Chapter 480: Ghost Assassin

Passing through the arched doorway of the Sky Pillar.

Just as Miss Xijiana had said, a layer of rippling water suddenly appeared, indicating that the invisible seal did not impede his forward progress.

After the scroll imbued with the "Ancestors' Blessing," yet another thing proved the Star People bloodline upon him.

Fate plays cruel tricks.

Who could have imagined that the wooden tag originally used for show to absorb new Pokémon would ultimately evolve to its current state, affecting his very life.

All Baimu could feel Miss Xijiana's gentle gaze from behind, and suddenly thought that if he couldn't get in and was blocked outside by the seal, the scene would probably be quite something.

"Shaao!"

At Hydreigon's cry, his vision abruptly went black, leaving only mottled rays of light filtering through the cracks in the walls to faintly illuminate the path ahead.

He had seen a similar scene once before in the Phantom Tower, but the visibility inside the Sky Pillar was clearly lower—

Because, comparatively speaking, it wasn't as broken down.

However, just as Baimu was about to complain about how Ash and his friends could see their surroundings effortlessly when they barged into ancient ruins, the walls suddenly emitted a faint glow, as if nightglow stones had been mixed into them.

Combined with the eyes' natural adaptation to light, the Sky Pillar provided him with enough visibility to make out most things within twenty meters of himself.

All Baimu held a flashlight: "……"

How naive.

As expected, the creativity of the ancient Star People was not something he could second-guess.

He thought for a moment and temporarily gave up on turning on the flashlight. The situation inside the Sky Pillar was unknown; being able to see was enough, so why create a large light source to attract whatever might be lurking.

There might very well be some special guardians here, like in the Phantom Tower.

Speaking of which, his curiosity gradually rose. Surveying the surroundings, he discovered that the interior of the Sky Pillar was not the clearly layered building with traps everywhere from the GBA Ruby version, but rather closer to the Ruby remake—a bizarre high tower composed of countless fragmented floor plates and thick triangular load-bearing pillars.

A massive mural covering the entire wall, extending beyond the reach of his vision, came into view.

"Mega Rayquaza..."

All Baimu murmured softly. What was carved above was undoubtedly the history from thousands of years ago, when the ancestors of the Star People stood upon the legendary megalith, praying for Mega Rayquaza to stop Primal Kyogre and Primal Groudon from fighting each other.

The patterns were as abstract as ever—for instance, Mega Rayquaza's head was carved as a perfectly straight triangle, its cheeks covered in twisted flames tearing through the sky, its slender body resembling high-altitude turbulence, yet the overall spirit was not lacking.

A solemn symphony seemed to sound in his ears, befitting the sanctity of the place.

"Just how tall is this?"

He walked up to the mural and looked up, only to find helplessly that the faint light was insufficient to let him see the top of the tower—it was pitch black, much like a bottomless black hole, swallowing all light whole.

Just as he was wondering, he suddenly lowered his head and pressed down on the Hydreigon head trying to peek out from between his legs. "What are you doing? We agreed you'd walk up on two legs, didn't you understand?"

"Shaao!"

Hydreigon brazenly indicated that it hadn't understood at all, and continued its efforts to carry its trainer onto its back.

"Dummy, I said no!"

All Baimu angrily grabbed its trumpet-flower-like fur, covering its eyes and shaking it side to side, but because the posture was too awkward, he gave up after shaking it twice.

He clearly understood Hydreigon's meaning—Miss Xijiana can't see from outside anyway, so who cares, just charge straight up.

But this kind of self-deception was meaningless; he might as well turn around and walk out and say he gave up.

Hydreigon retracted its heads, huffily letting out a mooing, cow-like nasal sound, quite indignant that its bold and somewhat immature suggestion had been overruled.

In the middle of their exchange.

Both suddenly looked toward a certain corner.

In the shadow obscured by a pillar, a pitch-black object stopped writhing, like an assassin caught in the act.

So the assassin went berserk.

"Fshhh!

An intense, blinding flash brought a massive ghost shadow spreading to All Baimu and Hydreigon's feet, ghost energy boiling into a ferocious ghost claw that swiped at the two!

【Flash】 to enlarge the shadow, then use the enlarged shadow for 【Shadow Sneak】.

Damn, it even uses combo tactics!

However, the two of them weren't standing targets waiting to be hit. The instant they spotted the peeper, Hydreigon had already spread its wings and taken to the sky, while he grabbed onto its "feet" to get airborne.

The ascent was swift, so they successfully dodged the sudden attack.

