Frontiers Unexplored

9) Wild Heart

Bokomon cleared his throat once he was sure that he had everyone's attention. He immediately launched into a lecture-like ramble that reminded Takuya of his teachers back on Earth. Still, he shoved that thought aside to concentrate on the words that were coming out of Bokomon's mouth. After all, if he was going to talk for as long as Takuya suspected, it was bound to be important.

"Cybelemon is known as a Beast Spirit," Bokomon explained. "I believe I mentioned this before, but Legendary Warriors were always able to walk the fine line between Human and Beast Digimon. It was simply in their nature. That fact appears to be truer than ever in this moment. Aeoelmon is the Human Spirit while Cybelemon is the Beast Spirit."

"You really mean that there are two Spirits for each element," Tomoki whispered with wide eyes. "All this time, we've been acting under the assumption that there was just one for each element, so... I bet we're going to need to turn our attention to the Beast Spirits after we're finished here."

Bokomon nodded. "That would be a good idea, yes. In fact, I doubt we would be able to defeat Cherubimon as we are right now. You couldn't even defeat Cybelemon, a single Beast Spirit, while using five Human Spirits. That seems to show clear as day that we have a lot of room to grow," he pointed out.

Izumi let out a sigh. "As much as I hate to say it, you're right. We're not ready to take on Cherubimon. This is going to take a lot longer than we could have ever anticipated, and as unfortunate as it is, it's simply something we're going to have to live with..." she murmured.

"What else is written in there about Beast Spirits?" Koji asked, his voice solemn. "There has to be more than just a mention about what they are."

"The Beast Spirits are said to be harder to control than Human Spirits. You see, Human Digimon are meant to be wiser than Beasts, so they have less raw strength in favor of strategy and intelligence. Beast Spirits are the other way around. In other words, they have the same amount of power, simply distributed in different areas," Bokomon told him. "But the issues with controlling Beast Spirits... I imagine that will be a problem for us further down the line."

"How hard could it be to control a Beast Spirit?" Takuya asked optimistically with a shrug of his shoulders. "We haven't had any issues with controlling our Spirits so far, so why would we start having trouble now?"

"Think back to the way Cybelemon fought. It was as if they had no way of controlling their limbs. They were acting wildly, not focusing on what was happening to themselves. If you ask me, the power came to be too much for them, and that factored into our defeat," Junpei pointed out. "Cybelemon was too unpredictable for us to come up with a solid strategy, and it wound up being our downfall at the end of the day."

"But you have to remember how strong Cybelemon was too," Neemon piped in airily. Takuya was surprised to hear him speak, having suspected that he was secretly asleep behind those closed eyes of his.

"Yeah... Cybelemon is not going to be a walk in the park to defeat even after we find our Beast Spirits. Wrangling them to be under our control is one issue, but fighting against Cybelemon is something else entirely," Izumi agreed with a heavy sigh. "Then there was the issue of the Legendary Warrior we just fought against..."

"Fioremon," Koji told her with a frown. "She's the Legendary Warrior of Wood." He didn't go any further than that, but it was clear to see that his mind was swirling with a thousand and one different questions relating to their previous combatant.

"She didn't ever shift over into Beast Spirit form," Tomoki commented. "I wonder if she even has one at this point... I mean, we were sort of giving her a run for her money. She was clearly weaker than Aeoelmon, but maybe that's because Aeoelmon had an elemental advantage thanks to being on the side of a mountain."