Thunder's exterior had completely changed. It no longer looked like the sleek, sci-fi warship from before, but a titanic vertical apparatus composed of several enormous, glowing energy pylons. The hull rotated from horizontal to upright; the superstructure on the deck elongated and split into four colossal towers, and three more vast towers extended from both bow and stern. The entire "Thunder" had transformed into a structure thousands of meters tall, sheathed head to toe in unyielding Chrome Digizoid. Cold steel and overwhelming mass delivered one thing to anyone who looked upon it: shock—pure, unmatched shock.
Tai stood atop one of the high towers nearest to the golden mass formed by the Four Sovereigns, watching that coalescing light with unblinking focus.
At last, the gold radiance stretched and lengthened, then drew inward to reveal a condensed, solid shape within—a ferocious golden dragon head emerged, bearing eight red eyes and a mouth of fangs, with four conical horns crowning it.
This was the Divine Beast Digimon that once dwelled at the center of the Digital World—Fanglongmon—keeper of balance between good and evil. Its body was composed of the hypothetical ore famed for absolute hardness, "Huanglong Ore," upon which only Huanglong Ore can inflict injury; no other mineral even compares, and its hardness cannot truly be measured. The flip side of this ultra-density is extreme weight, ill-suited to weapons or armor.
The ore is vanishingly rare, found only in the deepest earth, and integrating Huanglong Ore with a living being demands an age as long as myth itself. To date, the only Digimon known to be fully one with this ore is Fanglongmon.
Chrome Digizoid evolved to cancel those drawbacks, an excellent, scarce metal—but Fanglongmon alone is clad in Huanglong Ore. As the imperial Digimon seated at the world's center, it rules the Four Sovereigns that guard north, south, east, and west. Long ago, an angelic Digimon sealed it in lightless depths; stripped of their ruler, the Four Sovereigns turned to strife, and only now has equilibrium been maintained.
Fanglongmon is both good and evil, the "Taiji" of light and shadow. Its immense body is armored in scales of absolute hardness; harming it should be impossible. Its signature techniques: Taiji, which eternally reduces all things in the Digital World to the twin poles of light and dark until they vanish, and Huang Hui, a cataclysmic sandstorm-typhoon on a natural-disaster scale.
Fanglongmon lifted its massive head toward Tai, who floated upon one of Thunder's towers, and roared, "Oooh!" From its open maw, a spinning black-and-white beam, like a yin-yang fish, blasted straight for him.
Tai watched the onrushing column shear the air, the shock buffeting the black cloak at his back—yet he did not dodge. Instead, his right hand swept the Sacred Sword: Genesis Edge from right to up-left in a hard arc, unleashing a gigantic, golden sword-wave—Dimensional Flashcut.
Where the Dimensional Flashcut passed, space itself cracked open in fine seams. It met Fanglongmon's Taiji head-on—and, like a stone striking water, Tai's cut erased the Taiji beam and drove on toward the dragon.
Fanglongmon's eight eyes flared crimson. Twelve external DigiCores blazed and fired streams of data into the oncoming slash. The Flashcut's advance slowed markedly, though it still pressed forward. Fanglongmon roared again and poured in still more power until, at last, the blade of light ground to a halt.
Then its jaws yawned; a surge of energy slammed into the suspended slash. With the DigiCores' support, Fanglongmon managed—barely—to neutralize it.
Watching from the tower, Tai let out a cold snort. "So that's all. You're just a composite Fanglongmon, not the true one—and you haven't even mastered its power. Seems I expected too much. Let's end this."
He sprang, streaking straight for Fanglongmon. The dragon, still catching its breath after stalling the Flashcut, looked up to find Tai already upon it. With a wrathful bellow, a howling gale coiled round its body; sand and dust lifted in sheets as the storm swelled ever wider. This was Fanglongmon's other technique—Huang Hui—an overwhelming sandstorm-typhoon that buries foes in endless flowing dunes.
