“Boss!
Boss!
Put me the fuck down!
I can walk myself—no, float myself!”
“Don’t mention it.
You’re pretty badly hurt, so carrying you makes this faster.
Just focus on pointing the way.”
“Boss, you really are a gentle human!
But I just don’t get it—how the hell did you grab my phantom form earlier?”
“Because I was worried about your injuries!
See~ this is the power of love.
It transcends the boundaries of flesh and soul.”
Pumpkaboo wanted to cry but had no tears, feeling incredibly skeptical.
However, in the very next moment, it felt the violent shockwaves of a fierce battle rumbling from ahead, accompanied by the rotting stench of dead leaves and decaying branches.
“We’re here, it’s right over~~”
Before Pumpkaboo could even finish its sentence, Lorze chucked it completely behind him, stating without even turning his head:
“Thanks for leading the way.
Go hide yourself!”
“Eh~ Boss, why did you throw me away?!
Where’s the love?!
Didn’t you say it transcends flesh and soul?!”
“You stupid ‘pumpkin’!
There’s a kind of love called letting go.
The situation is about to get chaotic; throwing your ass far away is for your own protection.”
“I see!
The Boss’s love truly knows no bounds.
This pumpkin is crying to death.” Pumpkaboo’s voice grew fainter and fainter as it flew away.
Lorze cast a basic mind-concealing spell over himself and Zorua, then crouched low and approached with extreme caution.
Zorua dropped onto its front paws, sticking its butt in the air as it trailed closely behind.
As they drew closer, they discovered two Pokémon clans locked in an absolute bloodbath within the fog-shrouded woods.
On one side were dozens of Pokémon resembling floating wooden stumps.
They fought fiercely under the command of a Trevenant, which stood about 1.5 meters tall with a hideous, ghostly face carved into the center of its trunk.
The opposing side consisted of a roughly equal number of Pumpkaboo of varying sizes.
Their leader was an exceptionally colossal Pumpkaboo.
Generally speaking, a Pumpkaboo’s size depended on the pumpkin the lingering spirit inhabited, broadly categorized into Small, Average, Large, and Super Size.
But overall, the size disparity wouldn’t be absurd; the largest being twice the size of the smallest was already pushing it.
It could easily be classified as a fucking Giant Pumpkaboo.
Logically, the size difference between Pumpkaboo wouldn’t affect their actual combat power that much; strength was strictly determined by their internal energy tier.
But because this Giant Pumpkaboo was so massively overgrown, it definitely held a sheer weight advantage!
As the saying goes, immense size brings immense power.
Every time it clashed in close combat, the resulting shockwaves were undeniably far more violent than those of an ordinary Pumpkaboo.
However, no matter how phenomenally it had developed, it couldn’t genuinely rival a Trevenant, whose life-form tier and overall physical stats completely overshadowed it.
At this moment, the skirmishes on the periphery were basically an even stalemate.
But in the duel between the bosses, the Giant Pumpkaboo was being absolutely dominated.
The newly evolved Trevenant had gained a pair of powerful wooden claws, and it had even mastered “Shadow Claw”.
In just a few strikes, it mercilessly battered the Giant Pumpkaboo to the brink of death.
If it weren’t for the Giant Pumpkaboo’s massive size granting it slightly more stamina than others at its tier, it would have been fucking dead long ago!
Furthermore, this Trevenant wasn’t overwhelmingly crushing everything.
Even in its evolved state, its power was only capped at the absolute peak of the “Elite-tier.”
It was certainly stronger than the current Zorua, but its superiority was limited.
It hadn’t crossed the threshold into the next major realm, which massively boosted Lorze’s confidence in taking it down.
He estimated that before discovering the “Miracle Seed,” this Trevenant was likely just an incredibly average Phantump with mediocre talent and strength, leaving its foundation highly unstable.
It was purely out of dumb fucking luck that the energy contained within the “Miracle Seed” happened to shatter its genetic shackles, forcing an evolution.
Yet, it still hadn’t even scraped the bottom of the “Pro-tier.”
Right now, the only reason it was managing to beat the Giant Pumpkaboo into submission was purely due to the absolute stat boost from its evolution.
Seeing that the Trevenant’s strength was actually weaker than he anticipated, Lorze instantly sent a telepathic order to Zorua, telling it to strike the moment the perfect opportunity arose.
That opportunity presented itself very quickly.
