YMMV / The Worm Protocol

• Broken Base:
  • As a side effect of the HSQ mentioned below Noelle's power, and specifically her power's limits, lead to one that depends on how you look at the situation. Specifically how her power's biggest weakness is that she can't copy inorganic materials because they can't be digested for her passenger to understand and recreate her chosen captive. On the one hand Jesmon's blade, which as it is Chrome Digizoid could be considered just as inorganic as Weld was, being able to be used as a valid sample at all could seem to break that rule. On the other hand it's still constructed by a weird matter as Data existing in the Physical world behaves oddly as Digimon Tamers showed, and as the blade was broken down back into general data (like removed digimon parts are prone to doing) so being used a valid sample of Jesmon's code, a digimon's DNA equivalent, for an explicitly one time use doesn't sound that unreasonable either.
  • Viva La Vida caused one as Endbringers can feel the respective sins enough to act as hosts for Demon Lords despite earlier author notes even lampshading how they are essentially each a Living Weapon, and specifically Leviathan is used as one for Leviamon (meaning he was feeling envy at the moment more than anything else during the fight and more envy than any of the capes watching this like Eidolon or Armsmaster felt) shortly after Jesmon seemingly kills himself to convert his organic material into data. It and the chapter to follow it also raised the concerns about the series following the footsteps of Worm too much and risking Too Bleak, Stopped Caring by going too Grimdark too quickly. While the Knights are still lacking the "clean" victories which leave the Grimdark as a concern the first point even comes up in the story itself as Yggdrasil, the current Gatekeeper of the Seven Deadly Sins, is also of the opinion that the Endbringers don't have conventional feelings after bearing witness to one being used as a host and heard Leviamon's statement that it was full enough of his Sin to be a "worthy vessel" when there were still so many better (human) options for him to have used to make his escape.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite being one of the least referenced Royal Knights in the Digimon Franchise, to the point of being the only one being rendered a mindless Kaiju in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth where every other member and Imperialdramon Paladin Mode got at least a few lines to convey some personality, Examon is often singled out in the forums, likely for this being a situation where he can be allowed to shine. This popularity also seems referenced in universe with the amount of attention people pay specifically to the newcomer's "Nuke Dragon".
• Scrappy Mechanic: Yggdrasil's Interface Screw text can be one of these. It's very easy to forget it's a feature of the work, knowing when or where it appears can be difficult, and depending on what you're reading it on highlighting so you can read it can be very difficult. Forum posters can help in these regards, but it can still seem like an unnecessary step since it doesn't make you any more of an "active" reader as much as it makes you do busy work to read everything that's there. And if you thought that was bad the text format used for Dagomon and the Deep Ones is even worse as it is illegible and lacks an easy trick to fix this issue. However as the forums had made their distaste for both clear Yggdrasil's text is now merely left as red text like it appears when someone quote/replies with "Horaed" invisitext on the SB/SV forums and for Dagomon and his Deep Ones quickly left a plain text version of the chapter with plans to find a better alternative to convey the same intent.
• Shocking Moments:
  • 10.3, which starts with Bakuda's bombs taking such a chunk out of Jesmon that he compares it to damage taken from the Dex incident and ends with a tainted approximation of Jesmon born from Noelle's powers announcing to all the capes in earshot how the Knights are planning to kill Scion before further crippling Yggdrasil's Salvation.
  • And then we have 11.3, which follows UlForce's point of view in the Royal Knight's battle against Leviathan. And he isn't holding back. Leviathan unleashes monomolecularly thick blades of water at the Knights, takes his speed up to match UlForce, and is able to maneuver midair by changing direction using a single raindrop! ^note  This is an instance of In-universe physical "rule" breaking ability because using a single raindrop to utterly change your momentum doesn't have anything to do with speed. It does have to do with ignoring Inertia, a fundamental law of physics and something that doesn't seem related in any way to Leviathan's hyrdrokinetic powers which had been previously established. As the world is Like Reality Unless Otherwise Noted we're able to think about how this should have played out in our world. What should be happening when Leviathan tries that, and either damages himself because he's using hydrokenesis to keep the raindrop in a single location, at which point it is effectively a bullet trying to penetrate his skin. And at the speeds depicted, that would have been damaging, even to an Endbringer's skin. The other option would have been that the raindrop was either shattered and splashed over Leviathan's hide, doing all of nothing to change his momentum, as is the case if one of us tried to jump off of a raindrop. Oh and he cut off Omnimon's hand before the latter could use All Delete on him and used UlForce as a battering ram to get past Brockton's defenses.But it has to be said, the Knights are giving as good as their getting.

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