Sup!
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The screen had returned to normal. The new trainer with the backpack was now standing in her home in Pewter City, waiting for instructions.
But Giovanni's fingers rested on the keyboard and mouse without moving.
His mind was completely elsewhere from the game before him.
"Rainbow Rocket Team," he murmured the name under his breath, his fingertips unconsciously tapping against the desktop in a dull rhythm.
That massive floating fortress, those controlled nightmare Pokémon, that figure standing with its back to the world—every image replayed endlessly in his mind. Especially that particular one: the special "Mewtwo."
The bio-weapon Mewtwo that he'd invested countless blood, sweat, and resources to create was, in the hands of "Rainbow Rocket," seemingly just one of many powerful weapons, albeit a more notable one.
And its form was stable, its power tremendous, far exceeding his imagination!
This realization stirred within him an indescribable irritation, but even more so, a flame of desire igniting within his chest.
"Conquer all legends, dominate all worlds," he repeated that slogan, shimmering with rainbow light, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
It sounded arrogant, even laughable, but paired with such compelling imagery... it was entirely different.
He'd once thought his ambition was vast enough, but now it seemed his imagination had been bound by reality after all.
"Interesting," Giovanni murmured to himself, finally moving.
He pressed a key on the keyboard, ready to start the game.
Then, in the next moment, he froze.
He'd never played a game in his entire life.
So... how exactly did one move a character again?
---
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Lance controlled his character, carefully venturing deeper into the first level of Shoal Cave.
The light inside the cave dimmed suddenly, creating a sharp contrast with the sunny beach outside.
A blast of frigid air rushed toward him, and his character couldn't help but shiver.
Despite being just a game, the oppressive atmosphere that seeped through the screen felt incredibly real.
The ground beneath his character's feet was covered in a thin layer of frost, crunching softly with each step.
Ice crystals of countless sizes clung to the surrounding rock walls, glimmering with an eerie cold light as they caught the beam of his light source.
The air was saturated with an unnerving silence, broken only by a continuous sound like wind whistling through narrow passages, echoing from deeper within the cave. Even the game's music had grown quiet.
Lance couldn't help but furrow his brow. His instincts told him something wasn't right here.
Sure enough, after just a few steps, disaster struck!
Several Seel and a few Smoochum, as if suddenly seized by some massive terror, their eyes glowing with an unnatural red light, lunged directly at his character and launched a frenzied assault!
"What the?" Lance muttered, his brow furrowing as the game entered battle mode. He reflexively cursed under his breath. These Pokémon weren't particularly high level, but their aggression seemed excessive, nothing like the normal behavior of wild Pokémon. After all, you don't usually encounter monsters like this.
He quickly sent out his Gyarados and, using sheer level advantage, dispatched the battle easily.
But looking at those defeated Pokémon lying unconscious on the ground, his confusion only deepened.
Their behavior was completely abnormal, as if they'd been intensely stimulated by something, or scared half to death by some massive terror, making them so frenzied and aggressive.
He took a breath to steady himself and continued forward along the only path visible through the cave.
Along the way, Lance encountered several more waves of wild Pokémon attacks, including higher-level Lapras and several Dewgong, but he managed to handle them all with the combined strength of his Gyarados and the rest of his team.
These wild Pokémon were all below level forty, so even with type disadvantages, they weren't difficult to deal with.
But that lingering sense of unease never left, only intensifying as he ventured deeper.
Finally, he reached the end of this path. Ahead was nothing but a solid, cold rock wall. There was no way forward.
"That's strange," Lance muttered.
He maneuvered his character in a circle, carefully examining the surrounding walls and ground, repeatedly pressing the interaction button, but found no hidden side passages or mechanisms.
So, where had that little girl's Meowth and the gym leaders gone?
Had he taken a wrong turn?
Or could there be a hidden passage nearby that he hadn't found yet?
As he pondered this, even considering whether he should temporarily exit the cave and search for the entrance again, it happened.
"ROOOOOAAAAARRRR!!!"
A far more intense and distinct roar suddenly erupted from deep within the cave! The sound was no longer a distant wind; it was more like something massive breathing heavily.
