This overwhelming energy had absolutely no effect on the city buildings below or the fleeing people.
The rainbow-colored beam it fired pierced through the sky, and wherever it passed, even relatively powerful Ultra Beasts like Buzzwole and Pheromosa melted away like snow in the sun.
Ho-Oh effortlessly intercepted the endless tide of Ultra Beasts with its own power alone, bringing a glimmer of hope to the despairing world below.
Finally, after clearing most of the visible Ultra Beasts, Ho-Oh let out a cry that shook the earth, filled with resolute determination.
Its massive body transformed into a rainbow-colored pillar of light that pierced through the sky, brighter than the sun itself, and slammed into the enormous Ultra Wormhole that was still spewing forth Ultra Beasts.
A thunderous explosion rang in Kairos's ears.
The purple-black twisted vortex trembled violently under the impact of the rainbow light, then began to shatter continuously before finally being completely destroyed, disappearing without a trace.
The sky returned to its original color. Though dark wisps still lingered, the Ultra Wormhole had vanished.
And Ho-Oh's majestic figure also completely dissipated after that burst of brilliant light.
All that remained was a single rainbow-colored feather slowly drifting down through the air, radiating incredible life energy.
The feather flickered with faint light before finally disappearing from people's sight, as if it had never appeared at all.
All the phantom images stopped there abruptly, going dark like a screen losing power.
But Kairos's consciousness didn't return to reality. A new question surfaced in his mind.
Why had the world still ended up like this, even after Ho-Oh had gone that far, using all its power to successfully close the Ultra Wormhole and restore the land?
Were there even more terrifying disasters after the Ultra Beasts? Or did the Ultra Beasts return?
As if responding to his question, the darkness before his eyes didn't dissipate but rippled once more.
The vision continued playing.
The initial scenes were filled with hope. The survivors knelt on the ground, bowing reverently toward the sky where Ho-Oh had disappeared, their eyes full of awe.
The sudden appearance of the Legendary Pokémon had saved them. Naturally, that was their reaction.
Upon the ruins, tender green shoots began to grow. The earth soaked in rainbow light rain visibly recovered its life force at an astonishing pace.
The survivors supported each other and began rebuilding their homes.
They honored Ho-Oh as their savior deity, even erecting monuments in commemoration.
Everything seemed to be getting back on track, no different from before.
Then the vision's timeline began to accelerate.
One generation passed, and another grew up.
The new generation of leaders stood in towering buildings, gazing through massive glass walls at the gradually greening world.
Their eyes no longer held reverence but were filled with scrutiny and ambition. Kairos heard fragments of scattered arguments:
"...We cannot entrust civilization's survival to mythical creatures..."
"...We must control our own destiny! Establish reliable defenses..."
"...Surface resources must be efficiently utilized for a greater future..."
The scene flickered, showing human technology advancing at an unprecedented rate.
Massive drilling machines penetrated the earth's crust, constantly overloading and exhausting energy sources. Forest after forest was leveled, replaced by enormous factories.
Smog covered the entire once-blue sky.
Cities became grander and brighter, but nature's presence grew fainter and the environment worse and worse.
Kairos suddenly understood.
Ho-Oh's sacrifice, using its own power, had indeed stabilized the environment in the short term and even repaired the trauma caused by the Ultra Beasts.
But Ho-Oh's existence itself was perhaps the core that maintained this world's ecological balance.
After this core burned itself out to save the world, its remaining power could at most barely maintain the normal functioning of the world's natural environment.
If humanity then went ahead and destroyed the environment themselves, there wasn't much more to say. In the end, they could only die out.
This was the consequence of recklessly messing around without a Legendary Pokémon to back you up.
Sure enough, just as Kairos predicted, the vision's finale showed the complete collapse of the natural ecosystem in various ways.
The land began to turn into desert, rivers turned murky, the sky was permanently shrouded in gray haze, and even the last bit of green completely disappeared.
