EDEN Free Area—Kowloon Lv. 4.
"Humans really are a bunch of lunatics."
After several cautious jumps, the teen hacker who'd been selling personal data finally arrived at one of the most dangerous zones in all of EDEN—Kowloon.
Just as the traditional internet had its dark web drifting outside normal networks, EDEN also had areas free from all oversight—Free Areas and Abandoned Areas.
They weren't like the public zones strictly monitored by Kamishiro Enterprises and the government, nor like the half-regulated "semi‑free areas" built by private groups.
The true Free Areas were genuinely perilous places, filled with dangerous hackers.
Most Digimon who slipped in from the Digital World hid here as well.
And among all Free Areas, Kowloon was the most dangerous of the dangerous—full of unknown Digimon lurking in the shadows and elite hackers bold enough to enter.
The teen hacker dared to travel alone only because he trusted his skills completely.
Kowloon might seem terrifying to others, but to him, nothing in the Free Area compared to that Eater.
Not to mention—while Kowloon was dangerous, plenty of powerful figures lurked within. Even if that Eater actually completed its evolution, someone here could definitely deal with it.
"…Hm?"
Just as he was about to move deeper into Kowloon, the teen hacker suddenly realized he was being tracked.
And not by just one person.
"That newbie?"
He quickly identified one of his pursuers—it was that "newbie hacker" from earlier, the one with Renamon.
It was obvious: that guy wanted to secretly probe his background. Either to ask for another deal, or to outright steal his database.
Nothing unusual in the hacker world. Most hackers were extremely self-centered and arrogant—used to getting things without paying for them.
As a "seller," he ran into this sort of thing constantly, and was long used to it.
Chen Ze's final trick had been subtle, sure, but it still fell within the scope of conventional hacking—tracking via data traffic and address signatures.
For someone like the teen hacker, who had his own trump cards, such methods were nowhere near enough to pinpoint him.
What truly startled—and even frightened—him was the other pursuer. Someone clearly not tracking him with simple "hacking techniques."
"A Digimon?"
The teen hacker was certain of it. Besides a Digimon, who else could lock onto his position so precisely, maintaining pursuit without fail?
"Found you at last, Account Hunter!"
With a harsh shout, a flood of data surged from the interface before him, reconstructing into a humanoid shape right in front of his eyes.
"I told you—wrong guy!"
Judging from his reaction, this wasn't the first time he'd clashed with this pursuer. His surprise was mixed with helplessness.
"I'm not the one who stole your account! What's the point of chasing me?!"
Before the words even finished, he bolted.
Now all he wanted was to escape before this guy fully finished reconstructing.
"You can't escape, Account Hunter!"
As the last trace of data light faded, a boy wearing a blue hoodie with a visor-shaped terminal on his chest appeared on Kowloon Lv. 4.
"Keisuke, we can't let him get away this time."
Erika's voice came sharply through his earpiece, and Keisuke nodded without hesitation.
"I'm counting on you and Wormmon to keep tracking him. Leave the rest to me."
Through a stream of remote data exchanges, Keisuke coordinated with Erika in the real world while sprinting in the direction the teen hacker had fled.
This—this—was how a proper hacker team operated in EDEN.
Solo hackers might look cool, but only tightly coordinated groups like Hudie could truly bring out their full strength.
...
Let's roll back the clock one minute—to the moment Chen Ze was still speaking with Renamon.
"Hm?"
He immediately realized that the trojan he'd quietly implanted had been detected and deleted by the teen hacker, and his face showed a flicker of surprise.
That the teen hacker could find and remove his trojan wasn't strange—anyone surviving in Snowden for so long had to be an old fox.
What truly puzzled Chen Ze was the data feedback he'd gathered moments ago. Something about the teen hacker was… off.
Normally, no matter how skilled a hacker was, their Digital Avatar still depended on an actual physical terminal to run.
In other words, no matter where a hacker appeared in EDEN, there had to be an IP behind them—a real-world physical address.
But the teen hacker was different. No matter how Chen Ze searched or decrypted his data, he never found a real IP.
Well—saying "no IP" wasn't exactly right. His trojan had decoded physical addresses.
But that was the problem: there wasn't just one.
It was like the kid was connecting to him through countless proxies at once. Based on the limited data he'd scraped, Chen Ze could already decode more than ten IPs.
That was obviously abnormal—so abnormal that Chen Ze couldn't help thinking of one possibility.
"A Digimon?"
Yes. The teen hacker's situation matched a Digimon perfectly—an entity whose true body existed within EDEN itself.
IP? Network Address? Physical location? None of that applied.
Digimon didn't exist in the real world—so how could they possibly have a real-world location?
"What's wrong?"
Sensing Chen Ze's distraction, Renamon spoke up.
"I might've found something interesting."
A faint smile tugged at his lips. He wasn't completely certain yet, but he was close.
"Tell me—do you think Digimon other than us might also disguise themselves as humans?"
Hearing the hint behind his words, the highly intelligent Renamon immediately connected the dots—the teen hacker who'd just left.
"That guy is a Digimon?"
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