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The nightmare faded.
Grumpig, barely clinging to life, looked as though it had awakened from a long, poisoned sleep. The dull haze in its eyes cleared, and for the first time in a very long time, a spark of real awareness returned.
A final lucid surge.
At the very edge of death, something impossible happened:
The external pressure of Kael's aura and the immense Psychic strength still burning inside Grumpig's dying mind intertwined for a single, perfect instant.
The Nightmare Seed, already loosening its hold as Grumpig's body began to fail, was torn out of its mental space and scattered like smoke in a storm.
And in that breath of clarity—
The Pokémon that had spent its entire life drowning in slaughter and madness, both hateful and tragic…
Woke up.
Its vision was blurred, but it could still make out the massive silhouette standing over the battlefield.
Kael.
Grumpig didn't feel hatred toward him.
Strangely, what rose inside its chest wasn't rage but something closer to remorse.
Relief.
A quiet, broken kind of repentance.
"Drip."
Its battered right hand trembled up from the blood-soaked ground. Thick blood slid from its fingertips and fell back into the crimson pool beneath it.
Grumpig lifted that hand toward Kael's fingers, curling, as if trying to grasp something that wasn't there.
Through the gaps between its trembling fingers, that dark-violet figure radiating a violent, predatory aura—
Looked, in Grumpig's eyes, like the first slice of dawn splitting open a sky that had been dark for far too long.
Its fingers tightened.
It caught nothing.
And yet Grumpig knew—
It had held onto light.
The next moment, a fine trembling began deep in its chest and spread through its entire body.
Its blood, once scorching, cooled.
Its resilient skin dulled into lifeless gray.
With the last shred of willpower it possessed, Grumpig pulled the remainder of its Psychic reserves from its broken body extracting everything it had left.
A Psychic-type that powerful didn't waste its final breath.
Not like this.
Not when it had finally seen what it believed was a real chance.
Grumpig gathered every last fragment of itself…
And poured it into the black pearl embedded in its chest.
In its dying seconds, it seemed to catch a faint intuition of something it couldn't explain, something it didn't understand but couldn't ignore:
This Machoke standing before it…
this being that felt as though it didn't belong to the normal cycle of the world…
Was important.
A key.
Maybe even the key.
Grumpig knew it was dying.
Grumpig knew this might mean nothing.
And still—
It chose to spend everything.
To add even a tiny fraction of strength toward the world seeing daylight again.
The black pearl vibrated violently, barely containing the energy being forced into it. Cracks crawled over its surface, and pale pink light leaked through the fractures like blood through a bandage.
But at the very brink of collapse—
The pearl completed its purpose.
It amplified the condensed essence of Grumpig's remaining power.
"...Nnn… nnn…"
A strange, unnatural hum rose like something resonating from outside reality.
Then—
A flood of dazzling pink light burst outward, vast enough to feel like it could paint the entire sky.
It moved with a speed that didn't feel like speed at all—
More like an intention arriving instantly, bypassing distance.
It rushed straight toward Kael.
Because Grumpig held no malice in that final act, Kael, fresh from battle, didn't react in time.
And by the moment he sensed something wrong—
It was already too late.
HUM—
The dreamlike pink radiance swallowed him whole.
Time seemed to freeze.
Within the luminous torrent, Kael's dark-violet form began to fade—becoming thin, distant, unreal.
A blink—
And he was gone.
The pink flood vanished into the canopy like a reverse meteor, streaking upward before dissolving into the treetops with a ripple of warped space.
Grumpig's entire remaining Psychic essence anchored to a desperate, last-second, high-level Psychic technique akin to Future Sight—
carried its final hope…
And hurled Kael toward an unknown destination.
Even Grumpig didn't know where.
But it knew it was a place that could help him.
A place that could push him farther down the road toward tearing open the darkness and dragging the world into morning.
---
Not far from the slaughtered clearing, Croagunk collapsed with both hands on the ground, sliding backward until its spine hit a tree trunk.
Its mouth opened slightly, as if it wanted to speak—
But no sound came.
Its golden eyes stared blankly at the silent battlefield: broken bodies, blood-soaked earth, and a sudden, impossible emptiness where Kael had just been.
Everything that had happened felt like a violent hallucination.
First, the two Fighting-type companions it had been talking with had vanished in an instant, butchered by the nightmare Pokémon like they were nothing.
Then, as Croagunk tried to flee—
It had been caught and dragged back by the remaining enemy.
Hope had died in its chest. It was sure it was going to die there.
And then—
The Machop it had met once, the one that had been strangely friendly…
Appeared.
Evolved on the spot.
And with terrifying ease, it crushed three nightmare Pokémon that Croagunk had believed were untouchable.
Croagunk had barely begun to think, I'm saved how do I thank him?
When Grumpig, in its dying seconds, unleashed a power Croagunk had never seen—
And Kael vanished from the battlefield as if reality itself had rejected him.
Croagunk stood there, frozen.
"...Hhh…"
A light breeze brushed its face.
It inhaled.
The stench of blood hit its nose so hard it almost gagged.
Its body reacted before its mind could: goosebumps rising, skin tightening, a violent shiver crawling up its spine.
It snapped itself upright, legs still weak, one hand bracing hard against the tree trunk to stand.
Even through the shock, one truth surfaced:
Whatever this was whatever had happened here—
The camp at Ignis City couldn't continue.
Not after this.
The only smart choice was to get out of the forest and find the outside instructors.
Nightmare Pokémon.
Kael's disappearance.
The truth behind it all was far beyond Croagunk's strength.
Chasing answers would get it killed.
The only way Kael might be found…
the only way anything here would make sense…
It was as if the Pokémon League had been told everything.
Every detail.
Every second.
Croagunk swallowed—
Hard.
"...Gulp."
Just because those three nightmare Pokémon were dead didn't mean there weren't more lurking in the woods.
And that thought—
Hit like ice.
Croagunk's head jerked left, then right.
Now every shadow looked like a predator.
Every patch of darkness felt like a mouth waiting to close.
Fear flooded its limbs.
Even with its legs trembling, Croagunk turned and ran—stumbling at first, then sprinting full-speed toward the forest's edge.
Toward safety.
Toward help.
Toward anything that wasn't this blood-soaked silence.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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