A subtle, refined fragrance instantly filled the inner sanctum of the shrine, sending a massive, refreshing jolt through anyone who inhaled it.
"This is Dragon Breath Incense... Good grief, how much is this cloud of smoke even worth?"
Dragon Breath Incense was an exceptionally rare alchemical spice, uniquely capable of repairing deep structural trauma sustained by a Pokémon's spiritual source. Across the modern world, the production formula for Dragon Breath Incense had been completely lost to time, with only microscopic trace amounts occasionally unearthed from ancient, uncatalogued ruins.
On the global black market, a single gram of this material could easily command a price tag of over millions of League dollars.
Tracking the sheer volume of Dragon Breath Incense being casually burned just to greet his arrival, Feng Che felt his heart bleed with acute fiscal agony. With every passing second, hundreds of millions of potential League credits were cleanly evaporating into thin air.
"Your tracking arrays appear to harbor an exceptional affinity for this aroma," Landorus communicated telepathically. "Let us write a contract: should your vanguard successfully clear my trial, I shall smoothly transfer the definitive alchemical formula of this incense straight into your database."
"Furthermore, the raw botanical materials required to refine Dragon Breath Incense are pastured in abundance all across this Secret Relic Zone."
Landorus's proposal instantly caused Feng Che's brow to lift with immense satisfaction. Granted, having siphoned the ancient vaults of the Desert Pirates, his shadow empire sat atop a mountain of bottomless capital—yet near-zero baseline constraints dictated that an operator should ever decline a secondary, highly lucrative revenue vector.
"Permit my mainframes to map out the regulatory parameters of this Ascension Assessment."
"Every single asset deployed to trial the Earth Shrine must strictly anchor its taxonomy within the Ground-type ecosystem. Naturally, your newly captured Ursaring, whose cellular matrix is on the absolute verge of completing its Ground-type transition, will be authorized to enter the lane."
"Siphoning the telluric radiation emitted by this shrine over generations, the Ursaring lines pastured within this prehistoric forest comfortably register as quasi-Ground entities anyway."
"Your immediate tactical assignment: systematically neutralize the combat automated reflections engineered under my hand."
"Once the initial vanguard waves are broken, your active roster must seamlessly coordinate a joint press to forcefully override my personal defense grid."
Landorus guided Feng Che deeper into the absolute center of the sanctuary, where a colossally wide, ancient stone colosseum floor opened before them.
"To ensure fair combat metrics, my mainframes will dynamically balance the caliber of the reflections to mirror the power tier of your chosen assets."
"However, any partner stepping onto this floor is hard-coded to clear the entry threshold of the Master rank," Landorus added, locking down the boundary condition.
"Superb. Take the lane, Ursaring!"
Feng Che launched his newly acquired bear into the clearing. Having freshly devoured the entire crystal jar of premium Combee honey, the giant titan's vital indicators were running at maximum capacity.
"Ursaring—force a clean victory across this exchange, and my office will immediately unseal a secondary jar of premium honey to reinforce your inventory."
"Should your metrics sustain a definitive shutdown, your honey privileges will face a permanent blackout," Feng Che directed lazily, hitting the bear's absolute psychological vulnerability.
The honey was Ursaring's ultimate binding script—the absolute lifline regulating its behavioral programming.
"The concentration of raw telluric energy nesting within this Ursaring's circulation is remarkably robust; its cellular structure is hovering on the absolute cusp of an evolutionary leap," Landorus audited internally.
"A reasonable baseline. It is indeed approaching the optimal phase to trigger the full transformation."
Landorus gave a sharp click of its fingers. Torrential reservoirs of high-purity Ground-type energy instantly crystallized across the colosseum floor, printing ten independent reflection assets identifying as Donphan.
Combat Matrix: Automated Reflection Fleet
Species Profiles: Ten independent Donphan chimeras. Flaunt a low-slung, armor-plated grey elephantine chassis, their jagged, charcoal-black hide trunks extending seamlessly from crown to tail, flanked by a pair of long, exceptionally lethal tusks.
Mechanics: Their razor-sharp, stone-hard tusks expand dynamically with age, and their high-density hide grants them immense physical resilience. A common physical Take Down executed by this species packs more than enough kinetic energy to effortlessly flatten structural civilian facilities. Their standard programming dictates coiling their bodies into dense, high-velocity tire loops to launch crushing, rolling presses.
"Donphan fleet—initialize Defense Curl and chain into Rollout!" Landorus commanded telepathically.
The ten Donphan reflections instantly tucked their limbs, converting their armored chassis into spinning kinetic wheels that screamed across the bedrock like heavy artillery rounds, closing in on Ursaring from all angles.
"Ursaring—Hammer Arm!"
Confronting the oncoming onslaught of the rolling meat tanks, the muscle fibers lining Ursaring's massive forearms violently swelled, their diameter multiplying within a single blink.
Hoisting its massive, razor-sharp paw, it brought its weight down in a brutal horizontal swat against the lead Donphan.
The exact millisecond the blow grounded, the struck Donphan completely lost its kinetic trajectory, sailing across the airspace like a broken kite before crashing ruthlessly into the floor. The bedrock fractured cleanly into deep pits under the impact, the reflection sustaining terminal structural trauma as it dissolved into a stream of pure, unrefined Ground-type mass that violently funneled straight into Ursaring's body.
Ursaring instantly registered an immense, heavy physical drag anchoring its musculature.
