After walking a bit further, even Zorua’s emotions grew frantic.
Its little legs couldn’t help but speed up, desperate to sprint right to the destination.
But Lorze quickly slammed it with a telepathic warning, violently crushing its impulsive urge.
Because the closer he got to that direction, the more clearly he could sense the overwhelmingly dense ghost energy pulsating ahead.
Even with a spiritual strength forged by necromantic magic, Lorze couldn’t help but feel a suffocating, crushing pressure.
Ultimately, as Lorze neared the edge of the valley, he truly sensed an infinite myriad of ghost energies violently converging and overlapping.
It was glaringly obvious that a massive horde of Ghost-type Pokémon had gathered there.
Every single one of them was staring anxiously into the valley, but they were deeply terrified of something, absolutely not daring to carelessly approach.
“No wonder I didn’t see a single damn Pokémon along the way.
They were all lured here.
And thank god this is just the lower region.
Otherwise, who the fuck knows what kind of apocalyptic monstrosities would have been drawn out.”
He observed the massive horde of Ghost-type Pokémon guarding the perimeter of the ravine, watching with starved, greedy eyes but refusing to step inside.
The reason was simple: there were already vastly superior Pokémon occupying the center.
Lorze probed from a safe distance using his spiritual sense, confirming that there truly was an ancient, abandoned altar sitting in the middle of the valley.
Atop it rested a bizarre stone, and plastered to that stone was a sickly gray slip of paper.
Faint, eerie runes were carved onto this small slip of paper.
It was aggressively siphoning the ghost energy from the surrounding fog, slowly but inevitably clarifying its shape as its aura grew exponentially denser.
Encircling the altar, three ghostly silhouettes stood in a three-way Mexican standoff.
Their eyes were hyper-fixated on both the gradually forming ‘Spell Tag’ and their two rivals.
One of them had its entire body wrapped in gray bandages, extending a pair of pale gray, five-fingered hands, and glaring with a massive, striking red cyclops eye!
Another looked exactly like a witch draped in a purple magical robe, sporting a pointed hat with three crimson gems resting across its chest!
The final one was the most utterly abstract—a literal golden sarcophagus sprouting four pitch-black, spectral limbs.
These three Ghost-type Pokémon were Dusclops, Mismagius, and Cofagrigus, respectively.
And every single one of them had reached the terrifying “Pro-tier.”
Cofagrigus, in particular, didn’t just exude the most suffocating aura; it also subtly gave Lorze an incredibly skin-crawling, morbid sensation.
It felt exactly like being directly targeted by some horrifying, god-like entity, leaving Lorze completely flabbergasted.
“That Cofagrigus actually spotted me!
How the fuck is that possible?! Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
We’re so far apart that even ordinary Psychic-type Pokémon shouldn’t be able to pull that off!
So that bastard actually didn’t lie!
There really is an unformed ‘Spell Tag’ here.
No wonder it attracted all these Ghost-type Pokémon to camp around it.
But since the ‘Spell Tag’ hasn’t fully materialized yet, and they’re all intensely paranoid of getting backstabbed, they’re deadlocked.
None of them dares to make the first move.
Thinking about it, this Mexican standoff is the exact reason why that guy managed to slip away alive.
He also knew that coming back here was basically suicide, which is why he took the desperate gamble of trying to shoot me dead at the very end.
However, given the high malleability of this paper tag, there’s a massive probability someone deliberately plastered it here to let it slowly grow and absorb power.
This thing most likely already has a fucking owner!
But that doesn’t make any sense!
Even if a ‘Spell Tag’ can naturally manifest by soaking up ambient ghost aura, the process is agonizingly slow.
An ordinary human simply couldn’t outlive the amount of time required.
Could it be that this ‘Spell Tag’ was planted here by a highly intelligent Ghost-type Pokémon, just waiting for it to slowly reach maturity?!”
Lorze suddenly remembered that in the original games, many wild Ghost-type Pokémon had a set probability of naturally holding the ‘Spell Tag’ item.
“But that still doesn’t add up!
