"So, this thing really is a data-based lifeform."
Chen Ze wasn't surprised by the Eater's transformation; he'd long suspected this creature was similar to Digimon, some form of data life that drifted into EDEN from the Digital World.
The only thing that puzzled him slightly was the orange glow, which closely resembled the Crest of Purity and Crest of Courage he'd encountered earlier—both variants of the so-called "Digivolution" phenomenon.
"As long as it's a data lifeform, then things just got easier."
Facing the humanoid Eater, Chen Ze felt none of his previous tension.
"Renamon!"
Upon hearing Chen Ze's call, Renamon, with her long-established rapport, decisively intensified her assault—as if her previous insistence that "the Eater must not become humanoid" had never existed.
Because during their brief confrontation, Renamon discovered something crucial: after assuming its humanoid form, the Eater's strength hadn't increased. Instead, it had weakened slightly.
This was abnormal. Usually, "evolution" implied growing stronger, not weaker.
Such an unusual situation reminded Renamon of Digimon like Numemon, Sukamon, and Bakemon—Champion-level forms that were inferior in many ways to Rookie-level Digimon. A so-called "junk evolution."
In other words, Chen Ze seemed to have recognized the Eater's nature and weakened it through some means.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Meanwhile, the Eater—lacking any self-awareness—didn't realize the "debuff" it had suffered and continued fiercely clashing with Renamon.
This was both the Eater's strength and its weakness.
As a mere "tool" created with a single purpose, the Eater required minimal reasoning abilities. Its original design prioritized corrosion and assimilation using its existing structure and strength.
Attacking and evolving were merely additional features—meaningless to the Eater itself.
Precisely due to this characteristic, the Eater couldn't selectively discern beneficial data for its evolution, lacking the sophisticated filtering mechanisms real Digimon possessed.
Just like the chaotic data flood Chen Ze had sent earlier—regardless of the junk data it contained, the Eater swallowed it all without question.
Doing so shortened its transformation time but prevented it from gaining meaningful benefits from that junk data.
For data lifeforms, mere data volume didn't equal increased power.
Even with an "evolutionary" code aiding it, these barely logical data chunks couldn't significantly boost the Eater's combat power.
Right now, stripped of its special assimilation abilities, the Eater's true fighting strength amounted merely to the combined capabilities of Meramon and a handful of human Digital Avatars.
For Renamon, who'd previously overcome Champion-level opponents, such power was tricky but hardly threatening.
In fact, once she grasped Chen Ze's intent, Renamon realized the battle's outcome was already determined.
All she needed to do now was ensure her own safety while restraining and weakening the Eater's destructive capabilities.
Renamon neither approved nor rejected Chen Ze's "good Samaritan" approach. But as long as her safety wasn't compromised, she didn't mind cooperating with his current plan.
Frankly, considering Renamon's usual personality, she would've chosen to retreat immediately upon recognizing the Eater's danger.
Her continued involvement was purely for Chen Ze's sake.
"As expected, here's its core code."
While Renamon steadily weakened and limited the Eater's movements, Chen Ze—having identified its weakness—wasn't idle either.
If his previous relentless data attacks had been merely to confirm his hypothesis, the humanoid transformation of the Eater now gave Chen Ze absolute confidence in his victory.
Now, all he had left to do was maximize his gains from this battle.
"Is this the 'program' controlling the Eater?"
Chen Ze glanced briefly at the partial data downloaded from the hacker leader earlier, then shook his head in disappointment.
"What a crude control program."
With a program this simplistic, even if the hacker were still here, there was no way he could control the current Eater.
Thus, after a brief consideration, Chen Ze decisively abandoned using the boss's crude program, switching instead to decoding the Eater's original source code.
It was an incomprehensibly complex code that ordinary humans could never decode or comprehend—seemingly capable of turning any chaotic data into orderly, logical, and useful information.
In theory, even the most genius hacker couldn't rewrite this code. The best they could do—like that hacker leader—was to construct a simplistic "shell" program to constrain and guide its behavior.
Unfortunately, in Chen Ze's opinion, this approach inevitably resulted in the Eater eventually assimilating the shell and descending into an uncontrollable frenzy.
Of course, Chen Ze wouldn't adopt such a superficial solution—because he had something much better planned.
"I never imagined the 'Purity Code' I accidentally obtained from Mimi could be used not only for Digivolving Fresh Digimon but also in a scenario like this."
With a quiet sigh of amazement, Chen Ze extracted a portion of the Crest of Purity code from his DigiCore, inserting it directly into the Eater's core programming.
Indeed, Chen Ze had no intention of destroying the Eater. Rather, he planned to hack its core using his own techniques, turning it permanently into one of his personal "external devices."
Given the Eater's displayed abilities, if this plan succeeded, its usefulness would extend far beyond merely acting as an extra "hard drive."
Especially since the code comprising the Eater itself seemed capable of infinite evolution—like Digimon. Its value would thus far exceed any simple description like "external device."
Chen Ze believed that if he truly decoded this source code and integrated it with the Purity Code he'd accidentally acquired, evolving his Agumon form to Champion-level should become quite straightforward.
The only precaution he needed was to avoid giving his Digital Core another bizarre evolutionary tendency, similar to what happened after absorbing the Purity Code.
Considering the Eater's displayed traits, Chen Ze thought this outcome was unlikely.
Rather than worrying about strange evolutionary tendencies, Chen Ze was more concerned that absorbing a code notorious for unfiltered assimilation might cause his avatar to evolve into something useless like Numemon or Sukamon.
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