Digimon: I really didn't want to be the Digimon Emperor!

Cheng Yuan stared at the trembling black ball beast and the dog-cat beast in the cage, and felt as if something had gripped his chest tightly.

The cubs' fur was covered in mud and dried blood, their round eyes were filled with terror, and their tiny claws clung tightly to the cage bars, making faint "squeak" sounds.

"We have to save them," Wenrou said softly, her eyes slightly red.

"Save them? How?" The bespectacled boy adjusted his glasses, his tone cold. "Our mission is to collect data, not to be saints. Besides, what would we do with them if we took them back? Are you going to raise them?"

"But..." Wenrou wanted to argue, but Chengyuan raised his hand to interrupt her.

"Don't make a sound." Cheng Yuan squatted down and carefully observed the structure of the cage.

The cage was made of rough wooden sticks and vines, and although it was simple, it was indestructible for a young Digimon. He tried to push the cage door and found that it was firmly held in place by some kind of tough plant fiber.

"Can the little dog bite it off?" Cheng Yuan asked in a low voice.

The little dog approached the cage door and tried to tear at the vines with its teeth, but the vines didn't budge. "Woof! These vines have been specially treated; they're incredibly tough!"

Cheng Yuan squatted down, his fingertips tracing the surface of the vines—tiny metal particles were embedded in the rough fibers, gleaming coldly in the sunlight.

"Try Shadowball."

The dark energy on the puppy's chest rapidly condensed, and a purplish-black energy ball shot out.

The moment the vines made contact with the Shadow Orb, they emitted a teeth-grinding sizzling sound, and pungent white smoke rose up. The originally tough vines decayed and softened at a visible speed, finally snapping with a "crack".

"It's a success!" Wenrou was about to cheer when a faint groan came from behind her.

Cheng Yuan turned around abruptly and saw the stubborn monkey on the pangolin's back struggling to raise its head. Half of its face was sunken and deformed, and broken ribs pierced its fur, yet it still stared intently at the cage with its only intact eye.

It opened its mouth as if trying to speak, but its voice was so weak that no one could hear it. At this moment, the pangolin carrying it mumbled a translation: "It said... please save the child..."

Those cloudy eyes churned with too many emotions: despair, pleading, and a sliver of hope on the verge of being extinguished.

The little dog also looked at Cheng Yuan with innocent eyes.

Cheng Yuan took a deep breath and turned to his classmates, saying, "The cubs in the cage are defenseless, so rescuing them won't affect our mission. Besides, if we don't take care of them, they'll become food for the savage beasts sooner or later."

"But we have no obligation—"

"Don't forget," Cheng Yuan interrupted, "we're beast tamers, not hunters. Can you bear to watch these little guys get eaten by savage beasts?"

A moment of silence fell over the group, broken only by the heavy breathing of the pangolins echoing through the forest. Wenrou was the first to step forward, gently taking the black ball-shaped beast from her: "I'm joining."

Her gear-like creature obediently extended its mechanical arm and carefully lifted up the other cub.

"Count me in." Short-haired girl Li Yue kicked away the wild beast's wooden stick at her feet. Her Baloo had already begun weaving a vehicle from its vine cubs so that the pangolins could carry them.

Zhang Ming, who wore glasses, adjusted his frames, his gaze behind the lenses flickering uncertainly. Finally, he sighed, "...Whatever." But Cheng Yuan noticed that he quietly adjusted his backpack, making more comfortable space for the dog-cat beast in his arms.

Cheng Yuan crouched down in front of the stubborn monkey beast, its shattered chest heaving violently. "Hold on, we'll take them home soon." He asked softly, "Do you remember the direction of the nest?"

The monkey's pupils were already dilated, but it still struggled to raise its front paws, trying to point somewhere. In the end, its arms fell limply, and it fell into a coma again.

"Alright, let's go back to the outpost first! Let's collect the spoils and get moving!" Cheng Yuan quickly assigned tasks. "Li Yue, keep watch, Wen Rou, take care of the cubs, and Zhang Ming, use the Digivice to plan the shortest route." He glanced at the setting sun, the shadows in the forest growing longer.

"We must reach the outpost before nightfall."

Cheng Yuan once again directed everyone to collect the spoils of war.