"Scary Face! Pin it down!"

When the trainer and Pokémon were hit by a blinding attack and couldn't determine the opponent's species or exact range, attacking blindly was unwise; they had to buy time for their eyes to recover.

【Scary Face】 could do exactly that.

Sure enough, when Hydreigon revealed an extremely fierce and ferocious expression, under the dual effect of emotion and energy, the opponent let out an even more panicked cry.

"Dusu!" "Dusu dusu!"

Two Duskulls?

All Baimu quickly commanded, "Follow the sound—Dark Pulse!"

"Shaao!"

Hydreigon raised its left and right heads, all three mouths aimed at the source of the sound, firing the gathered Dark-type energy as a beam!

Boom boom—!

The entire Sky Pillar echoed with the sound of the beam striking the ground and causing an explosion; the two Duskulls' screams seemed to be drowned out as well.

Quite a ruckus they've made.

All Baimu was helpless—most Pokémon moves weren't quiet by nature; there was no way to be stealthy.

He could only pray they wouldn't attract more attackers.

As his vision gradually recovered, he could clearly see behind an intact triangular pillar, two Duskulls lying on the ground twitching nonstop with smoke rising from their bodies, only a little dust drifting in the air.

"Shaao?"

Hydreigon's cry, filled with surprise, reached his ears.

Obviously this guy knew his destructive power should at least be enough to blast apart a floor or pillar, but the facts proved this thing was incredibly hard — its attacks couldn't even scratch it.

The material's not ordinary.

Baimu released his hands and landed lightly on the ground, pulled out a Poké Ball and looked around for a place to take cover. He felt that with his current constitution, even jumping down from ten meters up, as long as he could do a proper forward roll to bleed off the force, he wouldn't get hurt.

Of course, that was just a feeling — so far he hadn't taken that kind of risk. At most he'd jumped off the top of a Steelix's head, which had scared the dumb iron lump half to death.

At the time the latter's head had been hanging low, roughly seven or eight meters up.

He and Hydreigon had taken cover behind another large pillar for a while, but the second wave of attackers never came, which was somewhat unexpected.

Are all the Pokémon in the Sky Pillar deaf?

Definitely not.

Then there was only one possibility.

"These guys are probably the obstacles we have to push past to move upward in the trial." He came over to the two Dusclops and poked their rock-hard bodies.

In the game, the Sky Pillar also had Ariados, Zubat, and even Mawile and other Pokémon.

But without a doubt, those Pokémon all need to eat — unlike Ghost-type Pokémon, which can offset their own wear and tear through dormancy.

His entry had most likely awakened these slumbering Ghost-type Pokémon.

And these guys probably had the mission of intercepting the challengers — they wouldn't swarm in all at once, only appearing at the right moment to attack them and create all kinds of trouble.

Although it's still just speculation, it's probably nine times out of ten.

"Saaa…"

Hydreigon nodded as if half-understanding. It had indeed smelled many unfamiliar scents nearby — some strong, some weak — but none of them were a match for it.

After thinking it over, Baimu released Dragapult and the two Dreepy as well.

"Luuu…""Hiiya~""Hiiya!"

Dragapult carefully observed its surroundings, the Dreepy sister's gaze landed on the Dusclops, and the Dreepy brother excitedly transformed into a face-hugger and lunged at his face.

The three Pokémon lived in three balls and had three different personalities.

But in battle they were a single unit.

Baimu forcibly peeled the Dreepy brother off his face, explained the current situation to them, and said: "From now on you'll serve as left and right guardians together with Hydreigon — you get me?"

Dragapult and the Dreepy sister nodded to show they understood; the Dreepy brother just giggled and kept goofing around.

"…"

He suddenly really wanted to smack this one.

Before he could try to put that thought into practice, the considerate Dreepy sister took it upon herself to help him vent his anger.

Smack!

A crisp melon-slapping sound.

The Dreepy brother's excited expression quickly turned into grievance. Clutching its head with a bullied look, under the Dreepy sister's "you hopeless lump" gaze it burrowed into the launch port on top of Dragapult's head.

Obviously it had heard everything Baimu said just now — it was just pretending it hadn't.

He was deeply moved.

And when the Dreepy sister burrowed into the launch port on Dragapult's other side, a complete Dragapult was finally formed. The latter's face was full of relief, clearly afraid the former would have an opinion.

How awkward that must be for it.

"Saaa!"

Hydreigon flapped its wings and came over to divide up the watch zones with Dragapult. Baimu let them discuss it among themselves.

At this moment.