The once-glorious cities became desolate and dilapidated.
Only then did the survivors finally remember their predecessors' warnings and were forced to flee to the underground shelters they had secretly begun building, the very precursor to the massive underground world where Kairos now found himself.
Here, the vision finally ended completely.
Kairos took a deep breath, his mood somewhat complicated.
On one hand, he felt these people had purely brought it upon themselves, destroying their own world through greed and shortsightedness.
But on the other hand...
However, at this moment, he also realized something.
Since the disaster's cause was humanity's excessive development after Ho-Oh's disappearance, then now, after five hundred years of self-repair on the surface world without human interference, shouldn't it be much better?
After all, without human influence, the world's natural environment would slowly heal itself.
The return to the surface that the Watchers so desperately hoped for might actually be genuinely achievable.
Of course, the prerequisites were that the surface had indeed recovered and that there was no possibility of another Ultra Beast invasion.
Speaking of which, Kairos found it a bit strange.
Why did every world seem to have Ultra Wormholes appearing?
His own world wouldn't face a similar situation in the future, would it?
But now clearly wasn't the right time to think about that question. Kairos carefully stored the metal fragment recording this heavy truth into his System space.
For now, he should return to the Watchers' base and inform Elara and the others about this crucial intelligence.
However, just as the thought of setting out arose, the System notification sounded.
[Important historical fragment has been collected. World background analysis significantly improved.]
[Current world background analysis: 33%. When analysis reaches 100%, if the Dimensional Communicator is activated again, the probability of connecting to a special world will greatly increase.]
Kairos stared at this sudden prompt, completely stunned.
Analysis rate? As the name suggested, this should be the degree of understanding about the world connected by the Dimensional Communicator, right?
But this... special world...
What kind of world qualified as a special world?
Wasn't even this world special enough?
Just as Kairos was pondering, the System provided a prompt answering his confusion.
[Responding to host: Special worlds refer to worlds with significant connections to original characters and the main world. The first world the host visited can be considered a special world.]
[The current world is an ordinary world.]
With that explanation, Kairos understood.
In that case, connecting to special worlds was a good thing.
After all, only in those worlds would there be high connections to characters from the Pokémon world.
Since that was the case, he absolutely had to find a way to max out this background analysis rate on this trip.
And the method to max it out should be to thoroughly understand this world's situation.
He took a deep breath and started heading back the way he came.
Just as Kairos was preparing to return, the situation at the Watchers' base was far from good.
The earlier incident where Gengar instantly dismantled the Alliance patrol squad had clearly drawn serious attention from the Alliance higher-ups.
At this moment, outside the defensive fortifications at the Watchers' base entrance, the atmosphere was tense.
A better-equipped Alliance security squad was launching a fierce assault.
Leading them was a military officer with three and a half stars on his shoulder insignia, his face cold.
His subordinates' Pokémon were no longer ordinary Magnemites but heavily modified Electivire with thick steel shields mounted on their arms, along with larger Magnezone with clearly enhanced discharge devices, obviously much stronger than before.
Elara, Anvil, and the other Watchers resisted desperately from behind scattered cover.
Their Snorlax and Golem seemed overwhelmed under the opponent's enhanced firepower.
Golem's body was bombarded with sparks flying, and even Snorlax's thick fat couldn't completely absorb the powerful electrical currents from the Magnezone.
Watcher members kept getting injured and falling. The defensive line was compressed further and further back, on the verge of being breached.
With a tremendous bang, Elara pushed a young member aside and was herself thrown back by an explosive shockwave, slamming hard into a metal wall.
Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She was clearly seriously injured.
"Surrender now."
The three-and-a-half-star officer's voice came through a loudspeaker, cold and emotionless.
"You have nowhere left to retreat. Stop resisting, and perhaps you can keep your lives."
A desperate atmosphere spread among the survivors. Anvil supported Elara, his eyes filled with rage and helplessness.
The gap in strength between them and the Alliance was simply too vast.
