Thud!
Aiden hit the ground hard enough to send a dull impact through his entire body, with his backside taking the worst of it.
“Woooow…”
His mouth opened wide on instinct before he slowly managed to close it again.
For several painful seconds, Aiden genuinely felt as though his rear end no longer belonged to him.
After writhing around on the floor while clutching it, he finally recovered enough to raise his head and look around.
“This place…”
A thin layer of yellow sand covered parts of the floor, but the surroundings were clearly artificial.
Aiden’s eyes widened almost immediately.
“Ruins?!”
Light streamed down through the hole above him, illuminating unmistakable signs of construction.
Neatly cut stone bricks lined the chamber, and many of them had been carved with precise spiral patterns.
As soon as one nearby Sandile noticed Aiden looking its way, it darted into the darkness and disappeared.
Remembering Sprigatito’s warning just before he fell, Aiden quickly put the pieces together.
The hole he had stepped into had probably been created, or at least weakened, by that Sandile moving through the ground.
“Wait…
where are Sprigatito and my phone?”
“Spriga?”
Aiden looked up.
Sprigatito’s head appeared over the edge of the opening above, his phone clenched carefully between her teeth.
The worry in her eyes instantly turned to relief and excitement when she saw him.
“Spriga!”
Without hesitation, she jumped straight down and landed in Aiden’s arms.
She rubbed her head against his chest while purring loudly, and Aiden stroked her between the ears before taking the phone from her mouth and inspecting it.
“Heh.
Still works!”
A grin immediately spread across his face.
He raised the phone, slowly panning the camera across the surrounding ruins.
“Trainers, this is exactly why traveling is so much fun.
You never know what kind of scenery—or trouble—you’re going to stumble into!”
“We started out chasing a Shiny Pokémon, and somehow I ended up falling straight into an ancient ruin!”
Aiden turned the camera back toward himself with growing enthusiasm.
“So our next segment is going to be—ruins exploration!”
Once the introduction was finished, he released Snivy from her Poké Ball as well.
Aiden wasn’t stupid enough to underestimate an unexplored ruin.
Wild Pokémon could be living anywhere inside, and ancient structures like this could easily contain traps or mechanisms that had survived for centuries.
There was no such thing as being too careful.
Still…
‘I’m pretty sure the League pays rewards for reporting newly discovered ruins.’
“Hehehe…”
Aiden’s smile became increasingly suspicious.
At this point, replacing Nurse Joy’s figurine was no longer going to be a problem.
And more importantly, his video now had everything it needed to explode online: a Shiny Pokémon chase, the accidental discovery of an ancient ruin, and an actual exploration of the place.
‘I’m going viral!’
Humming cheerfully to himself, Aiden pulled a headlamp from his storage backpack and strapped it on, then took out a trekking pole before looking down at Sprigatito and Snivy.
“We’re exploring an unknown ruin from here on out, so both of you need to stay alert, okay?”
“Meow!”
“Sni!”
The two Pokémon immediately grew serious.
The cool air underground was a welcome relief after the brutal desert heat, and Aiden could finally feel his overheated brain beginning to work properly again.
That was also when he noticed something unusual about the floor.
There were two distinct kinds of stone tiles.
Most were ordinary yellow bricks, but scattered among them were darker stones engraved with spiral patterns.
The patterned tiles were much rarer, and their placement appeared completely irregular.
Aiden stared at them for a moment.
“Snivy, use Vine Whip and see if you can press down that patterned tile over there.”
“Sni!”
Snivy nodded.
One vine shot forward, struck the tile, and immediately snapped back.
The moment it made contact, the stone abruptly sank into the floor.
At the same instant, hidden openings appeared along both walls.
A volley of arrows shot across the passage.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
The arrows struck the opposite wall and floor, scattering across the stone.
Sprigatito’s mouth fell open.
She immediately turned toward Aiden with sparkling, openly admiring eyes.
Snivy also gave him an approving look before placing her tiny hands on her hips and lifting her chin proudly.
Her expression practically screamed, ‘That’s my Trainer, so obviously I’m impressive too.’
Aiden gave her a helpless look, but he was far too excited by the discovery to complain.
“Good.
From now on, we avoid every tile with that pattern.
Snivy, use your vines to test the path ahead.
Sprigatito, you keep watch for any wild Pokémon nearby.”
“Sni!”
Snivy nodded, two vines extending from the leafy collar around her neck and swaying through the air.
“Spriga!”
Sprigatito climbed onto Aiden’s head.
Her pupils narrowed into vertical slits while her ears twitched constantly, listening for the slightest movement in the darkness.
Aiden nodded in satisfaction and raised his phone again.
“Go, go, go!
Let’s move!”
…
As they carefully worked their way around the traps, Aiden kept glancing at the strange markings carved into the patterned bricks.
Something about them felt oddly familiar.
Since this was the Pokémon world, his first instinct was naturally to compare them to a Pokémon.
“They kind of look like the spiral on Poliwag’s stomach…
but the lines here are much straighter, with sharper angles, and there aren’t nearly as many loops.”
He thought about it for a while, but ancient history had never exactly been one of his hobbies.
With no useful idea coming to mind, Aiden eventually stopped worrying about the symbols and returned his attention to the passage ahead.
“Honestly, this place is surprisingly quiet.”
He had half expected wild Pokémon to come rushing out of the darkness.
He had even been looking forward to showing off by hurling Poké Balls at them and taking advantage of the way a direct hit could pull a Pokémon inside.
Instead, after all that preparation, there was nothing.
Forget encountering a wild Pokémon every few steps—he hadn’t even seen another footprint from the Sandile that had disappeared earlier.
The only sounds in the ancient passage were the sharp swish of Snivy’s vines slicing through the air and the occasional tap as they tested the stone floor ahead.