaimed loudly calling out drawing the attention of the entire group to him.

Pulling his laptop out of his backpack, Izzy quickly connected it to one of the rock walls where, magically, the USB connector managed to plug into the wall without any problems as if it had always been able to plug into any surface.

Ignoring Mimi and Matt's raised eyebrows, Izzy began typing rapidly on his keyboard causing the laptop screen to change constantly. From strange images of the children's world to strange colorful symbols that seemed to pop out of the screen only to reappear in another language unrecognizable to any of the children.

And then, in less than a couple of minutes a large map of the Server Continent a appeared on the screen before it quickly shrunk down revealing the pyramid of Etemon from a satellite view.

"Ta-da!" Izzy exclaimed with a smirk as he pointed at the hologram with great pride.

Mimi simply looked at the hologram with a blank stare before looking back at the little boy with an uncomfortable smile. "...Izzy I don't want to sound like a killjoy, but what good does that do us?"

As if waiting for that question Izzy pressed Enter on his keyboard with a smile prompting another screen change. This time, the image of the pyramid was still in effect but in a transparent 3D model.

Inside the model, several tiny figures could be seen moving back and forth across the pyramid. The model showed with great clarity and accuracy every corner of the pyramid as well as the Digimons inside it, it also seemed to point out dangerous areas that were possibly traps for intruders....

"Now that I didn't expect..." Izzy commented in bewilderment before his eyes glanced to the side, causing a small smile to form on his face. "Oh! I got an Achievement..."

As Izzy looked at his Digivice, the other children and Digimons looked with rapt attention at the large hologram of the pyramid.

Below the pyramid was another pyramid many times smaller than the top pyramid. This pyramid, unlike the top one, was completely empty and filled with what appeared to be endless corridors, spiked pitfalls, alarms and much more.

But most interestingly, none of these things were connected to the upper pyramid!

The only exception to this was a single elevator connecting the two pyramids.

But to everyone's annoyance, Noah's signal for help was coming from the lowest floor of the lower pyramid meaning he would have to travel a long way to get there.

"Well done Izz-" Joe tried to praise the little boy but a reddish blob quickly walked past him interrupting him.

"...This is so cool!" Mimi exclaimed as she rushed over to Izzy to hug him tightly causing the little boy to let out an embarrassed yelp. "Now we can move inside the pyramid without getting lost!"

As the other children laughed at the obvious blush on Izzy's face. TK stared at the hologram with a glint in his eyes before averting his gaze to focus on the real pyramid that stood in his way.

Squeezing his Digivice tightly he couldn't help but feel nervous as he thought about confronting the evil Digimon that attacked his friends that day.

But now he was here, along with his brother and the rest of the Chosen Children.

He had hope in them and in himself.

'Just hold on a little longer... Noah... Herissmon...'

It was time for Etemon to pay for his sins.

...

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