If it belonged to a Ghost-type Pokémon, it would absolutely never leave it lying around out in the wild like this.”
Lorze felt a profound sense of wrongness about the entire situation.
His desire to hijack the treasure began to waver heavily.
Besides, given the current geopolitical nightmare of this area, even if he jumped into the bloodbath, there was a massive probability he wouldn’t walk away with shit.
His chances of success were pathetically microscopic.
After all, those were three “Pro-tier” Pokémon.
They possessed an absolute, insurmountable major realm advantage over Zorua.
And under the crushing weight of an absolute level gap, even elemental immunity wasn’t guaranteed to provide complete invulnerability.
After all, so-called “elemental immunity” generally only held true when the opponents were roughly within the same power bracket.
This was the fucking real world.
If a legendary Zapdos personally rained down a literal “Thunder,” there was absolutely no fucking way an ordinary Geodude could tank it unharmed just because it was a Ground-type.
Furthermore, who’s to say these “Pro-tier” Ghost-type Pokémon didn’t know how to unleash moves of entirely different typings?!
To have survived the brutal wild and slaughtered their way to the “Pro-tier,” they undoubtedly possessed a terrifying wealth of combat experience.
With this in mind, Lorze ran another hyper-detailed sweep over the ‘Spell Tag’ with his spiritual sense, confirming it would still take approximately a few days for it to fully mature and enter the world.
He could use these few days to carefully scheme.
If his own combat power experienced a massive leap, or if he found a phenomenally strong backup, he could potentially return and crash this treasure hunt.
“Wait a minute~ Backup!
Isn’t May literally a ready-made powerhouse currently wandering Mt.
Pyre?!
But…”
The moment Lorze thought of May, he immediately hesitated.
Setting aside the fact that it was extremely inconvenient for him and Zorua to fight completely uninhibited in front of her…
Even if they actually secured the ‘Spell Tag,’ he would inevitably have to split a massive cut of the loot with May.
More importantly, while May was technically a rookie Trainer just like him, she had an incredibly wealthy, powerful family backing her.
Her current combat power completely eclipsed his own.
God knows if she had other hidden Pokémon, but just the Combusken and Froslass she displayed on the ferry were both already at the absolute peak of the “Elite-tier.”
Factoring in her father Norman’s massive prestige and limitless resources, the genuine combat prowess of her Combusken and Froslass was estimated to severely outclass the Trevenant and Banette of the exact same tier that he had just encountered.
Therefore, even if he did drag May into this as backup, he would be completely relegated to a supporting role.
When it came time to divide the spoils, how the fuck could he have the face to demand the main prize?
“Fuck it, relying on others is worse than relying on myself!
I might as well seize the opportunity to hardcore grind inside Mt.
Pyre for the next few days!
Just that brief skirmish earlier has already allowed Zorua to spike its power by this much!
If we can just stumble across a few more similar jackpots, who’s to say we won’t have the capital to brawl it out with those ‘Pro-tier’ bastards?”
Realizing this, Lorze knew there was absolutely no fucking point in wasting time deadlocked with these Ghost-type Pokémon.
He meticulously burned the exact coordinates and topography of this area into his memory before stealthily slipping away.
Fortunately, because his spiritual sense was insanely amplified within this fog, he was able to clearly observe the ravine’s interior while actually maintaining a very safe, substantial distance.
Combined with the fact that he and Zorua had been moving with absolute, paranoid caution, they didn’t trigger the attention of the surrounding ghost horde, completely avoiding any unnecessary, bloody skirmishes.
Once they were safely clear of the danger zone, Lorze calmed down, thought for a moment, and tossed out the Giant Pumpkaboo.
By now, it had recovered a sliver of its stamina and consciousness, casting an utterly disgusted, contemptuous glare at Lorze for kicking a pumpkin while it was down.
The Giant Pumpkaboo attempted to rebel, but unsurprisingly, it was effortlessly beaten into submission by Zorua.
The only reason Lorze let out this un-tamed, hostile “comrade” was purely because it was a local thug.
It absolutely had to know the lay of the land, which was infinitely better than him stumbling around blindly like a headless fucking fly!