The violently retreating Giant Pumpkaboo, finally bled of all hope, wrapped its entire body in a pitch-black aura and recklessly charged straight into the Trevenant.
The latter was both startled and absolutely thrilled.
Post-evolution, its greatest asset was its lethal close-quarters combat ability, but its movement speed was painfully slow.
If the Pumpkaboo had kept kiting it with mobility, it would have taken a lot more effort to pin it down.
But now that the opponent was willingly offering itself up for a melee brawl, it played right into its fucking hands.
However, just as the Trevenant condensed a brutal “Shadow Claw,” fully intending to crush the Giant Pumpkaboo to death on the spot, a faint, shadowy stream of energy suddenly split off from the latter’s body, instantly phasing into the Trevenant.
“It’s ‘Destiny Bond’!
I didn’t expect this Pumpkaboo to have such a suicidal ace up its sleeve!
It seems this was its ultimate trump card for challenging the Trevenant to a deathmatch!
If it genuinely manages to trade its life for the Trevenant’s, then it’s truly anyone’s guess who will win this clan war.”
The moment the Trevenant was possessed by that sinister shadow, the ghostly face on its trunk instantly contorted in sheer panic.
But its violently descending “Shadow Claw” was already impossible to stop.
Bang~~
The “Shadow Claw” landed on the Giant Pumpkaboo exactly as intended.
The massive pumpkin was instantly slammed brutally into the ground, completely losing consciousness.
Because in the very next fraction of a second, a bizarre black mist violently detonated across its body in sync with Pumpkaboo’s defeat.
The Trevenant was instantly overwhelmed by an agonizing wave of lethargy, its heavy eyelids desperately fighting to stay open.
It resisted slightly for a brief moment, but it was completely powerless to stop its rapidly blurring vision.
Moments later, it crashed down hard onto the ground.
Seeing their respective clan bosses collapse one after another didn’t stop the surviving Phantump and Pumpkaboo from waging war.
The bloody struggle for their clans’ survival had driven them entirely berserk.
A chaotic barrage of “Astonish,” “Confuse Ray,” and “Shadow Sneak”…
went back and forth.
One by one, more Pumpkaboo and Phantump lost their combat capability and dropped.
“Guurr~”
Zorua sent a telepathic ping to Lorze, asking if it was time to strike.
Lorze was just about to give the order, but the intense paranoia ingrained into his soul from surviving in the magical world made him habitually sweep the entire area with his spiritual sense first, checking to ensure no one else was lurking around.
However, when his spiritual sense scanned roughly a few hundred meters to the opposite side of the battlefield, his expression violently tightened.
There was actually another human stealthily approaching from that direction.
Normally, with the spiritual strength of a mere apprentice Necromancer, he wouldn’t be able to detect movements hundreds of meters away.
But because he was currently immersed in this ghost fog, the sensory perception granted by his necromantic magic had been insanely buffed, allowing him to sharply detect the intruder.
He immediately relayed a message to Zorua through their soul contract: “Hold your position.
There’s someone on the other side.
Looks like we’ve got another scavenger trying to play clean-up.
We’ll observe the situation and act accordingly.
Unless I give the signal, absolutely do not blow your cover.”
“Guurr~~”
Zorua instantly understood.
A cunning gleam flashed in its eyes as it pressed its body even lower, practically melding completely into the shadows on the ground.
Lorze also pushed his shadow-cloaking magic to its absolute limits.
Combined with the dense fog’s cover, he was fully confident that no ordinary human or Pokémon could ever fucking spot them.
Sure enough, a short while later, after the Phantump and Pumpkaboo on the battlefield had almost entirely exhausted each other to the point of collapse, a man in his thirties wearing a gray mountaineering jacket emerged from the black fog.
“Hehehe~ What a glorious fucking surprise.
They actually beat each other into a mutually assured destruction.
When your luck rolls in, absolutely nothing can stop it.”
Hearing the man’s footsteps, the very few surviving Phantump and Pumpkaboo instantly ceased their bloody brawl.
They glared vigilantly at the intruder, letting out whimpering, guttural warnings.
However, in the next second, a dark shadow shot out from beneath the man’s boots.
After circling the air once, it morphed into a mundane-looking ragged doll with a literal zipper for a mouth, letting out a bizarre, sinister “Gaa Gaa” shriek.
It was none other than the evolved form of Shuppet—a Banette!