The two Dusclops that had been knocked out by the Dark Pulse had woken up — or rather, they'd actually been awake long ago, constantly looking for a chance to escape, and now they saw this as a good opportunity to run.

"Yami!""Yami yami!"

Amid the hissing, the two Dusclops scrambled away on all fours.

Hydreigon eagerly chased after them, but was quickly stopped by Baimu's outstretched hand.

"Why are you chasing them? Our goal is to climb to the top of the tower, not play hide-and-seek." He often found this guy's thought process and many of its behaviors hard to understand — three heads sharing one brain, so it got dumber?

Well then.

Humans were originally incapable of understanding a "dog"… no, two of them.

Baimu saw the Dreepy brother's eager-to-try expression and couldn't help sighing.

A few minutes later.

Having finished surveying the entire first floor, he officially began to ascend.

He remembered that in the game the Sky Pillar only had about five floors, but the one before him had more than ten. The key thing was that going up didn't rely on the vertical ladders from the game — it was still sloped staircases, connecting slabs of seemingly flimsy flooring, winding and twisting through the air in a rather peculiar way.

Fortunately, the stuff probably wouldn't collapse when stepped on — just as hard as the floor and pillars.

The drawback was no handrails.

If combat broke out on the stairs, one wrong step could easily send you plummeting from a height. At that point you could only pray for the kind of cushioned landing Team Rocket always seemed to get — otherwise you'd be meeting your own Pokémon in the spirit world.

Considering safety, Baimu was especially careful when walking the stairs.

But what was coming would come eventually.

"Tahihihi…"

A strange laugh suddenly rang out.

A Banette abruptly blocked the end of the stairs, but before Hydreigon and the hidden Dragapult could launch an attack, it vanished on the spot.

Most Ghost-type Pokémon possessed the ability to hide in shadows, and the interior environment of the Sky Pillar couldn't have been more suited to them.

Anyone casually entering here would just become a living target—

Baimu's face went blank. He pulled out a high-beam flashlight and aimed it at the spot where the Banette had disappeared.

Click.

In an instant.

A blazing sun descended!

A high-tech portable flashlight of a hundred and fifty thousand lumens summoned a daylight no different from the outside world, and left the curse doll, which had been creeping along stealthily, with nowhere to hide.

"Pfft—"

It wailed, raising its hands to shield its eyes, its originally sinister and eerie little face scrunched up almost like a chrysanthemum, written all over with resistance and panic.

Who the hell threw a flashbang now?!

The curse doll at this moment was just like All Baimu from several minutes earlier, who had been blinded by Gastly's flash — its eyes were forced into temporary blindness, and the fact that it wasn't rolling around on the ground was a testament to its strong endurance.

"Shasasha—"

The Three-Headed Dragon was so gleefully schadenfreude that its scalp itched; it loved most to pay someone back in their own coin.

All Baimu slapped its rump, "What are you spacing out for, get in there!"

Only then did this slow-witted fellow belatedly open its mouth and spew a blast of Dark Pulse at the curse doll; at the same time, the still-invisible Dragonite also made its move, appearing behind another curse doll that had hidden on the far side of the staircase and was trying to extend a ghostly claw to pull All Baimu down, and sinisterly lashed its pitch-black tail.

"Pfft?"

The second curse doll turned its head at the sound of the wind and was struck square by the tail.

Boom!

Peng!

One heavy, one light.

This combination of one drawing attention and the other ambushing was taken down in an instant, and they hadn't even lasted as long as the first two Gastly.

Many Ghost-type Pokémon hiding in the shadows watching couldn't help but tremble.

The two defeated Gastly squatted in a corner resentfully drawing circles — how could they have imagined their own trick would be "learned" by All Baimu so quickly and turned against the next group of prank-playing Ghost Pokémon.

There's no justice!

Meanwhile, on the other side.

All Baimu tossed down the two "corpses," switched off the flashlight without a backward glance, and arrived at the second floor of the Sky Pillar; a floor riddled with hollow, broken holes immediately came into view, and judging from the edges of the big holes, this floor was at best only slightly thicker than an Oreo.

Won't it really get stepped through?

He slowly set his foot down, and at some unknown point a strange pair of glasses had appeared on his face—

Night-vision goggles.

To be honest, he actually really disliked wearing this thing, because it felt like his field of vision would narrow, but to prevent himself from being blindsided by those ghost things with a flash, he forced himself to endure the awkwardness and put them on.

Come on!

Let's see what other tricks you lot can still pull off?!

All Baimu was looking forward to it at every moment.