Immediately after, the small, shallow puddle of water that had been in front of him began to rise at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Cold water gushed out continuously, spreading rapidly and washing away the frost on the ground.
"Is this a high tide?" Lance blinked, then immediately realized something was off.
"No, this isn't a natural tidal phenomenon!"
The water spread with incredible speed. In moments, it formed a broad water surface, and remarkably, this body of water led directly toward the side rock wall, which had seemed solid moments before but now revealed a cave opening that had been completely submerged beneath the water!
So that's it!
Lance understood.
It seemed he needed to use water-type moves, or perhaps needed to wait for a certain moment or trigger a specific condition before the path forward would reveal itself!
Lance didn't hesitate. He immediately commanded his Gyarados to use Surf. His character climbed onto the Gyarados's broad back, rode the newly appeared waterway, and steered toward the mysteriously revealed cave opening.
After passing through the brief water passage, the Gyarados carried him into a completely different section of the cavern.
The moment he entered, before he could even make out his surroundings, Lance was first struck by the suddenly intensified cold so severe it felt like it would freeze his very soul. Even through the screen, he felt the chill and couldn't help but pull his collar up.
Then, as his character's eyes adjusted to the lighting of this new space and the image became clear, he was utterly overwhelmed. His fingers froze instinctively over the keyboard.
The space here was far more massive and vast than before, as if some powerful force had hollowed out the entire mountainside, creating a gigantic ice cavern.
The temperature around here looked frighteningly low. In the game, his character's breath had transformed into thick white mist.
Most striking of all was the colossal ice mountain at the center of the cavern, constructed entirely of crystalline ice and radiating a brilliant blue glow. It was almost impossible to imagine its scale.
And at the core of that ice mountain, a massive, majestic, and fierce figure was completely frozen within.
It was a Pokémon unlike any he'd ever seen, and nothing he'd ever read about in any known records or Pokédex.
It was a Dragon and Ice-type Pokémon with a gray-blue body that looked like it was covered in ice armor, with a structure both complex and radiating an exaggerated sense of power.
Its enormous limbs, which resembled both wings and talons, along with a thick and powerful tail, were all locked within thick layers of ice, unable to move even a fraction.
The Pokémon's head hung low, with one eye like molten lava, burning a deep red, tightly shut.
Even in its sealed, dormant state, the very existence of this Pokémon radiated an aura that made one's heart tremble with terror.
It was as if the moment it awakened, it could unleash a devastating winter that would freeze everything and drag the entire world into an icy hell.
The frigid cold seemed almost to seep through the screen. Lance could feel his heartbeat accelerate, beads of sweat forming on his palms. He unconsciously held his breath.
What kind of Pokémon was this?
Another unknown, unrecorded legendary Pokémon?
Why was it sealed away in such a place?
And for some inexplicable reason, even though he was separated from it by a screen, even though the Pokémon radiated such a dangerous and ominous aura, Lance felt an inexplicable pull from deep within his heart, a strange stirring.
What was this... feeling?
After a brief moment of shock, Lance suddenly came to his senses.
Wait, that creature... It's a Dragon!
As a trainer specialized in Dragon-types, Lance could clearly sense the fierce dragon power contained within this Pokémon, a power that was wild, untamed, and filled with raw, destructive urges, yet seeming to carry traces of suppressed anger.
He almost instinctively maneuvered his character forward, wanting to get a closer look, wanting to perceive more clearly that dragon aura, so familiar yet completely different from anything in his previous knowledge.
However, just as his character tried to take a step forward, the game screen suddenly jolted violently. Immediately after, a strikingly obvious notification box appeared, its background decorated with patterns of fractured ice and snowflakes.
[This area is surrounded by air barriers of extreme cold and special energy. An invisible, formidable force rejects outside entities from drawing near!]
Lance's character was forcefully pushed back by an invisible barrier, unable to approach the ice mountain by even an inch. He couldn't even take a single step forward.
"I can't get through?"
Looks like this one, just like that Regrock, has a powerful barrier or energy field protecting it. He'd need to meet some condition to get closer, or perhaps awaken it somehow.
