She couldnÆt ask Knightmon to surrender again without her ability to speak, butà
She had no intention of doing so, anyway.
The red mist expanded quickly from her hand, moving towards Knightmon at surprising speed. Knightmon, his movements still bound, could do nothing but take the attack-
WhichàdidnÆt hurt at all?
Instead, it seemed to dye the area it touched, the left side of his chest plate, red. This color quickly began to spread, growing to cover his entire armor like off-color verdigris.
But even when it had covered him completely and stained his body red, it didnÆt hurt. He was left looking like heÆd bathed in blood and it had started to dry, butàit didnÆt hurt.
Thenàwhat was the point of this technique.
LadyDevimonÆs smile simply widened and she lifted up on hand. She held up three fingers.
The first fell. In their turn, the second and third followed.
And Knightmonà
Started to scream.
Now it hurt.
And it hurt in a way he wasnÆt sure how to describe. It was like his body was tearing itself apart from the inside.
Like heÆd been infected by a virusà
Oh, no.
LadyDevimonÆs strange ælaughÆ bubbled up again. Knightmon, realizing his only real chance of survive was defeating her before this æPoisonÆ killed him, tried to attack. He fired his Electric Slash, but-
ôDarkness Wave!ö LadyDevimon countered.
She released countless bat-like creatures from her hand. As an attack, while the individual creatures were weak, there were just so many of them.
But as a defenseà
While the creatures were weak, they were still solid. In order to hit LadyDevimon, Knightmon would effectively have to fire through a cloud of thousands of fairly large creatures in the hopes of missing them all and hitting her; for an attack the moved in, more or less, a straight line, that was impossible. The other possibility was to have an attack strong enough to waste its energy on countless creatures and still make it through the storm and hurt LadyDevimon.
Knightmon couldnÆt do either.
The bats didnÆt attack, though; they simply shrouded their mistress from view. Why attack? After all, KnightmonÆs body was killing itself; there was no real need to put themselves in actual physical danger, right?
KnightmonÆs body shook at the pain, but he wasnÆt dead yet.
When he reconstructed his armor, he did it by returning their data to a pre-established template. If he reduced himself to data again and returned himself to the state heÆd been in prior to the infection of the virus, maybe he could buy himself so time. He couldnÆt completely cure himself without doing the same to his shield, meaning he couldnÆt protect his Digital Core, but if he could get even a few more minutes-
But it would leave his shield open for an attack.
Knightmon shook himself.
So what? At this rate, he and his shield were going to be deleted anyway; sure, it was risky, but no more so then doing nothing.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
That thought firmly in mind, he made a backup plan, just in case.
And then his body started to break apart.
As expected, LadyDevimon took this chance to tear through the cloud of bats, her arm already lengthening into a spear.