The sky had turned a crimson red, and the earth was plunged into shadow. From the streets outside the shopping district, piercing, infant-like shrieks echoed in his ears.
What the hell is wrong with this world...
After living for twenty years, he finally realized that the everyday world he'd thought was so ordinary was anything but.
Saigo Homura found that his body was completely frozen in place right now.
It wasn't just him—everyone around him was stuck in the same motionless pose.
This eerie yet strangely familiar scene of crisis stirred up memories long buried deep in his body. There was an instinctive danger sense screaming that if he didn't snap out of it soon, he'd be devoured whole in the next moment, turned into nothing but food.
Finally—he remembered. It was like the classic trope in novels: his innate wisdom awakening.
From what he recalled, he hadn't been reborn into a simple parallel-universe Earth. No, he'd been reborn into a crossover 2D world filled with characters from all sorts of familiar everyday anime.
No—wait, even his name in this life wasn't ordinary at all!
If he wasn't absolutely sure he hadn't been born in an orphanage with a brother named Izayoi Sakamaki and a foster mother called Canary, he might've thought he'd transmigrated into the vessel for the Dragon Lord—that man who was the perfect fit for the Dragon Lord's power to possess.
In the future, he'd inherit the power of Humanity's Final Trial—the Absolute Evil Hazdahaka—and was destined to become one of the upper echelons of humanity, a member of the strongest human species.
A dragon slayer who, to counter Humanity's Final Trial's Absolute Evil, also carried the potential to become an evil dragon himself.
The essence of the three-headed dragon was the doomsday prophecy of humanity's upper-class rulers losing control, unleashing weapons of mass destruction, and wiping out the human race.
The Dragon Lord's Absolute Evil wasn't aimed at the perpetrators, but at the victims—the tragedies born from the evil of those in power, birthing a being that sought revenge against all of humanity. As the developer, Saigo Homura had access to the Stellar Particle Body, and with his cry of "human pride," he fulfilled the traits of avenging the victims, making him the ideal vessel for its incarnation.
Sure, if this world even incorporated the Little Garden cosmology, the danger level would skyrocket. But in the face of immediate peril, what Homura needed most was extraordinary talent and power.
Unfortunately—he wasn't that monstrous genius.
He wasn't the man who could replicate the power of the Third Perpetual Motion Machine, the Third Stellar Particle Body, who wielded the Dragon Lord's gift of the Thousand Sorceries, and who once held the Ophiuchus Sun Sovereignty.
If he had that kind of power, why worry about some crisis? He'd just blow it all to hell, crimson sky and all!!!
All fear stems from insufficient firepower.
His name was Saigo Homura, but his surname didn't come from the Saigo clan of this little island nation under his feet. It originated from the compound surname of the regions around the two lakes and northern Shaanxi.
The Saigo surname could be traced back to the nobility of the Zhou Dynasty, from the fief of Xixiang. But legend had it that his ancestors originally bore the surname Zhang. From the scant records that survived—one thing was certain: his forebear was the Marquis of Xixiang from the Han Dynasty.
Possibly Zhang Jing, the Marquis of Xixiang from the Eastern Han—or maybe Zhang Fei, the Marquis of Xixiang from the Three Kingdoms era. During the chaos of the Five Barbarians' Uprising, to escape the wars, they changed from Zhang to Saigo.
In ancient times, it wasn't uncommon for descendants to adopt surnames from their ancestors' fiefs, titles, or honors to evade disaster—a constant reminder to future generations to restore the glory of their forebears.
Luckily—in this life, he wasn't some little islander.
Though he, Saigo Homura, wasn't the Saigo Homura from the Little Garden world, he at least retained the bloodline of the flower-growing homeland.
The Saigo family in this world had considerable assets—at least far more than what that possible ancestor of his, Zhang Fei, had back in Zhuo Commandery, enough to help Liu Bei muster a volunteer army. Their hidden wealth wouldn't pale in comparison to the openly top-tier zaibatsu like the Shihomiya Family.
Talk about perfectly upholding family tradition—I've got quite the family fortune, huh!
But having money alone did nothing to change his current predicament.
Damn it—! Only today did he realize this was actually a world of the extraordinary!
Even as one of the top financial conglomerates in the human world, the Saigo family hadn't noticed a single anomaly before this.
Money without power was like a child clutching gold in a night market—it only made you feel less safe! Who knew what kind of worldviews had been fused into this place.
Throw in a stray low-level devil from something like High School DxD, or a Hollow from Bleach, and they'd toy with his life like it was nothing.
Suddenly—Saigo Homura's pupils contracted slightly. Perhaps the crisis had sharpened his senses to an extreme degree, boosting his memory as well. Not just his past life's memories, but even long-forgotten ones from his childhood in this life came flooding back.
He could even vividly recall embarrassing stuff like the age when he wet the bed—memories he had zero interest in dredging up. But amid the flood of trivial, useless junk, there were a few crucial pieces of information.
For instance—he'd gone to Odaiba Elementary School as a kid, and he even had a decent relationship with a few of the chosen children.
That's right—the world with the Digimon cosmology, home to the invincible Courage avatar Yagami Taichi and his seven sidekicks.
!?!!
Wait, no—hold on. In his memories, there was no Yagami Taichi, the absolute protagonist?
And from what he recalled, the global sensation of the Bloodsucking Demon Beast invasion and the subsequent Ultimate Bloodsucking Demon Beast extermination battle never happened. Not to mention the later Digital Crises like the Apocalymon and beyond.
No wonder Saigo Homura hadn't realized he was living in a dangerous world with the supernatural before recovering his past-life memories.
Without Yagami Taichi, how the hell were they supposed to get through the Digital World's crises?!
No Taichi meant no WarGreymon, naturally.
Forget the invincible WarGreymon—even in the simplest first season plot, the bosses to grind weren't just the Ultimate Bloodsucking Demon Beast; there were the Dark Four Heavenly Kings after that, and MetalGarurumon soloed two of them.
Without Yagami Taichi and MetalGarurumon, who was going to handle the Digital World and real-world crises that could drop out of nowhere?
Was it supposed to be that guy—the one who's a Crest of Friendship holder on paper but really just a scumbag? The ultimate backstabber who threw tantrums and split the team as a kid, hogged the spotlight with Steel Garurumon at key moments, and in the future, even stole his best friend Taichi's wife? That trashy Ahe?!
Boom~!!!!
The shopping mall's glass windows suddenly shattered in a gust of fierce wind, and the infant-like, sanity-draining horrific laughter from the streets grew even clearer.
The Digital World crises were instantly shoved to the back of his mind. Even if the world was doomed in the future, right now, surviving took priority.
He was just an ordinary guy caught in some paranormal phenomenon, desperately trying to save himself.
Even if this ordinary guy was filthy rich and had a handsome face that was in no way inferior to the Saigo brothers (Izayoi Sakamaki and Saigo Homura)—not ordinary at all.
Saigo Homura's hairs stood on end. Under the crushing pressure of this life-or-death crisis, his potential finally erupted. First, his fingers twitched slightly—Move! Come on, move!
Homura had a gut feeling that if he stayed put any longer without escaping, it'd be too late. He'd lose something irreplaceable!
Not his life, but something far more precious and terrifying to lose than life itself.