However, at this critical moment, a hidden passage on the side of the base, usually covered by debris, had its heavy iron plate pushed open from inside.
A figure wearing an oil-stained leather jacket and chewing on a metal pipe strolled out casually.
It was Old Smoker.
He seemed completely oblivious to the fierce battle before him and the countless weapons pointed at him.
His gaze swept across the battlefield, finally landing on the injured Elara. He walked straight over and asked, his voice raspy yet clear:
"Elara, tell me, where did that guy named Kairos go? I need to find him."
Everyone froze.
The Alliance officer frowned, eyeing this uninvited guest warily.
The Watchers were even more bewildered.
Many of them knew Old Smoker, just an information broker from the lower city who was well-connected, usually around three-star trainer level. How had he appeared in the base's depths at this crucial moment?
And at a time like this, was this really the right question to ask?
Elara endured the pain and urgently hissed: "Old Smoker! Are you here to die? Quick! Take Axuan and leave through the secret passage! We can't hold here!"
The Alliance officer also lost patience and warned sternly: "Unauthorized personnel, get lost immediately! Or face execution!"
Old Smoker grinned, revealing a mouthful of teeth yellowed from smoking.
He removed his pipe, tapped the ash off on his mechanical prosthetic limb, and said calmly: "Looks like it's been too long since I've been around. Any random punk thinks they can talk to me like that."
Before his words faded, a Poké Ball had already appeared in his hand, the very Ultra Ball Kairos had given him earlier!
The Ultra Ball was thrown, light flashed, and what emerged wasn't the familiar Murkrow but an abnormally imposing Honchkrow with razor-sharp eyes and an overwhelming presence!
Its beak and talons gleamed with cold metallic luster, its red mechanical eye scanning the entire scene with dominating pressure.
At this moment, both Elara and Anvil were stunned, because this was definitely not a Pokémon Old Smoker should have in their memory!
This presence absolutely reached four-star level!
Old Smoker's voice remained flat: "Honchkrow, Tailwind, then Dark Pulse to blow up those Magnezone's energy cores."
Honchkrow let out a piercing cry.
Its wings flapped powerfully, instantly sweeping a strong gust across the battlefield, disrupting the opposing Pokémon's formation while accelerating its own speed.
Immediately after, before anyone else could react, it shot out like black lightning.
The dark energy waves it fired precisely struck the most vulnerable energy transmission components on several Magnezone.
Boom, boom, boom!
A series of explosions rang out. Several Alliance Magnezone instantly crashed to the ground!
The steel-shield-equipped Electivire tried to block, but Honchkrow executed a sharp dive, its Dark Pulse directly striking the connection point between the shield and its body, skillfully flipping it over and rendering it unable to fight.
In just a few minutes, a single Pokémon completely reversed the battle!
The three-and-a-half-star officer's face turned deathly pale, unable to believe what was happening before his eyes.
Finally, he could only grit his teeth and order a retreat, fleeing in disarray with his defeated troops.
After the crisis was resolved, the base entrance was a mess.
The surviving Watchers looked at Old Smoker and his Honchkrow, their eyes filled with shock and confusion.
Elara clutched her wound, frowning with some urgency: "Old Smoker, what's going on with you? How did you suddenly advance to four-star?"
Old Smoker recalled Honchkrow and re-lit his pipe, but didn't answer Elara's question. Instead, he asked again:
"First tell me where that guy named Kairos went. I need to find him. It's important."
Just as the atmosphere grew tense, footsteps echoed from the passage entrance.
Kairos had returned.
He immediately took in the scene at the base entrance, the injured Elara, and Old Smoker, whose aura seemed completely out of place with the lower city.
Why did this guy feel different from before?
Then he saw the Honchkrow beside Old Smoker.
Oh, so his main Pokémon ate a Rare Candy and evolved. No wonder he seemed so pumped up now.
This must be what they mean by good fortune bringing good spirits.