Lance sighed, his heart instantly flooding with regret.
The game's design... it really does test one's patience every time. It was hard to say this wasn't intentional on the part of the creator.
Who was this Pokémon? What story and power did it hold? Why was it here? Who had the ability to seal it away like this?
Did this cavern's abnormally low temperature and all these eerie phenomena have something to do with it?
Countless questions flooded his mind all at once, tangling together like a knot.
But he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
He knew this wasn't the time to dwell on these mysteries. His primary objective hadn't been fulfilled yet: finding the missing Meowth and gym leader.
This sealed legendary Pokémon was clearly a remarkable discovery, but it probably wasn't the core of the current story.
He took one last long look at the ominous and powerful dragon frozen within that ice, etching its image firmly into his memory. Then he maneuvered his character to turn and head down another relatively narrow path, continuing to explore deeper into the cavern.
The deeper he ventured down this new path, the thicker the ice crystals became, and the temperature dropped even further, reaching the point where his character's breath was turning to ice.
The rock walls were completely covered in thick layers of ice, forming all manner of jagged ice spikes and icicles.
But as he walked, Lance gradually furrowed his brow. He sensed something was off.
Very off.
He'd initially assumed that the oppressive and deeply unsettling atmosphere permeating the entire cavern had come primarily from that frozen legendary Pokémon.
Its presence was indeed all-pervasive.
But as he gradually moved away from that ice-sealed beast and ventured deeper in another direction, why hadn't that heart-wrenching feeling diminished? Instead, it had grown clearer and more intense!
These were two completely different sensations. The frozen ice dragon's aura was powerful and majestic, carrying the dragons' inherent pride and weight of presence, along with a sleeping anger.
But this gradually intensifying aura he was sensing now was far more primal and pure, filled with a malevolent desire to freeze everything!
Which meant that the source of this cavern's abnormalities might not be just one?
Could that sealed Pokémon itself also be affected by this deeper power source?
Or... could it be imprisoned here to suppress something?
This thought made Lance's heart sink.
Just as alarm bells rang in his mind and he raced through his thoughts, from around the cave's corner ahead came the sound of intense battle, the explosive collision of Pokémon moves, and the urgent shouts of humans!
Lance snapped awake from his contemplation and quickened his character's pace, rushing forward.
After turning past a massive ice column, the scene before him made his heart tighten.
There, standing back to back, were the two twin gym leaders of Mossdeep City, their expressions taut with tension, their foreheads seeming to show tiny pixelated beads of sweat. To be sweating in such cold demonstrated the intensity of the battle.
They were commanding their Solrock and Lunatone, struggling to defend against the frenzied assault of a massive group of Ice-type Pokémon!
A large swarm of Swinub spun at high speed, unleashing dense ice shards like a blizzard. Beartic roared deafeningly, wielding its massive ice-covered paws.
Even Glalie, normally known for its cunning, was showing fangs and malice, charging forward directly, constantly creating illusions and launching attacks.
The gym leaders' Pokémon had clearly been battling continuously for a considerable time. Both Solrock and Lunatone bore injuries, and the light radiating from them was dimmer.
Though they were powerful and their super-effective moves were working well, against such overwhelming numbers of Pokémon that seemed relentless, they were struggling. They could barely maintain a defensive barrier, finding themselves in a passive defensive position.
It was at this moment that an especially massive Beartic quietly maneuvered under the cover of the surrounding technique's glow, flanking around from the side and rear, its eyes flickering with wild red light.
It raised its massive paw, brimming with dreadful cold energy, clearly about to come crashing down on the Lunatone and the gym leader behind it, both fully focused on the frontal attack and completely unaware!
In the nick of time!
"Watch out!" Lance instinctively pressed the interaction button and shouted as his fingers flew across the keyboard with practiced urgency. His character surged forward!
His character joined the battle instantly. His Gyarados's massive form, like a tank, suddenly blocked between the Beartic and Lunatone, its body absorbing the full force of that ice punch!
In an instant, ice fragments scattered!
The screen flashed black as the battle interface activated!
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