A colossal tornado of grit smothered sky and earth alike. Trees ripped free at the roots; rivers dammed under dunes; even the soil tore loose, feeding the hungry spiral.
The wind flayed Tai's cloak, setting it snapping wildly, yet he did not slow. The Genesis Edge drew back into a tight golden radiance wrapped around his right hand; his left gathered a second golden sphere. His palms met, and the fused light swelled into a broad golden wall—Divine Aegis, a total, all-directional defense. It expanded into a hemispheric shield that sealed Fanglongmon's Huang Hui within, a golden dome locking it in.
Within, Fanglongmon raged, its golden bulk corkscrewing through the storm, flashing in and out of the rolling dust. With each sweep of the dragon's body, the sand-typhoon turned more violent and battered the Divine Aegis all the harder.
Blow after blow made the golden shield dim and wobble. Tai murmured, "Worthy of Fanglongmon—even as a fusion, your force isn't to be taken lightly. But I'm not exactly soft, either." He pressed his right hand to the inside of the Aegis and poured power in. The tottering barrier steadied at once. WarGreymon and Chaos Megidramon likewise raised their chests and streamed energy into the dome, hardening it further.
Fanglongmon would not relent, hurling itself again and again into the barrier. Each impact rattled the Divine Aegis and boomed like a drum—bam, bam—
Tai's lip curled. "Death throes." His right hand snapped outward, a golden ray lancing into the air. Where it struck, the void itself crazed like shattered glass; from the cracks, brilliant gilded light welled.
He reached into that rupture and drew out a gigantic sword—the Digital World's ultimate weapon: the Ultimate Warblade King-Dragon Sword.
Fanglongmon ceased ramming the instant the blade appeared. A chill of mortal peril ran through it. It looked up just in time to see Tai free the King-Dragon Sword from the void.
A despairing roar tore from the dragon. It knew that weapon was beyond anything it could withstand; even scales of "absolute hardness" would not save it from this edge.
Fanglongmon loosed everything in a final, fatal gambit. A storm even fiercer than before raged through the dome; the cyclone plucked meters of earth into the air, leaving jagged pits where ground had been.
Tai, King-Dragon Sword in hand, simply watched Fanglongmon's struggle.
At last the dragon gathered the last of its energy and hurled the storm forward, slamming it against the Divine Aegis.
The detonation rang across the Digital World, a single, world-shaking blast. Dust avalanched over the land; a screaming gale scoured all. Yet through the gray sky, a single golden flash cut—and Fanglongmon's roar cut off mid-cry.
Thunder rocked on its axis under the shockwave, swaying as the storm tore past. When the dust reached Tai, it split of its own accord a meter before him, streaming neatly around his back before rejoining and racing away.
He traced a sigil with both hands, lines dense with law; golden energy flowed along them and gathered into a spinning vortex. With a sweeping gesture, Tai flung his arms wide; the whirlpool bulged and began to churn in empty air.
As it spun, the boundless sand and wind poured into it. The sky cleared from ashen to bright; the sun, hidden behind the murk, slowly returned.
In the field below, Fanglongmon's enormous body lay slumped amid devastation, its chest rising in shallow waves. From its back, a comparatively "small" blade jutted—the Ultimate Warblade King-Dragon Sword.
Silver energy ran from the sword into Fanglongmon's body, sketching a hexagram across it. Then the sword's glow turned from silver to gold; the hexagram followed suit. Golden light spread over Fanglongmon's form, countless filaments coursing back and forth along its length.
With each circuit, Fanglongmon grew more translucent until its body dissolved into a vast globe of golden light. The King-Dragon Sword fired four beams—azure, crimson, yellow, and blue—into four of Thunder's towering pylons, which received them in full. As the sword kept channeling power to Thunder, the once-huge golden sphere dwindled smaller and smaller.
Meanwhile, the other six towers on Thunder began to bud six white spheres of their own, each swelling as they drank in light.
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