Right at that micro-second, the remaining nine Donphan wheels screamed across the lane, coiling their paths to form a single, massive rolling tire designed to systematically crush Ursaring into grease.
Ursaring slammed its heavy limb ruthlessly into the floor, leveraging the compression force to vault dynamically into the high airspace.
Lacking the reflex loops to abort their velocity, two of the advancing Donphan wheels violently collided head-on, their structural frameworks buckling as they spun out into a dazed, catatonic state.
Concurrently, three secondary Donphan executed a high-velocity vertical bounce, their massive armor-plated hulls screaming upward to intercept Ursaring mid-air.
"Ursaring—Fury Swipes loop!"
Ursaring wreathed its claws in a blinding kinetic grid, its arms tracing an unbreachable wall of steel-hard talons around its silhouette.
The ascending Donphan reflections were ruthlessly batted out of the air, their multi-ton chassis crashing heavily back into the arena bedrock to print multiple gaping craters across the stone floor. The fallen entities remained completely pinned within the trenches, unable to clear the debris.
Smoothly landing back onto the floor, Ursaring hoisted its expanded paws, delivering a rapid-fire cadence of brutal, full-torque downward hammers straight into the pinned targets.
Defenseless under the crushing press, the Donphan reflections violently ruptured, converting into massive reservoirs of high-purity telluric mass that aggressively siphoned into Ursaring's circulation.
Ursaring:Catastrophic processing error... my systemic weight indicators are expanding at an unmanageable cadence...
Ursaring's biological taxonomy had yet to officially integrate the Ground-type sub-affinity; consequently, as these astronomical reservoirs of pure ground energy continuously flooded its channels, its internal mainframes held zero systemic protocols to safely govern or vent the mass.
"Exceptional execution. Let us observe how your partner manages the secondary phase," Landorus validated.
"Lest your intellect harbor the delusion that my trial is limited to a single configuration."
Landorus gave a secondary click of its fingers. Colossal columns of raw telluric energy violently welled out from the deep sanctuary vaults, their high-purity structures rapidly weaving together across the colosseum floor to print five high-caliber reflections identifying as Rhydon.
Combat Matrix: Vanguard Phase II
Species Profiles: Five independent Rhydon titans. Their morphological geometry mirrors prehistoric bipedal dinosaurs, their heavy hides wreathed in a rock-hard grey armor plate, crowned by a hyper-tensile, rotating drill-horn flanking their brow—an exceptionally lethal armor-piercing asset.
Anatomical Specs: Their upper talons sprout three razor-sharp claws, balanced by a series of prominent stone spikes lining their spines and a short, colossally thick neck wreathed in a high-density collar mantle. They command an immense tail assembly designed to maintain perfect kinetic balance during high-velocity charges.
The five Rhydon titans flashed their predatory, crimson eyes. Synchronizing their movements, they brought their heavy left limbs down in a unified stamp against the bedrock, telekinetically driving thousands of razor-sharp stone spires to violently erupt straight out from the earth lines.
Just as the massive stone grid screamed forward to systematically impale Ursaring into a sieve, the rogue bear moved.
Unsheathing its talons, it delivered a swift, flashing horizontal Slash combination line. The white kinetic air fronts cleanly sheared the advancing stone spires straight from their root nodes.
Telekinetically locking onto the severed rock pillars mid-transit, Ursaring swung its massive torso, violently hurling the stone projectiles straight back at the Rhydon formation. Lacking the agility parameters to clear the return trajectory, the lead Rhydon was cleanly run through by its own stone spires, its reflection violently fracturing into loose light blocks.
Seizing the momentum, the remaining four Rhydon aggressively elongated their stance, their hyper-tensile drill horns spinning at a manic cadence as they initialized a full-field charge, closing in on the bear.
"Ursaring—Hammer Arm combination!"
Every single one of the four advancing Rhydon had over-clocked their parameters to splice Smart Strike, Horn Drill, and Heavy Slam into a single, high-lethal charge lane.
Ursaring hoisted its massive forelimbs high into the air. Delivering a full-torque downward punch against the nearest titan, the sheer kinetic weight of the hit cleanly flipped the Rhydon upside down, smashing its shell ruthlessly into the bedrock.
Exhibiting immense, terrifying brawling savagery, the rogue bear reached down to firmly lock its talons around the fallen Rhydon's tail. Utilizing the multi-ton titan as a literal shield tool, it spun its frame to violently swing the asset straight into the flight paths of the remaining three Rhydon.
The poor proxy shield was violently torn into fine fragments under the spinning friction of its comrades' Horn Drills.
Without pausing its momentum, Ursaring aggressively pressed into the clearing, its brutal fists systematically detonating the remaining three Rhydon reflections one after the other within a matter of seconds.
A monumental, unprecedented volume of high-purity Ground-type energy aggressively flooded straight into Ursaring's circulation. Saturated under the astronomical telluric mass, the rogue bear's physical vessel grew exceptionally stiff and rigid, its lung parameters compressing to the point where it could barely parse air.
"This bear's internal systems are on the absolute threshold of structural collapse; that unmanaged reservoir of raw telluric mass is actively tearing its biological pathways to pieces," Mewtwo warned telepathically, its features shifting into a highly serious register. Feng Che's sensory arrays similarly flagged the acute danger.
Yet, despite its vital indicators screaming with critical warnings, the cross-scarred Ursaring stubbornly anchored its heavy limbs deep into the colosseum floor, explicitly refusing to buckle its stance as it waited for the final phase of the deadlock.
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