Meanwhile, at the edge of the jungle, Wang Lin's flying insect beast swooped down from the sky, its compound eyes flashing with anxious data streams.

"Still no signal." She stroked the cold screen of the Dinosaur, where all the location signals were displayed as glaring red crosses.

"Should we notify Captain Xu?" The PE teacher, Cao Jin, asked anxiously, his long ears twitching.

Wang Lin gazed at the tranquil jungle, biting her lower lip. "You contact the leader, I'll go in and find it. Flying Insect Beast, let's go!"

The main reason was that he didn't want to be scolded by Captain Xu... Although Captain Xu was young, he was not polite to the older guys like him at all.

Cao Jin: "Well... alright then!"

The picnic team returned, but the journey back was far less easy than the start.

There were more than ten baby Digimon, one in each person's hand, and Pangolin was carrying nearly ten on its back.

Cheng Yuan distributed the growth data packages to the Digimon babies, completely forgetting Xu Xin's instruction not to feed the Digimon.

"Hey class representative," Zhang Ming said, pushing up his glasses, with four round, black Digimon perched on his back, "don't we look like habitual Digimon traffickers?"

No sooner had he finished speaking than a black ball beast let out a "poof" fart, making his candle beast roll its eyes back from the stench.

"Save your energy, let's go!" Cheng Yuan glanced at the sky; the setting sun had already dyed half the sky red.

The little dog suddenly perked up its ears: "Woof! Something's following us!"

Before the words were finished, two burning fireballs "whooshed" over everyone's heads.

"Wild Beast Hunting Team!" Li Yue's Balomon immediately unfurled its vine form, transforming into a long whip ready to strike at any moment.

"You guys go first!" Cheng Yuan handed the cubs in his arms to Wen Rou. "Puppy Beast, Candle Beast, Gear Beast, stay with me and cover our retreat!"

The first two savage beasts quickly fell to the Holy Light Orb.

But the second wave of four green-skinned dwarves were exceptionally cunning. They hid behind trees, throwing fireballs while making strange "caw caw" noises.

"Watch this!" The Candle Beast puffed out its cheeks and spewed out a wall of blazing fire.

Unexpectedly, the fire spread along the withered vines and quickly ignited the entire shrubbery.

"Setting fire to the mountain is a death sentence!" Cheng Yuan gave Li Ming a thumbs up.

Thick smoke rose into the jungle like beacon fires, quickly attracting more wild men and beasts.

A rustling sound came from the bushes, and pairs of scarlet eyes gleamed in the darkness.

At first, there were only a few wild beasts spying from a distance, but soon their numbers increased to more than a dozen, and eventually they formed a three-sided encirclement.

"I knew bringing these burdens along would lead to nothing but trouble!" Zhang Ming adjusted his crooked glasses; his candle beast was so exhausted that even its flame had turned blue. "Now look what's happened, we're all going to become the savage beast's dinner!"

"Bullshit!" Li Yue's Palmon used its vines to fling away the charging Wild Beast. "If you hadn't insisted on taking those Digicores, we would have been long gone!"

Wenrou hugged the black ball beast tightly in her arms: "But...they're so small..."

"Small?" Zhang Ming kicked away the savage beast that was trying to ambush him. "When they grow up, you'll be the first one they eat!"

Cheng Yuan wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at the green-skinned figures that were gradually approaching.

Although the puppy beast had already eliminated several wild beasts, the continuous use of Holy Light Bullets left it panting heavily, and the Holy Ring around its neck had dimmed somewhat.

Worse still, they also had to be distracted by protecting the helpless cubs and a few weak human teammates.

"If only I could become a Digimon like in Digimon Adventure 4..." Cheng Yuan thought to himself, so he could fight alongside Puppymon.

"Where are Wang Lin, the beast tamer, and the flying insect beast? We're already fighting like this..." a classmate muttered.

"It's not that easy. I think they're testing whether we're cut out to be professional animal trainers. If we perform well, they might recruit us into their team, so they won't show up unless we're beaten half to death."

Meanwhile, flying insects on the edge of the distant jungle were already scouting deeper into the jungle, searching for the children's whereabouts.

At this moment, the flying insect beast's compound eye, with its keen vision, spotted the thick smoke in the distance. It connected with Wang Lin's arc light machine and informed her of its discovery deep in the jungle.