Mystogan slowly raised his head.
Beneath the shadow of his dark hood, his gaze remained as tranquil.
He slammed his hands into the ground before him.
The four remaining staves, along with the broken remains of the fifth scattered on the ground, were pulled up by an invisible force.
They broke through the earth and levitated around him in five positions.
The residual magic in the staves was forcibly stimulated, emitting a hum that bordered on its limit as unstable streams of multicolored light burst from the cracks.
Mystogan chanted lowly, his hands forming an incomprehensible seal.
"Skyscraper."
Omm—
It wasn't a loud bang, but a resonance that reached deep into the soul.
The magic did not dissipate; instead, it rapidly expanded, stretched, and intertwined, constructing a bizarre and motley scene in WereGarurumon's eyes.
It was an illusory domain woven entirely from illusion magic—a distortion of reality.
The "Skyscraper" illusion spread swiftly.
Light refracted and twisted within the domain, colors becoming thick and artificial, completely blurring the line between reality and hallucination.
Within it, one's sense of direction, distance, and time would be severely disrupted.
The information received by the five senses would contradict itself, ultimately leading to mental confusion and a collapse of will.
In the original story, even a much stronger Laxus would later be heavily injured by this very move.
"More illusions... and stronger than before." Ace gritted his teeth, trying to stabilize his Digimon through their mental link, but the connection flickered unsteadily under the interference.
Mystogan's figure flickered in and out of view among the distorted mirages of buildings, his voice coming from all directions.
"Within my 'Skyscraper,' your struggles will only make the dream more real."
However, just as the illusion's power was about to peak and completely engulf them—
"Awooo!"
A clear, piercing wolf's howl, like a blade of ice cutting through fog, rang out from the center of the illusion.
It was WereGarurumon: Sagittarius Mode.
WereGarurumon violently shook its wings.
With a sonic boom, its speed erupted in an instant, carving a sharp, azure trajectory through the distorted phantoms of the skyscraper.
The immense thrust from the "Sagittarius" wing pack granted it unparalleled agility in this space where reality and illusion were indistinguishable.
It was no longer a brute-force charge reliant on the ground; like a falcon soaring through the sky, it darted left and right, up and down, its path unpredictable.
Hidden deep within the illusion, Mystogan tried to lock onto the high-speed target, but the Sagittarius Mode's speed and directional changes far exceeded his expectations.
Several times, he gathered his magic to unleash invisible psychic shocks or unseen magical restraints, only for the target to dodge them by a hair's breadth at the last second.
"You dodged? Then try this."
A blue light flashed in WereGarurumon's eyes.
A few movable light plates on the front of its wing pack adjusted their angles slightly, locking onto an area below where the magical fluctuations were abnormally concentrated.
Swish, swish, swish!
Several high-energy lasers shot out from the wingtips like precision scalpels, cutting through the phantoms in their path and stabbing straight toward the target.
However, as the lasers entered that area, they vanished like a stone dropped into the sea, causing only a ripple before disappearing.
Mystogan's figure reappeared in another location.
'Illusory displacement... his real body is hidden even deeper.'
Sagittarius WereGarurumon was not discouraged; instead, it grew calmer.
While maintaining its high-speed maneuvers to evade potential risks, it continuously scanned the entire illusion with its various sensors, searching for the subtle dissonance that belonged to the caster.
Although Sagittarius Mode had greatly increased mobility and possessed ranged attacks, it lacked a decisive, powerful finishing move or a wide-area clearing ability against an opponent who could perfectly conceal himself within an illusion.
Moreover, the continuous high-speed flight and energy emissions were a significant drain on its stamina.
WereGarurumon quickly realized the problem.
After a high-speed spin, it suddenly hovered, its wings retracting inward sharply.
With a few soft clicks, the longest and sharpest pair of main wing blades detached from the main body. Under its mental control, they spun into its claws as if alive.
From wing blades used for flight and ranged attacks, it had drawn two long, thin, double-handed slashing blades whose edges flowed with the light of condensed energy.
The blades were slightly curved, aerodynamically designed for better slashing and thrusting.
Sagittarius WereGarurumon gripped the laser blades tightly, the thrust from the wing pack on its back undiminished.
Its form once again became an azure meteor, but this time, it was no longer a probing feint but a direct, straight-line thrust.
It crossed the twin blades before its chest, the tips aimed directly at a point in the illusion where spatial stability was slightly abnormal—a point it had calculated through data comparison.
It was the intersection of multiple illusory displacements, very likely the core of the caster's frequent activity.
Mystogan's true body was hidden in the deep illusion near that point of spatial abnormality.
Seeing his opponent decisively sacrifice some flight capability to charge straight for his likely location with blades in hand, his eyes narrowed.
The energy condensed on those laser blades gave him a tangible sense of threat.
Without hesitation, his figure blurred again, preparing for another illusory displacement.
However, just as he was about to shift—
'Found you!'
Sagittarius WereGarurumon's roar exploded on the mental plane.
It completely ignored the illusory displacement trajectories.
Its twin blades abruptly changed direction, stabbing viciously toward a spot to the side that appeared empty, but which its energy vision detected as having an extremely faint but stable source of magic.
Data-driven intuition combined with high-speed calculations had allowed it to predict the opponent's most probable hiding spot.
'What?!' Alarms blared in Mystogan's mind as his displacement was interrupted.
In his haste, he could only swing his staff to fire several powerful beams of magic in front of him while desperately leaning back.
Psh! Psh!
The sound of the laser blades tearing through the light was like ripping silk.
The blades' tips broke through the layers of defense with unstoppable momentum and stabbed viciously into Mystogan's shoulders.
They weren't fatal wounds, but the energy contained within them instantly erupted, invading his body and disrupting the flow of his magic.
"Urgh..." Mystogan finally let out a grunt of pain, his figure stumbling out of the illusion.
Blood streamed from his shoulders, and his aura plummeted.
The Skyscraper illusion fluctuated violently as its caster was injured, its light and shadows wavering on the verge of collapse.
In the distance, Ace, who had been barely resisting the illusion, felt his heart settle at the sight.
At the same time, he couldn't help but muse, "The combat aesthetics of Sagittarius Mode are indeed a lot better than the original Adventure 01 WereGarurumon form."
Ace glanced at GrapLeomon beside him and noticed that as this steady partner watched the majestic Sagittarius WereGarurumon wielding light blades in the air, an extremely subtle, indescribable emotion seemed to flash across its golden eyes.
'Was that... envy?' Ace was stunned for a moment.
He then recalled the tragic "death flags" associated with Leomon throughout the Digimon series, which even spawned the "Bento-mon" meme.
But in this world, not only was Leomon alive and well, but he might also have greater potential in the future...
Thinking about it that way, his "treatment" was indeed more than just a little better.